Page 24 of Tenure

“How old are you?” His voice sounds pained.

“Don’t you think it’s a bit late to ask me that?” I snap, gesturing to his cock.

His fingers tighten around my upper arm. “Answer me,” he growls.

I consider telling him to go fuck himself. My mouth even opens to do it. But the wind has been so thoroughly sucked out of my sails that I feel myself deflate, shoulders curving in as I cross my arms over my naked breasts, shivering despite the steam.

“Seventeen.”

He closes his eyes like he’s been stabbed, his jaw tight, breathing in hard through his nose.

I try to pull away, but his grip tightens even more. “Don’t,” he says, his voice hard but his eyes still closed.

“This was a mistake,” I say. “I—this was a big fucking mistake.”

His lips curl into a grimace as his eyes flip open, and I almost squeak like a fucking mouse at the look on his face.

“This was . . . not a smart choice, on my part,” he grits out, “but it wasn’t a mistake, Kiernan.”

He’s burning with intensity, like his stare alone could bow my back, crush my bones, bend me into submission. I suppress another shudder, the base of my spine beginning to tingle. He looks like he wants to lock me up and throw away the key. And I’m . . . not entirely upset about it.

He pulls me gently towards him and to my surprise wraps his arms around me, pulling my face into his bare chest, his palm finding the back of my head and cupping it sweetly, gently.

I sink into his body, both of us quiet. I don’t know how long we stand there like that but when he finally pulls away he isn’t hard and his face looks softer, somehow. He reaches to the side and squirts some shower gel into his palms, lathering them together and then running his foamy hands over my shoulders, my neck, my arms . . . I try to stay still, try not to moan, as he lathers the gel into my breasts, his fingers gently tweaking my nipples, and then moves on to my belly. He stops short of my pussy.

“Turn around,” he says, his voice low.

I do and he squirts more gel into his palms, lathering up my back, kneading the muscles until I relax. Then his hands slide onto my ass cheeks, soft and gentle, gliding over my stinging skin again and again until I can’t even tell it hurts.

He steps into me, keeping his hips away from mine but pressing his chest into my back, his hands on my hips and hislips on my neck, gently kissing the skin he’s sucked and nipped and more or lessmauledearlier. Everything is slow, and sweet, and has me puddling at his feet. And then his hand slides from my hip to my lower belly and dips between my legs, gently soaping my left thigh, and then my right, before finally cupping my pussy and rubbing that, too.

I wince, sucking in a breath between my teeth at the sharp, stinging pain.

“Shh, baby,” he murmurs in my ear.

“I would have expectedshut the fuck up Kiernan,”I say quietly. I feel the rumble of his chest as he chuckles, his hand gentle, soft, and driving me fucking crazy.

“Shut the fuck up, Kiernan,” he says, but his voice sounds sweet, playful, and I’m glad my back is to him, so he can’t see my smile.

Eventually he stops and pulls me fully under the water as the lather washes everything away. He gives himself a quick, efficient once-over, and I can’t help but notice he’s hard again. Then he turns off the taps and pushes me gently towards the shower door.

“Out.”

He grabs an enormous fluffy towel from a stack on a shelf beside the bathroom and wraps it all the way around me, over my head and my face and rubs me down like I’m a little kid.

I laugh and he stops dead, and I pull the towel down off my face so I can see what irked him. But he’s looking at me the same way he was looking at me in class, the first time he kissed me. When I was staring at my phone, laughing at SJ’s message, and he stopped the class . . .

“What?” I ask, sounding pouty.

“You have a beautiful laugh.”

It takes me by surprise, the ease with which he says it. He doesn’t seem like someone who compliments often, or easily,and definitely not without merit. I feel my whole body blush, and he looks away, grabbing a towel for himself and drying his body with the same quick, rough efficiency he used to clean my blood off him.

Laughing at SJ’s message . . .

I frown, something tugging at my memory. Phone . . . My phone . . .

“How did you get my number?” I ask suddenly.

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