Loe raamatut: «No Longer Forbidden»
No Longer Forbidden
Portia Da Costa
MILLS & BOON
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What’s the matter with me? Why am I sitting out here? I don’t usually behave like such a wimp.
But I’m here and the cold evening air makes me shudder. Or is that just nerves?
It’s dawned on me today that I’ve been waiting far too long. Dreaming far too long. I wasn’t consciously aware of it until I got here, but now I’ve got to do something. Choose action over inertia. Otherwise, why come here? I was never that keen on school. There was only one thing I remember fondly enough to bring me to a ten-year reunion.
One person. Really.
He’s been in the back of my mind all this time, ever since I boarded here in my high school years. He’s been in my heart even when I thought I’d gotten over him.
Nicholas Laurence. My math teacher from my final year. Off-limits. A no-no. Forbidden fruit. But forbidden fruit always was the most delicious, andnow he’s a man, like any other, and available. Available and still driving me crazy!
I sip my indifferent white wine, staring out into the twilight garden of Walton Wood College. Inside I’m laughing at myself and how I managed to fool myself into believing that I wasn’t coming here today to exorcise the demons of a stupid teenage crush. It’d actually worked until I set eyes on him across the assembly hall and got the shock of my life.
Oh, Mr. Laurence, still the most utterly beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Still completely edible with your dark curly hair, your bitter-chocolate eyes and your Botticellian-fallen-angel face. Still so endearingly eccentric in your traditional black academic gown that so very few teachers still wear these days. Still the same, but also different. So very different. You’re leaner. Harder. Damaged. There’s grey in those black curls now, and a scar that traverses your brow and your cheekbone. You’ve been in the wars or, to be strictly accurate, a serious car accident. My heart turns over inside me at the thought.
A short while ago, across a crowded room, our eyes locked, acknowledging in a thousandth of a second all that’s changed and all that’s remained the same. I know I should have just walked across and said hello then and there. God knows I wanted to, and there’s nothing now to stop me.
But I didn’t make a move. And he didn’t, either. We just circled the room like a pair of wary natives scoping each other out, occasionally catching glimpsesand making eye contact through thickets of my former classmates and a handful of our former teachers, then finessing ourselves back into the safety of chatty, laughing groups.
And now I’m sitting out here in front of the building in the darkness, drinking. And he’s in there, thinking about me. I know he is. The fire in those dark eyes told me so.
He feels what he felt before, just as I feel what I felt before. It’s as if all the people we’ve met and cared for in the interim never existed. And all that’s real are forbidden dreams of kissing and fucking.
Cradling my glass in my fingers, I close my eyes and the images flood in. Memories of an alternate reality where we were never noble, ethical teacher and sensible, dutiful pupil but just a man and a woman, lost in lust. In darkness like this, I see him loom over me, his eyes gleaming like polished gemstones as he moves between my legs. He licks his soft, lush lower lip, then bites down on it as he reaches down, tests my readiness and then guides his erect cock into me. So hard, yet also so easy as it slides into my slippery heat. Into my body that’s been waiting, waiting, waiting all this time.
I gasp as my pussy flutters. It feels so real—the sweet joining, at last, with Nick Laurence. I take a sip of wine to calm myself, trying to equate pure fantasy with the sex I’ve known. It’s not as if I haven’t had other men. There have been one or two, so I know what fucking is like. But with him? The unknown quantity? The imagined paragon?
Oh, don’t be so stupid, Annie!
My eyes flick open, and at the same time the clatter of heels on the steps leading from the front entrance to the college makes me start. I hear the sound of voices, a man and a woman, in conversation. I can’t hear specific words, but there’s excitement, lucky them.
It’s James Riley and Willa Adams. Are they together? I thought they’d split up, but it seems they’ve healed their rift. Even in the twilight I can see the glow in them, the electricity, the sex. Yes indeed, lucky them. If I’m not mistaken, they’ve already been up to something. It’s like an aura, rich and glowing, drifting around them.
They haven’t noticed me, but I watch as James strides off, presumably to get his car. Willa smiles, watching his back, a hungry, happy expression in her eyes. Oh, God, yes, they’ve certainly been up to something. The satisfaction on her face is unmistakable. But then she turns in my direction and sidles over.
“Hello, Annette… How are you? Didn’t see you in there…how have you been?”
Despite her obviously smitten state, she’s a shrewd cookie. There’s no point in prevaricating—my sad devotion to Nick Laurence was always an open secret amongst the small group of girls I used to hang with.
“Same old, same old,” I murmur, sipping my wine again as if that’ll cover up what a sad case I am.
To my surprise, she grabs me by the shoulder and squeezes. Her eyes are bright and joyous, and she looks like she wants to spread her good fortune around. “Look, Annie, go for it! He’s available now… He’s not married. Maybe he’s been waiting for you.” She grins again and I hear a growling engine approaching. “Don’t hold back, love… You might miss out on something wonderful.”
A rather rakish and slightly battered old grey S-Type Jaguar pulls up, and from within James pops the passenger door. Seeing the way Willa looks at him, I suddenly decide.
Why hold back indeed? What the hell have I got to lose?
As James guns the car, I grin back at Willa and abandon my glass. And as they speed away into the night, I walk smartly back into the building.
Back in the assembly hall where the main party is, I spot him immediately. He’s holding court with a circle of former math geeks who idolized him in quite a different way to the way I did, but the instant I focus on him, he focuses on me.
It’s a silent communication. We’re still on that secret unacknowledged wavelength we were ten years ago, and he’s sensed my sudden change, my determination. He excuses himself from his fan club and walks over. Even the way he leans on his stick as he approaches me seems lighter, as if now the moment’s come, he’s energized, just like me.
“Hello, Annette. How have you been? You look well.”
He has a low voice, slightly husky, but expressive. His smile is tentative at first, but his eyes glitter as he takes me in, studying my face and then, after a second, my body. His swift but thorough scrutiny heats my blood.
“I’m fine thank you, M—” I stop short, and after a beat we both laugh. Even if we didn’t have this weird, unspoken and unfinished/unstarted thing between us, it’d still be ludicrous to call him Mr. Laurence now.
“I’m very well, Nick, and yourself?” My eyes dart helplessly to the stick, and my heart clenches again, wondering if he’s still in a lot of pain. I heard about his accident a while back, and I know it was bad. I acknowledge now how much I wanted to visit him in hospital, but I was seeing someone, and it would have been awkward trying to explain why I was rushing to the bedside of a teacher who taught me in high school, ten years ago.
“Better than I was, thank you… I was a mess, but I’m improving.”
We stare at each other. Are we going to do the “What are you doing now? How’s school treating you?” round-the-houses dance? Or are we going to cut to the chase, and answer all the unspoken questions and urges right away?
“So…”
“So…”
We both laugh again, then stop just as suddenly. It’s all still here. The yearning, the hunger, the desire. The strange awareness of each other that transcends words.
But now there are rules, no ethics, no barriers. None at all.
“Look, is there somewhere we can go?” My eyes devour him. He’s still perfect, glorious, despite the scar and the obvious limp. His mouth is still temptation incarnate, with that plush lower lip and the quirk of a smile. “To talk,” I add, but who am I kidding?
Tasuta katkend on lõppenud.
