Page 11

Indi

M y fists clenched in determination, I stared down the bulldozers as they moved slowly toward me.

The rest of my Save Applewood Nature Park group had skittered out of the way when the development team brought in the trucks and bulldozers to scare us off.

But I wasn’t budging. Even though there was a huge lump of fear in my throat, I was determined not to leave until they backed down.

A huge crowd had begun to gather: nosy neighbors, picnickers, bikers, and TV reporters, all of them flicking eyes between the development guys in ill-fitting suits and me.

If I left right now, they’d start work on the new golf course and the oldest park in town would be nothing but a giant gaping hole in the ground.

Community groups had begged for an environmental survey, hoping that the presence of the endangered Shy Coral-Hued Worm would delay it until we could organize opposition to destroying the park.

Then I saw a very tall man striding over to me.

Oh, shit.

Here must be the stuffed shirt expert, ready to assure the TV reporters and the rest of the crowd that there was absolutely no danger to the Shy Coral-Hued Worm with this new golf course.

I gritted my teeth as he strode up to the reporters, imperiously gesturing to them for a microphone, which he tapped with tanned fingers.

He was very tall and lean, with short dark hair beginning to go gray at the temples, dressed in a light blue collared shirt and suit pants, with a striped blue and white tie.

Holy goddess, it must be 102 degrees out here and he was dressed like he was going to the Kentucky Derby, complete with classic pointy asshole shoes and some fucking cologne that smelled like gold doubloons.

I was only wearing a long gray skirt and tank top, but I was not about to let him intimidate me.

He flicked his eyes over to me. They were a chilled light ice-blue, and for a moment I felt an unusual squirmy sensation deep in my gut.

“I suppose you must be the hippie here trying to chain herself to a tree,” he said sharply as he set his briefcase on a nearby rock and took out a huge stack of papers.

It was that cultured, condescending voice that pissed me off.

“I suppose you must be the corporate bootlicker who doesn’t care about the park at all! They’re proposing to ruin important habitats here!”

“ Pardon , but you don’t have to tell me about the importance of habitats. I’m Professor Ambrose Hargreaves, from Smith & Cockburn College,” he said, as if that was supposed to mean something to me. “Who are you?”

“ I’ve never heard of you,” I retorted, ignoring his question. “But think about all the species you’d be killing here! Think of all the people who use this park!”

“Look at it!” he countered, pointing down at the ground, where the Shy Coral-Hued Worm, most unlike its name, was wriggling about in grimy pink glory.

“It’s just a worm, madam. There is absolutely nothing special about it.

If you get out of the way of these bulldozers I will personally order you a dozen new worms.”

I glared at him, heat and anger pulsing in my temples.

Professor Hargreaves had his sleeves neatly rolled up, just one prim and proper little lieutenant general roll of his powder blue collared shirt, but it was enough to show the way his tendons flexed.

Ugh

What a waste of good arms on a spineless corporate lackey.

“It’s not just about the worm, asshole,” I hissed. “The Eastern bluebirds eat this worm. Without the worm, no bluebirds. The whole interdependent web of life is threatened if we don’t do a proper environmental study.”

His eyes narrowed at me, the big stack of papers stilled in his hands.

“What’s this about the bluebirds? That wasn’t in the preliminary report I got.”

“There aren’t bluebirds around here!” one of the developers shouted, but Ambrose ignored him.

“Yes, there are!” I insisted. “They’re rare but I’ve seen them.”

His eyes raked almost painfully down my body, and I felt one thing instantly under my skin.

I wanted him.

"I saw nothing about that in the preliminary report,” he repeated, and I saw some of the corporate guys shuffle around.

There was silence for a moment, the sound of a large dog loudly eating an ice-cream cone the only thing I could hear in the park.

“Not very many sightings of the bluebird,” one of the other suit guys finally said resentfully, and I sucked in my breath with hope.

And without another word, Dr. Hargreaves dropped his papers and twisted around, striding from his place with the other suits to stand beside me.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“The Shy Coral-Hued Worm will not be harmed on my watch!” he boomed out as my jaw dropped with shock.

I watched as the developers’ faces puckered angrily, and they began to argue with the professor, shaking their fists and the development plans at him. One of the truck drivers revved his engine.

But the professor didn’t back down. Without the slightest sign of effort, he immediately launched into a passionate legal and constitutional defense of the park.

When the truck driver revved his engine, Dr. Hargreaves grabbed my arm and pulled me behind him, keeping his strong fingers encircled around my elbow, and my skin fucking burned where he touched me, my skin heating up with the raw intensity I felt rolling off him.

Once he had decided something was right, he was like a granite rock, shouting down the opposition and quoting lengthy passages of the state constitution until they all gave up and rolled out of there.

I watched in astonishment, the sweat rolling down my back and soaking my tank top, as they all left, the TV cameras, the bulldozers, and the trucks.

Everybody but the two of us.

“ You did that, Professor Hargreaves,” I said, hardly believing it. “I didn’t think you would.”

“I suppose I did,” he said, looking a little surprised himself. “That was most unlike me. Call me Ambrose, by the way.”

Ambrose

What a proper, old-fashioned name for a man who had seemed like the very sort of traditional, tightly-wound asshole I had always avoided.

For a moment we stared at each other, and I felt something crackle between us, an energy that was so intense I couldn’t breathe for a moment. And then a few papers from his briefcase began to scatter on the wind, and I immediately dropped on my hands and knees to pick them up.

They were clasped to my bosom when I looked up and he was staring down at me, his eyes so full of naked lust that I couldn’t move away.

I hadn’t meant to be on my hands and knees in front of him in such a wanton pose, but I stood up and held out the stack of papers to him, waiting to see what he would do.

He took the papers, stacked them neatly on top of the nearby rock, then bent down and kissed me.

And at first it was going to be a pity fuck for me, like just a primal expression of glee and thankfulness at what he had done out there, but then his lips fell on mine, and it was nothing like I had expected, all that starched stiffness unraveling outward as his hands gripped the back of my head, his lips devouring me with some fucking dirty nasty energy I didn’t know he had in him, and my heart began to pound.

He pulled me behind the rock so we were hidden from everyone at the park, pressing me up against the hard surface as he kissed me so thoroughly that I felt like I was melting, blazing sticky heat all over me but I didn’t care as I put my hands on his taut back, feeling the lines of lean muscle through his sleek shirt.

His tongue didn’t tease at my entrance so much as demand with entrance, and I opened my mouth with a gasp, feeling my nipples tauten under my shirt, rub against his hard belly.

He broke off with a gasp.

“Madam—I apologize,” he said in a raw voice, looking agonized, the muscles in his jaw moving.

He ripped his glasses off and stuffed them in his pocket, but he didn’t move his body from where his long thighs were pressed against me, his chest heaving, his other arm only inches from me.

“I am—usually more gentlemanly. I am—having a very difficult time controlling myself. You are—driving me mad, madam. This has never happened before, I assure you.”

The idea that he was coming apart, that this stiff and proper man could have that wild look in his ice-blue eyes, one arm curving around me, the other tearing at his tie, was intoxicating to me. What would it be like to see all the tightly-wound parts of him unravel?

So instead I gripped him by the front of his lapels and he fell on me with a groan.

I was absolutely dripping wet, my back stretched tight as I arched my pussy against the thick bulge grinding into me, and he fumbled at my long skirts like he couldn’t wait another second.

“Bloody hell, woman, you’re like a godsdamn Fabergé egg, like a luxury for an emperor,” he groaned in my ear, and I wanted to scream with laughter at this insane description of myself, since I was a massage therapy student who had no money and 4 roommates, but I was too horny.

I didn’t plan on coming, not on the backside of this rock, with a busy road only a few dozen feet away through the trees.

But something about how this man fucked me meant my body was on fire, wanting more of him, wanting to see how he’d come undone.

He sunk his hands in my hair and pulled, and I didn’t even know if he was doing it on purpose, the way he was fucking me like some feral, possessed animal, one hand digging into my ass, the other wrapped around the back of my throat so he could devour me with his lips.

His cock was long and thick, with a slight bend at the end that hit me just fucking right, and suddenly I was literally goddamn squirting, coming with a huge gush and soaking my thighs and the entire front of his fancy pants, but I didn’t care, riding him with fevered, frenetic energy, clutching him tighter with my thighs, wanting him and his strange combination of propriety and untamed passion.