Out of Control Read online

  Damn, her bike shorts were going to be soaked. And by damn, she meant supercalafragilistic with a side order of expialidocious.

  Just when she reached a viscous state, Drake released her with a sigh, though his shorts were obviously packing some serious heat. “Living with you is going to be dangerous. Good thing I’m on a deadline, or I’d want to keep you here.”

  “I don’t mind being kept.” Where did that quiver in her voice come from, and why was she talking like Betty Boop?

  “There’s an art to these things, Jen. The process is as important as the end result.”

  He looked stern. He looked passionate. He looked both bookish and badass, with the kind of hard muscles she’d expect on an athlete, not a mathematician. The silly shirt added a hint of attractive good humor. Not to mention his shorts were tenting in a most suggestive way. Delicious enough to start red desire swirling inside her, even without that amazing kiss.

  If he preferred a drawn-out game of seduction to a quick fling, Jen would play along. She was usually the quick-fling/booty-call type, almost had to be with her crazy schedule, but she had the feeling he’d be worth the wait.

  She smiled as sexily as she could. “Process I can appreciate. I blow and sculpt glass. You can’t rush it, and sometimes the glass has a mind of its own. And you have to follow the steps of the process, or it will fail.”

  Drake pulled her close again. “Molten glass sounds dangerous. Play safe. Now go, before we do something we both regret.”

  “I doubt either of us would regret it.”

  He gifted her with a slow, lazy grin. “I’d be distracted. Half my brain’s tied up in the paper I’m working on, and it would be sad not to give you my full attention.”

  Jen was distracted herself by his lazy smile and sharp gray eyes, by his muscles and the force of his kiss. But she wasn’t so distracted she didn’t ask, “Okay, today’s bad. When’s good?”

  “Move-in day’s April thirtieth. Enough time to get you settled in before end-of-semester madness starts.” There was something mischievous about the way he said it, which was the only reason she didn’t either smack him or tackle him. “Though you’ll probably hear from me as soon as my damn paper’s done.”

  He liked the game? She could play too. “And what if I’m busy then? I have work too, you know. Two jobs, in my case, sometimes three, and a big show in June.”

  “We’ll make time for each other.” He said it with such quiet confidence she found she believed him, though she always took it with a grain—more like a pound—of salt when a guy said he’d call.

  Though often as not, she was too busy to care if he never did.

  This time, at least, she knew they’d see each other again. Hell, they’d be sharing a house. Plenty of time to sort things out, even if her body thought it made more sense to sort it out now. So she smiled a little smile, cocked out her hip, waved slyly, said, “See you around,” and headed out.

  She pedaled a block, shaking the whole time, before she had to stop and sit on the grass, pretending to take a drink even though her water bottle was empty. She was too blind from lust to ride safely. She couldn’t sit down with the hard leather of the seat between her thighs, couldn’t ride standing because her legs were trembling too badly.

  At least she could catch a glimpse of the lake from here. She could pretend she was looking at the view instead of trying not to cause a traffic accident because she was on the verge of coming in her pants.

  How the hell had that happened? That kiss had devastated her in a way no kiss had done since high school.

  When Jen was first learning to work with glass, her instructor had told the class that if molten glass hit your skin, you wouldn’t know how bad the burn was at first. The hot glass would sear the nerves.

  The kiss was like that, so fast and furious she didn’t realize immediately how aroused she was.

  She ran her finger over her lips, remembering the kiss, remembering how his hand had felt on the back of her neck, in her hair, on her ass.

  So little to do so much.

  And she was going to be sharing his house.

  She couldn’t decide if she was in trouble or he was.

  Probably both.

  Yeah, she’d definitely sleep in the turret. At least her bedroom wouldn’t be directly attached to his that way—not that she imagined it would save her.

  Not that she imagined she really wanted to be saved.

  Then suddenly she knew what to do, who to call. She pulled out her phone, hit an old friend’s number. “Hi, Avi. How are things with you and your boy-toy?”

  She smiled to herself while her old friend, otherwise known as Mistress Avilyn, sex columnist and former New York pro domme, filled her in on how things were going with her lover-slash-slaveboy.

  “Damn, girl.” Jen sighed when the story was done. “You sound happy. I’m so glad Johnny’s a keeper. I need a little advice, though. I’ve met this guy. I’m really attracted to him but I’m picking up all these signals he’s a dom. Hell, I saw his riding crop. Which turns me on, but I really don’t know what I’m doing here. Any tips?”

  “If you were involved in your local scene, I’d say to ask a few people if he’s okay before you go too far, but being involved in the local scene would require you to actually have time for social life, and I know better. And if I know you, you’ve probably already gone too far, because when you finally let yourself have some fun, you get crazy.”

  Trust her old college roommate to know her, warts and all. “Well, yeah. I might have. Drake was the one who put the brakes on things.”

  For a second, Avi was silent. “Oh my. Drake? I know a Drake who lives in your area. What does yours do for a living?”

  “He’s a math professor at Cornell. There’s no way you’d know him.”

  Avi laughed. “It’s a small world, babe. Drake Matthews, right?”

  Okay, that was weird. “Uh, yeah.”

  “Tall, gray eyes, nerd glasses and the body of a god?”

  “That’s him. I cannot believe you know him!”

  “Normally I’d keep things vague until I talked to him.”

  “I’ll kill you if you tell him about this conversation!”

  Avi snorted. “Since I trust you, and also you’re the most impatient person I know, I’ll tell you a few things. You’re reading him right. He’s incredibly ethical and has a reputation for playing safe. And as you’ve probably noticed, he’s gorgeous enough to make me wish either he or I had a single submissive bone in our bodies. But neither of us do, so he’s all yours.”

  Pleasurable panic flooded Jen. “Cool! But what do I do now?”

  A throaty chuckle. “Call him, woman! From what I know of him, he’s not hung up on the idea that a submissive should always wait for a dominant to make the first move. If anything, he likes it when a woman makes it clear she’s interested. Besides, you’re not exactly a sub, unless something changed since we last talked.”

  Although Avi couldn’t see her, Jen shrugged. “Still curious with some subbish leanings, though maybe I’m about to get my curiosity satisfied. Definitely not so subbish I won’t make the first move. So what’s he into?”

  “Don’t know exactly. He’s not the kiss-and-tell type, and I’ve never had a reason to ask for details. But he always leaves his playmates smiling.”

  Chapter Three

  Jen spent a couple of days alternately checking her phone for messages from Professor Hot-Stuff and mildly freaking out that she was wasting time checking her damn phone and salivating over her future landlord but not having the guts to contact him. She had better things to do. Besides, she had no idea how long it took to write an academic paper, and she could hardly snark about putting work first—or getting involved enough in work you lost track of everything else—since every friend and lover she ever had accused her, accurately, of doing the same thing. And who knew how serious he’d been? The kiss, however toe-curling, was an impulsive bit of fun. Probably it wasn’t a good idea to ge
t involved in some kinky landlord-tenant affair. Professor Hot-Stuff, being a genius, had undoubtedly figured that out before she did.

  Either that or he just forgot to call. Genius didn’t preclude absentmindedness, as anyone who dealt with professors knew. And if you lived in Ithaca, you dealt with professors, even if you had nothing to do with either Cornell or Ithaca College. They were as much a part of the town as Cayuga Lake, the gorges and the unpredictable weather, which had turned from summer-warm to below freezing in the few days since she’d last seen Drake.

  Just when she was about to call Drake herself and at least get an idea when he might have free time, she had a vision for a new, ambitious work. A Green Man piece done using the layered-cameo technique—a face hinted at in the glass. Not a full sculpted face, like Susan Gott did in some of her evocative pieces, but something more subtle, suggesting both spring woods and a male presence. Something Jen could actually pull off with the tools and time at her disposal. The blown vases and simple paperweights were fun and creative in their own right. Relatively quick to make, they had a ready market at craft shows and on Etsy and eBay. Sometimes, though, she needed to create something that might be more expensive and harder to sell, and would definitely be harder to make, but would feed her soul.

  She began to sketch, combining notions and colors on paper so she’d know what she was doing with the glass. She thought through processes, researched techniques different than she’d used in the past (wishing the whole time that she read faster but thankful that YouTube hid some useful how-tos among all the cute cats and music videos), made meticulous notes coded by color, saved pictures, experimented using glass left over from making her bread-and-butter projects. The vision and the background work she needed to do to accomplish it consumed any time she wasn’t at the bakery. While she worked at the bakery, did her shift as a dog walker or rode her bike from job to job, she was engrossed in the spring colors around her and the still more vivid colors in her head. She even forgot her volunteer shift at GreenStar, running in an hour late, frantic and still sweaty from the studio; she needed the volunteer discount on her groceries too badly to miss the shift completely.

  Drake faded into the background, where he belonged.

  At least she thought he had until she reexamined her sketches. That face in the tree would be subtle when it was worked in glass, an abstract man in an abstract tree. In the sketches, though, it was obviously Drake’s face.

  One sketch even had a vine tracing that, while it wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else, she knew was a bow to his glasses.

  Oh Lord, Avi would laugh. Avi was used to her being the one who had some fun, then walked away because she was too busy to put up with some man’s shit.

  She reached for her phone. What would it hurt to call, set up a date?

  Then she looked at the sketches again. What it would hurt was her process. She was hot on the trail of this piece, but she still had a lot of work to do before she could actually get started—and that was in addition to doing her usual vases and suncatchers. Much as she wanted the pleasure of a picnic at Taughannock Falls or a movie or a concert, followed by the intense sex that seemed inevitable after that devastating kiss and Avi’s insider information, she couldn’t afford the distraction.

  If Drake could kick her out of the house to finish his work, despite the hard-on straining against his shorts and the lust that darkened his eyes and made his voice husky, she could resist calling him until the Green Man project was glass, not a fire in her brain.

  And if the attraction, once they saw each other again, was as strong as it had been that first day, it would make satisfaction all that much sweeter.

  Right? She kept telling herself that every time Drake managed to fight his way through the images and techniques that crowded her head. It might have worked too, if she hadn’t suddenly woken from a sound sleep on the couch in the studio (she hadn’t wanted to take the time to go home) remembering she’d promised Drake she’d fix that stained glass window.

  She didn’t want to distract herself with that now, not when that new piece was close enough she could close her eyes and see all its details, but damn it, she’d made a promise. It made sense to do it when she wasn’t living there yet to be bothered by the gaping hole where the window ought to be. And speaking of gaping holes, it was supposed to be dry and moderately warm for April in the Finger Lakes this week. It was as good a time as any to do the job. Not as cold as it had been last week, not pouring rain like it was a few days ago and would probably be by the weekend.

  All perfectly logical. So why did reaching for her phone to see when she could come over feel risky? Damn it, she wasn’t normally this nervous asking someone out—and she wasn’t asking Drake out, even though she still might do so down the road. This was business.

  Which didn’t stop her “Hi Drake” from sounding suspiciously squeaky when she heard his deep voice on the other end of the phone.

  After ten days, Jen hadn’t called. Of course, Drake hadn’t called her either. He hadn’t forgotten the woman’s impact, the presence she packed into her small body, but thanks to concentrating on his paper, focusing on his grad students and helping see the undergrads through the last few weeks of the semester, and spending hours with just his shinai, doing kendo, he’d found his way back to a sense of balance. Convinced himself that, while Jen Kessler was attractive and worth getting to know better, his strong reaction to her had been surprise as much as anything. He didn’t find himself on the receiving end of a lot of impulsive hugs. Jen had blasted right through his carefully cultivated reserve to the part of him he kept hidden behind that mask.

  Even after she’d obviously seen the riding crop, which made it all a little more interesting.

  That was all.

  Or so he thought until Jen did call. He didn’t recognize her number on his caller ID, but even after a simple, “Hi Drake,” he knew her voice.

  Knew it and felt it caressing his skin, ruffling his hair, messing up his mind.

  “I was wondering when you’d call.” He couldn’t decide if he sounded cool and slightly reproachful, pathetically eager or neutral. He was going for neutral but didn’t think he succeeded.

  She laughed, and the sound tickled him. “Weren’t you supposed to call me when you finished your paper?”

  That’s right, he had said that. “It took longer than I expected.” Which was the truth. It hadn’t helped that he kept getting distracted by thoughts of a certain red-haired artist, but saying that would definitely get into pathetically eager territory.

  “And meanwhile, I’ve started researching a new piece that involves some different techniques than I normally use. I’m going to…” Her voice trailed away briefly before she continued, “Why do I suspect you’ll understand a lecture on the technical aspects of art glass about as much as I’d understand if you tried to explain what your paper was about? Except you know what glass is, which means you might be ahead of me trying to understand math. I gave up after geometry.”

  “Geometry discourages a lot of people. That whole business of proving something that’s already obvious. But seriously, I think we’d be about even. I’m sure you can do the math you need in everyday life, but you don’t need to understand numbers the way I do. I might think a vase or a stained glass window is pretty, but I don’t need to understand it the same way an artist does—or even the guy at the beer-bottle factory.”

  He was being serious, but Jen sputtered with mirth. “Beer-bottle factory?”

  Her laugh was infectious, and Drake was glad to let it infect him. He was chuckling all out of proportion to the amusement, and he suspected some of it was the sheer pleasure of hearing Jen’s voice. Normally, he’d try to rein in the mirth to a more mature, dignified level. But this time he didn’t bother. After all, Jen was cracking up too.

  Finally, she calmed herself. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Way underslept. That new piece is consuming me—but I bet you know something about work eating your brain.”

&n
bsp; Drake made a small, noncommittal noise. It was scary that she understood him that well already.

  “Anyway,” Jen continued, “I need to fix that window, and I realized I better do that before I get any deeper into this project. Once I finish that piece, I’ll be going crazy making vases and stuff for the Solstice Show.” Drake must have made a puzzled sound, since she added, “You know, that big arts-and-crafts show on the Commons in mid-June?”

  “Right. That.” Drake thought it sounded familiar, but it wasn’t anything he’d ever paid much attention to.

  “So when would be a good time to come by and do the window? I’ll have to take it out, but I know how to do that. My dad taught me. It’s supposed to be pretty nice the next few days. And I’ll be taking over the floor of the apartment for a couple of days, but I’ll lay down newspaper.”

  Drake felt a wave of cock-twitching excitement at the thought of seeing Jen again, followed by a wave of dismay at the strength of his reaction. He wanted to see her, but at the same time he didn’t. He wasn’t sure if this ambivalence was because he was afraid the spark wouldn’t be there or that it would. “Come by at six,” he said. “I don’t know how long it will take to fix the window—”

  “Neither do I,” she admitted. “Maybe a few hours of hands-on work, maybe longer.”

  “So I’ll just give you your key early. That way you won’t need to worry about whether I’m here or not.” If he hung around, he was pretty sure she’d never get the window done, and while it would be fun, Ithaca’s weather was far too volatile to have a gaping hole to the outside for long. The weather was pleasant now, but it sometimes snowed in late April.

  “Makes sense.” Was he imagining the same combination of relief and regret in her voice that he felt himself? “See you around six.”

  “Bike again?” Drake raised one eyebrow like Leonard Nimoy as Spock. An apt comparison, Jen thought. Like Spock, Drake was super smart and in tight control of himself. The way Drake was looking at her suggested all kinds of dirty goodness, but he was being hands-off.