Page 17 of Indecent Temptations

His tongue was in my mouth at once, his lips parting mine, our bodies coming together just like they had back at my flat. I couldn’t believe that I had managed to hold off of him for so long – not when being near him like this felt so good. All those questions I’d had, all that fear and panic that I was doing something wrong or that I had done something wrong or that I was about to ruin my life, they fell away at once. How could they matter when this man was touching me?

Something fell from the desk, but I didn’t care, didn’t have the attention span to focus on picking it up again. There were large windows in the room that looked out onto the back playground, and if someone happened to be wandering through them, they would have seen us kissing on the desk and my cover would have been blown. But something about the thought of getting caught just made this all the more thrilling to me. Who was I? Who was this version of me that came out when he was around? Was this the version that I had been looking for when I had tried to switch things up, to change things for the better?

I would have fucked him right there. I really would. And I wouldn’t have given a damn what happened or who saw or what they would have thought of me when they did. None of that mattered one little bit in my head, not when I was kissing him, not when his strong arms were around me. He hitched me up onto the desk and I spread my legs and hooked them around him. The libido that I had tried to pretend didn’t exist since my ex had left me was back and it wasn’t going to be ignored a moment longer. He moved his mouth to my neck and I gasped and moaned and-

And suddenly realized what I was doing.

I pushed him away from me firmly, pulling my gaze from him, hating myself for letting it get this far – why couldn’t I resist him? I was a grown-up woman and I had control over what I did and who I did it with, but when I was around him, all of that just seemed to stop, to fall away.

"What is it? What’s wrong?" Joseph asked. His eyes were dark and his breath was coming harder and faster than it had before, and I knew that it was as hard for him to bring this to such a sudden halt as it was for me.

"You need to get out of here," I told him, echoing my words when he had been back at the flat with me. He furrowed his brow.

"Why? I don’t-"

"You don’t need to," I told him, closing my eyes and rubbing my hand over my face, trying to wipe the memory of how good it had been to kiss him from my mind.

"You just need to go," I ordered him. "Get out of the school. Please. I can’t be around you. It’s not...it’s not good for me. It’s not..."

I couldn’t find the words. Safe? Maybe that had something to do with it. I felt like I was on the brink of being exposed when I was around him. But it was more than that. I felt this loss of control, a control that I had fought so hard for for so long, but when I was with him, it just stopped existing. I wasn’t going to risk that. I couldn’t risk that.

He stared at me for a long moment, as though he was giving me time to change my mind, and I just kept my eyes away from him and hoped that he would go without too much of a fuss. Finally, and with a long sigh, he turned and slowly walked out of the classroom, as though he could hardly believe that I was doing this to him. I closed my eyes. It was the only way that I could let him leave without stopping and cracking and begging him to come back. I hated that I was so weak-willed, but there was nothing that I could do to change the way I felt around him – the way I felt when I was close to him, and the way that he made me feel like the whole world was on the brink of changing around me.

The door opened again and my eyes sprang open, but it was only Mallory, slipping into the classroom to drop off some folder inserts that she had promised me. I quickly pulled down my skirt and hoped that I didn’t look too ruffled – double-hoped that she hadn’t spotted Joseph making his way on out of here.

"Hey," I greeted her, busying myself with picking up what we had knocked off the desk.

"Hey, are you alright?” She asked. "I thought you were meant to be doing the gate today..."

"I was," I replied. "I just needed to grab something from in here, that’s all. I’m heading back out now, don’t worry."

"I wasn’t trying to get on you," she remarked. "Just wondering..."

"I’m fine," I told her again, and I knew that if I said another word, she was going to be on to me.

So, instead of hanging around and waiting to get busted, I headed for the door, brushed past her, and headed back out to the gate to do my duty. And prayed, above all else, that Joseph wasn’t going to make himself any more of a problem today than he already had.

Chapter nine

Just to be close to you

AssoonasIheard the engine sputtering below me, I felt a wave of dread slide through me. Fuck.Fuck.I knew that I should have taken this damn thing in to get serviced sooner rather than later. And now, I was paying the price for it.

I managed to pull in at the side of the Loch before the engine gave out completely. I groaned as I slid to a slow halt, and silently cursed myself for thinking that I could keep this thing going when it had been telling me that I needed to get it checked up for ages now.

It had been a hell of a long day – I had been out at a teacher training conference thing, and by the time that I got off to head back home, it was starting to get dark. I had just wanted to get back to my place and put my feet up and be done with this whole mess, but instead, I was going to have to call out a mechanic in the middle of the night and hope for the best...

Not that I imagined I would have much luck finding someone who would do the job with me at this time of the evening. It was nearing nine, and most of them would have shut up shop a while ago. Which meant that I was going to have to go outside the normal range of services I might have employed, and look at something a little more...

No. I couldn’t call him up. There was no way. I hadn’t spoken to Joseph since we’d had that encounter in my classroom a few days ago, and there was a good reason for that; I was totally and utterly done with the very thought of having him around. I needed to be. For my own sanity, for my own peace of mind. I had to let go.

But who else was going to be around at this time of night who would be able to help with my car? Truth was, I couldn’t think of one person who would have been willing to turn out to the middle of nowhere, who would have the knowledge on top of that to actually be of any use to me. He was an engineer, after all, he would know what he was doing. If there was anyone I could use the help from...

Maybe I was just looking for an excuse to see him again. I hadn’t been able to stopthinkingabout him since we had shared that little moment in the classroom. There had been something so outrageously hot about knowing that we could have been caught at any moment, and yet not caring enough to stop because we were just that much into one another. There weren’t words for how much I felt like I needed him. And we had left that chapter still open, and I wasn’t sure that I could cope with just not seeing him again even when I knew that what I needed more than anything was some distance, space, time to get my head straight.

I had kept what had happened to myself. It was just safer that way. I didn’t want anyone knowing what was going on. If anyone even caught wind of this, then there would be serious trouble – I couldn’t imagine the mess that would come up if it was public knowledge that I was sleeping with an ex-student at the school I taught at, not to mention the fact that his little sister was still a pupil there, too.

But I still had his number in my phone. I had kept it there, for reasons that even I hadn’t been able to fully justify to myself, for a long-ass time now. And there had to be something behind it, some reason that the universe had made me hang on to it. Maybe it was because someone up there knew that I was going to need some emergency mechanics late on a cool Autumn evening and that he was just the man to give them to me?

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