Exposure
Authors: Caia Fox
Copyright © 2015 Caia Fox
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people
(living or dead), places or events is purely coincidental. All characters
involved in sexual activity are 18 years of age or older.
NOTE: Contains scenes of a sexual nature including sensual
spanking and light BDSM. This story is unsuitable for those under 18 or if you
are offended by such things.
COVER DESIGN : Silver Heart Publishing
EDITOR: Jersey Devil Editing
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CONTENTS
Sometimes you can love a guy, even a really
great guy, far too much.
How much is too much?
When he can persuade you to do anything,
things you would never normally do. When you forget there’s a world out there
that doesn’t care about you or him, just how many newspapers your story will
sell.
That’s loving too much.
Sometimes when you love too much, you do
things you regret, and it can wreck your whole life.
And you doubt it can ever be fixed.
Melissa
“How come you get the visit from Mr.
Heartthrob? I’ve been here longer than you.” Justine, my friend and fellow
teacher at Miss Price’s School for Girls, wasn’t happy at all.
“At least you might get your class to
concentrate today. I haven’t had any sense out of my group all week.”
“You can’t really blame them. It’s not
every day James Willoughby turns up in your average English class.”
“I suppose not. But what I don’t get is
what’s in it for him. It seems weird he agreed to do a talk on
A Midsummer
Night’s Dream
to a class of seventeen-year-olds. You’d think he would have
better things to do.”
“Miss Saunders is his aunt. She got him
started reading plays and stuff. I suppose it’s my fault I picked
Macbeth
to do with my class this year. That’s why you’re getting him.”
“Must be a favorite aunt to come all this
way to talk to a bunch of school kids.”
“Maybe panting seventeen-year-old girls are
his thing.” She pulled a face.
“Or maybe he’s a sucker for all that
adulation,” I said, and we laughed.
I liked Justine. It was good to have
someone around my own age in the department. A lot of the teachers looked ready
for retirement, including Miss Saunders, Head of English at the school, but it
was one of those places where tradition ruled. Sometimes, it was like working
in the dark ages.
James Willoughby was starring in a
production of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
in Stratford, fifty miles away
from our Oxford school. Though the girls were studying the play that year, I
was sure it wasn’t the thought of hearing about Shakespeare that had them in a
state.
James had just played the lead in
Doctor
Devlin
on prime time TV and made every female heart flutter, including
mine. I was looking forward to meeting him. It would be something to tell my
friends who were always nagging me to get a life and get out more.
He arrived with his acting buddy who was
also in the play. James was a looker, there was no denying it. But right from
the start, when Miss Saunders introduced them and the girls swooned over James,
I was more taken with his friend Nathan Waite.
With his wild mop of dark hair and dazzling
green eyes, Nathan’s looks were more striking than his friend’s, and I loved
Nathan’s accent, which seemed to belong somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic
ocean, being neither British nor American.
He seemed to find the whole scenario of
talking to a class of British schoolgirls amusing, yet here he was supporting
his friend. Dark blue denims and a white shirt had never looked so hot.
James and Nathan were like partners in
crime, batting jokes back and forth, answering the girls’ questions with a kind
of charming humor I liked.
I had to remind the girls a couple of times
that James and Nathan were there to talk about Shakespeare when questions about
Doctor Devlin
crept in, but James deftly answered them without a fuss
and then got them back on track
to A Midsummer Night’s Dream
.
I was impressed by the way he handled the
class, and Nathan caught me looking and raised an eyebrow, nodding toward his
friend as if to say, “What do you know? He’s good at this.”
At the end of the talk, Miss Saunders told
the girls Nathan and James had agreed to do autographs. I know those copies of
the play would be treasured more than any of their other school books—at least
until
Doctor Devlin
was long forgotten. Those books wouldn’t be getting
passed on to younger pupils in the book sale at the end of the term.
“What about you, Miss Hamilton, don’t you
want your copy autographed?” Nathan asked, smiling and sending my heart
aflutter, once the clamor for signatures had died down.
I gave him my book, and they both signed
it. Nathan handed it back. It was only once they had gone that I noticed he had
autographed it but also written his phone number in my book with “Call me”
scrawled alongside.
My heart skipped a beat when I read that.
But would I dare to call him?
***
“Course you should call him,” my best
friend Hannah said. “Call him or I’ll call him myself.” She was looking up the
cast of the play on her phone. There wasn’t much information about Nathan
online, but there was a picture.
“Nice,” she said. “Get on that phone before
some other woman snaps him up.”
She was always on me to go out on dates and
nagged me so much that at one point I signed up for online dating. Two
disastrous dates were enough for me. One guy talked incessantly about his
mother. He still lived at home at thirty-five. The other was so unlike his
picture I almost walked out of the bar where we were to meet before he made
himself known. It’s amazing what you can do with Photoshop, and this guy had
serious skills with the software.
Anyway, I had nothing to lose, so, heart
hammering, I plucked up enough courage to call Nathan Waite, timing it for when
the play would be over for the evening. I seemed to catch him at a party.
“Ah, Miss Hamilton, you called,” he said.
“Do you have another name?”
“Yes, Melissa.”
“Well, Melissa, do you want to come over
here right now? Because this party is seriously lacking something.”
“What’s that?”
“You.”
“I can’t come over there now. It’s ten-thirty
at night.”
“I could come to you.”
“Same thing. Ten-thirty.”
“Do you have something against certain
times of the day? I mean, is quarter after two an issue or ten to five? Is it
only ten-thirty you have an objection to? We’ll get the clocks changed.
Obliterate that time from every single one.”
I giggled.
“No it’s just late. I’ve got school
tomorrow.”
“Ah yes, we can’t have the teacher half-asleep
in charge of the class. I’d like to be the one to make you sleepy though.”
I didn’t know what to say about that.
“What if I pick you up on Sunday? No
matinee for me, no school for you.”
And so I met him that weekend.
“We’re going for a picnic,” he said, when
he came to my door.
“It’s pouring down rain.”
“We can’t let a bit of rain stop us,” he
said.
He meant it, too.
We drove into the Cotswolds. Rain hammered
on the car roof and the wipers swished back and forth. I didn’t mind at all. It
felt like I was in a bubble with him, the rest of the world shut out. Mind you,
if the rest of the world had any sense, they wouldn’t be out at all in that
weather.
“You seem to know where you’re going, but
you’re not from around here,” I said. “I can’t place your accent.”
“I was brought up in New York, but I’ve
spent a lot of time over here. And my mother is English. I picked up my first
words from her, I expect.”
“Did you go to drama school in America?”
“No, I spent most of my school days back
home, but I went to RADA, The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. I’m a
true hybrid.” He laughed.
We picnicked sitting on the tailgate of his
car, the rain dripping around us. I didn’t care about the weather. He made me
laugh. Sensible Melissa Hamilton was anything but sensible with him. We laughed
about the play, my school, the differences between Britain and America. There
was nothing sacred. I wasn’t sensible as I enjoyed the banter, nor when he
stole a strawberry from my hand and ate it, nor when he kissed me, and I tasted
the strawberry on his lips.
I knew anybody this smooth was well-versed
in the art of seduction. I wasn’t born yesterday. Yet, I was quite ready to be charmed
by him and throw caution to the wind.
“Do you take all your dates on picnics in
the rain?”
“Only the ones called Melissa,” he said.
“And how many of them are there?”
“Only one.”
He kissed me again, deeper this time, until
I could feel I was losing myself in him. I would have to be careful. My heart
was in real danger if I didn’t claw my way back to reality.
“So what do you do with girls called other
things?”
He looked at me.
“Don’t answer that,” I said, laughing. “I’m
not sure I want to know.”
“Sorry, Melissa, I’m no angel. I can’t
pretend I am. I’m a single guy. You know how it is.”
“I don’t, but I can guess.”
Could I deal with a man who had a whole
host of other girls vying for his attention? Just my luck that the only guy I
wanted to date since forever was such a player with women.
But when he ran his thumb softly over my
cheek, looked at me with his searching, penetrating gaze and pulled me close
again, his fingers in my hair, I couldn’t help responding to his all-consuming,
eager mouth with everything I had. He claimed me with that kiss, and I knew I
wanted to see him again, even if he hurt me, even if he had a string of women back
in Stratford.
A roll of thunder sounded with a flash of
lightning not far behind.
“I suppose we’d better get out from under
these trees,” he said. “I’ll drive you home.”
As we scrambled back into the car and out
of the rain, I wondered if I had scared him off asking about other women and
come across as too possessive. I felt subdued despite the delight of those
kisses, but I tried to hide it. It didn’t make sense to spoil the remaining
time I had with him.
As Taylor Swift came out of the sound
system, I looked at him, ready to make some kind of cheerful comment, but he
was already looking at me.
“I’ll have to get back when I drop you off,
but do you want to come to the performance on Saturday? It’s the last night,
and there’s an after show party.”
“I’d love that,” I said. I didn’t want to
play games. What was the point? “What will you do after the run ends?”
“We’ve got an open-air production coming up
a bit closer to you. Rehearsals start in a few weeks. Some guy James knows has
roped us in to perform at his country manor near Bicester. James thinks it will
be fun. I’m not so sure with this fucking weather.”
When we got to the front door of my
building, I started to get out. He pulled me to him and kissed me so deeply, it
was as if he was the one who wanted to possess me and never let me go. Perhaps
he kissed every woman like that. I didn’t know. But he made me feel like I was
the only woman in the world at that moment, and I could feel my body responding
to that kiss. I wanted more, much more. I hoped there would be more kisses like
that on Saturday.
***
Nathan sent me three text messages after
our first date in the rain. He was either interested in me, or he was great at
making women fall under his spell. I wasn’t sure which, but either way, his
charm worked its magic on me. I knew I was falling for him.
He must have sent his first text as soon as
he got back to Stratford.
“
Strawberries never tasted so good. See
you Saturday.
”
It was just a few words, but his message
made me feel all warm inside, like he had wrapped a big soft blanket around me.
I wasn’t used to flirting by text. My “
See
you then x
” message back was feeble, but it was the best I could do.
Late on Tuesday there was another message.
I laughed when I saw it.
“
Sorry. Just noticed it’s Half Past Ten.
Bad time. Will fix clock before Saturday
.”
“
Don’t molest your clock on my behalf,
”
I texted back. “
The National Society for Cruelty to Clocks will be on your
back. I will grin and bear it
.”
His third message on Friday was
disappointingly simple:
“
Ticket at the box office. See you
tomorrow
.”
But it meant he was still thinking about
me, at least at the moment he pressed the keys on his phone.
“
Looking forward to it,
” was all I
said in my message back, and I was, but that didn’t stop me being nervous as
hell as I got ready.
I wondered if I’d be driving back home that
night, knowing I was just one of a group of women Nathan had invited, and I
tried not to get my hopes up. The guy was an actor for God’s sake and he looked
like a god too. I had to be just one in a long string of women interested in
him. He’d pretty much told me that himself.
Still, it didn’t hurt to be prepared, and I
spent ages getting ready until I looked my best. Even my sometimes-wayward hair
looked good. I’d bought the sexiest lace bra and panties for the occasion, and
I was damn well going to wear them. I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d rather
wear them for than Nathan.