Page 19 of Indecent Temptations

"Guess I gave you the chance to be a gentleman," I teased him.

"Lucky that you don’t know many engineers," He remarked. I cocked my head at him.

"What makes you think that you’re the only engineer I know?" I shot back. "Maybe I have a whole little black book of them."

"But you called me, huh?"

"Maybe I tried everyone else first and you were the only one I could get to..."

"Maybe I need to make myself your go-to in future," he replied. He moved a little closer to me, and I froze on the spot – I didn’t know what to think. But there was a chemistry between us, my body aching for his touch. I could still remember how good it felt to kiss him, the power of the way his body felt against mine.

"Hey, don’t worry," he murmured, and he slowly eased my shoes off my feet. I didn’t move – I smiled and wriggled my toes in my tights.

"You had a long day?" He asked. I nodded.

"Teacher training," I replied, knowing that this was dangerous, this was getting far too close to breaking the rules that I had set up for myself. He took one foot in his hands and began to slowly massage me, going gentle, going slow but firm. It was exactly how he had been when we had been in bed together. His fingers kneaded my muscles, and I closed my eyes and let my head rest back against the couch.

"You’re good at that," I remarked.

"Yeah, well, I’m good at a lot of things," he reminded me. He was flirting, outrageously, but I supposed I was the one who had called him up this night, I was the one who had invited him up here, I was the one who had allowed him to put his hands on me and touch me. I was the one who was letting this happen. And I was the one who wanted it to happen.

"I remember," I replied, and I took a deep breath. I reached for my tea and he picked up my other foot and started to work on it. I loved the way he looked at my body when he touched me, loved the way it made me feel when he took hold of me. I couldn’t help but smile as I watched him.

"What are you grinning about?" He asked. There was this strange mix of sensation between us at that moment; both tension and relaxation, something that existed between the two so that I couldn’t tell the difference between them. I wasn’t even sure that it was important I did anymore. All that mattered was that he was here and that he was touching me and that at last I could just let myself be around him again, be around him the way that I knew I needed to.

"I don’t know," I admitted. "I don’t really know what to think right now."

"What do you mean?”

"I mean..." I trailed off, trying to find the words to tell him what I needed to and coming up with a fresh blank. I shook my head.

"It’s nothing."

"Tell me," he told me, squeezing my feet in his hands lightly, sending pleasurable shivers up my spine. It wasn’t arousal, not quite, nothing that obvious – something softer, sweeter. Just the way he had been all night long.

"I just like being around you," I admitted. "But I don’t...I don’t think I should."

"Why do you feel like that?" He asked with curiosity.

"Because of how old you are," I told him. "And the fact that you lied to me about your age. And that you used to go to my school. And that your sister still does go there."

"None of that stuff matters-"

"It does to me," I told him firmly. "It might not to you, but it does to me. I can’t just brush it off that easily. I wish I could, trust me, but it’s not so easy."

"Why not?"

"People judge," I explained. "You know that. You’ve lived in this town your whole life, you get it."

"Who cares if they judge?" He asked, and his hand slipped an inch further up my leg; I gently brushed him back, telling him without words that I didn’t want him to touch me like that, not until I knew for sure how I felt about it.

"I do," I reminded him. "I do, because it might be enough to get in the way of my job, remember? I don’t want anyone talking behind my back, especially not the parents of the kids I’m involved with."

"So we make sure they don’t talk about us," he suggested. "We don’t give them anything to talk about."

"You’re not doing a very good job at that, given that you turned up at the school recently," I pointed out to him. He grinned and held his hands up.

"Hey, what can I say, I just knew I had to see you..."

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