Authors: Ginny Glass,Inez Kelley
Talk Dirty To Me (4 page)
TUESDAY Addendum:
Responses to “James”—
Temperature 99.7, sweat production increased,
heart rate increased, breathing erratic.
More study needed.
I hope he calls again.
WEDNESDAY
Waking temp. normal, heart rate normal.
Sleep inadequate—increased sexual content during REM cycle.
Looking forward to coffee with J. R.
Jarod scanned the after-lunch crowd and cursed. She wasn’t going to show. She might have figured out he was James or still figured him for some creep. Guilt soured the coffee in his stomach and he tossed his half-full cup in the trash. Great, the most interesting woman he’d met in ages and he screwed up with a phone call.
“Sorry, I got held up in a meeting.” Nora breezed into the café, bringing sunshine and crisp fall air. She dropped her bulging knapsack on an empty chair and slid into the one across from him. Her cheeks were flushed pink from the wind and a small smile curved her unpainted mouth. “I wasn’t sure if you’d still be here.”
His stomach flopped like a high school kid on a date with the prom queen.
“Well, I am.” He smiled. “How do you take your coffee? I’ll get us a cup.”
“Three creamers, please, no flavored stuff, just normal.”
The line was nonexistent and Jarod brought two steaming takeout cups back quickly—before his guilt over last night’s charade could bog down his elation at the sight of her. She didn’t act as if she knew the call had been from him so he played dumb. “So what did you do last night besides bio lab laundry?”
“Nothing.” She sipped the coffee, her eyes fixed on the table. A slight twitch on her lips and the darkening of her cheeks denied her lie and he bit his tongue. She had no idea. “Just research. I didn’t know you wore glasses. You didn’t have them on yesterday.”
“Ah, well.” He pushed the bridge of his glasses higher on his nose. “My allergies acted up and my eyes were all swollen this morning. I couldn’t get my contacts in.”
“They don’t look puffy to me.”
“Antihistamine and getting away from my neighbor’s cat.”
One eye narrowed as she studied him. She nodded. “I like them. They make you look scholarly. You teach English Lit
and
Advanced Rhetoric?”
and
Advanced Rhetoric?”
“You looked me up,” he teased.
“Of course. Had your name and picture not been on the faculty roster, I wouldn’t be here.”
Jarod tasted his own drink. “Cautious lady.”
“Just smart. There’s no phone listed for you.”
“Yeah, I keep meaning to switch to a local number but then I forget just as quickly. Besides, it keeps students from calling and claiming their computers crashed late Sunday night before a paper is due on Monday.”
“Smart man. I noticed you did your dissertation on the Romantic Classics. Isn’t that an odd subject for a man?”
“Not in Literature. The archetypal romances are the foundation for almost any prose today.”
The corner of Nora’s mouth quirked upward.
Jarod bristled at the same time his heart tripped a few beats. “What?”
“Tell me why you chose Romantic Classics, really.”
Jarod bit the inside of his lip. He couldn’t tell her he was moved by the emotion of it all, that he was drawn in by lush language and the verbose purpleness of classic literature. It would make him seem too…effete. She had been intrigued by James last night—aggressive, bold and masculine.
“Most of the Romantic Era classics aren’t just stories. They’re studies of human nature. They epitomize the world thinking of the era. Besides, for the most part, they were written by men.”
Nora sipped her coffee. Jarod hoped after watching her lips fold around the rim he was still able to form coherent speech.
“And?”
“And so they offer a unique and permanent capsulated viewpoint of the driving gender. Like textual anthropology. My title was ‘Gender Representation in the Romances: The Bones of Masculinity Past.’”
“Interesting.” Nora shifted and her lab coat fell open. The dark olive sweater lent a hint of green to her eyes and offset her skin. It did a world of good for her figure, hugging the curves. He fought to keep his eyes on her face. He liked that lab coat. It was like an outer shell hiding her from the world but underneath, she was all woman. It seemed perfect for what he knew of her.
Conversation flowed easily and without pause. The story about her car vandalism bothered him but she assured him she now waited for security to walk her to her car if she had to stay late. Copper tinged his mouth as he bit back the words volunteering to meet her himself, just to assure her safety. Too early to feel that protective but damn, now he was going to worry.
Her mind was amazing, sharp and thorough. The dry wit and almost-clinical slant she could place on anything captivated him. He made her smile with horror stories of his last essay assignment and she offered her own tales about bungling undergrads in Bio 101. She laughed and the dulcet tones tripped down his spine like water from a cool stream. He
really
liked her.
really
liked her.
A rhythmic beeping from her cell phone brought him out of their soft-focus, autumn-scented world. Somehow, forty-five minutes had passed. He was going to be late for his own class. Nora stuffed a paper napkin into her empty cup and stood. “I have to go. I have to give a lecture in five minutes.”
“Me, too. Can we do this again?”
A pink tongue slicked along her bottom lip and she dipped her chin once. “Tomorrow?”
“If we graduate to lunch, I’ll buy.” He held his breath as she slung the bag onto her shoulder, her eyes averted. Sensing a rebuff, he pushed. “Here, in public. Lots of people around.”
Bourbon eyes sparkled when she smiled at him. “I guess so, but we’ll go dutch. Noon?”
This had to be what winning the lottery felt like. Jarod rose and took her hand. He dropped a small kiss on her knuckles. “Until tomorrow.”
His lips tingled and his chest ached with the rush of his heartbeat. He watched her walk away, a naughty grin widening his mouth. Her lab coat hid her hips, but her straight khaki skirt had a slit in the back that showed her long, lean legs. As he gathered his papers and leather binder, he noticed a student scurrying out of the café.
“Hey, Chris?”
“Yeah, Prof?”
“You work in the mailroom, don’t you?”
“Yeah, it sucks.”
Jarod handed him a sealed manila envelope with Nora’s name written on the front. “Drop this in the faculty inbox, will you?”
He made it to class on time and with a bounce to his step.
WEDNESDAY 2 p.m.
Light lunch, yogurt, wheat crackers—coffee with J. R.
Vitals unreliable (wind chill and late for lecture).
Interesting and engaging conversation.
Intrigued. Agreed to lunch.
He has nice eyes.
Nora’s heart skipped as her cell phone chirped again. Her gaze zeroed in on the screen—out of area. Her heart sped up. Same time as last night. She flipped the phone open on the third chirp.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Nora.”
The air froze in her lungs. The pen she held wobbled. “Hello, James.”
“Did you get your mail?”
“Yes, nine pages as promised and a photocopy of some letters.”
“Good, did you read them?”
“First things first. Since you’re parsing out my book one page at time, I want a new copy as well as the loose pages.”
A deep chuckle caressed her ear. “Okay, fair enough.”
“How did you get the envelope in the school mailbox?”
“Mmm, let’s just say I have an affiliation with the college.”
Student? Assistant? Professor? Could he be one of the security guards or the cafeteria workers or any of the office personnel? Worrying her lip, she made notes and let the call lapse into silence.
“Nora, stop worrying. You have all the control here. Hang up and I’m a memory.”
“Not if I want my things back.”
“As smart as you are, as organized, I cannot imagine you don’t have these notes three other places. And the book is available anywhere. Try Amazon.”
Husky, laced with intrigue and a hint of bravado, his voice soothed her concerns. He was right. She could end the call and forget him. But she couldn’t forget those irreplaceable interviews. And could she forget what he did to her? This mysterious, faceless man stirred something in her that she craved without knowing why. The faceless thing unsettled her. She needed a face. “What do you look like?”
“Just a man, sweetheart.”
If he wouldn’t give her an image, she would have to conjure one. Jarod Reed’s face leaped to her mind and, startled, she shoved it away. No, she was not going to confuse the two. Jarod was sweet, polite. James’s voice, gravelly and edged with sin, was too deep for the English professor with the gentle smile. This man, he was dangerously tempting and way outside her scope of experience. He made her feel like a teenager with a crush on the local leather-wearing bad boy, all jittery nerves and expectations.
James was impractical, a bodice-ripper hero who shouldn’t even pique her interest. If she were to give James a face, it wouldn’t be one with Jarod’s green eyes or the slow ease of his smile. Still, Jarod’s face was the only one she could seem to summon.
“I read the letters. Joyce was a very visceral man.”
“That he was. Most men are at their core. Education and society might buff off the rough spots but when it comes to sex and love, we’re all creatures of our baser instinct.”
“Basic biology. It’s what I intend to show.”
“But you’re operating from a tragic control group. You said you’ve never let go, let the animal urges take over.”
“I prefer the human species to bestiality,” she quipped just to hear that luscious chuckle one more time. Her toes curled inside her argyle socks.
“Procreation is a biological urge. But sex isn’t all about splitting cells. It’s deeper than two bodies intertwined. It can be a spiritual experience.”
“Hmm,” she murmured, shuffling pages. The photocopied words stuck in her throat but she forced past them, a decidedly frosty tone in her voice. “James Joyce wrote ‘Nora, My love for you allows me to pray to the spirit of eternal beauty and tenderness mirrored in your eyes or fling you down under me on that softy belly of yours and fuck you up behind, like a hog riding a sow, glorying in the very stink and sweat that rises from your arse, glorying in the open shape of your upturned dress and white girlish drawers and in the confusion of your flushed cheeks and tangled hair.’ Spiritual, huh? Sounds more earthly to me.”
“Ah, sweet Nora, the passion of loving a woman you can’t wait to be inside encompasses your body and your soul. It is possible to love her with all your heart while wanting to fuck her until she screams your name.”
He had shocked her, Jarod could tell. Her sweet indrawn breath twanged a note in his belly, and his cock twitched. He expected her to pull back, to slip into her deep-freeze mode, but she didn’t.
“Okay, then tell me this,” she challenged, bravado plain in her voice. “Did I make you hard?”
“Oh, hell yes. I’m as hard as a baseball bat right now. I want to jack off but I’m waiting.”
“Waiting? For what?”
“You. You stopped writing something on the back cover, something about the dark and the voice that reached out…Tell me how it ends.”
“You just want me to play phone-sex operator.”
“Maybe I do, but that’s not all I want. I want to be with you, if not in person at least like this. You intrigue me, sweetheart. Brains turn me on just as much as breasts.”
She said nothing but he could hear her moving. A floor creaked and a light snapped.
Off or on?
he wondered, trying to picture her in her house or apartment. “What are you wearing?”
he wondered, trying to picture her in her house or apartment. “What are you wearing?”
“Not sexy stuff. Just…panties and a tee shirt.”
“That is sexy. Did what Joyce wrote turn you on? Did reading it to me turn you on?”
Another length of silence. Jarod braced for the sharp click, the electric hum of a dead line in his ear.
“Yes,” she whispered and his throat clenched. How far was he willing to take this?
All the way.
“Are you wet, Nora?”
“I don’t—oh God. This is so dirty. I don’t even know you.”
“You do. You know me.” He flipped off the lamp and leaned back on the couch. The darkness intensified the rush, amplified every catch, every inflection in her tone. He licked his lips. “I’m always there, in your fantasies, doing exactly what you want. I’m the ultimate safe lover. I can’t touch you except with my voice.”
Other books
Firefly by Severo Sarduy
Inkers by Alex Rudall
The Raven Queen by Che Golden
Honey's Farm by Iris Gower
Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein
Duchess by Susan May Warren
Crineal Chronicles 1: In Hera's Service by Raymond L Jennings
Songs of the Shenandoah by Michael K. Reynolds
Happy Valley by Patrick White
The Borribles: Across the Dark Metropolis by Michael de Larrabeiti
