Hoops (13 page)

They glared at each other.

She knew that whatever she tried to say at this moment would bear no resemblance to the well-reasoned, measured statements she expected of herself. So she held her tongue.

“Understand?” he repeated.

Not contradicting him this time stretched her self-control to the limit.

“Good.” He nodded as if she’d satisfied him, breaking the stare. When he looked up again, a dry shadow of his grin was starting its crooked path. “So, I’ll see you around, Professor.” He nodded, a farewell as well as an acknowledgment of her anger, and headed down.

She waited for him to disappear so she could vent her fury. She longed to kick something—a wall if not C.J. Draper.

At the landing halfway down the flight of stairs, he stopped a moment, looking over the banister. He glanced back at her, then again at something beyond the banister, as if trying to weigh the possible impact they’d have on each other. He seemed almost bemused as he shook his head once, then turned and came back to where she still stood immobile. “C’mon, Professor, let’s go out the other way.”

The odd tightness was gone from his face and voice; the amusement that now tinted them infuriated her. She jerked her arm away. How could he laugh?

“I’m going this way. Good night, Mr. Draper.”

“Aw, c’mon, Professor.” He had a hold on her arm again, preventing her from taking the last step to the landing.

“What are you doing? Let go of me.”

“Shhh. Not so loud.”

“Why should I be quiet?”

He gave a deep sigh. “If you’d cooperate . . . but I guess you won’t be satisfied . . .”

She couldn’t shake his grasp on her arm, but he gave her enough slack to advance the last step to the landing. The idea of refusing to look over the railing just to thwart him tempted her momentarily. But such childish pleasure was beneath her, she sternly told herself. Better to go along for now so that he’d release her before the warmth of his hand penetrated right through her coat and blouse to skin that was already traitorously softening.

She peered down to the dark hallway below them and barely distinguished a couple entwined on a couch that served as a reception area for several tiny offices. Much too intent on each other to be distracted, they showed no sign of noticing Carolyn or C.J.

Instinctively she stepped back into the corner of the landing. Her first thought to not disturb the couple quickly gave way to the realization that seeing them disturbed her, reminding her of too many temptations.

“You should stop them,” she whispered as C.J. followed her into the corner.

“Me? Why?” he whispered back. He was so close he didn’t need to do more than whisper.

Why
? Because a man held a woman just a stairway away. Kissed and touched. And C.J. Draper stood so close to her she could hear the rhythm of his breathing, could feel the brush of it on her face. He was so big that he cut off the rest of the world. Only this small corner, with the two of them, existed.

“They probably both have roommates and don’t have anywhere else to go,” he said.

“They shouldn’t be doing that.”
I shouldn’t be thinking what it would be like to do that with you.

“They’re just doing a little necking.” His broad shoulders deepened the shadows that seemed to swallow her.

“They shouldn’t be doing that,” she repeated haltingly. She tilted her head back to look up at him.

“Shouldn’t be doing it here? Or not at all?” C.J. bent closer and looked into her eyes with an intensity that held her.

She wished he’d look away. Her throat went dry. Swallowing didn’t help. “What do you mean?” Her question had a small crack in the middle.

“Don’t you believe in necking, Professor?”

Now he was looking at her lips, and that was worse. She wanted to lick them. She couldn’t, not with his eyes resting on them. Resisting the urge cost her breath, burning her lungs as if she’d been running.

“I do, Carolyn.” His voice barely had sound. It was just a thought, a desire, hanging in the few molecules of air that separated their lips. “I believe in necking.”

Carolyn remembered the feel of his lips from their kiss at Angelo’s. The warmth and firmness of them against hers.

She wasn’t aware she’d tipped her head back farther to receive his kiss until she felt its light touch. Then she wasn’t aware of anything except the texture of his mouth moving on hers, the warmth of his hands and arms underneath her coat, wrapping around her, urging her body to curve into his.

So big, yet so gentle. He enveloped her, the strength of his arms cradling her firmly against him.

He held her tightly as his lips grazed her ear, then traveled down the side of her throat. She heard him breathe her name before his mouth came back to hers.

His tongue traced the outline of her lips, then slid along their seam, patiently requesting entrance. She parted her lips because that was what he wanted . . . no, because that was what she wanted.

Enticingly his tongue slid over the smooth, sharp line of her teeth. He explored the intimacy she allowed him with luxurious leisure. This could go on forever, he seemed to be telling her.

And as kiss followed kiss, she wanted it to. But she also wanted more. She needed more. She stretched up to wind her arms around his neck. Her body pressed against his so that she felt the power of his thighs against hers, the hardness of his chest against the swelling softness of her breasts.

The first hesitant touch of her tongue to his shocked her with waves of longing.  Thought was for plodding along the earth. This took her up to the sky, circling around and around, higher and higher. She could only hang on.

Her fingers raked the hair at the back of his neck, urging him closer, closer. The warmth of his hand on the bare skin of her back fed her senses, but with no remembrance of his easing her blouse loose from her slacks to slip underneath it.

His tongue plunging deeper and deeper into her mouth drew a groan of mingled satisfaction and frustration that she didn’t recognize as her own. The swift climb left her lightheaded—and wanting still more.

He pulled back to frame her face with his long hands. She felt the slight roughness of calluses against the tender skin of her cheeks. He tilted her head back. She stared into the desire that he made no effort to hide and the question in his eyes that no amount of studying would give her an answer to. And she felt the beginnings of vertigo.

She glanced away and the dizziness rushed in.

“No.” She couldn’t get enough oxygen, not with the hardness of his body still pressing against her. “We shouldn’t.” She twisted away, leaning her right shoulder against the wall as she struggled to drag air into her lungs.

“What’s the matter, Professor? Did your brain kick in?”

“Don’t.”

He hated the harshness in his own voice, hated it even more when he heard the confusion in hers. He knew what had happened as clearly as if she’d told him. He’d seen the fear in her eyes when she’d opened them and seen how far she could fall. He’d been up there with her, but that wasn’t enough for her, so she’d brought them both tumbling down.

Hs anger sparked from the friction of coming so suddenly back to earth. Gently he straightened the collar of her green silk blouse that his urgent hands had disturbed. Then he stroked her hair away from her neck.

He knew he’d threatened the delicate balance between them when he’d asked what she was doing here. And he’d expected her to react that way to his telling her to stay away from the media. Hell, maybe that was why he’d done it. He’d been so damn pleased to see her, like a high school kid with a crush. And he’d felt like such a fool; just one reference to his being tuned in to her and she’d frozen. So he’d stepped on her toes good and hard with his size fourteens. Last time she’d run away; this time he’d given her a push.

Oh, the warning about reporters had needed saying. He couldn’t risk her inadvertently hurting the guys just because hearing her laugh made his veins burn. But he could have done it another way, without kicking whatever remained of their truce to smithereens.

The players needed her; that was what he had to remember. He had to work with her for the good of the team; that was what was important. Then how come he felt like he’d just lost ten games single-handedly?

“No, maybe we shouldn’t,” he said softly as he drew away from her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have . . .”

Damn, he didn’t want to say he was sorry. He didn’t regret kissing her. He wanted to hold her, stroke her hair, tell her everything would be okay. But who was he to try to tempt her out from behind that marble mask? He hadn’t come here for that. His top priority had to remain the opportunity he’d worked for all these years. He knew that.

She’d retreat behind the marble now. Just as well. Only it wouldn’t stop this damn ache for her.

He knew that, too.

* * * *

She thought it out that night, lying in bed and staring at the ceiling. The first step was to gather the facts.

Fact: when she closed her eyes, she could hear his voice, low and soft in her ear, and feel the stroke of his hand, tender and soothing on her hair.

Her lips tightened grimly.

Fact: what bothered her about the night they’d scouted the game wasn’t so much falling asleep on his shoulder—that could happen to anyone lulled by the warmth and rhythm of a car—but that for a moment between waking and moving she’d known exactly where she was and what was happening, and she’d allowed it. More than that—reveled in it.

Fact: she’d made no move to stop him from kissing her outside Angelo’s the other night.

Fact: she was more than a recipient of his kiss tonight; she was a participant. He’d apologized...
I shouldn’t have.
But he’d done nothing alone. She’d welcomed the pressure of his lips on hers, the texture of his tongue, the heat of his body. She’d responded to it.

She felt a burning emptiness at the center of her, an emptiness she’d tried to ignore for weeks. Instead it had grown, spurred on by thoughts of C.J.

Enough facts. The obvious conclusion: she was attracted to C.J. Draper.

She was a grown woman. It was all very natural that she have sexual desires. That she should want a man’s kisses, the solid warmth of his body, the shiver of his caresses, and all the things they promised.

Natural. All natural.

She twisted onto her side and stared unseeingly at the red glow of the digital clock.

Natural but not reasonable.

She and C.J. Draper had nothing in common. Two beings from different worlds with different interests. Their only mutual concern was the basketball team—and they battled over that. C.J. Draper wasn’t the sort of man she could really talk to or hope to share a future with.

Not that she contemplated a future with him, of course. But she held a certain image of the type of man she should include in her life, an image C.J. Draper didn’t fit. And she could well imagine that he generally dated a very different sort of woman. She rolled over, turning her back on an imaginary line of long-legged blondes.

He’d just hurried her along from one unsettling encounter to another, never giving her time to think things out. Like tonight, when her feelings about him had swung around like a compass gone mad. First friendly, then angry, then cool, then . . . hot.

But now that she’d thought things through, she realized she didn’t run her life that way. She never had, and she didn’t want to start. She always looked at the facts, came to a conclusion, then decided on a course of action.

The conclusion: C.J. Draper was basically overbearing. Sometimes masking it in charm, but always trying to hustle her into something.

Course of action: stay away from C.J. Draper.

* * * *

“Brad, your French professor tells me your attendance has fallen off.”

Carolyn contemplated the unconcerned face across the desk in her office. With Thanksgiving break already past that didn’t leave him much time to catch up before exams. To avoid a D he would need to improve his class participation and turn in a more than respectable final exam. He’d better develop some concern—and fast.

“They don’t play much basketball in France,” Brad responded when she demanded an explanation. She wanted to throttle the attractive young man lolling in the chair on the other side of her desk. So much potential and not the slightest urge to use it.

If she could interest him in French . . .  His lips twisted a little grimly. Unfortunately she didn’t know of any attractive female French exchange students on campus. But there was one other way.

“If you don’t improve your grade, there won’t be any basketball played by Brad Spencer.”

The lack of a threat in her voice seemed to make him sit up a little. She spoke with certainty, not bluster.

“You can’t do that.”

“If your grades don’t meet Ashton’s standards, I can and I will.”

“Coach won’t let you.”

She battered down a surge of irritation before she could speak again. C.J. Draper had no say in anything she did. “It’s not up to Mr. Draper. It’s up to me. I’m the one who decides if you’re academically eligible to play.” She paused. “Or ineligible.”

He stood up. “You’d do that to me?”

“No. You’d do that to yourself if you don’t get your grades up. You’ve got ability. All you have to do is use it.” She saw him waver and knew the precise moment he decided on bravado.

“I don’t believe you. You can’t do this,” he said as he exited the room with a swagger.

On the way back from closing the door he’d left open, she glanced out the window. She saw him half jogging up the long slope, past the dormitory quads, heading toward the ridge where the gym sat. Going to appeal to C.J.

Let him say what he liked, she reminded herself. It didn’t matter. She’d hammered this out with Stewart at the beginning—if a player’s grades dropped below a certain level, he didn’t play. They’d set broad outlines, but she decided the specifics.

Less than an hour later Brad Spencer, considerably chastened, knocked on her office door.

As they worked out a program to make up for wasted time, she wondered about his conversation with C.J. Resolutely she pushed aside a shard of resentment. So what if Brad had listened to C.J. and not her? The result mattered, that was all.