Dark Blue: Study in Seduction, Book 1 (7 page)

“He is divorced, and there might have been a new woman while he was on sabbatical, but Rana, the head of our lab, hasn’t mentioned anyone, and he knows him really well. I think Alex is too busy making a name to get involved with a woman. Did you know he’s landed a TV series about erotic classics on the BBC? Lucky sod. Rana said he got a big fee for it and it’ll help his book sales when he finishes it.”

Carla mentally crossed her fingers. Perhaps the woman had been Alex’s agent. Any sensible person would assume that, yet Carla wasn’t feeling very sensible where Alex was concerned. Their attention was diverted by Gideon, who had collapsed on the lawn, snoring gently.

Michael rolled his eyes. “Better get him to his room and make sure he doesn’t come to any real harm.”

“I’ll help you.”

“I can’t have you doing that. Sorry if that’s sexist of me, but he’ll probably chunder again, and you don’t want kebab all over your lovely dress, do you?”

Michael was so sweet and so eager to be PC that Carla felt a cruel bitch, asking him about Alex. “If you’re sure…”

He beamed. “I am. Carla, I’ve really enjoyed tonight. These aren’t the best circumstances but…do you fancy going out for a drink sometime?”

“Me?”

“Well, yes, I don’t mean Gideon. I know that you might think there’s a difference in age between us, though it’s only a few years… Oh shit. I’m making a right mess of this, aren’t I?”

“No. No.” She squirmed. She liked Michael, but he seemed barely more than a boy. Stephen’s face flashed across her mind, shaking his head and laughing in a gently amused way like when she’d backed the Volvo into the garage doors and the time she’d dripped paint stripper on the dining table.

“I think that…”

Her words were interrupted by Gideon suddenly waking and chundering again, and maybe that was a relief to both of them. Michael took Gideon’s arm. “Come on, mate, let’s get you back to your room before you pebble dash the whole quad. Carla, sleep on it. You know where to find me if you want me. Drop me a note in my pigeonhole or,” he added with a smirk, “I’ll drop something in yours.”

In Emma’s room, Carla couldn’t sleep, even though it was past three a.m. She ran over the tutorial again, trying to think—objectively—about every point Alex had made about her work. To be fair, he had said it was ”well researched” and had some “original insights and showed a lot of promise”, but she’d ignored that praise and focused on the negative things he’d said. Now she’d had space and time to think, he probably hadn’t trashed her essay as much as she’d thought and was only trying to push her. After all, that was why she’d longed to come to Oxford and St Bert’s, to be challenged and dragged out of her suburban comfort zone; to do something for herself, something Stephen would never have expected or thought her capable of doing.

She also thought about the scarlet woman. Even if that woman was a business acquaintance, surely Alex must have a partner, or partners, no matter what Michael had said. No man who dripped sex appeal and charisma from every Provençal pore would have a cold bed for long.

She switched on the bedside light, even though there was now purple in the sky through the window. With dawn around the corner, she might as well go back to her own bed and try to sleep or work or anything to banish Alex from her exhausted mind.

She walked back to the hostel via the Parks. As the sun came up, mist rose from the meadows. Rowers jogged past on their way to practise on the river. She stood by the water, breathing in the scent of hawthorn and cherry blossom. This was her new life. It was a time to look forward, not back.

Then she saw him running along the path that led from the punting boathouse towards the college. He was bare-chested and ran with a feline grace and ease. Even from here, the sheen of sweat glistened in the rising sun and sent a jolt of pure lust through her, instantly dampening her knickers.

She’d never wanted a man this much, not sexually. Never wanted to be on her knees in front of a man this much. Never been prepared to brave so much to get his attention. Her feelings for Alex weren’t a crush, they were an a primeval need.

She thought about what he’d said to her about her Jane Austen essay.

Amaze him
.

And his veiled challenges in the cloisters and outside the club.

They were surely a code to cross the line and finally give him no choice but to acknowledge his own desires for her? To provoke him into action?

To break his rules.

He’d gone from her view, but her steps quickened. She would place her hand in the tiger’s cage, perhaps walk right into it, metaphorically naked and prepared for anything that might happen.

At the hostel, she switched on her laptop, highlighted the thousand words on the
Significance and Hierarchy of Estates in Pride & Prejudice
that had taken her days to craft, pressed Delete and began again. It was afternoon when, drooping over her laptop with exhaustion, she opened up her e-mail and composed a message:

From: Carla Jonas
[email protected]
 

To: Professor Alex Lemaitre
[email protected]

Subject: Dear old Jane

Hi Alex,

Please find attached my essay on Jane Austen.

Thanks,

Carla

She stabbed the Enter key and collapsed back on the bed.

Amaze him, Alex had said.

So she had.

Chapter Six

Carla threw her keys on the desk, kicked off her shoes and lay on her bed. She’d just got back to the hostel after the Gathering, and she was wrung out in every way: physically, emotionally.

She’d laid flowers on his grave, and her father and Stephen’s brother had said a few words. Inevitably, it had been painful and exhausting, and perhaps that was why they felt the need to do it. It was cathartic like a Shakespeare tragedy was meant to be. She’d cried, as had his family, because they’d all learned by now that it was more painful to resist letting it all out, and it did help there was part of her that found the Gathering an ordeal in a different way to theirs.

At the party afterwards, reminiscing and drinking wine with relatives and friends, she’d wondered if any of them were ready not to cry so much and instead to…oh God, cliché alert—move on? To celebrate Stephen’s life, not with a gathering and tears, but with a quiet thought in between the business of their daily lives? Could she be allowed to think of Stephen every day, or almost every day, with memories that were good and not so good, without focusing on this one event?

Maybe that was too much to expect. The people around her, her infuriating but kind and loving parents, friends and in-laws didn’t have the full insight into the text that she did. They couldn’t read between Stephen’s lines. Only she and, perhaps, one other person in the world—his mistress—could ever do that.

Could she be allowed to move on and love someone else one day?

Someone like Alex.

Although Alex was no more easy to read than Stephen. Getting involved with him might only bring more trouble and heartbreak.

She sat bolt upright.

OMG, as Emma would say.

The essay.

The bloody stupid, excruciating essay she’d sent him after her night at the club, in a moment of hormonal madness. She’d been so busy at the Gathering that she’d almost forgotten it. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. She’d regretted sending it the moment she’d driven off to her home and meant to compose a message telling Alex the essay was a joke, written to entertain her fellow students and attached by mistake. The problem was that there hadn’t been time during her weekend away, and even when there had, she’d hesitated.

It hadn’t seemed right to e-mail Alex about such a trivial thing when she was meant to be thinking of Stephen and her family. That was why she hadn’t sent it.

Wasn’t it?

Or was there something else preventing her from withdrawing the essay, deep in her subconscious or not even that deep at all?

The tute was tomorrow afternoon; there was still time. In fact, she could email him now. She opened up the lid of her laptop and tapped on the email icon, and her heart sank as she saw the message in her inbox.

From: Professor Alex Lemaitre
[email protected]

To: Carla Jonas [email protected]

Subject: Re: Dear old Jane

Hi Carla,

Thanks for your essay on Austen. I’m sorry I’m going to have to put back our tutorial by a few hours. I know it’s a bit late but could you possibly come round to my rooms at 8 p.m.? I think it’s *essential* that we meet to talk about this before exams.

See you at 8 o’clock.

Best,

Alex

Chapter Seven

Carla’s heart thumped as she climbed the steps to Alex’s room for her one-to-one. She didn’t think she’d ever been so nervous about anything. Not even walking into the fetish party could match the stomach-churning feeling of dragging herself up that creaking staircase. His room was on the top floor, in a part of the college reserved for dons and guest visitors. The usual thud of music and laughter of students was absent, and every step on the ancient oak treads creaked alarmingly.

She almost stumbled at the frantic beeping from her bag. It was her cell phone alarm call, the one she’d set to make sure she wasn’t late for her tute. Not that it was likely, seeing as she’d arrived at college half an hour previously and spent the time pacing around the quads and gardens, checking her phone and the clock on the lodge tower until eight o’ clock neared. Still terrified of being late, she ended up on the landing outside his door four minutes early.

She reached the top landing. Crap. The wooden plaque on the door seemed laden with foreboding.

PROFESSOR A. L. LEMAITRE

God knew why. It was just a name, all the dons had them, but it reminded her, in stark letters, of the reality of the situation. This wasn’t a fantasy told to her by a mystery man at a party. It was for real.

She’d gone through the door-knocking scenario a dozen times, practising a confident rap and hearing him say, “Come” and walking in, head held high. Okay. Deep breath. She probably had nothing to worry about. He’d made it clear he didn’t want to rekindle the spark between them, and it was too late to worry about the essay because he’d already assessed it. Oh shit.

“Hello, Carla.”

She glanced up after shoving her phone back in her bag to find Alex framed in the doorway.

“Oh, er… Hi. How did you know I was here?”

“I heard the stairs creak. They’re as good as any guard dog. And then your mobile phone went off.”

“I didn’t want to be late,” she said breezily.

There was a definite twinkle in his eye. “Very wise.”

Twin demons of lust and anxiety played tug-of-war with her mind. Alex hadn’t turned out to be what she expected. She’d expected him to be in jeans, sweater and possibly the gown he wore for lectures; instead, he wore a white dress shirt with black studs and black tux trousers with a thin strip of satin along the side seam. He also held a towel in one hand. She saw the ruddy tinge to his chin and got a waft of woody cologne as she walked past him into the room.

He touched his chin. “Sorry, I was just having a shave. I’m going out to dinner later.”

“Anywhere nice?” she asked, meaning any
one
nice.
Scarlet, perhaps?

He grimaced. “Not really, but don’t tell anyone I said so. It’s a faculty dinner, and it will be excruciatingly political and boring.”

Once inside, her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The last rays of the evening sun just about penetrated the edges of the room, and the window was open to the street.

“I hope I haven’t spoiled your evening,” he said.

“No, we’re going see a film later; it doesn’t start until ten thirty.”

Alex winced. “Bit late for me. I don’t know about you, I’d probably nod off halfway through.”

After her late nights recently, this was very likely to happen, but she was stopped in her tracks.

He gestured to a chair. “Why don’t you make yourself comfortable and ready for the fray.”

The words “comfortable” and “fray” were not the most natural of bedfellows, and her hackles rose, along with the nerve endings in her nether regions. That cocktail of fear and lust that Alex aroused flowed through her veins again, so thick and bittersweet it was almost unbearable.

He hung the towel over the rail by the washbasin, and she spotted her essay on his desk. Shit. There was red pen all over it. She could see it from there. In fact, he’d left it in full view—almost as if he wanted her to see it. It was hard to read under the mass of underlining and question marks. My God, was that a WTF in the margin?

“Drink?” he asked.

“Yes, please.” He must know she needed one.

She sat in the leather armchair as he poured her a gin and tonic and added ice from his fridge. Instead of sitting behind his desk, he chose the tub chair opposite her, legs so wide apart she couldn’t fail to see his impressive tackle through the wool of his expensive trousers. She couldn’t say whether he was aroused, however, and wasn’t sure whether that made her relieved or disappointed. He reached for her essay and placed it across his lap. All her thoughts and assertions were now just the thickness of a piece of cloth from his cock.