Learning Curves - By Elyse Mady Page 0,12
too and cried out in concert with his incoherent admonition of pleasure.
He sank down on top of her, his weight heavy but not unpleasant, as their breathing slowly returned to normal. An unfamiliar lassitude stole over her limbs.
Wow, Leanne thought, if this is what great sex feels like, I finally know what the fuss is about.
The sound of the door opening niggled at her daydream. Her eyes snapped open in alarm, a look reflected in the face of the naked man still lying on top of her.
But there was nowhere to hide, and when the exotic dancers entered the room, Leanne knew the fantasy was well and truly over. Tumbling over themselves in their haste to exit, they apologized. Leanne had to acknowledge that Brandon was doing his level best to shield her from their view but as they backed out the open door, they laughed raucously. “Christ! I didn’t know he had it in him.”
She closed her eyes in shame when she heard the other one guffaw. “Or in her!”
Chapter Three
From her miniscule office window, Leanne saw students, well wrapped against the fall chill, hurrying across the quad below. Located in an old, cramped building near the center of campus, the English department was understaffed and overcrowded.
And while she’d tried to make the space a little more cheerful, bringing in a small plant and hanging some funny—well, okay, relatively funny—quotes from great writers, the window remained the only perk in an otherwise awkward space that was sweltering in summer and damp in winter. But Leanne knew that as a graduate student, she was lucky to have secured any office, even this one.
Sighing, she abandoned the view and sized up the thick stack of term papers she’d collected during the last lecture. Determined, she opened one, but before she’d corrected the first run-on sentence, memories of the weekend hijacked her thoughts.
Brandon.
Ever since their wild encounter and subsequent humiliating discovery, she’d undertaken some serious soul searching, asking herself again and again what kind of person would abandon her so-called principles at the drop of a hat—or a bathrobe—for a pathetic thrill with some guy she picked up in a strip club. Even if he did have washboard abs and a killer smile.
And was hung like a Greek god…
Her devil-may-care side had chipped in a lot over the past forty-eight hours.
Until Saturday, she hadn’t even known it existed. She’d always played it safe. Done the expected and never strayed outside the lines. Now, she was discovering that she also had a Leanne-cares-a-lot side too.
The aftermath of their encounter had been awkward and tacky. Although the other dancers apologized profusely for their ill-timed interruption, there was no ignoring the subtle signs of approval they telegraphed their coworker. Or Brandon’s stony embarrassment, clearly conveyed despite his near-catatonic silence.
Dressing hurriedly, trying not to meet his eye, knowing the scorn and condemnation she would see in his face, she’d barely been able to look up from the floor. Only as she left the room had he spoken.
“Are you okay to get home?”
She’d turned, perplexed, all her thoughts focused on escape. “I don’t understand.”
“Do you have a way to get home? Will your friends make sure you get there safely?”
She shook her head and tried to overcome the after-effects of their incredible sex. There was no way she could face Gillian and the bombed bridesmaids. She’d rather be drawn and quartered. “No. But I can grab the bus or find a taxi…”
His lips thinned. “You’re not walking alone at this time of night,” he’d said angrily and picked up the radio from the dressing table. “Jay…Jay…come in…”
“Hey, Brandon. What’s up?”
“I need you to do me a favor.”
In the end, the bouncer waited with her out front until the taxi arrived. And when she reached her apartment, she discovered Brandon had also arranged for the fare to be taken care of, the driver making a show of the brightly colored chit he’d collected at the club.
Yet as she lay awake in bed that night, her body still thrumming with the incredible sensations he’d awoken, it hadn’t been his sexual prowess she remembered as much as his thoughtfulness, his protectiveness. He’d made sure she’d been looked after.
Maybe, she thought, if I went back to the club, we could meet again…
The notion of returning to the strip club brought her back to earth like a cold dash of water. What the hell was she thinking? Brandon was an exotic dancer; she was an academic in training. The sex might have