Forbidden Lessons (10 page)

"I wasn’t expecting that we would go so fast, so soon. I get carried away around you, though that’s no excuse. Did I hurt you?" he asked.

She didn’t want to admit it because he might feel bad. "Only at the very start and then it was fine."

"I’m sorry." He stroked her cheek.

"Don’t be, it was amazing. I haven’t ever… I mean it was the first time, but I am so glad it was you. I didn’t want you to stop."

She was babbling but she felt nervous. She wasn’t sure what one was supposed to do next. Get up? Bathe? Sleep? She should have sought more detailed information from Susie. She was also worried that it was all over now and that he wouldn’t want this again.

He rolled onto his side and faced her again. The sweat on her skin was cooling and she was just starting to feel colder. He noticed her stomach and grabbed a nearby towel.

"I’m sorry about that too, for losing control. Or nearly." When he had dried her he kissed her again and she enjoyed the warmth of his body.

Then he looked at her, and his eyes were grey and intense.

"I love you."

His words hung in the air. She couldn’t breathe, her whole being sang with joy.

"Do you really?" She hadn’t thought it possible for him to feel that way about her.

"Christ, of course I do. Do you think I could have done that to you if I didn’t?"

"I love you too."

He put his arms around her and held her until she fell asleep.

Late autumn sunlight filtered through the gap in the curtain, waking her. She was alone in his bed, sticky, rumpled, sore.

For a moment she thought he had abandoned her and panicked.
 

Then he came into the room with a cup of tea.

"How are you?"

She was embarrassed for him to see her so dishevelled and tucked herself further below the sheet.

"About last night…" he began.

Oh God. He was going to tell her that it was all a mistake, that he regretted it. Maybe she had been terrible in bed.

"I didn’t mean for everything to happen so quickly. I truly meant to take my time. The problem is that I lose control around you but it shouldn’t be like that, I should have been far more gentle, your first time."

He came and sat down by her on the bed, putting the cup down on a table.

"I don’t want to hurt you, but I’m worried about the reaction I have towards you. I wanted to be your first, to make you properly mine, and something overtook me."

She loved his possessiveness. "I didn’t ask you to stop."

"My fear is that I wouldn’t have done, even if you had."

This gave Laura a shivery feeling inside, and she felt a throb between her legs.
 

"I don’t mind though. I like it when you take control." She said this last almost in a whisper. He saw the desire in her eyes.

"Does it bother you that I’m not older?" she asked.

"I wish it bothered me more." He pulled the sheet back from her, revealing her body. He ran both his hands over her breasts, and her nipples peaked at his touch. "God, how I want you."

He rolled her onto her stomach, and stroked his hands down the contours of her back and waist. It was soothing and electrifying. She felt him kiss her down her spine. All the points of her body that she wanted him to touch - her nipples, between her legs - were facing downwards and inaccessible. She squirmed against the sheet.

He put his hands on her thighs, and parted them. "I know you’re probably sore, but I have to have you. I will be gentle," he said.

She was sore and it stung as he started to push into her from behind, but she wanted it too. He entered her as slowly as he could, fraction by fraction, giving her time to adjust. "Christ you’re so tight, does it hurt?"

"A little. But don’t stop."
 

She felt him stretching her, filling her. The slowness made her feel it even more than the previous evening.
 

She knew - she could hear it in his voice - that a dark part of him wanted to hurt her, to dominate her. To make her his. And the knowledge of it made her able to abandon herself to him.

He covered her back with his body, and she was completely filled by him. He rocked back and forth into her in small movements, still slowly. She felt the hugeness of him inside her, the weight above.

"I don’t want you to ever fuck anyone else but me."

The harshness of his language only heightened her sensations.

Then he put his hands around her waist and drove into her fast and hard, over and over and over, until they were both spent.

* * *

The rest of Saturday passed in a kind of haze. Laura felt an intense joy just to be around him. She didn’t dare go outside in case she was seen by a teacher, as many staff stayed on the school grounds over exeat weekends.

They were trapped together. The cottage was a bunker amid the storm clouds gathering. He asked her if she wanted to watch television but she didn’t want to let the outside world in, to break the spell.
 

He had some marking to do, so she looked through his bookshelf to find something to read. Its contents were mainly in German. Most of his books were in storage, he told her. "There are some novels by the bed."

They weren’t by authors that Laura had ever read, though she had heard of some of them. One was by P G Wodehouse with a cover illustration of cricketers, so she chose that one.

He noticed the cover when she came back down with it. "You like cricket? Or Wodehouse?"

"I’ve never read him. But I’ve played cricket with my cousins."

She had barely had time to read the first pages when he threw down his marking and came over to her.

"Companionable silence isn’t working for me." He put his hand under her top and felt her breast. "I want you again."

She loved him touching her, loved him wanting her, loved his intensity even as it frightened her.

"Take your clothes off," he said.

"Here?"

"Now."

It was an order, not a request. Not that she would have refused him.

She stood there naked; he was fully clothed.

For a while he gazed at her. It may have only been moments, it felt like several minutes. Then he came up to her. He put her hands on either side of her head and tilted it to look at his.

She couldn’t read his expression. For a moment she thought he was going to devour her. Crush her in a kiss, bruise her skin in his grip.

Instead his lips were on hers softly and he kissed her slowly and tenderly. Then down her neck and on her shoulder. He moved around her body as though it were a statue, kissing her in places that made her feel dizzy to her feet.
 

She felt revered.

Then he was before her again, kissing her neck, her breasts, her stomach as he knelt down in front of her.

He moved her legs slightly more apart, and as she stood there he kissed her between them, and she felt his tongue move into the slit between them. It was so much softer than his fingers and lacked their pressure but when he swirled it around her clitoris she gasped slightly and nearly lost her balance.

He broke off and looked up at her. "Stand still. You’re going to come for me right here."

The command nearly brought her to the edge, and then he was tasting her again. Deliberately not using his fingers, just licking her and sucking her.

She gripped his shoulders to stay upright. Being in this position and feeling all the blood swelling in her groin made her light headed. She rocked slightly and he went harder on her clit and it was enough.
 

She reached her peak, moaning, her leg muscles tensing as he continued what he was doing, not even stopping as the spasms subsided and it was too sensitive in an instant.

Then her knees buckled slightly and a grey fuzziness spread before her eyes like a broken television picture, and she closed them and he had to catch her as she nearly fainted.

Still dizzy, he moved her to the sofa, bent her over the edge and thrust into her.
 

* * *

"Will it be weird in class? Will people guess?"

They were lying on the sofa together naked with only the light and heat of the gas fire.

"It will be normal. I’ll be as distracted by you as ever - more than ever - but you won’t know a thing and nor will anyone else," he said.

"I will." She could tell when he wanted her from his eyes, she didn’t need the more obvious physical signs to know how he felt.

He stroked her breast, playing with her nipple. He never seemed to tire of her body.

They hadn’t really talked about what happened next. "After this weekend, will you want to… again?" she asked him.

"Laura, you’re mine now. I will always want you."

There was a note in the way he said "mine" that made her shiver.

She let him know how she felt by kissing him. She was learning to initiate.

"We’ll have to be very careful," he said. "But we will make it work."

Not wanting to push her luck, Laura slipped back to Michaelmas House earlier than she needed to on Sunday night, among the first girls arriving back.
 

She was worried everyone would notice, that what she had done was written all over her face. She even felt she was walking differently. Her head and her body were in a different place now.

Part of her wanted space and time to process everything while the rest was longing for the fellowship of her dorm mates. She knew she wouldn’t be able to hide anything from Susie.

She sat on her bed, looking out of the window across the darkening playing fields. She could see the light on the groundsman's cottages. And for a while she was perfectly at peace.

Charlotte was the first to burst in. "What a weekend! Almost a relief to be back in school." She threw her bag on the floor and collapsed on the other window bed.

"Not a good one?"

"Just a round-the-clock grilling over everything I didn’t get an A-plus in," Charlotte said. "I should have had more nerve and gone with Susie to St Duncan’s."

Margery came in next and in her usual fashion immediately began hanging up her clothes and tidying away her other effects.

"Relax Margie, there’s no inspection today," Charlotte said.

"I just like things tidy." Margery didn’t ask them about their weekend, she was still feeling aggrieved at being dropped by Laura.

Susie arrived wreathed in sly smiles. She had had the best time ever, she told them, and won a load of money playing poker. "Fifty quid the first night, and fifty quid last night when they tried to win it back from me. They can afford it," she said, seeing Margery’s alarmed face. "And it’s a good lesson for them. Better fifty quid to me than fifty grand in Monte Carlo."

Laura marvelled at Susie. She had no idea herself how to even play poker. How did Susie get to be so sophisticated? She supposed it was something to do with spending summers in Italy with her wealthy relatives. They owned vineyards.

"So what about all you girls?" Susie said. "Laura?" Susie had a particularly knowing grin on her face.
 

Crunch time had come. Laura knew she could trust them, but what she had to reveal was so huge. Would it wreck their friendship? What if they disapproved?

"Well…" she began, not sure how even to start.

"Brace yourselves," Susie said. "This is a big one."
 

Margery looked at them both in bewilderment. "What’s going on?"

Laura couldn’t take a deep breath because her chest felt so tense she could hardly get any air in. Staring at the floor, she said quickly and quietly:

"I spent the weekend with Mr Rydell."

There was a pause. Margery frowned and Charlotte burst out laughing. "Yeah, right."

"No, I really did. At his place."

Charlotte looked at Susie who was smiling like the Sphinx and then back at Laura. She saw how pale Laura looked, and the nervousness in her eyes.
 

"Christ, Christ, Christ on a bike. Bloody Hell. You’re not joking? What and when and how and why, and why didn’t you tell us?"

When had it started? Laura wasn’t even sure where to begin.
 

She did her best. How she’d liked him from the start and felt a connection with him. How he’d stopped and talked with her several times. How they’d been alone in his classroom. How it had suddenly… just happened. And how he had asked her to stay with him that weekend. She didn’t even get to the details of what happened.

"He’s your teacher, Laura. He’s so old. It’s just wrong." Margery was distressed and confused.

Charlotte was shocked but fascinated. "He is so gorgeous. I just can’t believe he would go for someone not even in the sixth form. This is true right? I mean this isn’t some joke between you and Susie?"

Susie was getting impatient. "So did it go well this weekend? Did you guys do it? Was he any good?"

Laura went red.

"Welcome to the club then," Susie said. "You can give us a detailed account when you’re ready." What she meant was when Margery wasn’t there, as Margery would only be horrified rather than intrigued by the details.

She left the room, and Charlotte fired dozens more questions at Laura, mainly pertaining to the early days of the affair. "I just can’t figure out how it could all have been going on under my nose."

Laura did her best to answer her questions. She was relieved that Charlotte wasn’t aggrieved at being kept in the dark, and didn’t seem to be against it all, unlike Margery.

"Nothing was actually happening, so there was nothing to see."

"But there must have been all these hidden undercurrents. Why didn’t anyone else pick up on it?"

Laura cast a glance at Margery, who was folding away clothes. "I noticed him always staring at her," Margery said. "But I never thought anything like this would happen."
 

She was actually upset. She genuinely disapproved. Laura felt a pang.

"Neither did I, not in a million years. It just got to the point that nothing else mattered." She wanted Margery to understand. But Margery had never been in love, let alone reciprocally.