Free Mr. James: A Forbidden Romance by Lacey Legend Page B

roads. She wanted their living dream to last longer. He finished the phone call, thanking the desk clerk, and then he hung up the phone.
     
    “All….day….long….” he answered her questioning eyes as he kissed her slowly and tenderly. “You are mine.” He grinned and rolled over on top of her as she giggled at him.
     
    They were snowed in at the hotel in Springfield for two days, and aside from taking small breaks for showers and room service, Connor and Catalina found nothing but happiness, bliss and unequaled passion in each other’s arms as they loved one another again and again until the roads were finally opened and the dream came to an end.
     
    They packed their bags quietly and neither one of them wanted to speak as they checked out of the hotel and loaded the car, preparing to drive back home. They held on to each other and stretched out every moment of happiness together that they could before they climbed into the car and headed down the snowy highway away from Springfield.
     
    Catalina looked miserably out of the window. “This has been the best time of my life,” she said softly. “I don’t want it to end.” She turned to look at him.
     
    He shook his head seriously. “Neither do I, but you know when we get back to campus that we can’t continue to do this. No one can find out about us, for so many reasons. This incredible love that we have shared has to stay back in Springfield and in our dreams and thoughts. When we get back to campus, you have to be my student and I have to be your teacher, and the two of us can never meet in the middle.”
     
    She wiped a few tears that had escaped her eyes and looked out of her window again. “I’d give anything to make that different.”
     
    He sighed deeply and nodded. “Me too, but we are driving back to the real world, and there is no way around that.”
     
    Catalina sighed. “I knew that it would be just a one-time affair; it was the way the circumstances played out, and all along I knew that we could only have each other while we were there, but still,” she said, looking over at him and taking his hand in hers, “I would rather have that time with you than nothing at all.” She gave him a weak smile and he shared his with her as well.
     
    They were quiet most of the way home, holding hands and kissing each other’s fingers, sharing secret kisses along the road and even stopping once beneath a bridge to make love once more in the car before they got back to the campus. It was decadent and dangerous, and it turned them both on enormously, as did the knowledge that it would be the last time they were together.
     
    Their orgasms shook them to their cores and they held tightly to each other as their love season ended, and then they redressed and drove back out onto the road; her with tears at the edge of her eyelashes, and him with a miserable and dejected frown.
     
    Later that afternoon, they pulled into the campus parking lot and hugged each other goodbye, but nothing more than that, as they didn’t want to be seen sharing any kind of overt affection. She held his eyes with hers for a long sad moment before she climbed into her car and he waved as she drove off.
     
    Connor walked to his office to drop off some of the files he had taken and created while he was in Springfield. Just as he unlocked his office door and walked in, a woman came striding down the hallway toward him, smiling and waving, and he groaned inwardly, wishing desperately that she hadn’t seen him and more than that, that he hadn’t seen her so he could have locked himself in his office.
     
    He watched her for an instant as she approached him. She was a few inches taller than him and about a decade older. She had long silvery white hair that had been blonde in high school but had given way to age before she was out of college. She wore it pulled up in a French twist at the back of her head.
     
    In her ears there were diamond earrings, on her wrist was a gold and