Chapter 5 #2
Heat coursed through me in a thousand different rivers; every river converged between my thighs and sang down to the soles of my feet and then back up again to shimmer underneath Bell’s lips.
The pleasure I felt on my neck was matched, magnified even, by what thrummed in that forbidden part of my body, by what ached and flared there.
I had never—No one had ever said—You heard about kissing on the lips and you heard about sex, but this was something entirely unheard of, unknown, unrevealed.
Bell’s mouth on my neck—and oh my God, on my throat—wet, sucking, tasting…
I was suddenly, dazzlingly, made physical.
So physical that the rest of me barely existed, as if whatever electrical frissons made up my intellectual self had been thoroughly overrun by the hot flickers sent up by my nervous system.
I was gasping and then I was more than gasping. A helpless whimper left me, a plaintive little noise.
Bell gave a low, torn groan. His other hand came up to cage me against the chalkboard, and his hips came against mine, our thighs slotting as he pressed close. The long, flowing skirt I wore lifted enough that I could feel the air around my ankles.
“Let me kiss you,” he breathed, mouth on my jaw now. He moved to smell my hair again and then my neck. “God, Birdie. Can I kiss you? Tell me I can kiss you. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it.”
I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t think at all.
My thoughts were nothing, scattered like blown sawdust, and his mouth was all I could think of.
Well, that and the hand in my hair, so incomprehensibly large and warm.
And his hips against mine. And that thigh now pressing against the center of my legs and I—oh, sweet God—I had no idea what to do with this feeling.
It curled in my stomach, squeezed like a cramp, matched the tightness in my ribs and the trembling in my thighs.
“Please, baby,” he groaned against my cheek. “Please let me kiss you.”
Baby. It was ridiculous to be called that by someone seven years younger than me, by a college student, and yet the giddy warmth that flushed through me was undeniable.
Just as undeniable was the reflexive panic, the terror, the uncertainty.
I’d never been kissed, never even been close to being kissed, never even had the chance to consider what it would be like.
Busy was whom people kissed, or Kaitlyn, when she decided her rules for other people didn’t apply to her. Not me. Never me.
And we couldn’t. We couldn’t kiss. It was as impossible as the idea that Bell wanted to kiss me at all.
“Birdie?” he whispered, pulling back to look at me.
I tried to look away—an instinct, a tuck of my chin to my shoulder—but that large hand wouldn’t allow it, wouldn’t grant me even that escape. Those blue eyes burned into mine, the irises paler than a winter morning but his pupils dilated into pools of night.
“Birdie, please say yes. Say I can kiss you.”
My voice was shaky when I spoke, but the words were certain. “We can’t.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Who says we can’t?”
“You’re my student,” I whispered.
“Until Saturday, and then I’m nobody’s student. The grades are submitted. There’s no conflict of interest.”
“It’s against the student safety policy and the student-teacher fraternization policy.”
“Again, I’m days away from not being a student. You’re no longer a teacher at all, only a resident.”
“I’m older than you,” I said, wishing he weren’t making me look at him because the intensity in those eyes… It was so hard to think. “And it’s not right.”
“I know you’re older than me,” he said with a small, tender smile. The intense look in his eyes didn’t diminish one bit. “And it’s perfectly right. A kiss, Birdie. People do it all the time.”
“Not the way you want to kiss me,” I whispered, and he let out a laugh, deep and warm and so, so heavenly. Like music. Like the sun. You just wanted to be close to that laugh. Inside it.
“You’re right, you’re right,” he said, a dimple burrowing deep into his cheek. “Not the way I want to kiss you.”
“We can’t,” I repeated. But I was still caged by that hand splayed on the chalkboard by my head, by his hand in my hair. By his eyes.
“Are you saying no, Birdie? Are you telling me I can’t kiss you?”
My lips parted to answer. Of course that was what I was telling him—of course I was saying no.
But the answer wouldn’t come.
It was the oddly perilous feeling of his hips against mine. It was that mouth, still wet from kissing my neck. It was the way his eyes roved over my face, like he had to make sure I was still right in front of him.
Victory flashed in his eyes. “I see,” he said softly.
I shook my head as quickly as I could with his hand there. “We can’t,” I said again. Hoping that would be enough.
“Tell me no.”
I couldn’t. And even now I can’t say if it was because of the churning want inside me or because saying no to Bell felt impossible. He was so much, a demigod, and how could a mortal say no? To his charm and that unearthly determination beneath it?
He pulled his lower lip briefly between his teeth, not taking his eyes from mine. Assessing. “Say yes.” He spoke it like a dare. “If you won’t say no, then say yes.”
I shook my head again. “I could get fired. And it isn’t seemly.” And if you kiss me and then forget about it later—or worse, laugh about it—I don’t know if I can endure it.
“Seemly? No, I wouldn’t want it to be.” His voice grew low. “I don’t think seemly thoughts about you. I have no seemly plans. Everything I want from you is unwholesome and obscene.”
I just stared at him, mouth open, heart pounding.
He was so handsome, and this moment couldn’t be real, and the entire world was a lie if it were real.
Friendly Bell. Warm, popular, courteous Bell.
Bell who helped his classmates and volunteered at the coat closet and held wayward kittens in his shirt for an entire class and petted them to sleep.
He wanted unwholesome things from me.
“I was wrong about you,” I said. The words were barely audible, but he heard them.
A dimple flashed. “What were you wrong about?”
“I thought you were…good.”
Another laugh like the music of heaven. “Tell me no, Birdie. Because if you don’t, I’m going to kiss you anyway.”
“You—that’s not—you can’t do that. It’s not right.”
The hand in my hair pulled tight. “I don’t care,” he said, and the honesty was so plain in his voice that it sent a chill down my spine. He really didn’t care. He couldn’t be made to care. He leaned close. “I only want you. No matter the cost. And if you don’t say no…”
“I have to say yes for you to kiss me. Those are the rules,” I said desperately, and he snorted, pressing his face into the side of mine.
“And what would you know of the rules, pretty bird?” he asked kindly.
Nothing. I knew only what I’d been told, the theory as taught by a church that broke its own rules so often that no one expected differently anymore.
But I’d been told I was supposed to enthusiastically consent.
That was a rule. And now Bell was breaking it as his mouth moved on my jaw over to mine.
“I think,” he murmured, “that you should let me kiss you and then decide. How will you know you like kissing me if you haven’t done it? And I’ll kiss you so good, I promise. I’ll make those pretty eyes water. I’ll make those pretty nipples hard.”
His last statement was staggering in how lurid it sounded to me, and it didn’t even matter because he moved a hand to my chest at the same time as he said it and squeezed.
It was the first time I’d ever been squeezed there, and the blazing pleasure flaring against his hand and between my legs drove the breath from my lungs.
I arched helplessly against him, and when he squeezed again, I moaned.
How did anyone endure a feeling like this? And when it was given by someone who looked like him?
“I know,” he said. “I know, baby. Tell me no. Say it, Birdie, because I’m not going to wait any longer.”
But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t say yes and I couldn’t say no…and at least Eve chose her fate in Eden. She may have been tricked, beguiled, plied, but she still reached for the fruit herself. She still ate it willingly.
In the end, I merely moaned when it was brought to my lips—and then opened my mouth anyway.