CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Dean
I’VE TAKEN DOWN ALL THE BOARDS covering the windows on the first floor of the house. The glass is cracked and filthy, but some sunlight and air now circulate around the rooms. Most of the furniture deserves a second look, so I’ve moved it all into the front room for later study.
I’m fixing the hinges on the front door when a car pulls up. I stop and approach, extending my hand as Max Lyons gets out of the driver’s seat.
“Thanks for stopping by,” I tell him as we shake hands. “I wanted your opinion on the building. The Historical Society is trying to have it declared a historical site, but so far they haven’t had much luck.”
“Allie told me,” Max says. “She said Liv was working on a campaign to save the house.”
“Unfortunately, it sounds like that will take more money and resources than the Society has.”
“Too bad.” Max looks up at the house. “I did a paper on this place when I was a grad student. Have a soft spot for it.”
“Is it salvageable?”
“Maybe.” He shrugs. “The Historical Society will have to do a structural analysis. It’ll take a lot of money to restore it.”
We walk around the building. Max talks about the masonry and weathering, the roof pitch, the slate shingles, the original architecture compared to later remodeling.
“Do you want me to come back and write up a report?” he asks as we return to his car. “I know a structural engineer who can do the analysis, if needed.”
“That would be great, thanks. I’m here…” Every day now “…a lot, so have them call my cell.”
He programs my number into his phone just as another car rumbles up the drive, tires digging into the dirt road.
Shit.
Kelsey comes to an abrupt halt, getting out of the car and slamming the door. Max takes a step backward. Kelsey stalks toward me, her eyes flashing behind her glasses.
I hold up my hands in defense. “You told me you were coming back on Thursday. I was going to pick you up at the airport.”
“I left the conference early to deal with a department screw-up,” she snaps. “I got a ride back with a colleague. What the fuck, Dean?”
“I wanted to tell you in person.”
“Well, I found out from the university paper.” Kelsey’s narrow gaze slants to Max. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting in the way, apparently,” Max replies.
“Then you should leave,” Kelsey says tartly.
Max gives me a look that says, Good luck with this one, buddy. Then he gets in his car and maneuvers back down the driveway.
“Kelsey, I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t want to tell you over the phone. I had a whole speech planned for when I picked you up at the airport.”
She crosses her arms, vibrating with anger. “So tell me now.”
“I had to resign because the Office of Judicial Affairs was investigating a sexual harassment charge against me.”
She blinks. “That’s a joke, right?”
I shake my head.
Her face drains of color. “You’re going to have to explain this in great detail.”
We sit down on one of the porch steps, and I tell her the whole story, starting with my rejection of Maggie Hamilton’s thesis proposal.
“I couldn’t tell you,” I say. “The OJA kept it confidential, and we weren’t supposed to talk to anyone about it.”
“Dean, this is totally fucked-up. You can’t resign because some little bitch lied about you.”
“I already did,” I tell her. “And it wasn’t just because of the lie. Edward Hamilton was going after Liv. I’d…”
There’s no telling what I’d do. And Kelsey knows it.
She shakes her head. “Well, shit.”
“Yeah.”
“How’s Liv?”
“Upset, but… she gets it. Hardest part was telling her and my students.”
We sit in silence for a while. A few birds chirp in the trees. Finally Kelsey squeezes my arm and shoves off the step.
“Racquetball tomorrow afternoon?” she asks. “I guess you have plenty of time on your hands now.”
I almost smile. “Yeah, sure.”
“Okay.” She takes a few steps before turning back to face me. “Hey, it’s horrible. I’m sorry. I wish there was… well, it bites the big one.”
“Yes, it does. But…” I rest my elbows on my knees and look past her to the view of downtown, the clear blue lake. “It’s kind of okay, Kels, you know? Like I did the right thing. I protected Liv. My reputation is intact. I’ll finish my work on the dig. I can still do independent study work, write my book. I’ll get another job one day.”
“But you still hate that you were forced into it.”
“I hate that it’s affecting my students, but it would have been worse if they’d had to deal with the investigation and been asked if I harassed them. My colleagues too. My whole reputation, my life, would have been shot to hell if this all went public, resignation or not. And then if Liv… well.”
I stare at the lake. “I’d do anything for her, Kelsey. Anything. It’s insane how much I love her. And losing my job is nothing compared to… to her.”
“I know. She feels the same way about you.” Kelsey studies me for a minute. “Hey, remember when I kissed you last fall?”
“How can I forget?” I mutter. “It’s like a bad horror movie. The Attack of the Venomous Pit Viper.”
A grin cracks her face. “You know, when I told Liv about it, she laughed.”
“Of course she did. It was so bad it was funny.”
“My point,” Kelsey continues dryly, “is that she didn’t freak out like most women would have. It wouldn’t have occurred to her to be threatened by that. Even though she had a shitty time as a kid, and her mother is a head case, Liv just… she knows you. She knows me. It’s kind of amazing that she has this… I don’t know… total trust in the people she loves.”
“Yeah. It is kind of amazing.”
“I’ve always wished I was a little more like her.” Kelsey backs up a few steps. “But don’t tell her I said that. She’d start crying.”
“She wouldn’t… well, okay. She probably would.”
Kelsey grins and gets into her car.
After she’s gone, I work for another hour before heading home. Liv is making teriyaki chicken for dinner, and the sight of her bustling around our little kitchen is a reminder that everything is still the way it’s supposed to be.
Over dinner, she tells me about the encounter she and Crystal had with Maggie Hamilton. I’m less concerned about Maggie than I am about Edward Hamilton, though I’m not surprised Louise Butler found a way to threaten Maggie.
“I guess Maggie learned a tough lesson,” Liv says.
“Ironic that she might’ve learned it from your mother.”
Liv shakes her head, a shadow passing across her face. “My mother did graduate from the school of hard knocks.”
“Hey.” I rub my hand down her back. “You’ve handled this whole situation with your mother beautifully.”
Liv arches an eyebrow at me in amusement. “Is that your way of admitting you were wrong?”
“I’d never admit such a thing.”
She leans over to kiss my chin. “Well, you are my Mr. Right.”
After dinner, Liv settles in to watch TV, and I go into my office to work. Even having handed in my resignation, I’m still a scholar with papers to review and edit. Life changes, but history doesn’t.
I study an article about Chaucer and the concept of fate as a wheel of fortune. The wheel appears throughout medieval literature and art, often in stained-glass windows and illuminated manuscripts. The wheel spins you into either luck or misfortune, all set beforehand.
And though I never believed in love as a predetermined fate, even I had to admit it was a stroke of luck when, five years ago, I happened to walk into the coffeehouse where Olivia R. Winter worked.
After the day we’d met at the registrar’s office, I thought I’d never see her again.
And when I did, I knew I wouldn’t let her go. Fate, luck, or nothing.
Liv has always been the one part of my life I got right. Everything fit with her, like sliding a button into a buttonhole. I knew I wanted her. Knew I’d wait for her as long as she needed me to. I knew it would be so easy to love her.
And even now, I have to wonder if fate, the medieval rota fortunae, was somehow involved.
I shut down my computer and put my books away. It’s almost midnight. The noise of a comedy program comes from the TV. I push away from my desk and go into the living room.
All thoughts of medieval literature disappear at the sight of my pretty wife. Liv is curled up on the sofa, her hands tucked beneath her head. Her curved body moves with the rhythm of sleep. Her shirt has ridden up to expose the pale expanse of her stomach.
I turn off the TV, then pause to brush a few strands of hair away from Liv’s forehead. On our second date, I’d been unable to stop myself from tugging her hair out of its ponytail so I could finally see it tumble over her shoulders. I wanted to touch her hair so badly my fingers hurt.
Now I get to touch it whenever I want, which is often. I slide my fingers through the thick strands, easing them away from her neck. She shifts. I realize she’s not wearing a bra beneath her T-shirt. I move a hand down to her breast. She sighs and arches into my hand, her taut nipple poking against my palm. My prick twitches. Liv’s tongue darts out to lick her lips. She shifts again, rubbing her legs together.
Ah, Christ. Liv doesn’t have discreet sex dreams. She gets into them, twisting and writhing and letting out little moans that make me hard in an instant. She fidgets again, slipping one hand between her legs. I tweak her nipple, then skim my fingers into the warm crevice beneath her breast. She’s sweating a little, strands of hair sticking to her neck, her skin flushed pink.
I consider waking her up, telling her to push her gorgeous breasts together so I can press my cock between them because, fuck, I’m starting to hurt. I yank on the button-fly of my jeans to relieve some of the pressure.
At that instant, Liv opens her eyes. She jerks her gaze up to my bulging crotch. Then she sucks in a breath and looks at me. Her brown eyes are glazed with sleep and arousal. I pull on the remaining buttons and shove my jeans and boxers down.
“Oh, God, Dean.” Liv groans and reaches for my erection. “Give it to me.”
I grasp a fistful of her hair and nudge my cock past her parted lips. Hot tension floods me the instant her beautiful mouth closes around me. Her tongue swirls and licks in exactly the right way, her hand pumping up and down the shaft. The pressure starts to build hard and fast, and I have to pull away before I can’t control it any longer.
I grab her T-shirt and yank it over her head. Her breasts bounce with the movement, the hard-tipped globes making my mouth water. She rubs her hands over them, her slender fingers twisting her nipples, then down to slither out of her sweatpants.
When she’s naked and flushed all over, lust bolts through me at the sight of her rounded curves and damp skin. I push a hand between her thighs and almost come. She’s so hot, so wet. I slide a finger into her and work it back and forth.
“Dean.” Before I’ve thrust more than three times, she comes, her legs clamping around me, her fingers twisting into my shirt. “I can’t get enough… please…”
She never has to beg, but it’s sexy as hell when she does. I back away and sit in an easy chair. My cock juts upward, and I have to fight the urge to stroke it. Liv rises on her elbow and stares at me, her eyes hot.
“Come and fuck me,” I tell her.
She lets out a little moan that goes straight to my blood. Pushing herself off the sofa, she walks over to straddle my lap. She reaches down to position us both and then with one, mind-blowing plunge, she sinks onto my shaft.
I clutch her hips when she starts to move. I won’t last long, not with her tight as a glove and her muscles so pliable. Not with her breasts bouncing in front of me, moans streaming from her throat, her ass slamming down on my thighs.
She braces one hand on my shoulder and uses the other to play with her nipples. Her breath comes faster, her hair falling over her face with the increasing force of her movements.
“Dean,” she gasps, digging her fingers into my shoulder. “Touch them.”
I palm her breasts as she supports herself with her other hand. Her muscles tighten with strain, and I’m sweating with the effort of withholding my orgasm. One twist of her nipples and she comes again with a shriek, convulsing around my shaft.
Before I can thrust upward, she slides off and moves back on my thighs. She grasps my cock, her gaze rapt on the movement of her own hand. A few strokes in and I can’t hold it anymore, pushing up into her grip as I shoot all over her hand.
“Oh, fuck.” Still gasping, Liv rubs her palm over her belly and sinks against my heaving chest. “That was amazing.”
I stroke her smooth, damp back as her breathing begins to slow. “So what was this dream about?”
She doesn’t respond, which makes me grin.
“Come on, beauty,” I cajole, moving my hands to her gorgeous ass. “Was I a pirate captain again?”
She presses her face against my shoulder and shakes her head. I squeeze her ass.
“A swashbuckler?” I ask. “A king? A superhero?”
She shakes her head again. I can almost feel her blush against my skin.
“What then?” I slip a finger into her pussy just to make her squirm. She does. And moans.
“A knight?” I ask.
“No.”
“Then what?” I work my finger a little harder. She shifts her hips to accommodate me.
“None of your business,” she mumbles.
“Uh huh. What do you do when I’m not around during one of your hot dreams?” I swear her blush gets warmer.
“Left to your own devices, aren’t you?” I circle my thumb around her clit. She shivers. “Seems only fair that you should tell me what you’re dreaming about when I’m around to help you get off.”
“All right, fine.” She pushes up to glower at me. “You were an elf.”
I’m so surprised that I stop touching her. “An elf?”
Her cheeks redden again. “Yes.”
“Like with pointy ears and a funny hat?” I can’t help grinning. “That’s what got you so hot?”
She shoves at my chest. “No, not with pointy ears and a funny hat.”
“Then what?”
“You were like a Lord of the Rings elf. You know, with a leather vest and tight pants and a bow and arrow.”
“What were you?” I ask.
“I was a… a fairy.”
“A fairy.” This is increasingly promising. “Like Tinker Bell?”
“Not exactly. I did have wings, though. Jeweled slippers. I was wearing a white gown with a golden belt.” She pauses. “And nothing underneath.”
Nice.
Even though it takes some persuading to get Liv to tell me about her erotic dreams, the result is well worth the effort. Not to mention that she always warms to the story after her initial reluctance, likely embellishing it with extra details.
“So what’d we do?” I ask.
“Well, there was a war going on between the elves and the fairies over possession of the forest,” she says. “I lived in a peaceful village with my fairy brethren…”
“Your fairy brethren?”
She swats my shoulder. “Yes. And you were out marauding with a troop of warrior elves, trying to take over the forest district by district.”
“Uh huh.”
“You saw me one afternoon when you were out hunting. I was picking flowers next to a lake. It was a really hot day, so I waded into the water to cool off. You were hiding behind a tree when you saw me getting all wet.”
“And I got hard.”
“Not right away because you were watching my pet deer.”
Sometimes it takes Liv a while to get to the good stuff.
“You had a pet deer,” I say.
“Yes. Its name was Clover.”
“When did we have sex?”
Liv arches an eyebrow. “I thought you wanted me to tell you about my dream.”
“Yeah, but maybe without so much backstory.”
She sighs as if I’d said I wanted to read the Cliff’s Notes version of a literary masterpiece.
“My pet deer,” she says pointedly, “was named Clover. You wanted to bring her back to your camp for dinner. But when you moved to raise your bow and arrow, you stepped on a twig. Both Clover and I heard the noise. She ran off into the forest, and I hurried to try and find my gown, which I’d left on the shore.”
“You were naked?”
“Of course I was naked. I was in the lake, remember?”
“Why were you naked in the forest if there was a threat of marauding elves?” Two can play at this game.
“I told you,” Liv says. “I lived in a peaceful fairy district.”
“But if warrior elves were taking over the forest district by district, you should’ve known about the danger and not gone skinny-dipping in the lake.”
Liv folds her arms over her chest and frowns. She’s trying for annoyance, but the position of her arms pushes her breasts up and out and makes her look damn sexy.
I want to lick her nipples. Instead I force my gaze back to her face.
“Okay,” I say. “So maybe there was a treaty between the fairies and the elves that they’d leave your district alone. So you thought you were safe.”
Her expression clears. “Yeah, that’s good. I mean… um, something like that. Anyway, I was hurrying to the shore when you stepped out from behind the trees. You pointed an arrow at me and told me not to move. Then you realized I was naked.”
“Took me a while.”
“The sun was at a weird angle, so you couldn’t really see at first. Then when you came closer, I grabbed my gown and held it in front of my wet body. You said you had to take me back to your camp. When I refused, you asked what I’d do to earn my release.”
She stares at my mouth and settles back on my thighs. I shift so my erection slides against her pussy.
“What’d you say?” I ask.
“That I… um, that I’d do whatever it took. I had to get back to my village.”
“Had to find your pet deer.”
“Yeah.” She lifts a hand and rubs her thumb across my lower lip. “So I said I’d do whatever you wanted. I was already… aroused, you know, being naked and in the water with the sun hot on my skin. And then you were there, all big and imposing with this tight leather vest and long hair…”
“Long hair?”
“You were an elf.” She wiggles a little against my thigh. A jolt of heat goes directly to my cock. “You pulled my gown away so you could stare at my naked body, all glistening with water droplets. The sight of me made you crazy with lust.”
She slides her hand down my chest to my stiffening prick. Her breasts move as she takes a breath.
“Then what?” My voice is getting hoarse.
“Then you ordered me to press my breasts together because you wanted to fuck my cleavage.”
“And you did.”
“Sank to my knees before you’d even finished giving me the order,” Liv whispers.
My gaze goes to her full, round breasts which I actually haven’t fucked in some time. I groan at the thought, shifting to ease what is again turning into an almost painful erection. My cock swells against Liv’s hand.
Her eyes widen. “Nice recovery.”
“Nice dream.”
I figure my elven-self and her fairy-self both got off good and hard, but I’m no longer interested in the details. I reach up to fondle one of her breasts, running my thumb over the peak.
“Get on your knees.”
She shifts to the floor, easing herself between my legs. I lift her other breast and push my cock between them.
“Oh, God, Dean…”
“Do it.”
Liv cups her breasts and rubs them over my erection, her skin growing slick and shiny, her chest heaving against the underside of my shaft. Enveloped in her pillowy softness, I lean back and let her work herself over me, rubbing, stroking, squeezing. After a few minutes she lowers her head and licks the tip as I push upward.
Pressure tightens the base of my spine. I put my hand on the back of Liv’s neck. She shifts to the side. I grasp her around the waist and bring us both to the floor. She wraps her legs around me, arching her hips as I plunge into her.
It takes longer this time, a slow and powerful fucking that makes me grit my teeth as the pressure builds. Liv clutches my forearms and moans, her body rolling and quivering with every thrust. I could watch her for hours, feel this forever, but the urgency spirals out of control. I sink deep inside her as she convulses around me, and then there’s nothing but pleasure.
Easy. It’s so easy to be with her, my lusty fairy, my beautiful wife. Wanting her is like breathing. Needing her is in my blood. And loving her will always be the beat of my heart.