Provocative (Tempting Book 3) Read Online Free Page B

the washcloth over my face. “Thank you,” I sighed as he ran the washcloth down my neck.
    “Anything you need—you just tell me,” he whispered.
    I squeezed my eyes shut, not wanting the hormonal overflow to continue leaking from my eyes. Nathan stayed with me on the bathroom floor until my legs cramped from the position I was in. As I clutched the corner of the wall to stand, Nathan swept me up into his arms and carried me to the bed as if he lived to do it for me. And as he tucked me in—actually fucking tucking the sheet around me—all I could think was that I wanted to be as fucking chill as Nathan was about all of this. As if he’d seen the future laid out in front of him and embraced it. The puke, the chills, the hormones—it was so easy for him to be what I needed.
    He climbed into bed behind me and snuggled up against my back and I hoped I didn’t completely fucking reek. But if I did, he didn’t acknowledge it, burying his head into my neck and breathing one long breath against me—like I hadn’t just woken him up on a work night and had him take care of me when I couldn’t move from the toilet.
    His arm snaked around my waist, pulling me flush against his front. I wasn’t sure what kind of good karma I had put out into the world to deserve this fine piece of ass—which was just one thing in a line of many wonderful and delicious things about him—but I wanted, more than anything in that moment, to be as strong and as solid as he was for me.

Chapter Five
    I was deep into reading a paper comparing Virginia Woolf’s Orlando with one of her essays from the late twenties for my Literary Theory in Comparison course when there was a sharp rap on my office door.
    “Come in,” I called out, not looking up from my desk. Even though I had regular office hours like all professors, the students at Harvard had access to their teachers at any given time.
    “Nathan, my boy.”
    I smiled easily at Max Collingsworth, my mentor at Harvard and one of the most prestigious professors in the Arts and Sciences department. “Max, what can I help you with?”
    He tipped his chin at what I was reading. “Any good?”
    Edging the papers in his direction when he sat in a chair opposite my simple wooden desk, I shrugged my shoulders. “Not bad. Maybe a little too self-important for my tastes. Though my feedback should knock him down a peg.”
    Max lifted a bushy white eyebrow at the opening line. “Huh.”
    “I know.”
    We laughed, and the ease in which I could interact with Max still completely mystified me. Coming from Northern University where I was never quite out of my dad’s shadow, it was such a massive relief to find people who not only respected me, but challenged me because they believed I was worthy of it. Not just my colleagues, but my students as well. Most of my classes only had ten to fifteen students in them, and every single day, the students made my mind race with how intelligent and thought-provoking they were. Without a doubt, it was the greatest job I’d ever had in my life.
    Max handed the paper back to me and started asking about something when my cell phone vibrated on my desk. Normally I would have ignored it, but given how sick Adele had been lately, I gave Max an apologetic look.

    A dele : If I die today from lack of fluids, just remember I love you and I’m sorry if I couldn’t clean up after myself before I succumbed to my affliction.

    I wiped a hand across my mouth, shaking my head. If I thought it was difficult seeing Adele unsure about this pregnancy, that was nothing compared to seeing her unsure and completely miserable at the same time.
    In my entire life, I’d never felt so helpless as I did the other night when she was hanging over the toilet. And it dawned on me, as soon as that thought swept over my brain, that seeing her puke was only a pinprick compared to what I’d probably feel like when she was actually giving birth.
    “Everything okay?”
    I dropped my hand and