Chapter 23
GRADY
T he broken couch tilted at a precarious angle, but I didn’t give a damn about my furniture.
Cece was still moving above me, her body gripping me like a vise as aftershocks rolled through her.
It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. Her hair was a mess, skin flushed and she was completely lost in pleasure.
I lost count of the number of orgasms I’d given her.
She cried out my name, which pushed me over the edge.
“Fuck,” I growled, my hips jerking up as I came hard, spilling myself into the condom with a grunt that sounded more animal than human.
We collapsed together on the busted couch. Her head fell to my shoulder, and I could feel her heart hammering against my chest. My hands moved to her back, stroking the smooth skin as we both tried to remember what our names were.
“Did we just break your couch?” she asked after a moment, her voice muffled against my neck.
I chuckled, the sound rumbling through my chest. “Completely destroyed it. But it was a piece of shit anyway.”
She lifted her head to look at me, her blue eyes bright with post-orgasmic satisfaction and something that looked suspiciously like mischief. “I can’t believe we just did that.”
“Which part? The kitchen counter, the standing sex, or breaking my furniture?”
“All of it.” She laughed, and the sound went straight to my chest. “I’ve never—I mean, I’m not usually?—”
“Wild?” I suggested, brushing a strand of hair away from her flushed face.
She blushed deeper. “I was going to say adventurous. But yeah, wild works too.”
“You’re full of surprises, Miss Monroe.” I traced my thumb along her jawline, marveling at how soft her skin was. “In the best possible way.”
She bit her lower lip, suddenly looking uncertain. “This was supposed to be a conversation about boundaries.”
“We had the conversation,” I pointed out. “We agreed on all the logical reasons why this was a terrible idea.”
“And then we did it anyway.”
“Multiple times. Very thoroughly.” I couldn’t keep the smugness out of my voice. The woman had come apart in my hands like she was made for me. I had never felt chemistry like this with anyone before.
She laughed despite herself, then grew serious. “What does this mean? For us, I mean.”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? What we’d just done had obliterated every professional boundary we’d carefully discussed. The smart thing would be to chalk it up to one night of incredible sex and go back to pretending we were just professor and student.
But looking at her now, naked and beautiful in my arms, I knew that was impossible. I was already addicted to the way she responded to my touch, the sounds she made when she came, the way she looked at me like I was the only man in the world.
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
I carefully lifted her and sat her on the couch. I strolled into the bathroom to dispose of the condom, then I wandered back into the kitchen. I was suddenly thirsty and ravenous. We had worked up an appetite.
I grabbed a couple bottles of cold water from the fridge and a small bowl of leftover strawberries. And then the bag of Ruffles from the counter. I carried my bounty to the couch. She hadn’t moved. I loved that she was still naked.
I handed her the water. “Cold enough?”
She smiled, a quiet, tired light. “Perfect.” She took a sip with total satisfaction, like I’d handed her treasure.
“Hungry?” I asked.
She giggled. “I am.”
“We burned a few calories.”
I held out the bag of chips. She grabbed a handful and started to eat. I watched her munch on them, completely un-self-conscious about sitting naked on my broken couch eating junk food. Well, the strawberries counted as healthy, I supposed.
There was something incredibly sexy about how comfortable she was with me now, the hesitation and awkwardness gone. We’d been tiptoeing around each other for so long that this felt like we could finally breathe around each other again.
“So,” I said, popping a strawberry in my mouth, “on a scale of one to ten, how badly did we just fuck up our professional relationship?”
She nearly choked on her chips, laughing. “Oh, we’re somewhere around a fifteen. Maybe twenty.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” I grinned, offering her a strawberry. “Good thing I never liked following rules anyway.”
“I noticed.” She bit into the fruit, juice running down her chin. Without thinking, I leaned over and licked it off. Her breath hitched at the contact.
“What? I was being helpful.”
“Helpful,” she repeated, shaking her head but smiling. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
I stretched out on the tilted couch, pulling her against my side. She fit perfectly, her head on my chest, one leg thrown over mine. “We could call it a lot of things. Educational. Research. Field work.”
“Field work?” She snorted. “That’s terrible, even for you.”
“Hey, we’re exploring uncharted territory here. Seems like legitimate research to me.”
“Tell me about Guatemala.”
I blinked awake. “The pyramid clean-up?”
She propped herself up on her elbow. “Yeah. What’s it like working out there?”
And that was another reason why she was so perfect. She cared about my work and I could talk about it without having to explain terms or try to dumb it down so she could understand. I knew she loved it and was just as passionate about human history as I was.
“It was intense. We climbed up—hundreds of feet—through vines and roots. I didn’t know half the pyramid was hidden.
Turns out there are thousands more just like it, buried in jungle.
LIDAR revealed them only recently. You would never believe the structures were even there.
It requires a thousand-mile view to get the total picture.
They’ve been there the whole time—hiding in plain sight. ”
She nodded, eyes bright. “I know. It’s crazy to think about all that history hidden, just waiting—like a warship at the bottom of the ocean.”
I chuckled. “Exactly. Stuff from a thousand years ago. People lived, loved, died there. Then the forest grew back. We’re just cutting vines off now.”
Her hand moved up my chest. “That’s… beautiful.”
I tightened my arm around her, thumb rubbing the curve of her cheek. “It means everything isn’t lost. Sometimes I think we archeologists are just memory-grabbers.”
She shrugged lightly. “I like that. Memory-grabbers.” Her voice was soft, close. “I don’t mind being a voyeur.”
“Come again?” I asked with a laugh.
“Not watching people have sex.” She laughed. “I want to peek into the lives of people that lived before us.”
“Bummer,” I teased. “About not being a voyeur.”
She slapped at my chest. “Perv.”
I grabbed her and rolled her under me. I blindly reached out to pull another condom from the end table.
“I’m not even going to ask why you have condoms strategically placed around your house,” she said.
I grinned down at her, rolling the condom on. “I scatter them around just in case.”
“Just in case what?” she asked, but her voice was already breathless as I settled between her thighs.
“Just in case I got lucky enough to have a beautiful graduate student break my furniture,” I murmured against her throat.
She wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling me closer. “You’re terrible.”
“You love it.” I pushed into her slowly this time, savoring the way her eyes fluttered closed and her lips parted on a soft gasp. “God, Cece. I could do this all night.”
“Promise?” The word came out on a moan as I started moving inside her.
I built the tension between us with deliberate, measured strokes.
I wanted to memorize every expression that crossed her face, every sound she made.
Because even though neither of us was saying it out loud, we both knew this couldn’t last. Tomorrow we’d have to go back to being professor and student. But tonight? Tonight she was mine.
“Look at me,” I commanded softly when her eyes started to drift closed.
She opened them, pupils dilated with pleasure. The connection between us felt electric. More than just physical. Dangerous.
“That’s it,” I breathed, my rhythm never faltering. “Stay with me.”
Her nails dug into my shoulders as she exploded around me. I was lost in ecstasy too a second later. I kissed the side of her face and then nibbled on her earlobe.
“Stay the night,” I whispered.
She tensed against me, her body going from pliant to rigid in a blink. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” I asked, though part of me already suspected this had been too good to be true. “It’s Friday night. No classes tomorrow.” I hoped like hell she wasn’t going to tell me she had a boyfriend waiting at home.
She shifted uncomfortably beneath me, avoiding eye contact. “I have to get home. My daughter will be wondering where I am.”
The words stopped me cold. I pulled back, staring down at her. “Your daughter?”
“Sophie. She’s five.” The words came out defensive, like she was bracing for judgment. “My mom’s watching her, but I need to be there when she wakes up in the morning.”
I rolled off her, sitting up on the edge of the broken couch. A daughter. A fucking five-year-old daughter. My mind reeled, trying to process this information that felt like it should have come up before now. Before I’d had my hands all over her. Before I’d been inside her three times tonight.
“You never mentioned—” I started, then stopped myself. Because what was I going to say? That she should have disclosed her parental status before we fucked? That having a kid changed everything?
Except it did change everything, didn’t it?
“It’s not exactly something that comes up in casual conversation,” she said quietly, reaching for her clothes. “Especially not with professors.”
I watched her pull on her shirt, the easy intimacy we’d shared moments before evaporating like steam. “Cece, I didn’t mean?—”
“It’s fine.” But her voice was clipped now, professional. She was already pulling away, building walls between us. “I should have mentioned it earlier.”
“No, that’s not—” I ran a hand through my hair, frustrated with myself. “I was just surprised.”
She paused, looking at me with those blue eyes that had been soft with satisfaction minutes ago and were now guarded. “Surprised. Right.”
Fuck. I was handling this all wrong. But the revelation had knocked me completely off balance.
A kid meant responsibilities I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
It meant her life was infinitely more complicated than I’d realized.
It meant she wasn’t just some graduate student I could have a casual fling with.
And she definitely couldn’t hop on a plane and fly into the jungle to hide out for months at a time.
She got dressed quickly and grabbed her keys from where they’d fallen on the floor. “I should go.”
“Cece, wait?—”
But she was already heading for the door. “I’ll see you in class next week.”