Page 20 of Adrian (Love Under the Lights 3)

I showed her slow and gentle twice through the night, but my dick did my thinking for me again, and I didn’t wear a condom either time. I didn’t even think about one until I was in the shower the next day, and she was already gone.10CaseyMy eyes popped open when Adrian nuzzled against my neck and whispered, “You’re going to be late.”

I was beyond comfortable where I was and didn’t have any desire to move. At least not until the moment I realized I had less than an hour to get to my first tutoring session of the morning. And I had to go to my apartment first because I hadn’t thought to bring extra clothes with me. I wasn’t going to spend the day in the same pair of shorts I’d worn all weekend, and Adrian’s shirt that I’d borrowed yesterday was a little big and kept falling down my shoulder.

“Crap!” I grumbled, scrambling off the bed. After I tossed my clothes on and found my glasses, Adrian walked me to the door and pulled me close to slant his mouth over mine for a deep kiss. “Call me later, beautiful.”

“Will do, handsome,” I promised with a wink before running over to my car.

I replayed our weekend in my head on a loop as I made the drive from his house to my apartment. Things had happened so quickly, but it all felt right, and there wasn’t anything I could think of that I would want to change.

Once home, I hurried through getting ready for the day before racing out the door ten minutes later to get to school. My first two tutoring sessions were fine, but when the third showed up, she was distracted and kind of jumpy. I worked through the same calculus problem six times with absolutely no indication she was actually getting anything out of it. Mostly, this was due to her inability to stop texting on her phone.

“Come on, Heather. We’re both wasting our time if you aren’t going to apply yourself.”

She looked up at me like a kid who’d just been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked, her cheeks hot. “I’ll pay attention.”

Only she didn’t. Instead of focusing on the assignment, she was focused on me. I was so uncomfortable by the time our session was up that I almost applauded.

“Okay, well, I’ll see you next time you come for help,” I said as I stood and gathered my stuff. Eager to get away from her, I hurried away. Walking across campus to my cellular neurophysiology class, I swore I saw a few people pointing at me. For a good few seconds, I actually wondered if they could tell I was no longer a virgin. Logically, I knew that wasn’t possible, but something seemed off. I chalked it up as the Mondayest Monday ever.

I was sure things would get better in class, but they didn’t. Two of the other students sat there whispering to each other while staring at me like I was the most fascinating person alive. Even more uncomfortable than I’d been with Heather, I put my head down and focused on the lecture.

As class ended, I felt my phone vibrate with a text alert. Taking it out, I saw I had a notification from my next-door neighbor, Marley.

There’s a pap outside looking 4 u. Might want 2 steer clear of ur apt 4 a while.My brow furrowed as I tried to make sense of her message. Clueless, I texted back

What is a pap?Her answer made my blood run cold.

Paparazzi. You know TMZ has pix of u with Adrian Clarke at the farmers market right?I knew next to nothing about celebrity culture, but since my sister was a gossip junkie and TMZ was her dealer, I knew how popular their website was. If Cindy’s love of all things TMZ hadn’t clued me in on how big of a deal the site was, the fact that I regularly saw a double-decker TMZ tour bus driving around Beverly Hills would’ve. I wasn’t prone to panic, but being told that a photographer was poking around my apartment building freaked me out big time. As I was trying to wrap my mind around that, I realized that also explained why people had been looking at me strangely. Opening a new text, I quickly sent an SOS to Adrian.

TMZ put up pictures of us from yesterday. My neighbor says there’s a photographer at my apartment, and everyone at school is staring at me. I’m a little freaked out. Can I come over?Wanting to avoid the very unwelcome attention I was getting, I put my head down and sprinted across campus to the parking lot. After getting into my car, I pulled my phone out and checked my texts, expecting I’d have a response from Adrian, but there was nothing. I tried to call, but that went straight to voicemail. I waited a few minutes and tried both texting and calling again. When nothing came, I knew I needed a different game plan. I needed to be somewhere the paparazzi couldn’t be, and that meant only one thing.

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