Page 28 of The Sinner and the Scholar
My hands grip the shelf so hard; I fear I’ll break something with my anger… and… there’s this other infuriating sense riding my system. She smells good. Too good. It’s making my head light.
Secrets. Lies. Taunts.
She still hugs those papers like she’s hiding something. Warm brown eyes flick up to mine and dance with humor. Like me, she has spectacles on, but they don’t hide her ego. I don’t think I’ll ever prove myself worthy enough to earn an invitation behind that wall she’s built around herself.
Just give me the gospel—lead us to the relic.
I flatten my lips as she smirks up at me. I should take it from her. But that would make me as bad as she is. I’m already flirting with damnation with what I’ve done to bring us here. Now every minute in her presence brings me closer to a temptation I can’t afford.
Push off. Leave. Let her come to you in her own time.
But somehow, I stand there, caught in a snare that begins somewhere in her scent and ends around her plump lips. I don’t want to kiss them. I want to bite them.
She brazenly rolls her hips into mine as if she senses my thoughts and can’t resist deploying her filthy Sinner tactics. Contact sparks a frenzy of sensation in my body. Pleasure skips up my spine. But it’s not my mouth that releases a moan of appreciation. It’s hers, along with a flutter of her lashes and a lick of her lips.
Inside my body, a holy war wages in my blood. Half rushes south, hot on the heels of temptation, while the rest prays to remain in control. God, give me the strength to resist this woman. She’s a devil who will bring me to my knees. She’ll veer me from my path of redemption, and I simply cannot.
I cannot.
“What wicked things will you teach me, Wesley?”
Arousal bleeds through her husky voice. She rocks into me again, but this time, it’s more of a lover’s maneuver, a way to close the gap she’s longed to obliterate. It shocks me. Throws me into an alternate reality where she’s not my enemy but the woman I’ve been searching for my entire life. The one who will fill the empty hole in my heart, the one who will be strong enough to stay by my side… to resist whatever curse inevitably kills everyone I care about. Another roll of her hips into mine, another bite of her lip, and I swallow a groan in my throat.
Stop.This is too far. This is beyond a game. This is the edge of the cliff.Remind her that the promise of sex won’t buy you. Remind her of what she is.
“Flexing your filthy Sinner skills, I see,” I whisper darkly. “To distract me? It’s only making me think whatever you’re hiding must be valuable.”
I know I’ve made a mistake when her eyes flash with spite.
“If I’m a filthy whore, then you’re a dirty man.”
To prove her point, she rubs her hip bone into my groin. Hot pleasure threatens to undo me, but I won’t give in. I won’t let her win this battle.
Step away. End this now.
I press closer, trapping her with my body, keeping my expression passive. She is soft and hard at once. Feminine but toned. A contradiction my body welcomes.
“I’d bet you’d love it, wouldn’t you?” she continues softly. “You’d love to take me here, make me beg, and then scold me for not keeping quiet.”
My lungs seize. She just described a fantasy of mine so accurately it’s like she’s wrenched it from my dreams. When I was young, working late and in the library alone, the gaping hole in my heart grew bigger. Oh, how I would prop my chin on my hand and watch the pretty librarian meander about, shelving the books. I was too shy to act on my crush. Too afraid.
I want to think Thea’s manipulating me. That she’s somehow guessed my desires, but instead, I think we’re just the same. Zeke was right.
Wes and the bookish one both talk in nerd. Try her.
The fact that I’m still crowding her, pushing harder against her, proves we want similar things. She whimpers with what sounds like need.
Chase it,my body urges.Roll in it. Tease it open. Make her yours.
This is no longer a distraction to her. She’s testing me, pushing me to my limits, and wanting me to submit as she is. Wanting us to fall together. Perhaps that’s what throws me off the most. Her reaction to me is genuine. Her pupils dilate, she pants, her cheeks flush with stunning color. This isn’t an act. I arouse her.
If we want similar things, perhaps we’re fighting the same inner war.
That last thought floors me. I lose the battle in my blood. It all rushes south. My cock grows hard, achingly so. Instead of making me feel lost, I feel like I belong. On the next undulation of her hips, I thrust against her. We clash. Gasp. Her eyelashes flutter. She sees the change in me. The satisfaction, the thrill, the raw longing. It’s like I’m staring at a reflection of my soul.
No more.
Yes, once more.
