Dark Blue: Study in Seduction, Book 1 (9 page)

“Then it’s a good job that I am sure.”

He stood up, his long, strong fingers splayed against the leather top of desk, and then lifted one wrist, studying the face of his watch. The gloom had deepened now, creeping into the corners of his room. Through the open window, she heard the shouts and laughter of people on their way to have fun, to drink and party while she waited for—what? Pleasure? Pain? Both?

He checked his watch again, as if he was waiting for something to happen as she tried to moisten her lips. It was impossible to swallow, as her throat was dry. If her throat was dry, her knickers were wet. The whole time she’d been facing the wall, she’d struggled to stop the juices from flowing.

He glanced up from his watch to her. “You do know why you’re here?”

No. Why am I here?
She nodded; then a reality check slammed into her. She summoned bravado and laughed in his face. “Because you didn’t like my essay on Darcy?”

He laughed very softly. “As I pointed out, you can’t make these statements without evidence.”

“Evidence? I thought you said you loved it, and it was bold and…and daring. You said that.”

“Nonetheless, it’s no use as an exam essay, and there is, I’m afraid, something else. Something far more serious than the problems with this essay. In speaking to me about the party in London, you broke one of my most important rules.”

“I had to say something. I’ve been going mad with frustration. You have to…”

He put a finger on her lips. “I don’t have to do anything, and you’re only getting into deeper hot water. I have warned you explicitly several times that I keep my personal life private and that everyone who went to that party was supposed to keep it strictly to themselves, with no exceptions.”

“It doesn’t matter now. There are only the two of us here.”

“It matters to me, and when I ask you to do something, I expect to be obeyed. I’ve given you a number of chances, and I can’t overlook your repeated defiance of me any longer. I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to bend over my desk.”

Her whole body just liquefied. Her legs were now on a separate circuit from her brain, and, without waiting for any conscious permission, they carried her to the edge of his desk. She placed her hands on the leather top, inches from her red-lined essay, unable to refuse.

“Alex…”

“Lower.”

His fingers touched her back with the lightest of pressure. She did as she was told and pushed her hands forward, edging papers dangerously close to the edge of the desk. Her essay lay upside down in front of her eyes, devastated with red pen, but that was the least of her worries now. What would happen next filled every last atom of her mind. Would he actually spank her, or was he playing a game of brinkmanship? Would it really hurt? Would she cry out and weep or laugh as he tapped her butt, pulled her upright and kissed her?

She wanted this to happen like she’d never wanted anything else before, yet at the same time, she felt light-headed with fear. She’d never been this wet, and she was clenching in a glorious agony that could only be eased by the brand of his hand on her behind and his cock inside her. The world had clicked into place, and now being bent over her tutor’s desk was the most natural thing in the world. Not just natural but primeval; it had to happen no matter how much it hurt.

“Oh!”

He lifted up her flippy little skirt, tugged her Brazilian shorts out of her butt cheeks and yanked them over her thighs to her ankles. She let out a tiny shriek at the same time as her body went into a kind of sensual shock.

“No, we mustn’t do this.”

“Please, don’t be clichéd.”

Her rational mind tried to protest. In reality, she didn’t mean a word. She didn’t want him to hear her or stop for a moment. She longed to accept what he wanted to give her willingly—gracefully.

The lace of her knickers tickled her feet, and the damp air from the open window cooled her bottom. St Bert’s was a draughty old hole, she thought, as nerves, lust and adrenaline swamped every cell of her being.

Briefly, his palm rested against her flesh, his touch light and almost tender. It might as well have been molten for the fire it shot through her insides. Her clit almost exploded. Oh help, she could come right now without him even doing anything.

There was a brief, agonising moment when he withdrew his hand, and she panicked, torn in half by fear of the punishment and fear of being set free. Then he spoke in gentle, almost reverent tones. “Don’t move or move your hands until I say you can. If you want to move your hands, tell me, and I’ll give you time to compose yourself.”

What the hell did he mean by that? Why would she need to
compose herself
?

Great Tom chimed, and she realised exactly what he intended in the same moment as his hand made contact with her backside. The loud smack was echoed by a fiery sting in her butt cheek. Oh hell, it was much harder than she’d expected. Not brutal but
definitely
not pretending.

“Ow!” She swore to herself she would not gasp again, that she wouldn’t make a sound, but oh, it stung like crazy, and ouch, here it came again. It wasn’t terribly painful, yet the slaps kept coming, on and on, first one cheek then the other, in time with the striking of the bell. She squashed down a little “oof” and squirmed as each smack landed. She dared not cry out too loudly, as someone would surely hear her, if they hadn’t already heard the spanks. They were rhythmic and almost musical, starting to be too uncomfortable to bear anymore, and she couldn’t contain her gasps and “oofs” any longer. Her bottom already felt red hot, and still he went on spanking her. Suddenly, full realisation hit her as hard as his palm across her tender cheeks.

The clock, it chimed every night at nine, but not nine times, oh no; it chimed on Oxford time: one hundred and bloody one times.

“No. You can’t!” Her hands flew from the desk. She snapped round to find Alex looking at her and bloody smiling again.

“I didn’t say you could move. I haven’t finished.”

“I’m not taking a hundred and one of these!”

His expression was indulgent, not disappointed, yet he obviously expected her to fail this test. “Perhaps not this evening, no, but we’ll build up to it.”

“Build up to them? My backside’s burning already. It hurts!”

“Pain is a perception. It’s psychological, and I’m not spanking you that hard. They’re just glancing blows. They won’t do you any lasting harm, even though I’ll admit they probably do smart a bit.” S
mart a bit?
How could he be so cool about it when her behind was on fire? “I know it can’t be that awful. I can tell. It’s pretty obvious.”

He was right. She was so wet the juices trickled down her legs. Each slap sent a quiver of fire from her bottom to her clit and connected deep inside her brain too.

“Hands back on the desk, please, and we’ll try and get to twenty-one, shall we?”

Twenty-one…
She must have had twenty-one already! “How many have I had?” she asked through gritted teeth.

“About fourteen.”

“About? Aren’t you counting?”

“Fifteen, actually. You stood up during the last one, so it will have to be repeated. Now the bell is still striking, there’s still time. Focus on the chimes, and you’ll cope.”

She bent over, curling her fingers in a delicious agony of fear and anticipation. It’s not
really
hurting, she told herself. She was just being a wuss. She vowed she would not move or make a sound, so she clamped her lips together, determined not to even twitch.

Her next gasp morphed into a yowl as he cracked his palm down.

“Ow, ow, oww!”

He rained down three strokes with metronomic precision, each sharper and harder than the last one. Then it dawned on her, through the sizzling in her butt and the wonder that she could allow this at all, that Alex must have done this before. He was too skilled to be a novice, surely? Her heart plummeted, the adrenaline that was keeping her upright and coping with the onslaught ebbed away, and he still hadn’t finished.

“Three to go,” he said calmly. She scrunched her toes and tensed her thighs to try to tauten her throbbing glutes against the next slap. The final three were, perhaps, not quite so hard. Still, each one still left its fiery sting, and she squealed out loud every time. Then it stopped. The chimes continued in the distance as she fought to regain her breathing.

It had ended, but she was too afraid to move, sensing his hand inches from her skin. Surely he wasn’t going to start again? The clock had finished now; the time was over. He’d taken her to her limit and gone beyond it. She didn’t want any more strokes. She wanted something else.

Her face was wet with tears, whether of pain or release or some kind of twisted joy, she didn’t know. They trickled down her cheeks and onto her lips, salty and hot.

She expected him to raise her up and comfort her or apologise for a spanking so hard it had made her weep, but there was nothing, just an absence of his hand, a callous abandonment. She dared not turn round to face him, still too shocked at the clinical precision of the thrashing. Still too enraged with herself for letting him do it, for not moving, for the wetness between her thighs, for wanting his cock in her mouth.

Then she heard boards creak again, and she knew he had sunk to his knees behind her. She felt him slip her knickers over her feet and plant a gentle kiss in the centre of each cheek. It was a butterfly kiss, so light she could hardly feel it, but her skin was so sensitised, she winced. Anyone would think he was checking to see just how far he’d gone.

Then his fingers plunged inside her dripping sex, and she cried out louder than she had so far. The window was still open, and she didn’t care now who heard. Restraint was long gone. Still bending over his desk, she whimpered and squirmed as he feathered her pussy with his finger, the waves of pleasure diluting the throb in her bottom.

“Please…” Her voice sounded like it had been dragged over broken glass.

“Shh. Just enjoy.”

She moaned as his tongue rasped softly over her swollen clit. He licked and stroked and laved her, and she clutched the papers on his desk in her fists, screwing them into tight little balls, sparks firing inside her throbbing pussy. She couldn’t hold on any longer. She had started to disappear in on herself, to not exist anymore as her orgasm built. Her body only wanted one thing now, and she would trample the whole world to get it.

He slipped his fingers inside her again: one, then two, then three, and she shattered in his hands.

Carla panted, still lost in another world as she came down, her pussy still quivering, then stopping, then pulsing again. Alex’s fingers skittered down her back, stroking her spine as she opened her eyes to a mass of paper and his laptop inches from her nose, whirring softly. Outside, a motorbike roared along the street as she slowly returned to the world. Alex’s hands were beneath her arms, helping her to her feet with infinite gentleness and turning her to face him.

Finally he held her, and she rested her head on his shoulder, wetting the cotton of his dress shirt with her tears. He lifted her chin and kissed her mouth briefly and softly. “Was that enough attention for you,
cherie
?” he whispered.

She raised her eyes to his to see them bright with pleasure. He looked uplifted, and even though she’d only just recovered from a monster orgasm, she was desperate to have him inside her, filling her up to the core. “Mmm.”

She expected another kiss. Instead, he stepped backwards, dropping his hands from her back. He checked his watch again, and she felt him slipping away as the room grew colder.

What was happening here? She needed to know the next part of the game, if it was a game. She gulped down disappointment. What if a game was the only terms he could meet her on? Could she live with that?

“How could you do that?” she asked.

“Why did you let me?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have an answer.”

He shrugged. “Sometimes there are no answers.”

“You don’t really believe that. Not the great Professor Lemaitre. You always have an answer or a theory.”

A sad smile crossed his lips. “You overestimate me, Carla. Either that or you’re deliberately baiting me. No one knows everything, and perhaps there are some things even I don’t want to analyse or explain. And it’s getting late. I think you should go and join your friends.”

He was sending her away from him again, the equivalent of calling her a cab to put as much distance as possible between them.

Just like that?

“What about…?” What about making love to her? Taking her to his bed? Letting her give him some attention.

“Your essay?” He retrieved it from the pages littering the floorboards. No. No, she didn’t mean her bloody essay. She meant so much more, but she would never beg him to make love to her.

“Yes. I suppose so,” she said.

He held out the essay like a consolation prize for not having fucked her. “Have you got any other ideas?”

“I wrote something about the hierarchy of estates in Austen’s novels. I think I can dig it out.” She sounded sullen, like a teenage version of herself, the one that had known best and walked out of school halfway through her A levels.

“Good. Send me that one, and I’ll grade it.”