Learning Curves - By Elyse Mady Page 0,45

Where he fit in. Leanne understood him better now and knew why he chose to live the way he did. She’d been the first to claim that their relationship had a time limit. He’d agreed. Now, after getting to know him better, she saw that her motives weren’t as clear-cut.

If things had been different, she knew she could have cared for Brandon. Cared for him deeply. But no matter how good the sex, there could be no future for either of them. Not together, at least.

He’d told her their first night together what she could expect.

He didn’t do relationships.

It wasn’t personal. It was just how he was wired.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. She wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for the hurt of his past or for her sadness at the finality of her realization but she couldn’t stop the words escaping. “I’m so, so sorry, Brandon.”

His hand brushed away a strand of hair and he dropped a soft kiss on her lips. He rolled onto his back, pulling her across his body, his shaft probing her moistness insistently. He reached toward the bedside table once again and deftly sheathed himself.

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, sliding slowly inside. Inch by inch, she could feel herself expand, stretching to fit his rigid form, before she began to rock against him, her thighs clenching and releasing in a slow, measured rhythm. “My life is what it is. I can’t change the past. Neither can you.”

She wanted to exhort him not to give up on the idea of love but the words lodged in her mouth and she couldn’t get them past the lump in her throat. After all, who was she to lecture anyone about the right and wrong way to live life? It wasn’t as if she was a paragon of balance and happiness. Still, even if she couldn’t say the words, she could show him. Show him with her hands and her mouth and her body.

She didn’t know if he could discern her message or not, but they made love again, slowly this time, their movements soft and gentle, as they rocked and swayed together, building toward their mutual pleasure.

Chapter Ten

Professor Armstrong’s office was cluttered with nearly forty years of research. Books lined the shelves from floor to ceiling: textbooks, paperbacks and antique leather-bound tomes. A framed poster from an international conference held in Dusseldorf in 1975 hung on the wall. A computer sat on the battered desk while on the windowsill, a neglected spider plant struggled to live.

It was, give or take the placement of the desk and the state of the plant, identical to every university office Leanne had ever sat in and it represented everything to which she aspired. Now, sipping the coffee her advisor had produced from his ancient coffeemaker, they neared the end of their biweekly review of Leanne’s latest chapter.

She’d been working on her thesis for more than two years now. In that time she’d spent countless hours reading, writing draft after draft, revising the three hundred page paper until, at times, she felt like Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining, manically typing nonsense words over and over, until they had no meaning at all. But now, as she leaned back in the office chair and took another sip of coffee, she felt a surprising sense of satisfaction. All work and no play did make Leanne a dull girl. She finally found time to play and she’d never felt better.

Everything in her life was on track.

Armstrong’s concerns weren’t as serious as he’d made out. He wanted her to rework one of her arguments in the second-to-last chapter, and marked up the draft with his usual grammatical fervor, hunting down every misplaced semicolon with religious fanaticism. But today, not even his liberal application of red ink could dampen her mood.

Her body was loose and relaxed, well and truly sated after an incredible night at Brandon’s. They’d talked into the wee hours, alternating their late-night confessions with more mind-blowing sex. On her hands and knees. Straddling him. Bent across the bed, licking and sucking until they’d both been so exhausted, they’d fallen into a deep, mindless sleep, waking only when Brandon’s alarm went off at eight o’clock. She’d been running late but that didn’t stop them from enjoying a shower-time quickie. Standing up, her legs wrapped around his pounding hips, a sudsy, slick romp that had sent her hurling through the stratosphere once more.

What that man can do with a shower wand, she thought with a silent

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