“Are you disobeying me, Mercy?” His voice was quiet, controlled, but with a dangerous edge that sent a shiver down my spine.
“I’m looking at your books,” I replied, not looking up. “You have quite the collection.”
I heard his chair move, then his footsteps across the carpet. He didn’t touch me. He stood close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body, smell the faint notes of his cologne mixed with coffee.
“Put the book down.”
I placed it back on the shelf, still not turning around. His hand came to rest on the small of my back.
“This is new,” he said, voice low near my ear. “This defiance.”
“Is that what it is?”
His hand moved up my spine, between my shoulder blades, to the nape of my neck where he gathered my hair in his fist.
“Turn around.”
I turned, my back against the bookshelf, his hand still tangled in my hair. His eyes had darkened to that impossible shade that made my knees weak.
“What are you doing, Mercy?” he asked, voice pitched low enough that even if someone had their ear pressed to the door, they wouldn’t hear.
“Testing boundaries,” I said honestly.
A smile ghosted across his face. “And what have you learned?”
“That you like it more than you should.”
His grip tightened in my hair, just enough to make me catch my breath. “Dangerous conclusion,” he murmured.
In one quick move, he turned me around against his desk. My back was to him, and his hands now on my hips.
Judah's mouth found the back of my neck.
“This is not why I asked you in here,” he said against my skin.
“No?” I arched against him, feeling his growing erection press against me.
“No.” He grunted when I moved my hips up and down. A little friction here, a little there.
His fingers dug into my hips, stilling my movement.
“The Henderson forms,” he said.
“Processed.” My voice came out steadier than I felt.
“The September schedule.”
“Fixed.”
In answer, he spun me around to face him, lifting me onto the desk in one fluid motion. Papers scattered. Something — a pen, maybe — clattered to the floor. His hands slid up my thighs, bunching my skirt as they moved.
His mouth moved to my shoulder. The same place as this morning — the same spot, like he was returning to something he'd left there.
“Do you know,” he said, “what I thought about during the eleven o'clock pastoral meeting?”
I closed my eyes. “Something blasphemous, no doubt.”
He grinned against my skin and pushed the shirt up and over my chest.
