Chapter 1

Judge

I will conquer this.

“Professor Copeland, you’re really distracted today.”

“I’m sorry, Jason,” I said, scrubbing a hand down my face. “I promise to pay more attention.”

With a shameful shudder, I realized I’d been ignoring my graduate student, Jason Crawford. Good thing he didn’t understand the turn my thoughts had taken.

Turbulent images floated across my brain again, and I couldn’t eradicate them. Full breasts and a lush, round ass. A wicked obsession with a woman I shouldn’t want but couldn’t stop. Some twisted addiction to dark illicit fantasies and raging lust that had settled so deep in my bones it could put me away for life. I yearned. I craved. I masturbated. I hadn’t made love to a woman since the first ping of desire had hit my groin the day I’d seen her poolside in her string bikini at her sweet sixteen. And that had been years ago. I remember going home that night and willing myself to sweep away any and all images of her until I’d fallen into a fitful sleep of regret and shame. But her face had been the first thing filling my mind the next morning and every dawn thereafter. And then she’d been taken from me, ripped away by what felt like a vicious Universe when in fact, a benevolent Universe was just protecting her from the likes of a degenerate like me.

It felt like forever since I’d even had a glimpse of her. And I wanted to see her again. Just a taste. With my eyes only.

I clamped those orbs shut in an irrational burst of defiance, and her image flashed into the blackness. Innocence. Sweetness. Light. I felt like just the thought of her unzipped my soul, opening the tortured part of my deepest being and exposing it to the light.

I imagined running my fingers over the silk of her long, auburn waves. The upturn of her pert nose. The curve of her luscious hip. She’d put her hand there once while giving me sass but her words had floated over me, unheard. All I could think of in that moment was kissing her. Shoving my tongue straight down her throat so at least one part of me got to be inside her body.

Would her striking green eyes register shock or desire? I could imagine my hands traveling up and down her torso, memorizing every curve as my cock strained against my pants. And after I’d discovered every inch of her with my touch, my mouth would follow, tasting her. Worshiping her with my lips and tongue. After so many years of craving a woman without any chance of assuaging the fierce yearning, my future looked bleak. I wanted a family. A wife and children who adored me, who I could protect and cherish. And I couldn’t have that yet. I couldn’t have it until I eradicated the woman who currently lived in my mind and, more importantly, in my dark heart.

She was so much younger than me. My mind cared but my sensitized body hadn’t received the message. I’d dated. I’d fucked. I’d pretended I wanted a commitment. But none of those other women could satisfy my urge for what I really wanted. Her. She was perfection. Smart, talented, gorgeous, humble. I could go on and on. Devon excelled at anything and everything she put her mind to. If she wanted it, she went after it. I wished that what she wanted was me.

Devon was John’s daughter. My best friend since I’d gotten my green card back in college. We’d been roommates. He’d made fun of my UK accent and I’d made fun of his ready-made family. In actuality, I admired John. Not a lot of men who knocked up their high school sweetheart would stand up and do the right thing. John and Rebecca had made it. A true inspirational success story of love, commitment, and family right out of a fabled fairytale.

And that love had created Devon, their only child. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t betray John in that foolish and despicable way. He’d been there for me throughout my entire time in the United States. Now, I needed to be there for him by erasing all my impure thoughts of his twenty-year-old baby girl. But wanting to do it and actually doing it were two different things. My mind and body had been firing on all cylinders for Devon for so long, it was hard to think of much else.

It had been four long years since I’d even been intimate with a woman. I just couldn’t bring myself to go there with them, and I’d ghost after a few dates. Even if the dates were spectacular. Even if the woman stimulated my mind and heart. Ever since that very first day when my cock had first twitched for Devon over birthday cake and an innocuous touch, I’d only been able to maintain a commitment with my right hand. The sex between Stevenson’s literary masterpiece and Victoria Secret’s lingerie swimwear had done something so sinister to my libido I feared it might never return to ignite for woman closer to my own age.

And now Devon’s here. Within a whisper of my itching fingers.

After all this time, I knew she was something to me. Something I’d never experienced before and probably never would again. Something worth exploring, worth fighting for, worth dying for. And if John ever got wind of it, that’s where I’d find myself. Six feet under with shovels of dirt covering my murdered corpse.

I ran a hand over my day’s worth of scruff and hissed out a breath. I hadn’t even mustered the strength to shave this morning after another sleepless night haunted by erotic dreams starring Devon.

“It wasn’t that important. I just wondered if you would like a cup of coffee from the cafeteria, Professor Copeland?”

My head snapped up at my graduate student’s words. Jason Crawford was a fellow brit and helped me with all of my large lecture classes. I was lucky to have such a brilliant writer as I taught this large class of freshman English students at Diamond. Since English was a required course for their liberal arts degree, most of them didn’t want to be here. And those were the kind of students I loathed. Thanks to Jason, I didn’t have to engage more than necessary.

“No. I can’t ingest that swill but I thank you for the offer. I’ll get a Starbucks at lunch to sustain me through the afternoon.”

If anything could sustain me. Every young woman who traipsed over the threshold of the lecture hall with auburn hair set my heart to racing and my cock to twitching. Until I scanned my hungry eyes down the length of the young woman’s body only to realize it wasn’t her.

None of them would be Devon because John had told me she’d taken AP lit in high school so she’d tested out of most English courses. Maybe I’d have her in one of my higher level courses. But for now, a reprieve. It had been a couple of weeks since the start of the semester and I hadn’t even had a glimpse of her. Not that I’d been looking.

I’ve been looking in every fucking nook, cranny, and cubbyhole in this university. If Devon had been within a few yards of me, my body would respond.

I hadn’t seen her since that sweet sixteen four years ago. Out of deliberate and selfish care for my own raging lust and fragile ego. As soon as Rebecca had sent out the save-the-date graduation cards, I’d booked a trip back home to London to visit my sister. Could I have seen Lynn any other time that summer? Hell, yes, I could have. But I wanted to be willful. And so I’d let my best friend in the world down by not attending his only child’s graduation because I was afraid my inappropriate feelings would be written all over my lecherous face. My desire for Devon had been building the past four years, chugging down the track of downfall like a runaway lustamotive. Instead of being the bigger man, I’d sent her a thousand dollar check. The Judge Copeland ‘please don’t fucking come near me ever again’ scholarship award.

I should have been there. The guilt. And the shame. I’d felt it when I made my cowardly decision and I’d felt it even more acutely when John had admitted over a casual lunch how much the family had missed my presence. Especially Devon.

I’d disappointed my lifelong friend, myself, and her.

And the thought of hurting her feelings stabbed through my body like a knight’s jousting lance.

I reached onto my desk to peer into my planner. One more lecture to go until I could escape the campus for an off-site lunch. I didn’t have anything else until two. Caffeine, here I come. Too bad it couldn’t be a liquid lunch. The blessed burn of a dry Merlot stealing down my throat might numb the bodily sensations that had become as usual to me as a steady heartbeat or breath in my lungs.

I sucked in a ragged inhale and wondered if I could stop the guttural reaction that happened each time I gazed upon her angelic face. Probably not. I just hoped it would happen in a public place. She wouldn’t dare come and visit me during office hours, would she? Only one thing I knew for certain.

I still wanted her. Now more than ever.