The Housemistress (11 page)

An audible suspiration of disappointment immediately leaves Rylie’s lips, her confidence faintly shaken. Has Carriveau had enough? Is she bored? Not even a little.

“Keep going,” the French woman insists, reading Rylie’s mind and transferring her free hand to the teen’s other hip. “
S’il te plaît
.”

Far from being bored, she’s now using both hands to more actively direct the intensity of the contact between them. Delighted by that, Rylie pushes back harder, practically grinding herself into her Housemistress. In response, Carriveau tightens her grip, the friction between them increasing as she rocks her own pelvis forward, subtly and gently causing Rylie’s thrusts to hit home even more firmly.

At this point, Rylie drops the subterfuge. She whines, abandons the iron, and wiggles her bum shamelessly against Carriveau’s crotch. For her part, Carriveau brings one hand up, under Rylie’s skirt, gripping her bare inner thigh, admitting quietly:

“
Je n’arrête pas de penser à toi
.”

I can’t stop thinking about you.

Rylie whimpers, pushing back harder, yearning to feel Carriveau’s fingers inside her.

But she’s denied.

Carriveau drags her fingernails over Rylie’s tender flesh, her thumb scarcely an inch away from the teen’s hot, wet sex. She refrains from venturing any further, but Rylie’s arousal is so heightened that she doesn’t even need direct contact.

A small orgasm ripples through her, and she clutches the edge of the ironing board to hold herself up, a low moan escaping from her lips, muffled against the crumpled up shirt.

When the shivers subside and her body goes limp, Carriveau leans over her arched back and rescues the shirt, setting the iron back down on its cradle.

“Are you done?”

Rylie manages a nod and an affirmative squeak.

“All right, then.” Carriveau peels away from her. “I think it’s time for bed.”

Rylie practically collapses on the ironing board, groaning discontentedly.

“Ah, the urgency of youth,” Carriveau teases her. “Always so impatient.”

“But … my shirt …” Rylie protests weakly.

“No buts,
ma chérie
.” Carriveau spanks her bum and sends her out of the room. “Go on and get yourself ready for bed.”

Halfway across the room, Rylie looks back over her shoulder, finding Carriveau about to finish the ironing of the shirt herself.

“Miss, you don’t have to—”

“Go,” Carriveau urges, waving her off. “Don’t be late up to the dorm.”

Rylie starts to do as she’s told, but turns back again in the doorway. “You’ll come say goodnight, won’t you?”

“
Bien sûr
.” Carriveau beams. “Of course.”

Slightly shaky and lightheaded, her cunt still in spasms, Rylie makes her way upstairs to the Lower Sixth dormitory. In a daze, she pulls on her pajamas, brushes her teeth, washes her face, and drags a brush through her hair, unable to think of anything but the lingering sensation of Carriveau’s hand on her thigh, the scratches on her skin a visible reminder of her Housemistress’s nails digging into her, making her come instantly.

Indeed, Carriveau’s mere presence is enough to arouse her. One look at her red lips, her proud cleavage, or her shapely rear, and she gets flooded—even more so tonight. When Carriveau arrives at the dormitory for bed checks—carrying with her a pristinely ironed shirt—Rylie’s nipples stiffen and jut out, showing through her thin cotton pajamas.

As her turn to be wished goodnight rolls around, she stands up straight, her shoulders back, making sure her assets are on display.

“I think you left this in the laundry room.” Carriveau hands over the shirt, refusing to let her eyes wander. “Hang it up right away, else it’ll crease again.”

“
Oui, merci beaucoup
.”

After the exchange of the shirt and a smile, Rylie retreats to the back of her cubicle and slips the still warm garment onto a hanger. As she straightens the starchy cotton, her fingers come into contact with something pinned to the inside, just below the last buttonhole.

It’s a note, written in Occitan.

On the back, she finds the English translation: For nothing is as hard to gain as that which I am seeking, nor any longing affects me as that for what I cannot have.

Rylie’s eyes dart up, following Carriveau as she completes her circuit of the dorm.

“Goodnight, Edwards.” The Housemistress sighs, keeping well clear of the thin yellow line. “I’m very tired tonight.”

At the door, she flashes Rylie a fleeting smile, turns out the lights, and vanishes into the darkness, the now familiar sound of her retreating footsteps echoing down the empty hallway.

Too wired to sleep, Rylie grabs her phone, curls up under her duvet, and texts back and forth with old friends, catching up on recent gossip from her former school. Without meaning to, she kills an hour and most of her battery, and it’s not until she finally rolls over to go to sleep that she realizes the dormitory has been awfully quiet tonight.

Adel hasn’t partaken in any nocturnal pleasures, which, up till this point, have occurred nightly and like clockwork. Perhaps she’s tired, Rylie thinks, letting out a yawn of her own.

Tired.

Like Miss Carriveau.

That’s an intriguing thought, and Rylie fleshes it out further. What if it was no accident that Carriveau was standing outside the dormitory door on that first night? What if her return the following evening was equally contrived? Has she been standing out there every night? Rylie hadn’t thought to check. Could Adel’s midnight wanking sessions be deliberately staged for Carriveau’s pleasure?

Rylie falls asleep with her hand inside her knickers, teasing her drenched sex.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Carriveau moans into her pillow, her chestnut hair flopping over her face and shoulders as she sinks limply into the sheets, her third orgasm of the morning ebbing away.

“
Je n’en reviens pas
,” she pants, rolling onto her back, astounded by the intensity of her climax, finally feeling somewhat sated.

Flooded with endorphins, she shuts off her alarm before it has a chance to shrill at her, then gets herself ready for work in record time. Rushing through morning paperwork in her study, she’s still feeling the buzz of sexual euphoria when she bursts into the Lower Sixth dormitory at seven o’clock on the dot.

“
Réveillez-vous
!” She claps her hands together, beaming broadly. “It’s a brand new day!”

Swooping through the room, she makes sure every girl is at least partially conscious and in the process of rising from bed, then turns to Rylie’s cubicle.

Rylie’s
empty
cubicle.

The bed’s made, the pressed shirt’s gone, and there’s no sign of the teen.

Carriveau feels a small flutter of panic, and she grabs Gabby’s elbow as the groggy redhead stumbles out of the adjoining cubicle.

“
Où est Harcourt
?” she demands. “Where’s Rylie?”

“Huh?” Gabby rubs sleep out of her eyes, squinting at Rylie’s bed. “I dunno.”

Giving the dorm another once over, satisfied that Rylie hasn’t risen from another girl’s bed instead of her own, Carriveau hurries from the room and down the stairs, brushing past Miss Ansell without so much as a flicker of acknowledgment.

“Trouble at mill?” the confused geography teacher calls after her, but even that goes ignored.

Carriveau continues her search for Rylie on the ground floor, starting with the study room, then the common room, then the kitchen.

“
Dieu merci
!” She presses a hand to her chest, very much relieved to find Rylie making breakfast. “I didn’t know where you were. Why are you up so early?”

Rylie drops two slices of bread in the nearest toaster. “I thought if I got up early enough then you might be able to show me how to use this strange toasting contraption.” She leans forward, shaking her bum in Carriveau’s direction.

Smiling wryly, all worry evaporated, Carriveau walks slowly toward her. “I think I can help with that.” She pushes the lever on the toaster. “
Voilà
!”

“Boo.” Rylie feigns a sulk.

“Perhaps you’d like to wish me good morning?” Carriveau offers instead. “
En français
, of course.”

Knowing that a greeting
en français
means
faire la bise
—a kiss on each cheek—Rylie very carefully invades Carriveau’s personal space, first planting a delicate peck on the right cheek, then the left, taking her time with both.

“
Bonjour, Mademoiselle Carriveau
,” she coos softly, slipping a hand onto her Housemistress’s slender waist.

“Careful.” Carriveau peels that opportunistic hand away, kissing Rylie’s fingers. “Please be careful.” She kisses the teen’s palm. “You have to control these wandering hands of yours.”

“But not my lips?”

Carriveau shrugs. “I’m French. A kiss or two on the cheek is like a handshake,
n’est-ce pas
? It’s perfectly harmless.”

“So another won’t hurt? Just lips, no hands.”

Carriveau doesn’t voice an objection, so Rylie leans forward and presses her mouth firmly to the French woman’s cheek, letting the peck linger a fraction of a second longer than could be considered platonic.

“I really like you,” she whispers, her lips to Carriveau’s ear.

“I’d noticed,” Carriveau whispers back, placing her hands upon Rylie’s shoulders, ready to push her away if she should grow bold enough to make another advance.

Feeling the tension in her Housemistress’s touch, Rylie pulls back of her own accord—albeit only a few inches. Her eyes are drawn to Carriveau’s mouth, those glossy red lips of hers slightly parted and so tantalizingly inviting.

Rylie encroaches again. “Just lips, no hands,” she repeats, tilting her head and moving in for a full-on lip-lock.

“Don’t.” Carriveau gasps as Rylie’s bottom lip bumps hers. “Please don’t.”

“Why not?” Rylie stays put, rubbing their noses together. “Last night—”

Carriveau puts a finger to the teen’s lips, silencing her and moving her back. “Last night was a reckless indulgence.” She keeps her finger where it is, tracing Rylie’s lower lip with the tip. “I’m not your peer, and this attraction between us is no trivial thing.”

Rylie closes her hot mouth around Carriveau’s fingertip, gently kissing it.

“I won’t ignore it—I
can’t
ignore it—but we mustn’t … this shouldn’t …” Halfway through that thought, Carriveau loses the ability to speak.

She becomes entranced by the action of Rylie’s mouth as the teen’s lips part and she flicks her tongue around the digit before kissing it again, sucking it deeper than before. But it’s over in seconds.

Something in Carriveau’s voice—a note of desperation perhaps—triggers Rylie to recall a conversation she’d had with Gabby when she first arrived at Larkhill. Just before bed check, Gabby said she was surprised that Carriveau could still bear to look at them “After what happened with Kaitlyn.”

Well, what
did
happen with Kaitlyn? Rylie never followed up. Did Kaitlyn break Carriveau’s heart? If that’s the case, surely all she needs is a bit of reassurance …