The Connaghers Series Boxed Set Page 5

  Knowing he was so turned on dialed up the heat as high as her internal boiler would go. On a low groan, she parted her thighs and pressed harder against his seeking hand.

  “But do you know what that means, darlin’? Do you know how hard it is for me to touch you like this when my control is already frayed? Because what I really want to do…”

  “Do it,” she ground out.

  “Rae—”

  “I want to know the truth! I need to know what you want, what you really want. When you take off your professor mask, Conn, what are you going to ask me to do?”

  He tugged the scrap of lace off one hip and then the other. “Step out of them.”

  Heart pounding frantically, she did as he ordered, and he made a low, raw sound like a dying man as he touched her.

  “I’ve dreamed of this, Rae. Dreamed of you quivering and trembling, bare to my touch. I wanted you helpless. I wanted you whimpering for me to hurry up, begging me to take you.”

  In her mind, his whispered fantasies collided with her own.

  She’d ached for his hands, especially since he’d gripped her thigh so hard. She’d daydreamed about him holding her down, pinning her, making her helpless. Knowing that he wanted the same only made her desire worse.

  But now that she had his powerful, demanding hands on her, he wasn’t holding her down at all. She whimpered as he asked, squirming to get his fingers inside her. That’s when he pulled his hand back and smacked her right cheek. The sharp crack made her flinch, but it didn’t hurt. He didn’t smack her that hard.

  She blew out a long, shaking breath, relieved, until he rubbed his palm against her skin, spreading the warmth from his slap. His fingers delved again and she groaned, louder, her back straining to push harder into him.

  “Shhh, darlin’. I doubt many professors are still on campus since our final was so late, but the dean’s surely in her office just down the hall. I wouldn’t care to explain to her why my door was locked with you in here with me, would you?”

  He slapped her again, harder, the sting burning straight through her core. How could he tell her to be quiet and then spank her harder? Fire built with each stroke, sucking her down into an endless black hole of need. He was devouring her, destroying her, turning her into a quivering mass of hunger, and the more she shook and whimpered as quietly as she could, the harder he spanked her.

  “Are you ready to beg me yet?”

  “Bastard,” she retorted, biting back the pleas that boiled in her mind. Please, make me yours.

  “That’s my darlin’,” he purred against her ear. “Let me spank you longer. Harder. How far will you let me go?”

  As far as it takes, she swore. Wound up so tight, she wanted to scream, grind herself against his desk, his thigh, anything to gain relief. As she struggled, the small pain in her scalp blended with the punishing need, the growing fire on her ass, worsening her desire.

  She sobbed, not because he spanked her too hard—but because she needed him too badly.

  Dropping his left forearm between her shoulder blades, he shifted his weight so that he was holding her down in earnest. Immediately, it felt like he’d hit some button in her that managed to winch every muscle in her body to a tight humming pitch. This is what she’d dreamed about. What she’d yearned to feel, and yet dreaded at the same time.

  Helpless, for him.

  Shaking, crying, she begged as he’d threatened. “Please, please, Conn, I can’t stand it!”

  His hand stilled. “What do you want, darlin’? Do you want me to stop?”

  “No, no, don’t stop,” she sobbed. “I want you. Please, Conn!”

  His right hand left her momentarily. The sound of his zipper was loud despite their frantic breathing.

  So primed for him, the thought of him sliding home at last almost pushed her over the edge. However, he didn’t move behind her. He didn’t take her on top of his desk as she’d dreamed all these months. Despite her best efforts, he evidently still possessed enough control to torment her with what she couldn’t have. She threw her head back, a desperate wail threatening to tear from her throat, and he slid his fingers deep inside her.

  “Say my name.”

  She opened her mouth to comply, but every muscle suddenly locked down so fiercely that she nearly screamed. Jamming her right hand against her mouth to make sure she didn’t draw the dean and every police officer in town to knock down his door, she reached, blindly, with her other, hoping to at least touch him. It helped that he was curled over her, using his weight to trap her.

  She grabbed hold of his erection like he was the only lifeline that could keep her from drowning.

  With a harsh, low curse, he pumped in her hand and shuddered against her. The thought of him coming inside her threw her so far out to sea that she didn’t know if she’d ever make it back, but she managed to breathe out, “Conn.”

  Conn had just failed the biggest exam of his entire life.

  He crammed the evidence of his failure back into his jeans and pulled Rae into his arms. “Hold on, darlin’. I’ve got you. Can you hear me?”

  She was limp, her face wet with tears, her breathing ragged and wracked with sobs. Dear God, had she tried to tell him to stop? How could she? After his little lesson in telling him no, did he honestly think she’d dare refuse him again?

  Drunk on her sweetness, he’d used her attraction and inherent desire to please him as surely as any rope to bind her, and then he hadn’t given her any sort of safety net. She was the student in this as surely as she’d sat in his poetry class, and he’d abused her trust. He’d punished her without ever explaining the rules, or making sure she understood the game they played. And then like a fucking bastard, he’d compounded his crime by losing the last bit of control and coming like a pimple-faced jerk.

  As a dominant, he’d done the unthinkable: he’d lost control of himself.

  Curling into a tight little ball, she started to shake.

  He held her tighter. “I’m sorry, darlin’, so sorry. I shouldn’t have taken you so far, certainly not on our first… hell, I can’t even call this a date. It was wrong of me to ask this of you before we ever talked about it. I’ve built up too many fantasies about you here in my office, and once you let me start, I didn’t want to stop.”

  She tucked her face against his neck, but at least she didn’t run wailing for the dean’s office. “I didn’t ask you to stop.”

  That didn’t make him feel any better. “Could you have told me no, Rae? Honestly?” Her silence made his heart thud painfully in his chest. “That’s what I thought.”

  He cupped her cheek tenderly and turned her face up to his, wiping her tears away. “This was my fault, Rae. It won’t happen again until we’ve had a chance to talk long and hard about what you’re comfortable with. I swear it, darlin’.”

  Someone knocked on the door and they both froze. “Dr. Connagher?”

  He stared down into Rae’s pale face, her eyes great dark pools of reproach. All it’d take from her was one cried-out plea to the dean waiting outside his door, and he’d be done teaching. Forever. After what he’d done to this precious student who’d trusted him enough to take the first step toward surrender, he deserved to be fired.

  No. I deserve to rot in hell.

  “Come down to my office in the next ten minutes and you can have your student’s paper and final exam,” Dean Strobel said. “Look them over this weekend and we’ll touch base on Monday.”

  My student. Rae, forgive me.

  “Sure thing, dean,” he forced out. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Rae slid off his lap. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself. She tried to laugh, but it came out closer to a quiet sob that sliced and diced his heart to ribbons. “It’s a good thing she didn’t ask to come in. I’ll sneak out while you’re in her office.”

  “No,” he ground out, guilt strangling him. She couldn’t even meet his gaze. “I don’t want you sneaking anywhere.”

  She cring
ed at the roughness in his voice and he thought he would expire on the spot. He couldn’t bear to see her fear. Not like this.

  “Stay here, darlin’, while I change and take care of the dean. If my door is closed, no one will bother you. Then we’ll go somewhere and talk, just you and me, Rae, man and woman, not professor and student. I won’t even think about kinky shit until we talk through what just happened and I make sure you’re okay with it.”

  He eased her down into his chair. She was still shivering, so he grabbed the spare jacket he kept on the back of his door and wrapped her in it. Looking at her so small, huddled and shivering, made him want to put his head through a brick wall. Every instinct told him to sweep her up into his arms and carry her away from here. Once they were alone, he could make her feel safe again.

  He’d lay it all on the line for her.

  How much I love her. How much I need her.

  “I’m okay,” she whispered against her drawn-up knees. “You need to go. I understand.”

  Still, he lingered, even knowing that he only had a few minutes to wash up before going to the dean’s office. “I don’t want to leave you, not like this.” He suddenly thought of the Robert Burns poem she’d quoted earlier, and a worse line came to mind. “‘To spare thee now is past my pow’r,/ Thou bonie gem.’5 Forgive me, Rae. I’ll fix this, no matter what you need. Just wait for me, okay?”

  “In this evil hour, crush my slender stem.6” A ghost of a smile flickered on her lips, but her eyes still struck his heart with guilt. “I’m no mountain daisy, Dr. Connagher.”

  “To see you was to love you.”7 He cupped her face in both hands and lightly brushed his mouth against hers. Not a kiss, exactly, for he feared pushing himself on her too quickly again. Instead, he tried to tell her with his gentleness how much he treasured her. How hard he would work to regain her trust. “I’ll hasten back to you as soon as the dean is finished with me, but I refuse to say farewell. Wait for me, Rae.”

  Later, he’d regret that he hadn’t made her give her word.

  5

  Dear Dr. Connagher:

  When you first left, I thought I was okay. Wrapped in your coat and your scent, hidden away in your office, I could almost believe everything would be still be fine. Without you there, I started to think. For myself. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stop shaking. I just had to get out of there.

  I rushed back to my dorm, stood in the bathroom with the door locked, and stared at my ass. I could still see your handprints in my flesh, red and angry like a fresh brand.

  What have you done to me? Who is this person bawling my eyes out at the thought of losing you, despite the bruises I’ll surely have tomorrow? The exact same person who begged you not to stop.

  Standing there looking at your handiwork, I knew you were right. I would beg you to do it again, if that’s the only way I can have you.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  Because I’m standing here, checking my ass again in the mirror, and I still want you. I don’t regret letting you spank me. No, my biggest regret is that I couldn’t shake your control enough to get you inside me.

  I’m scared, Conn, of me, not you. How far would I let you go? Will I let you abuse me, hurt me, break me, simply to be with you?

  I need to clear my head. I need to remember who I am. So I’m going home this weekend, and honestly, right now, I don’t know that I can come back to campus. I don’t know that I can bear to come back to you in a week, because deep down, I know the truth.

  I’ll never be able to tell you no again.

  If I were brave enough to stop by your office before leaving town, I’d slide my “extra credit” poem beneath your door. I couldn’t write it before your final final exam. It’s not iambic pentameter. Hell, it doesn’t even rhyme. But it says it all, doesn’t it? So I won’t sign like I have been, because you already know the truth.

  ~ Rae

  Yours

  Wild hearts can’t be broken.

  Wild horses can’t be tamed.

  But I never was wild

  -- except for you --

  and my heart is hand-blown glass.

  You never promised to love me.

  You never promised to save me.

  You held my heart

  -- in the palm of your hand –

  and squeezed.

  I’m so sorry if I cut you.

  I’m so sorry if I made you bleed.

  When you held me

  -- I was already broken –

  and only shards remain.

  Continue reading about Conn and Rae’s journey in

  Dear Sir, I’m Yours.

  Dear Sir, I’m Yours

  1

  Dear Dr. Connagher:

  A simple letter probably isn’t the best way to tell you all of this, but I need to write this out as much for myself, as for you. If we talked on the phone, I don’t think I could get it all out—fear, longing, turmoil, and most of all, the agony. Every moment I’m not there with you is torture.

  If I’d met you this past Friday night as we agreed, I couldn’t have sat there on our first real date and told you the truth. It’s not that you’d intimidate me, or scare me, exactly. It’s me. I lose my will when I’m with you.

  I’d do anything to be with you, which scares me to death.

  So this really is for the best. I know it. But it doesn’t make it any easier.

  Daddy was in an accident Friday afternoon at his jobsite and nearly died. I’ve spent the last few days at the hospital, waiting with my family to see if he’ll live, how badly he’ll be handicapped. He’s never going to be the same, and he’ll have years of physical therapy and doctor’s visits. I need to stay here. I need to help Mom, try to find a way to pay his medical bills, and save his business. I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll be returning to Drury University. Finishing my degree is the last thing on my mind right now, even though I only have a few semesters left.

  Every single word of that is true. However, it’s also true that I didn’t have my car loaded to come back to campus before the accident. I hadn’t decided to come back to you.

  Self-preservation, Conn. I have to protect myself. When I’m with you, I want what you want. I don’t even know what I want. You hurt me in your office. You embarrassed me. And yet you made me feel incredible, too. You made me want you to hurt me. How messed up is that?

  Yet I lie awake at night remembering, and it’s all I can do not to jump in my car and drive straight to you.

  I know you’ll never read this. You hate e-mail. It would be better to mail it to your office. But what if someone read it by accident? True, again, but it’s also true that maybe deep down in my dark, scary place only you’ve seen, I really don’t want you to read this at all.

  ~ Rae

  Current Day

  The job was perfect, she needed the money badly, and working for a college professor’s elderly grandmother should be a piece of cake. Yet butterflies the size of Texas crashed and burned in Rae’s stomach.

  The little old lady couldn’t possibly know the truth: Five years ago, her grandson had bent Rae over his desk the last day of finals, spanked her, and given her the best orgasm of her life.

  She hadn’t seen him since, although not a single night had gone by that she didn’t remember…and ache for him to do it again.

  Besides, Conn wouldn’t be here—a fifteen-minute drive into the country from campus—in the middle of the semester. He certainly wasn’t the kind of man to live at home with his grandma. The ridiculous thought made her laugh out loud nervously.

  Idling her truck, Rae stared at the dilapidated iron gate and gnawed on her lip. Someone had attempted to put up a shiny new sign that read Healy House but it hung askew, revealing Beulah written in rusted ivy. A nice pile of cash would go a long ways to keep the hospital bills from swallowing her parents’ meager disability income, but the real lure was the promise of restoring a fantastic old house.

  That’s why she
hadn’t told the old lady no on the phone as soon as Miss Belle bragged about her college professor grandson. Fixing up houses was Rae’s specialty, the older the better. According to Miss Belle, her house had been built in 1850. Turning a Missouri plantation house into a Bed and Breakfast would be a challenge for “The Fix-It Lady”.

  Driving her rusted-out Ford truck down the oak- and maple-lined driveway, Rae felt her heartbeat speed with anticipation despite the queasy, gnawing pit of nerves in her stomach. The ancient trees would be gorgeous in a couple of weeks once the leaves started to turn color.

  At last the house appeared. Peeling white paint, wide grand front porch, two stories—the house took her breath away. She parked the truck and got out for a better look. The roof needed some work, she thought, noting bubbled-up shingles. Scraped and painted, the porch would look as good as new. With climbing roses running wild all over the railing and up the columns, the air was filled with incredible spice and color.

  Rae wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans, cleared her throat in preparation, and raised her finger toward the doorbell.

  “Coming, dear!”

  Reflexively, she went ahead and rang the doorbell anyway. The old lady must have heard her truck drive up. Beveled glass sparkled in the rich mahogany door, but one pane in the lower right-hand corner must have fallen out. The hole was covered with a brown paper bag and masking tape. A stained-glass panel would look gorgeous framed in the ancient door.

  Moments later, the front door opened and Miss Belle invited her inside. From her floppy, wide-brimmed straw hat tied with a pink scarf to her shirtwaist pink dress and her perfect white heels, Miss Belle was the epitome of a southern lady. Her silvered strawberry hair probably would have clashed dreadfully with the pink dress twenty years ago, before age toned it down. Sharp eyed and smooth skinned, the old lady looked about fifty or sixty instead of the eighty she must be.