“I don’t know how to walk away from you,” he confessed, a low growl wrapped in a whisper.
“Then don’t. Liam…” she murmured against his throat, tasting the name for the first time in a year, testing the familiar feel of it on her tongue.
Min lifted her head to look at him. Surely, he felt this magnetic pull that drew them together, as inevitable as the tide. She was so tired of fighting it – wasn’t he?
His breathing, increasingly ragged, jostled her where she rested against him. His eyes had gone liquid and dark. Was his heart beating as hard as her own? She had to know.
Very slowly, slow enough that he could stop her, she raised her hand and ghosted her fingers over his chest. His hand snapped up, pressing hers against the muscled slope of his chest so she could feel the pounding beneath his skin. He looked at her with such intensity she couldn’t look away if she tried.
Dr. Jacobs took her face in his hands, his fingertips caressing the back of her neck. He studied her eyes, desire and duty warring in their depths, before his mouth found hers.
His lips were soft, but his kiss was urgent. His hands tangled in her hair. With one firm hand on the small of her back, he pulled her into his lap. She settled against him, straddling him. He swallowed her moan when she pressed herself against the hard length of his erection.
She clutched his shirt and laced her other arm around his neck, pulling him closer. Her body remembered his. With him, it felt like the pieces of herself were slotting back together.
His arm around her back held her tight against his chest, giving her just enough leeway to rock her hips against his, the friction through her thin yoga pants almost more than she could stand as his cock pressed against her through the fabric. Dr. Jacobs drew a line of hot, wet kisses down her neck and back to her lips, demanding entrance to her mouth with the velvet blade of his tongue. His hand in her hair tilted her head, allowing him better access so he could kiss her harder, deeper, consume her completely.
She’d never thought she’d have this again – never thought she’d havehim. But here he was. She needed more. She needed everything.
Her hand drifted down his torso, sliding between their bodies to palm his erection through his pants. His cock thickened and grew beneath her touch. Nothing mattered more in that moment than how badly she wanted him inside her –neededhim inside her. She fumbled with his belt buckle, and he broke their kiss, swearing under his breath.
As her fingers worked the button of his pants, he reached between them and gripped her hand, stilling her movement. He pulled back from her, though her lips chased his. He rested his forehead against hers, stroking the back of her hand still at his waistband, and struggling to steady his breathing.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so fucking sorry.” His lips barely brushed over hers again before he lifted her off his lap and set her on the bench. “I can’t do this,” he exhaled before he disappeared into the night.
Chapter Fourteen
Long Island, New York
The flight from Italy to New York seemed to be twice as long as the flight in the opposite direction had been. Min dreaded returning to campus, to the world ofDr. Jacobsrather than Liam.
For the whole flight, Min daydreamed about the pressure of his hand on her lower back, the scratch of his stubble on her throat. As she collected her bags from baggage claim, she thought of the strength in his arms when he pulled her towards him, the whisper of his lips across the nape of her neck. Even as she loaded her bags into the trunk of Jeff’s car, a shiver ran down her spine at the memory of the way her body had thrummed with a need to be closer to him. Somehow the hours and miles of distance between them, even with him running away from her – almost literally – hadn’t dulled the need coursing through her.
On the drive back to their apartment, Min tried to distract herself, both from that need and from the increasing despair that she had really lost him… again. It felt even worse this time than it had before. A year ago, she hadn’t known quite how brilliant he was, his suppressed smile whenever someone bemoaned the length of his paper assignments, how he could caress her with the music he commanded with his baton. She hadn’t known the weight of a year of stolen glances across crowded rehearsal rooms. She didn’t know what it felt like to have him hold her when she felt broken, or to stand on an Italian rooftop beside him.
She’d already spent a year of her life pining for this man. How much longer could she survive it?
So as Jeff wove in and out of lanes on the Belt Parkway, Min asked him about his summer – who he’d seen, who he’d hooked up with, the latest gossip – anything not to have to think about her frustratingly sexy professor.
“It was just a fling,” Jeff said, though his mouth curved into his signature Cheshire Cat curl. “You know how it goes,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
No, she didn’t know. But she could imagine. Jeff had never been the kind of guy to commit to serious relationships. He had a new boy in his bed every week. Meanwhile, Min was still hung up on the one man she shouldn’t even be thinking about.
“What about you?” Jeff asked with a smirk. “Any hot affairs in Italy?” She hesitated half a second too long and Jeff whipped his head around to look at her, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “Who was it? Tell me everything!”
“It was nothing.” She slumped further in her seat and looked out the window. If her best friend caught the redness creeping over her cheeks, he’d know she was lying.
“Nuh uh, you can’t lie to me, missy. There was something.” Jeff paused and looked at her again, his eyes widening even further. “Are you blushing? You’re seriously blushing right now? Damn, Mel, what’d you do? Or should I say who?” he teased.
“I didn’tdoanyone,” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest and scowling.Damn my horrible poker face.
“If you say so.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes. Jeff pressed his lips tight together, as if he was trying not to say what he was thinking, before blurting out, “Please don’t tell me you slept with Bobby again. I swear to God, if you – ”
“I didn’t do anything with Bobby.”
More silence, but the tension in Jeff’s shoulders relaxed.
