Page 29 of A Billion Dollar Romance
“Oh. No, Charlie knows.”
She raised her eyebrow.
“Charlie knows. My friends Ryan and Bennett. They’ll be there Saturday. Andthat’severyone.”
“My best friend Flora knows,” she said, and pink tinged her face. I’d never get over how readily she blushed. “She actually went to school with me.”
“Was I her professor, too?” I asked.
Edie tilted her chin up. I was still taller than her, even sitting. “No,” she said. “You were only mine.”
My cock chubbed against my zipper, and I swallowed a bite of sandwich that had gone suddenly dry in my mouth.
This girl would be the death of me.
“Is that right?” I asked, and she nodded.
“Yes,” she said. Her pink tongue darted out from between her lips, wetting them, and I had to drag my eyes back up to hers. “I had such a crush on you, and then… after graduation, I reached out and you offered to critique my work. We reconnected.” A gust of wind tossed her hair, and I thought of how it had looked spread out on my pillow.
It was the same story she’d told before, and…
I didn’t wonder any more if the part about her crush on me was true. Not with the way her own gaze dropped to my lips, the way she leaned in toward me subconsciously.
It wasalltrue, even if the order we were telling it in wasn’t.
“Edie,” I said, and reached out, smoothing her hair away from her face with the back of my fingers, letting them trail down her face to her chin.
“James,” she said, and it was as if she was trying out the word for the first time. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Professor Martin.”
Fuck.
I closed my eyes tight, removing my hand from her warm skin.
The words sounded so damn good from her lips, but I didn’t need the reminder that what I was doing was wrong.
“Tell me,” I said, opening my eyes, taking a breath. “Tell me if anyone says anything to you about… us. I’ll make sure it’s taken care of. You don’t deserve that. You’ve done nothing wrong.”
It was me who had taken advantage.
“Oh, I’m sure no one will say anything,” she said quickly, her eyes now fixed back on her sandwich.
She’d wanted me to kiss her, hadn’t she?
Or was I just seeing what I wanted to see?
Professor Martin.
She was dangerous.
“Or at least, not to my face,” she added, “since they know…”
“They know you’re with me,” I finished for her, and she nodded, glancing up at me from between those long lashes. Forget a few puny office workers–I would take on a dozen bears if it meant Edie would look at me like that.
“Right,” she said. “They know I’m yours.”
Verydangerous.
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