A Lesson in Truth

“I can’t do this anymore.”

“Do what?” I asked. My voice squeaked in a way that bothered me almost as much as his words.

“You know what,” Michael said, his gaze focused on the stapled pages of my latest chapters lying before him, a red pen in his hand as if he was going to grade my work with me sitting right there.

I stared at him, hoping to hell he’d say more without me needing to add anything else to the conversation. The squeak was bound to emerge again. No need to remind him I was fifteen years his junior. Squeaking might give him a clue.

He ditched the pen with a flick and ran his hand through his hair. The dark strands popped up and gave his hair a spiky guise that made him look too young to be a tenured professor, too vulnerable to be telling me we were over. We hadn’t even started. One kiss, one long, beautiful kiss that ruined me for all other men and he was calling it quits?

“I’ve asked Professor Shields to take you on,” he said. “He’s familiar with your thesis and knows the field of research well enough.”

My stomach did a flip-flop thing I could only recall it doing one other time in my life—waiting in my dad’s car as he took my dog into the vet’s office for the last time. Was I going to vomit like I did then? Was I going to lose it sitting across from Michael, his metal desk between us, a wall of ungraded midterms blocking the way? I’d been in his office every week for the past two years. How did I not know where the trash can was?

“David, you’re not saying anything.”

Yeah, I wasn’t. I was busy holding down the Cap’s Crunch I’d inhaled for dinner. That’s what I got for eating a kids’ cereal. Why’d I buy that shit anyway? Because I had no self control. I never could turn down what I desired—no matter how bad it was for me.

“David.” That was his professor voice. The one he used when someone else was within hearing distance. Not the one he’d used for the past year. Not the one he used when we were alone. He was leaning his elbows on the desk, his eyes wide, the spiky hair still an issue, but the vulnerability the mussed hair had caused was gone. Or maybe it had been my imagination.

“What?” I said. “You want me to work with someone else? Fine.”

“Don’t say it like that. You know I don’t have any other choice.”

“Right.”

“We kissed last night. Do you want to pretend that didn’t happen?”

Was he crazy? I’d waited two years to feel his lips on mine. Nothing he said would erase it from my memory. Even if he wanted to forget. Even if he wanted to believe we hadn’t been more than professor and student, more than friends, for a long time.

I forced myself out of the chair. I was a half-step from the door. Then why couldn’t I make a move toward it?

Because this was it. I had lost my chance with him. Lost the possibility of having both a friend and a lover, having a partner who understood me like no one I’d ever dated, who was smart and funny and the sexiest man I’d ever known.

I reached for the printed chapters I had handed him five minutes earlier. No way was I leaving them behind. He was done being my advisor. He was done being my best friend. Done being my anything. The papers rattled with the shake of my hand.

Michael stood and stepped around the desk. “God, babe, Come here.” He didn’t wait for me to move. He came to me and pulled me against him, holding me in his arms.

I dropped the pages as he traced an invisible path up and down my back.

“I didn’t think it would upset you this much.” Not his professor voice. Could he just stop fucking talking? Apparently not.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

I lowered my head to his shoulder. Two years I had waited to be in his arms and this was all I was ever going to get. I turned toward his neck and breathed deep. He smelled of the cologne he always wore, but it was stronger from this distance. Almost as strong as when I wore the same stuff on the weekends—an action that gave me a bit of a stalker vibe, but I didn’t care. I wanted to smell him on my sheets. Apparently it had been a wise choice. That was the only way I was ever going to have his scent there.

I searched out his skin with my tongue. The salty, rich taste burst into my mouth. I craved more. I opened wider and sucked in the warmth of him.

“God, David.” He gripped the back of my head. Was he going to make me stop? He held me against him and tilted his head back.

I wound my arms around his waist and took one small step until our bodies smashed together, leaving not an inch of air between us.

Michael moaned.

Good thing his room was at the end of a long hall. Good thing it was too late for office hours.

The soft sound surged adrenaline and lust throughout my body. My dick filled, and I worked my way to his lips.

The kiss wasn’t soft and slow like the one the night before. It was a kiss between two men who’d spent a damn long time dreaming of this moment, both turned on and ready to feel something more, ready to consummate a year-long love affair we had tried to pretend didn’t exist.

Only I hadn’t pretended as much as he. I had let myself imagine it all—the touching, the lovemaking, the nights spent in his bed.

Oddly, the one daydream I hadn’t pictured was us fucking in his office.

The mental images spurred me on. I wanted him to lay me over his desk, his laptop and the stack of midterms pushed aside, and do every beautiful, naughty thing I’d been dreaming of until I screamed his name.

Michael touched the side of my face and retreated from the kiss.

That was it, then. The last taste I’d ever have.

He still held my face in his hand, though. Until he moved his hand lower. And lower. He reached the bottom of my shirt and gripped the fabric in both fists. He tugged the shirt over my head. “I want to feel you.” He threw off his own shirt. “Been dying to feel your body against mine.”

His hands on my bare chest took away any resistance I could’ve voiced. I didn’t care what it all meant for him. I wanted it.

I wanted him.

He came to me as if not even a call from the university president could’ve stopped him. Our mouths joined again, his arms tight around me, his hands touching me in all the places I’d longed for him to be.

My heart raced at the press of his erection against my groin. I glided my hands down his arms, loving the heated flesh, the fine muscles that reminded me he didn’t always sit at his desk grading papers.

“I want you.” Definitely not his professor voice.

A tremble worked through me and my hands shook. “I want you too.”

He ran a hand through my hair. “It’s okay, David. We don’t have to.”

Yeah, he was crazy.

I took a step back and reached for the laptop on his desk. I set it and his favorite coffee mug on top of a short bookcase.

He shoved everything else, stack of midterms included, aside. Pens, sticky notes, paper clips, and a stapler fell to the floor. The clattering of the office supplies barely made a sound over my own deep breaths. The top of his desk sat bare before us.

I undid the zipper on my jeans.

Michael stared at me. Then his gaze dropped to where I worked my pants open, and his breath hitched. Maybe this was what he’d been dreaming of—a quick fuck in his office.

He stilled my hands. “Wait.” He stepped closer. “Let me.” He parted the opening of my jeans, and without removing more of my clothes, he dipped his hand inside my briefs.

I arched into the touch. The warmth of his palm around my cock could no way be compared to the two years of jerking off I’d done waiting for this moment.

He met my lips with his again. I gripped his biceps and my hips matched the rhythm of our tongues. The sweet surrender of kissing him made me dizzy.

He stilled my body with a hand to my hip. “Wait.”

He had to quit telling me to stop. A point would come when stopping would be impossible. Hell, who was I kidding. We’d already reached that stage.

He undid his dress pants and shoved them and his underwear off, kicking them away with his shoes and socks.

I froze at the sight of his hard cock. The flushed, stretched skin gave beauty new meaning. The solid flesh couldn’t hide his desire. Neither could the husky voice.

“Take off your pants.”

My hands shook more as I undressed. Once I stood naked, he hauled me to him again. His body tight to mine, from chest to shin, was better than any fantasy, better than any other sexual moment in my life.

He took both our cocks in his hand and stroked. “Been waiting to feel you like this.” His voice had grown deeper than ever before. “Been waiting to taste you too.”

Sounded good to me. I captured his mouth with another kiss and caressed his tongue with mine. Never had such a simple coming together of mouths spun my desire so out of control.

“My, God,” he said. “You can kiss. But I actually meant something else.” He took a step forward, moving us as one until the back of my thighs smacked against the desk. “Lie down.”

I slid my ass across the desktop and tried not to shiver. It was the cool surface on my heated skin. That was all. It wasn’t Michael standing naked before me.

Sure.

I lowered my body until I was lying flat before him.

He reached out and brushed the inside of my thigh with his fingers, the touch soft and tender. “Damn, you’re gorgeous,” he said.

The shiver was back.

He hunched over me and stopped with his mouth an inch from my dick. He met my stare and smiled before he traveled the last fragment of space separating us and lowered his mouth over the tip of my cock.

Oh God. Michael’s mouth. I closed my eyes and took his head in my hands, needing to touch him. I caressed him as he worked his wet tongue down my shaft.

He began a slow pull with his lips, wetting, sucking, bringing me closer and closer to the edge. A low moan echoed in the small room. Was that me? No squeaking there.

I threw my eyes open and raised my head to watch. No way was I missing another second. His head bobbed faster. His hot lips grazed my flesh with each lift. Damn. He was good. How much practicing had he done in his life? He had probably sucked his first cock while I was learning to crawl.

It didn’t matter.

There’s no one else here with him now. Only me.

I quivered again as my orgasm advanced, then gave up on watching and dropped back to the desk.

Michael released me and said, “Don’t come. Not yet.” He rose up over me and lowered his body to mine. “Been waiting too long to be inside you.” He leaned over the side of the desk, fumbled with the bottom drawer, and returned with a condom and lube. How many times had he done it in his office?

Who cared.

But I did care. Too much.

“I want to see you when you come,” he said. Then his fingers were where I wanted them to be, easing the way, slicking me, then himself.

Oh, God. He was going to be inside me soon.

I lifted my legs, opening myself until he could sink into where I’d been needing him most.

That wasn’t quite true, though. He’d been where I needed him for a long time. In my heart.

Michael bent over me; his strong arms framed my shoulders. His cock pressed between my ass cheeks but not inside me yet.

“David.” He nuzzled my chin with his cheek. His breath traveled along my jawline as he said my name again. It mixed with a long moan. He kissed me.

I wrapped my arms around him and tugged him closer, driving my tongue deeper, trying to get him in me. I bucked my ass upward, and his hips jerked forward. Finally, he eased off my chest, took his own cock in hand, and lined up. I bit my lip as he sank deep. The sweet burn had my toes curling.

He froze. How could he hold still? Didn’t he want to fuck me?

He slanted his upper body over me again. One hand gripped the edge of the desk. The other he brought to my mouth. He caressed my lip until I released it from between my teeth.

“I want to hear you,” he said.

What? My moans? My pleas for more? If I let those out, I might let loose so much more.

He kissed me again and moved in a slow rock. He was everywhere. My mouth. My ass. My heart. And I wanted it all. I wanted all of him.

He gave me one last, slow kiss then he pulled back and took my legs in his hands as he set to showing me how inadequate all my other lovers had been.

How could he give this up?

How could he not want to take a chance?

Because he had his entire career to think about. And because I’m just a college kid he has a hard-on for. Nothing special. Nothing to take a chance on. We’d been tap dancing around this possibility for a long time, and I had let myself hope it meant to him what it did to me. I’d let myself think all the nights and weekends we’d spent together outside of the classroom—the Saturday morning pick-up basketball games, the Sunday beers with lunch, the late-night on-line chats—had meant we were dating.

I should have transferred to another advisor—hell, to another school—long before we could get to the sex on his desk part. Because having him in me, around me, all over me was going to make walking away harder than it would’ve been a few minutes before.

But we’d gone too far. Nothing could’ve stopped me.

He wrapped a hand around my shaft, and something inside me short-circuited. I came as the words I swore myself I’d never say poured out. “Love you, Michael. Loved you for so long.” No wonder I ate a kids’ cereal. I sounded like a babbling teenager with his first crush. I clamped my mouth shut and gripped his thighs as he thrust into me again and again.

He came with one word on his lips. “David.” He collapsed onto me, and his body shuddered.

I held him. I wanted to stay that way all night, but there was the matter of the condom.

And the fact that he’d broken up with me, if I could call it that.

He lowered my legs, and I groaned as he left my body. From the physical sensation? Or from knowing he’d never be within me again, that we’d never have this moment again?

Michael draped his body over mine. His heavy breaths hit the side of my neck. “I knew,” he said. “I knew it’d be good, but I had no idea…”

I shook again. Not from the cold. Couldn’t even try to lie on that one. Why did he have to say anything?

He angled himself alongside me and leaned on his elbow, his legs entwined with mine, his abdomen solid against me. Why was his desk so damn small?

He ran a hand across my chest. “Are you okay?”

I slid off the desk and reached for my pants, not bothering with my underwear. “I’ll go now.”

“Go? Jesus, maybe I am too old for you. I thought there’d be some cuddling after. Thought you’d come spend the weekend at my place.”

I froze, my pants halfway up my thighs, my briefs still lying on the floor next to my bare feet. “What are you talking about?”

He sat up. Damn, he was beautiful, his skin a temptation I ached to touch again.

“What do you think happened here?” he asked.

I spotted my thesis on the floor. It had landed on the long edge of the pages, forming a little white pop-up tent. Maybe I could crawl underneath it and hide. Anything to avoid conversation. He already told me we were done. Did he need to drag it out? But that’s how he always was—concerned about my feelings, asking if I was working too hard, if I was getting enough sleep, if I’d bothered to eat a fruit or vegetable in the past week.

I met his stare. “You were saying goodbye.”

He stood and slipped on his pants. Then he came to me. He grabbed the waistband of my jeans and drew them up. “I can’t be with you and continue to serve as your advisor. It’s unethical.”

I shook my head. They were the words I’d feared since I had accepted I was in love with him. He was too good, too upstanding, too entrenched in his job to fuck a student. Even if I was done taking his classes, I was still a student in his department.

But we had fucked. No. Scratch that. We’d made love. And that’s why his words were killing me even more than when I’d first stepped into his office.

He took my face in his hands. “You’re so smart, sometimes I forget how young you are.” He ran the pad of his thumb over my lower lip. The way he had when he’d been buried inside me. “Babe, I’m in love with you. And I’m not about to give you up. So I’m going to have to give up being your advisor. I’ve scheduled a meeting with the dean for Monday morning. I was hoping since you’re done with your coursework and we hadn’t slept together yet, this wasn’t going to get me fired.” He smiled. “I guess that plan’s out the window.”

The flip-flop thing in my stomach was back. And I hadn’t found the damn trash can yet.

He loved me.

He wanted to keep seeing me.

He was going to get fired because of me.

“Oh God.” I made for the chair. My feet tangled in my underwear, and I pitched forward.

He reached out and caught me. His sure hands helped me to the seat. “Are you okay?”

Was I?

My briefs were wrapped around my right foot. He kneeled in front of me and unwound the white fabric from my ankle. Thank God my mother taught me about wearing clean underwear. Of course, she had mentioned auto accidents and hospitals. Not college professors and naked office sex.

Michael and I had sex.

And he loves me.

“Oh God.”

Michael laughed. He reached for my face again, drawing me in for a long, slow kiss—like the first one we’d shared. When he released me, he pressed his forehead to mine. “I love you.”

“Are you sure?”

He stared at me, his eyes searching mine. “I tried to tell myself for a long time I didn’t have feelings for you. I think you and I have both known for a while now that what we have is special. I love my job, but I’m not going to deny what I feel for you. I’m not going to deny us any longer.”

“They’ll fire you?”

“I think I can convince the dean this isn’t a scandalous thing, that I’m serious about you. I didn’t realize I was going to have to convince you too. Good thing I already had this planned.”

“Had what planned?” I slipped my toe through the pant leg of my briefs and twirled them in the air. “Sex on your desk?” I asked in the huskiest tone I could manage.

He laughed again.

So the trying-to-be-sexy thing wasn’t for me.

His laugh ended, and he lunged at me, the kiss as passionate and full of strength and tongue and promise as any he’d given me when we had been on his desk.

Okay. So maybe my sex appeal was based in humor and not my ability to flirt with men’s underwear.

“The sex was supposed to come later,” he said. “After.”

“After what?”

He went to his desk and used a key to unlock the top drawer. He pulled out a small box and brought it to me. A jewelry box. But not new. The top was worn; the black exterior faded. He kneeled beside me again and opened the lid. “After I gave you this.”

A gold band.

“It was my father’s. I’d love for you to wear it.” He took my hand in his. “I’d love it if you’d marry me.”

Damn. Where was that trash can? He either had to stop making me flustered as hell, or I had to quit the Cap’n Crunch. Could a grown man go cold turkey off the Cap’n?

The jewelry box and the wedding band inside trembled. He looked like he’d need the trash can before I did.

“Are you sure?” I asked again.

A smile spread over his lips, and the crinkle at the corners of his eyes returned. “You’re the only person I’ve wanted since I met you. I’m not going to let our age difference or the fact that you’re a student keep me out of your arms for one more day. I want to support you, comfort you, live with you, make love to you in a bed we share every night.”

Okay. The Cap’n Crunch would have to go. I’d need protein mixed in.

He removed the ring from the box and held it out between us. “I want to spend my life with you.”

It was my turn to grab for him. We ended up with him on my lap, his legs straddling my thighs, his groin pressed against my lower abdomen. Our tongues and bodies found a rhythm I didn’t want to end.

But it had to end—I had something to say.

“Yes.” I took his hand in mine, the ring pressed between our palms. “I’ll marry you.”