Forbidden Lessons Part 16

"Let's try it."

"Are you serious? What will Mr Poynter say?"

He ignored her protests. "What books are up there?"

"English literature."

Mr Rydell got up, and spoke in a deliberately louder voice. "You can show me where they are, Laura. Charles, there are some very dog-eared poets that have apparently escaped attention. Practically falling apart." Mr Poynter had naturally focused most of the initial efforts on preserving the works of his own subject, History.

"We should do those as a priority," Mr Poynter agreed.

Mr Rydell went up the stairway, getting Laura to follow him. They were in luck: there were no Upper School girls working up there that afternoon.

In an instant he had pulled her to the side of the upper level that was out of view of those below. He pushed her back against the shelves and pinning her there, kissed her. She smelt his skin, drank in his male scent, felt the roughness of stubble against her face.

His tongue explored her while he moved her hand onto his groin. He was rock hard. "It's not easy to stick books together with that distracting me," he said.

Laura had never felt so turned on. She wanted that hardness, wanted to bring him relief, wanted to bring herself relief. The fleeting moments that they could allow themselves to embrace, the presence of the others below, the intensity of their desire and the ma.s.sive risk: it was insanity. It was also the s.e.xiest thing in the world.

"G.o.d knows how I'm going to wait until Exeat," he said, breaking away. "Or find these supposed crumbling literary texts that we've promised Mr Poynter." Swiftly he grabbed an old copy of Spenser and pulled a couple of pages loose. "Always found him overrated, but we'll fix him up better than ever before." He grabbed a couple of other books that did look in need of repair and they went back down the stairs.

25. Private lessons.

After never being properly alone with Mr Rydell since half term, except for the brief moment in the library, by exeat Laura felt she would burst. The nights had drawn in for winter so it was already dark when she slipped off to the groundsman's cottages again. She had borrowed Charlotte's coat as it had a hood.

Having been pent up for weeks he did not let her off lightly.

They lay in bed, Laura exhausted but completely happy, talking together about various things when he stopped her.

"Did you just call me Sir?"

She was mortified. They were so used to calling the male teachers by this t.i.tle that it had just slipped out with him. Possibly because she had made more of a conscious effort to use it in German lessons to mask any sense of familiarity. She started to apologise.

"Don't apologise, I think I rather like it," he told her.

She wasn't sure if he was joking. Then he moved her hand onto him. He was rock hard.

"Already?" She was surprised as he never usually recovered this quickly.

"You saying that did it. You'd better say it again."

"How?" She wasn't sure what he wanted.

"Ask me to f.u.c.k you."

She found it hard to say things like this though she knew it turned him on. And it turned her on too, being made to say them.

"Please f.u.c.k me Sir."

"Say it again," he ordered.

She complied and he grabbed her and took possession of her. She was slightly bruised from his forcefulness before but he didn't go any more gently on her. "Keep saying it," he ordered.

"I want you to f.u.c.k me Sir." She looked directly at him while she said it. It was the first time they had directly played off the power imbalance between them, any sense of equality gone. She was his pupil and his subordinate and he was fully in charge.

He was done in seconds, the fastest ever. Then he went down on her and brought her to liquid in less than a minute. She was amazed how quickly he got her there.

"For G.o.d's sake never call me that in cla.s.s again. I'll get flashbacks," he said.

She looked up at him, into his eyes. "I love you Sir." She was half mocking him, half meaning it. She saw the effect that it had on him, his eyes darkening.

"Stop, I can't go again, it will be physically painful," he said.

She knew now that she could say it whenever she wanted to get leverage. Wrap him around her little finger. How strange that submitting - or playing at submitting - actually gave her more power over him.

True to his word he started coaching her in English even though she pointed out that university entrance was ages away.

"If you get a handle on this now, you'll coast it later on. I want to give you some advantage if I can."

When he went through the texts and her work with her he switched back into teacher mode. It was different from English lessons because it was one-on-one, so she was getting more individual attention in a single session than she would get from a term with Mr Peters.

He took the tuition seriously which Laura found disconcerting at first, expecting him to play around with her. She hadn't expected him to just do her homework for her but she had thought it might be a more leisurely experience.

But he was equally as good a teacher of English literature as he was of German, so she soon became absorbed as well.

"This is really to A-level standard, this degree of criticism and a.n.a.lysis," he said. "But it's worthwhile getting a grasp of it now."

He introduced a lot of background material and context: texts which she had occasionally heard of but hadn't ever studied. She started to understand how these earlier works, as well as the historical context, illuminated the texts they were doing. In fairness to Mr Peters he had also referenced some of this material but only fleetingly. Teaching a cla.s.s of a couple of dozen pupils couldn't compare to solo tuition.

Mr Rydell worked with her for over an hour, breaking apart her latest essay and showing her how she could have structured it better and what else she could have included.

"I wish you could help transform my Maths like this. Or Physics."

He smiled. "You probably know more calculus than I do. Six weeks after taking my final exam it was wiped from my mind."

As he turned back to the texts, Laura wound her leg through his and leaned against him.

"That's going to distract me if you do that."

"Maybe I should do this in cla.s.s?" she said.

Laura wanted to make the most of her time with him, homework could wait. She turned more fully towards him, moving over his lap so she was straddling him. She kissed his lips feeling him draw in his breath. But before he could respond and deepen the kiss she moved to his cheek, then down his neck, loving the rasp of his stubble. He was so utterly male.

She unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt. She never got to do this because he was usually first to tear her clothes off, shedding his own rapidly before she even got a chance. This time he let her. She ran her hands over his chest, feeling his muscles and the heat of his skin as she moved them round to his back.

He was so broad she had to be close against him to reach fully around him. His hands were already caressing her own back but he held off from undressing her.

"You can continue the lesson," she said.

Then s.h.i.+fting back slightly so she could access his belt, she undid him and moved his boxers aside, allowing his hardness to spring up. Holding gently with both hands she put her mouth around it, feeling the soft, hot, velvety head.

He swore, suppressing a groan as she swirled her tongue around him.

Laura wasn't sure how deep she could take him but she wanted him to know how much she desired him. She tried as far as possible but he was so huge.

He didn't seem to care, just from what she was doing she had felt him grow even harder, hearing his breathing grow ragged.

Now she moved her hands over his thighs and between them, feeling the tautness of him, the fullness, how ready he was to burst.

"If you keep touching me there I'll lose it," he warned.

That made her want to touch him all the more but she also wanted to draw this out. She wanted to make him wait like he so often forced her to wait.

She broke off from what she was doing and raised her head to look up at him.

"Oh G.o.d don't stop," he said.

Smiling, she bent her head back down and very slowly moved her lips over him again. He twitched as she did so and she heard him catch his breath in his throat. She loved the feeling of power she had over him, it made her throb between her own legs.

Slowly - infinitesimally slowly - she lowered her head and took him in deeper. She swirled her tongue around and at the same time cupped him, applying gentle pressure just where he had warned her not to.

She could tell from his breathing he was about to lose it so she kept up what she was doing. Then suddenly he gave a jerk and pulled out of her, and it started going everywhere, some against her face. He was gripping her shoulders, his eyes had been closed but he opened them and saw.

"Christ..." It seemed to make him come even longer, he closed his eyes again and she thought he would never stop spasming.

"You could have stayed there," she said when he had finally finished and was recovering.

"I didn't know if you wanted me to. Did you want me to?"

She nodded.

"Next time then." His traces were drying on her skin. "You have no idea how much it turns me on to see you like that."

"Sticky and messy." She smiled seductively at him.

"Marked as mine."

Later they came as near as they ever had done to arguing when she tried to get him to change his mind about looking for another job. The prospect of seeing him barely once a term, if she could even get away at half term, was unbearable.

"Laura if you were ten years older, even five, I would ask you to marry me. But I'm not going to do that to you now, even if we could run off to Gretna Green. It wouldn't be fair on you."

"But what if I wanted it too?" She knew that she never wanted to be without him.

"You might want it now, but who knows if you would feel the same in a few years? You need to be able to live your life, go to university, make your own choices without being tied down," he said.

"You might change your mind too."

"It's easier to know what I want with a few more years of life experience under my belt. This kind of thing... it doesn't come along twice in a lifetime. Not for me anyway. But it might for you."

"So you want to break up with me?"

"I never want to lose you, I never want to stop seeing you. But as selfish as I want to be, I'm not going to stand in your way. If in a few years time you feel the same then we can have a different conversation. But right now we just have us, today. Let's not think about the future for now."

Yet she felt that now was running out of time. She wanted a tomorrow. A forever.

Teresa Hubert knew what she had seen. Or she thought she did. Her parents had been late picking her up for exeat and she had been waiting in the common room, with its views over the playing fields, when she saw a figure in the distance walking along the path to the groundsman's cottages.

Even though it was dark there was enough illumination from nearby streetlights for Teresa to recognise the coat instantly. It was Charlotte's. No one else in Michaelmas House had one with such a distinctive hood. But the figure didn't look tall enough to be Charlotte and besides she was certain she'd seen Charlotte's father's car earlier.

She watched as the person was let into the cottage but from the angle, the distance and the darkness she couldn't tell who it was.

It had to be one of the others in Charlotte's dorm. What were they doing visiting Mr Rydell after dark on a Friday evening?

Whoever had gone there didn't emerge and Teresa was waiting there for at least half an hour according to her watch.

It must be Susie, Laura or Margery. Margery she ruled out immediately because there was no way she would be visiting a man at night. She just wasn't the type. Unless it was for some kind of extra German tuition? That would admittedly be more like Margery. It would be easy to rule Margery out, she could call her bluff and Margery would cave immediately.

Teresa considered Susie to the most likely in terms of character. She thought Susie was a s.l.u.t, partly because she was jealous of her. Susie was extremely pretty and the rumours that she was seeing Darius Iles, one of the elite set of St Duncan's, had riled Teresa. Who did she think she was coming here and immediately taking up with a boy like that?

But Susie didn't do German so how could she possibly know Mr Rydell well enough to visit him at his home?

That left Laura. Teresa wasn't particularly observant in cla.s.s because she was full of her own self importance and liked to fancy that Mr Rydell had a special fondness for her. She certainly couldn't recall anything that would suggest Laura knew him better than anyone else.

Teresa didn't like Laura but she didn't hate her as much as she hated Charlotte. But they came as a set, those four, and despite what Teresa thought of as her kindnesses to Margery she still didn't feel that she had made any progress with her affection.

She brooded about it all weekend. By Sunday night she had decided to report what she had seen. It would be interesting to stir the pot, and hopefully one of them would be in for it. But first she would see if she could get anything out of Margery. She must know something, they were all as thick as thieves.

26. Exposure alert.

Margery was in the common room doing some extra study. She couldn't think of much else to do these days. Since the midnight feast the others had been closer than ever. She didn't regret not going but she regretted the growing distance between her and the others. Even throwing herself into her studies didn't really fill the gap.

It was here that Teresa Hubert found her sitting by the long windows that overlooked the playing fields. The same place that Teresa had seen what she had seen.