Teach Me (19 page)

I
wriggle in anticipation, my whole body stretched out beneath him, and
then something colder encircles my wrists, and I hear the sharp snap
of . . .

Oh
god. Was he really serious? I give a light, experimental tug, just to
be sure.

Yep.
Handcuffs.

“What
are—” I start
to ask, but as quick as I speak, his hand slaps my bare thigh, just
below the hem of my dress, hard enough to sting.

“I
said be quiet.”
There’s such an
undertone of command in that simple sentence that I can’t
help but shiver all over. He’s
in complete control now. He can take what he wants from me, do
whatever he wants to me, in a way I’ve
never let anyone take control of me before.

And
it’s making me hot
as hell.

I
try squirming again, testing the bonds, and am interrupted once more
by the sensation of my dress being drawn up my body. He doesn’t
stop at the waist like I expect—he
pulls it all the way up to my hands, leaves it tangled around my
wrists, still locked in their restraints, and then comes back for the
bra.

In
no time at all, I lie naked on the floor of his office, more exposed
than I’ve ever felt
in my life. Hot, excited warmth pools between my legs, and I cross
them out of sheer habit.

Something
light and feathery, even softer than the blanket we’re
lying on, brushes my thigh. At first it just tickles, but as he drags
it slowly over my skin, that sensation erupts into something else. A
burning, desperate
need
.

“Ohhhh,
stop,” I hiss.

The
feather lifts from my skin, and his hot hands cup my breasts instead.
“Do you really want
me to stop?” he
murmurs.

I
bite my lip as my nipples harden under his grasp, and gasp faintly as
he flicks one of them, and rolls the other between his finger and
thumb. When I can think straight enough to move, I shake my head
hard.

“Well
then.” The hands
leave my chest, and in a moment the feather is back, tracing over my
thighs. “Open your
legs.”

I
swallow hard and uncross my legs, spreading them before him. He’s
slow, methodic. Torturous. He brushes me from one ankle all the way
up to the top of my thigh and right across my clit, which makes me
bite my tongue to keep from groaning aloud, and then slowly down my
other leg, all the way to my ankle.

He
repeats the motion with his fingers now, hotter and harder a
sensation, but just as painfully stimulating: the feel of his skin
against mine, and being completely unable to do anything about it,
unable to pull him closer the way I want—no,
need
.

I’m
waiting on tenterhooks for the sound of his belt buckle unclasping,
his jeans hitting the floor. I’m
so focused on that, so concentrated on when he’ll
finally thrust into me and fuck me to a climax, that I am not at all
prepared when his mouth presses to my ankle. This time I do gasp,
only lightly, but it makes him pull away and slap the inside of my
thigh, just enough to make me jump.

“No
sound.”

I
swear the bastard is enjoying this far too much. I grit my teeth to
keep my mouth shut, but it’s
hard when he’s
licking higher, higher, at my thigh, now the top of it, alternately
sucking at my skin and lapping at me as he moves. Just when I think I
won’t be able to
stand it anymore, that I’ll
have to beg him to take me already, his tongue slides deep into my
pussy, curling against me, sending sparks of bright red flaring
behind my closed eyelids.

My
body arcs up into him, and my hands curl involuntarily around the
fabric of my dress, my nails digging into my palms through it. I
can’t make a sound
to let him know how I feel, so I let my body do the talking for me.

His
tongue delves deeper into me, tasting every inch of me, and my legs
quiver beneath him, my stomach trembling where he rests a hand to
brace himself against me. I’m
close to finishing, my hips bucking of their own accord now, my
breath sharp and fast, my mouth clamped shut to keep any accidental
moans from slipping out.

And
then he pulls away, and my whole body screams in agony for release.

“So
not fair,” I hiss
through clenched teeth, and I expect him to slap me again for that.

Instead,
he grips my knees, pulls them far apart, and we both gasp as he
shoves his cock into me.

“You
like that, you dirty girl?”
he grunts. “You like
my cock in your wet, hot pussy?”

He
doesn’t wait for a
reply. He holds me like that, legs splayed, and thrusts so hard my
hips buck up off the floor. Every time he pulls away I want to scream
for more, and every time he slams back into me I have to fight back
my groans.

I
clench around him, the only thing I can do from my prone position. He
hisses, and then he fucks me in earnest. Every thrust splits me open,
plunders my body as he claims every inch of me.

It’s
not long before we both quake against each other, him suppressing a
soft grunt under his breath, and me unable to help the low moan that
escapes my lips as we finish as one, the climax rocketing through my
entire body, sparks flying along my nerve endings.

When
he pulls out and slides my dress back down over me, then reaches up
to untie the blindfold and free my hands, neither of us speaks. We
stare at one another, savoring the sensations we’re
both feeling right now, the sense of total completeness.

When
I’m free, I sit up,
and he draws me into his arms, eyes still fixed onto mine. I sink
into his kiss, melt into his embrace, lose myself entirely, for one
long, endless minute, that’s
somehow over far too soon. Because after a moment, someone knocks at
the door.

#

“My
house at seven,” is
all Jack has time to hiss in my ear before I finish fastening my
thick winter coat around me. We’d
scattered enough papers across his desk to make an excuse for our
delay in answering the knock. (The carpet he just fucked me on, a
cozy shag rug that looks like something out of a ski lodge with a
warm fire, we stuffed under a bookshelf in the corner.)

Then
I’m smiling blandly
at the male student who steps into the room, praying that the perfume
I spritzed, panicking, would cover up enough of the heady scent of
sex that hung in the air.

Jack
waves the student in with a “How’s
it, Keith?”,
ignoring me altogether as I shut the door behind me. But I don’t
mind. My heart pounds the whole way back to my dorm, replaying every
second of what we just did.

I’m
still buoyed up by the memories when I reach Jack’s
house that evening. I don’t
bother to knock, just step right inside and head for the kitchen, all
thoughts of my classwork and the other stuff I’ve
been dealing with throughout the day driven from my mind. I want a
repeat of this afternoon. I want him to touch me again, fuck me
again. I want to feel his skin against mine, and his lips on mine,
like the cure for everything that could possibly ail me.

That
is, until I cross the threshold into the kitchen, and find Jack
staring at the wall, almost catatonic.

It
takes him almost a minute to wake up, to realize that I’m
there, and who I am. Finally, his eyes focus on me, and I guess
what’s coming even
before he says it.

“My
father just died.”

They
say cancer is like that. Slow at first, then suddenly deteriorating
in leaps and bounds at the end. The doctors gave him two months since
they detected it on Saturday, but he barely lasted four days.

I
don’t know how long
I zone out after getting the phone call from Kat. All I can think
about is the last time I saw him, the anger in his eyes as he told me
I’ve been doing
everything wrong, that my entire life is a waste. I don’t
believe him; I never have, never will. But Kat was right. Now that’s
the last memory I’ll
ever have of him: Knowing exactly how much I disappointed him, right
up until the end.

Next
thing I notice in the real world is Harper shaking my shoulder, her
worried face the first thing I’m
able to truly focus on in what feels like hours. Maybe it has been,
I’m not sure.

“My
father just died,” I
tell her, and it sounds so mundane. Like something somebody else
would say or a line from a movie. That’s
not really happening to me, is it? And if it is, should I care as
much as I do? I never visited home if I could help it, ran down here
to Oxford the first chance I could get to escape him—mostly
him, because let’s
face it, Mum wouldn’t
think half the things she does if not for his influence.

Maybe
that’s what I always
hated about their emphasis on marriage, kids, settling down into a
practical job and a practical, quiet life—they
seemed too close. Like they lost their individual personalities when
they started to date, and now I can’t
tell where Dad ends and Mum starts. It’s
scary, to trust someone that much. How does Mum know that Dad was the
right person to let inside her life like that?

And
what’s going to
happen to her now that he’s
gone?

Harper’s
arms close around me and I grip her tightly, fiercely. So tight I’m
sure it hurts, yet she doesn’t
complain, only draws me in closer, sitting on my lap so she can wrap
her whole body around me, which is good, because suddenly I realize
how much I need her right now.

I
don’t know how long
we sit like that, just listening to each other breathe, feeling one
another’s heartbeats
through our chests. Maybe if getting close to someone, if trusting
someone, feels like this . . . maybe
it wouldn’t be so
bad after all.

Except
then I think about losing her, the way Mum just lost Dad, and it
knocks the wind out of me. I pull back just far enough to look her
dead in the eye, those soft, baby blue eyes, so beautiful, so clear
and honest and full of emotion right now, emotion for me, because of
me.

“Harper,”
I say. “I would like
to date you. But I need you to promise me something.”

She
blinks, once. I can tell she’s
startled by this. We haven’t
talked about anything like this yet. About a future, or a plan for
where this thing we have is going. Part of me is afraid she’ll
say no, that she isn’t
thinking along the same lines that I am.

A
bigger part is afraid she’ll
say yes.

Her
teeth edge around her lip, a flash of white against her peach pink
lips. “What?”
she asks, and I adore her for that—for
not just saying
Anything
,
the way some people would, when they don’t
really mean it at all.

I
smile for the first time since Kat called earlier today. “Promise
me that if we wind up together, you’ll
let me die first.”

She
smacks my chest with the back of her hand, bursting out a startled
laugh that’s
somewhere between amused, relieved, and annoyed. “What
a morbid thing to say. Neither of us is going to die, Jack.”

“Someday,”
I point out. “So I
just need to know that I’ll
go first.” I tighten
my arms around her waist. “Because
I can’t live without
you.”

She
lets that ring in the air between us a moment, her eyes wider and
fuller than ever. When she leans in to kiss me, it’s
gentle, not so much a kiss as a promise we’re
making to each other. “You
won’t ever have to,”
she murmurs, finally, when we break apart.

I
kiss her again, once, twice, a dozen times, until she’s
laughing and squirming on my lap, which is causing other yearnings to
stir in my gut, the animal tendencies she brings out in me. But I
suppress them, because there’s
still one more thing I need to ask her. As much as it scares me, I
can tell I have to ask.

“Will
you come to the funeral with me?”
I grimace, hating how the words sound. Terrified at the idea of her
meeting my family—no,
not that. I want her to meet them. But I’m
afraid they’ll push
her away like they do to me. I’m
afraid she’ll take
one look at them and think, No way I want to date a guy with parents
like this.

But
Harper only kisses my cheek and brushes my hair back from my
forehead. “Of
course, Jack. Whatever you need.”

“That’s
a pretty long list,”
I warn her.

She
squirms in my lap again, as though sensing what’s
on the top of that list. “I
think I’m up to the
challenge.”

I
run my hands through her hair, savoring the way it feels in between
my fingers. I do that again and again, until I notice her staring at
me, wide-eyed and worried. Of course she’s
worried. After what I just told her is happening, now I’m . . .
How do you even act normal after something like that?

“This
feels strange,” I
admit. The news must not have sunk in yet. This must be what denial
feels like. Not thinking about anything but the beautiful girl in my
arms. Not wondering what’s
going on at home, with the rest of my family in the wake of what’s
happened.

But
Harper’s hands are
already undoing the zip on my jeans. “Then
let me take your mind off of it.”

She
slides off my lap to kneel between my legs, and, well, no hot-blooded
man could stop her at this point. I let my head fall back as she
frees me from the confines of my boxers, her hands hot and soft, so
fucking soft, as they cup my shaft, one of her knuckles kneading at
the spot underneath, making me suck in a quick gasp of air.

Then
her lips envelope me, suck me deep into her mouth, and I’m
gone, completely lost to Harper Reed.

I
curl in the passenger seat of Jack’s
car and watch the scenery fly past the window while he narrates
anything of interest we’re
passing. So far it hasn’t
been much. A few crumbling towers on distant hills, the history of
which he recites for me in great detail. And a whole lot of
roundabouts, which reminds me of the time my parents took me to
Boston on a vacation and I thought I was about to die every time we
had to drive through town.