voice stronger than she'd have
believed she could make it. She looked at his face, easier to focus
on now that his attention was riveted to her lips, but when he
looked up again she was caught. "But also because I knew it would
make you angry."
" Really?" Allen slid his own tongue along his lips, mimicking
on purpose the gesture she'd unconsciously made. It left his mouth
glistening. He did it again, more slowly and deliberately this
time, like he was tasting something.
Me, she thought, her mind
a daze of arousal. He looks like he's
thinking about tasting me.
All at once she knew how
Little Red Riding Hood had felt, looking at the Big Bad Wolf. The
well-known tale had mentioned the teeth, but what about the wolf's
tongue? All the better to lick yo u with,
she thought, and lost again to the shudder radiating from her
pussy.
Allen gave a throaty chuckle that
snapped her out of her erotic haze. "How amusing."
"It wasn't meant to be
amusing."
"I know. It's good to be passionate
about something."
He still sounded amused, damn him.
The man was a monster. Chauvinistic,
arrogant, self-absorbed...delicious, Karrie finished in her head.
Delicious and dangerous. She squared her shoulders.
"I don't appreciate you
mocking me." There. She'd said it, what she 'd been longing to say for so long.
"Is that what you think I'm
doing?"
"You know it is."
He was on his feet so fast
she gasped and took a step back, but the second desk behind her
blocked her from getting away. She'd known he was a tall man, and
an imp osing one, but until just now, she
hadn't realized how big he was. He loomed over her. Made her feel
small, petite...defenseless.
His smooth, liquid voice oozed over
her like molasses dripped from a spoon. "I prefer to think of it as
challenging you."
He 'd loosened his tie, she noticed. And unbuttoned his shirt.
She caught a glimpse of his chest. Bare skin, a few curling dark
hairs. The scent of him filled her and took her breath away. She
looked up and was caught again in his eyes. Mesmerized.
"You are possibly the brightest student I've ever taught,"
he said. "And certainly one of the most creative. Most of my
graduate students would never think of using children's fairy tales
as an allegory for women's rights."
"Don't you want to qualify
that as one o f the brightest female
students?" she challenged.
Professor Allen shook his head slowly,
almost imperceptibly. "No, Ms. Damron, I don't. You see, you don't
know me as well as you think you do."
"This from the man who, on
the first day of class, told me I 'd have
to work twice as hard for the same return as the male students,
simply because of my gender?"
He tilted his head a
fraction, and now she felt his gaze burn along her cheek, down her
jaw, to stop again at her mouth. "I said it. But not because I
th ought less of you than any of those
others."
Karrie's lips parted. His gaze
sharpened. "Then why?"
He hadn't moved, but she
felt him all over her, covering her, felt his arms around her and
his mouth on hers. She felt the press of his hands on her ass
an d yes, dear heaven yes, she felt his
cock inside her.
"As the only female
student in the class of all men, it would have been far too easy
for someone to assume I'd grant you privileges denied your male
colleagues. I've seen what rumor and speculation can do to the reputation of a young woman assumed to
have garnered a special sort of attention from her professor. If
you didn't work harder than the others, their jealousy might have
made them believe your success in my class to be the result of
impropriety on my part, rather than your efforts."
"You mean to tell me you were so
rotten to me all this time because you didn't want the guys in the
class to think I earned my degree on my back?" Anger--real
anger--flared in her, and she put her hands on her hips.
"As long as it was clear you hated
me," Allen said, "nobody