Page 47 of The English Professor

‘It wasyourrule! Jack, we can’t,’ I say in between breaths. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this at work. Lorna is just down the corridor, she could walk in at any moment.’

‘I know, I know... but I can’t stop thinking about you. About everything we did. About the way you taste, the way I felt when I was inside of you. I don’t know if I can...’

I can feel his cock growing as he speaks, the way he’s pressing himself into me. He strokes my neck with his tongue and I’m suddenly hit with all the other things he did with his tongue.

He pulls back, his expression pained and bereft. ‘Leyna, I don’t know how to not want you.’

Something inside me breaks a little. The tenderness in his voice, the fragility—the brute honesty. I want nothing more than to have him ravish me right here in the photocopy room. But I surprise myself. I shake my head no. He was right before. We can’t. We shouldn’t. It’s too risky. I hold his face in my hands. ‘I need to go back to my desk. And you need to do something with that,’ I gaze down at the bulge straining against his trousers. As though I’ve poured a bucket of cold water over him, he takes a step back.

It's as though that wall has sprung up again and his expression changes from open and honest to withdrawn and guarded. ‘What is wrong with me? You’re absolutely right, Ley— Miss Burrows. I shall not come upon you like this again. It was exceptionally unprofessional of me and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never should have—’ He doesn’t even finish his sentence. He runs a hand through his hair and straightens up his trousers. He grabs the stack of papers which the photocopier has spat out and holds it discreetly across the top of his trousers, and charges out of the room, almost ashamed.

‘Jack! No, I didn’t mean—’ But he’s already gone and it wasn’t like I was able to shout down the corridor.

I stand there in that tiny photocopy room, a proper heap of emotions.

Jack. What the fuck are we doing?

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IHATE WHAT’S HAPPENING. I haven’t seen Jack in two days and I feel empty. I feel a longing that, while sexual, is also more than that. I miss that wild, mysterious man who seems so tortured and conflicted about everything.

That’s when I decide I need to put things right. It’s treading a line that makes even the likes of me nervous, but things cannot continue as they have been. They simply can’t.

It’s Thursday morning and I’m picking what I’m going to wear to work. I choose a snug, emerald green cocktail dress. I’ve always thought the colour contrasts nicely with my reddish-brown hair. It’s so small that it’s hard to breathe and move in it, but it hugs my figure the way the water hugs the shoreline and will do just the trick. He won’t be able to look the other way when he sees me in this. I wear a black blazer over it to tone it down for when I’m around Lorna and the staff at work.

I put my plan into motion and check his timetable on my computer. He has a class that ends at four o’clock in Old Elvet, the building that’s out of the way and where he played one of his dirtiest tricks on me. I open up his online diary and add a meeting. Ten minutes after four, Old Elvet, room 344. I know which one it is because I spent so much time running around that building last time. It’s in the corner, at the end of the hallway. I make sure he gets an email invite about the room and the new meeting. I click on the box so that I know he’s read the email, just to be certain. And when I know he has, I’ll head over there and surprise him.

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THE CLASSROOM IN OLDElvet is dated and plain, but it’s out of the way and quiet, and that’s the most important thing. Hardly anyone is around at four o’clock in the afternoon and that is important for what I have planned. I sit behind the desk at the front of the room. Waiting. I’m wearing black heels and my legs are crossed on top of the desk—the same position Jack was in when I found him the last time we were in this building.

When he pops his head around the door, I wish I’d had my phone set to record. I lose track of how many emotions I see cross his face: surprise, confusion, realisation, frustration, and what was that last one? Perhaps a dark lustful look? He wipes that one off his face as quickly as I’ve just seen it appear.

‘Oh, hello,’ I feign surprise.

He looks behind himself, down the corridor. ‘Leyna...’ he exhales one long breath.

At least he didn’t call me Miss Burrows again.

I uncross my legs and stand up, slowly. I’m not wearing that black blazer I was wearing earlier in the day. It’s just little, old me in the smallest, tightest cocktail dress I own. I smooth down the sides of the dress, drawing his eyes to my curves as I do so. This dress is like a second skin in emerald green. ‘I just thought it might be nice to be able to have a conversation. In private.’ Have we slipped back into our old skins again? Am I to play the devious flirt and he’s going to pretend he’s some repressed, chivalrous knight? The sooner I get Jack back on track, the better. I know there is a depraved, debauched, wicked man in there—if only I could peel off enough layers to get at him.

‘There’s nothing more to talk about.’ He tries to be cool, nonchalant, as he leans against the doorframe.

‘Jack, close the door.’ I can see he’s fighting with himself, but finally he does as I ask. ‘Now place a chair underneath the door handle.’ His head jerks swiftly, looking at me. I match his stare with my own. ‘We need to talk, and I don’t want us interrupted.’ Again, he gives me this incredibly frustrated look, but does as I say. ‘Now come and sit down. I really think we need to resolve whatever this is going on between us—’

‘There’s nothing to resolve!’

‘See, the way you just said that makes me think there are still wrinkles needing ironed out between us.’ Jack has sat down in a seat and I’ve moved around to the front of the desk and I’m now half-sitting on top of it. ‘The way we left things when you apologised and rushed out of the photocopy room... It wasn’t right. You had nothing to say sorry for.’

He shakes his head. ‘I took advantage of you. At work, no less. It was wrong of me and I shouldn’t have done that.’

‘And just how do you think you did that?’

‘I allowed you—’

‘You allowed me?!’ Jack needs a reality check. ‘The only person who allows me to do anything is me.’ I walk over and slowly sit in his lap. ‘What about this? Are you allowing me to do this?’ I grind my bottom into his lap and he sucks in a sharp breath. ‘Are you allowing me to do this?’

‘I shouldn’t. We shouldn’t,’ he confesses, but his eyes are half-closed, and he looks as torn as a child in a sweet shop.

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