Ellsbeth
“Good meeting?” she asked.
“It’s funny,” Rawlins said, standing from his chair but not closing any of the distance between them. “I’ve been teaching at Newlyn for a very long time. And it’s been a long time since a graduate student brought a thesis proposal to me that actually excited me.”
“Curt’s proposal was that good, huh?”
Rawlins eyed the closed door. “Fortunately Professor Gallway is Curt’s adviser. Because I couldn’t give less of a fuck about his proposal.”
Ellsbeth smiled, and she noticed how strong Rawlins’s hands looked, how the veins pressed against his skin and his fingers extended elegantly. She wondered if he played the piano.
“So of those rare proposals that excite you, how many of those advisees managed to pull off a fully functioning ritual already by this point in the year?” She wasn’t supposed to be flirting, but she couldn’t help it.
With him, flirting felt like speaking in a mother tongue after being away from your home country for years, and only running into another native speaker by chance.
Rawlins smiled back at her then, but he kept his mouth closed, the crooked dog-teeth Ellsbeth fantasized about mercifully still hidden.
She eyed the bowl of black licorice on his desk and reached over to pop a few pieces into her mouth.
“You know,” Ellsbeth said, “professors who want students to come to their office hours put out candy that most people like. Chocolate, you know. M it was a humiliation.
It turned her into a cliché, a joke. It did seem like he cared about her—that he really wanted her—but that might be all part of his larger game: Show a girl your bleeding heart, pretend you’re desperate for her, pretend she’s unique so that she feels special.
As soon as his conquest was over, Rawlins could dismiss her thoughtlessly, leaving behind only the crumbled remnants of what had once been her dignity and his respect for her academic promise.
So why were her legs parting? Why did she feel herself take her right hand and move it up her thighs inside her skirt? Rawlins bit his lip—he actually bit his lip. Ellsbeth had never seen a man do that outside of the movies. “Should I close the blinds?” he said quietly.
Ellsbeth just nodded, and in a heartbeat Rawlins was up and across the room, adjusting the shades. Ellsbeth reached down to peel her underwear down her legs, still sitting in his desk chair.
In an instant, Rawlins was back at the chair and had lowered himself onto his knees, between her legs.
He pushed her skirt up to her waistband.
“I want to taste you,” he said. And he looked up at her with an expression that she knew then would play on repeat in her mind for the rest of her life.
His voice was low and soft. “But you’re going to have to beg for it. ”
Now Ellsbeth groaned. She could feel the wetness between her legs, the hot, pulsing want. “I want you,” she said.
“That’s not begging.”
Ellsbeth swallowed hard, and he ran his fingers along her inner thigh.
“Will you?” His finger drifted away, farther down her leg. “I said beg, Ellsbeth.”
Ellsbeth pressed herself toward him. “Please,” she moaned. And in that instant, she was no longer thinking about whether she was being foolish or ruining any grand plans. All she could think about was his tongue inside her.
Rawlins needed no more encouragement. His arms braced against her thighs, and Ellsbeth bucked back against the chair as he swirled his tongue around her clit.
She had told boys she dated in college that she wasn’t a fan of oral sex—she found it awkward and stilted, a performance that she was required to applaud no matter how off-key the playing was.
It turned out she just hadn’t been with someone like Rawlins yet.
He moved his mouth confidently, with an insatiable hunger that caused Ellsbeth to squirm.
When she did, he just held her thighs firmer.
Her hands raked through his hair. She needed more of him.
She pulled him up, glistening and gasping, and brought his face to hers, kissing him hard.
“Stand up,” Rawlins said when they finally separated.
She did, enjoying the electric thrill of obeying him.
She saw the outline of his thick erection pressing against his jeans and watched as he slowly unbuttoned himself and stepped out of his pants.
He sat in his office chair and pulled a condom from the wallet sitting on his desk.
He ripped the foil with his teeth and rolled it over his length.
Ellsbeth straddled him then, hovering a few inches above him, her knees balancing on either side of his thighs.
She wanted him viscerally, in a way she hadn’t known was even possible.
It was a physical craving, and no amount of logic was going to override the gravity that was pulling her onto him.
She lowered herself until she felt the tip of his cock.
“I want you,” she said. Rawlins wrapped his arms around her hips and thrust himself inside her.
She gasped then, so loudly that if he hadn’t already promised the office was on a private wing of the department she would have panicked.
It was unlike anything she had ever felt before.
How had she gone so long not knowing that it could feel like this?
It was a wholeness, a delicious stretching, pure pleasure with every thrust, and she just wanted more of him.
Her hands were in his hair, and around his neck, and undoing the buttons from his shirt as quickly as she could so that she could feel his chest. Rawlins’s breath was heavy; he sighed into her neck.
“How does this feel so good?” Ellsbeth whispered. “How are you doing this to me?”
“You’re perfect,” he said back into her hair. “God, Ellsbeth, you’re perfect.”
Her pace quickened instinctively with her excitement, hips bucking as she ground herself against him. But his hands found her waist and slowed her, insisting on a deliberate rhythm.
It was impossible to know how long they were there, intertwined in that office chair, pressing into each other and kissing every available inch of skin.
Her orgasm rose up slowly and then hit again and again until her head was buzzing and balance seemed like a foreign concept.
Eventually, Rawlins’s self-control broke; his thrusts quickened, becoming jerky and forceful.
He groaned and then collapsed in the chair.
Ellsbeth lifted herself off him, and after a moment that felt like their souls returning to their bodies, Rawlins peeled the condom off and wrapped it neatly in a square of tissue paper before throwing it away.
Rawlins pulled his boxers back on and cocked his head, gesturing for Ellsbeth to come back.
She curled on his lap, one arm around his neck, and kissed him deeply.
The sex should have eased the wanting. It should have felt like a craving fulfilled.
She should be satisfied. But no. A taste had only made her want him even more.
They were silent for a while, while the colors of the sunset through the slits of the window shades went from pink to red to navy blue.
When Ellsbeth would go back to her own bed later that night, her mechanical, logical, list-making brain would remind her why she had just made a terrible mistake.
But for the moment, the only thing that filled her mind was his smell, and how good his arms felt around her.