15. Claire
fifteen
He stoodup to leave ten minutes ago, but for some reason, he’s still in my classroom.
Nathan.
Maybe if we’re on a first name basis, I won’t seem like a monster to everyone else.
All of a sudden, he’s peeling like an onion, shedding his layers like a lizard in heat, and leaving his armor all over my floor.
But he isn’t saying anything. He’s simply sitting here, in the same chair I’d just made him sit in while he’d iced his forehead, watching me set up centers for my class for tomorrow.
Tomorrow. My last day in Juliet’s class before she comes back from maternity leave. She’ll be in tomorrow to shadow with me and answer any questions for the kids after they’ve finished their assignments, and then, the classroom is all hers. I’ve already been here for six weeks. It’s crazy how time seems to fly when you’re finally doing something for yourself.
I put the finishing touches on the last table, then stand with my hands on my hips, tilting my head with an appreciative hum.
“Looks good.”
The gravelly texture of his voice is unexpected, and shoots a tingle down my spine.
“Thanks.”
I turn and offer him a soft smile, then slowly head back to my desk to start packing up my things. It feels selfish, to have extended my night so long that I’ll arrive at home in time to skip helping with anything at all. I’ll be duty free tonight, but it comes at the cost of staying at school until the last possible minute. I swallow that guilt when I feel the weight of Nathan’s gaze still heavy on me, tracking me as I walk across the room.
“Why are you here so late?”
I hesitate, my obnoxiously large water tumbler suspended halfway to its special pocket in my tote bag.
Chillax, Claire. He’s not going to call your mommy and tattle.
“Just wanted to make sure everything is set for tomorrow, and get the room nice and ready for Juliet when she comes back from maternity leave,” I say, tucking my tumbler into its cupholder pouch before sliding in my laptop and zipping the bag shut.
“That’s nice of you.”
“She’s had six weeks with that beautiful baby. I’m sure she wants to come back to a smoothly running classroom. It’s the least I could do.”
“I’m sure she’ll be appreciative.”
“Mhm.”
He seems almost like he’s talking just to talk now, and when I zip my fleece jacket on and loft the strap of my tote over my shoulder, I realize he hasn’t moved. It’s the juxtaposition of his rigidity, and the way he looks like a ball of clay ready to melt at any touch, that throws me off. I don’t think I’ve seen this man as anything but firm and strict, but suddenly, his vulnerabilities are trying to bulldoze through to the surface. A peek at the clock tells me that it’s closer now to eight o’clock than it is to seven. Biting my lip, I walk toward him and extend my hand.
“I think it’s probably out of juice by now. Here. I’ll toss it.”
He hands me the ice pack, and I’m stunned at the disappointment I feel when our skin doesn’t touch. After I toss it, and see that he still hasn’t gotten up from the chair, I take a seat in the student desk nearest him.
“So.”
He’s staring at his clasped hands, threading them in and out slowly. He tilts his head toward me, and it’s like I can see the thoughts swimming in the forest of his eyes. They’re buried deep down into the jungle, but they’re there somewhere.
“Why do you have an ice pack in your purse?”
I chuckle, my whole upper body jolting as I smile.
“Because Ryan can’t make it twenty-four hours without procuring some kind of injury. I’ve just learned to be prepared. I have a whole box in my car.”
He smiles, but it immediately collapses into intrigue.
“Who is Ryan?”
“Oh! Sorry. Ryan is my little brother.”
Something about the way his body relaxes, the tension slipping off of his shoulders as they fall, makes me wonder who he thought I was talking about. Makes me wonder why he cares. Makes me wonder why I care if he does.
No wife. No girlfriend either.
“How many siblings do you have?”
He interrupts that particular train of thought, and I swallow the tension that knotted in my throat.
“Five. I’m the oldest. And I was pretty perfect for the first eight years, but then the ‘rents decided to try to duplicate me five different times, and well…”
I shrug, eyes widening as if to say all that I typically keep in. The ones I spilled to him at the bar last week without even thinking twice.
Nathan’s brows bunch together, a divot forming above the bridge of his glasses, and something in me wants to press forward and smooth it out with my thumb.
“So you’re here late because…”
The cut-and-dry man returns. Straight to the point. I swallow, choosing my words carefully enough that I don’t have to give it all away.
“Home is loud,” I shrug. There is a sadness in my voice that I don’t expect. My gaze falls to my lap, where I smooth over my fresh nail polish. “Sometimes it gets too loud to think, so I figured, if I was here instead of there, at least I’d get to pick the music.”
I slip my thumb over my phone screen and Taylor Swift blares for a second before I pause it again.
“You do a lot of the heavy lifting at home, don’t you?”
The tone of his voice, the soft silk, wraps me in empathy. A weight on my shoulders slips. Falls. Tumbles right into Nathan’s awaiting palms, like it has simply been waiting all this time for him to catch it.
“Yeah.”
Oh, God, why are there tears in my eyes?
I shake my head, laughing nervously, shucking them away with the backs of my hands as I stand.
“Oh my God, I am so sorry, I?—”
“Shh. Stop.”
He takes my hand, gripping it between both of his, and I look down to where he still sits. Bump on his forehead. Hazel eyes swimming behind his glasses. Lips pursed tightly, like he’s trying to hold in all of the things he wants to say.
“I know how it feels, Claire. Sometimes, things were so hard, I just wanted to run away from it all. But that would mean abandoning my brother, and I couldn’t do that either.”
I watch the heavy, tense breaths expanding in his chest, in the same moment that my heart seems to find its missing piece in the middle of this classroom.
We both have so much more to say. So much more that I want to uncover. But for tonight, it stays buried in hidden text that we’ll have to find out next time. The hallway lights flicker off, pulling both of us from the moment. I slide my hand from his.
“I shouldget home. Gotta get my beauty rest in and all of that jazz.”
I head for the door, and this time, he follows.
“I’ll walk you out,” is all he says on our otherwise silent walk out of the building.
He has no bag, no coat, and I wonder what he’ll spend the rest of his night doing. Why he’s here so late. I didn’t end up asking, but now doesn’t seem like we’d have quite enough time for all the answers I want.
Because suddenly, I’m longing to spend more time talking to him. To find the secrets hidden in his eyes, behind the late night hour and the reasons that he uses the building to escape.
We arrive at my car—the used, 2009 Accord that I bought with my own money—and face one another in the evening dusk.
He’s searching for the words to say. I can see the cogs turning behind his square frames, can hear the gears shifting, and give him the time while I listen to the encouraging chirps of the crickets.
“You have done an excellent job in Mrs. Ford’s classroom, Claire. We are incredibly lucky to have you. To keep you.”
Oh. Something in my people-pleasing gut has shifted, because this man’s praise? It suddenly has my skin hot.
“I feel confident that you’ll work wonders in the rest of these classrooms. Especially with what you and Lucy are working on. You make a difference, Claire.”
I thought I’d been imagining the sparks where our skin had touched earlier, hell, in the way his eyes had almost twinkled at the library. But here in the moonlight, with his body inches from mine, I can feel a pull. And hey, it very well might be my libido tugging on my praise kink, but I want him to keep saying nice things to me.
Instead, I swallow, and stare at the space between our bodies. I might thrive on praise, but I’ve always been terrible at taking it.
“Thank you, Mr. Harding.”
I imagined that growly sound in the back of his throat, right?
Well, if I did, I definitely didn’t imagine the way he just shifted slightly forward.
The way his fist tightened at his side.
The crotch of his pants swelling slightly. Yeah. They weren’t this tight before. Not that I was looking closely enough to notice.
I don’t get the chance to scrutinize what he’s working with before his finger is beneath my chin, tilting my gaze up and toward his.
If my skin wasn’t on fire before, it’s sizzling against his now. And it’s straight up competing with the smoldering embers in his eyes.
“What did I say earlier?”
The gasp that escapes when I part my lips to answer definitely has the power to transform into a moan if he keeps talking to me like this.
“Nathan. Sorry. Nathan.”
“Good—”
He stops himself, pinching his eyes closed and immediately stepping backward, grunting again.
If he was holding onto the word girl…
I would’ve combusted on the spot.
“Get home safely, Ms. Benson. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I don’t get the chance to correct him with his abrupt turn and fast-walk back toward the building.
On the car ride home, I crank the air.
I wasn’t lying to him when I said that home was too loud to think. The middle of the night is when I get in my quiet time. My time to read or write or mindlessly surf the web without one of the littles begging for my phone so they can play Minecraft or watch YouTube. I thought tonight’s drug of choice would be the latest episode in my favorite true crime podcast that I can’t listen to in the car when I have the kids, but tonight, my mind is completely elsewhere.
You know what week no one ever talks about when it comes to women? It’s the week when you’re unbearably horny. Combining this week with Nathan Harding’s hands on me and the phantom of him calling me a good girl, and I know what I’m doing with my “me time” before I’ve even rolled into the driveway.
Living in a house full of people has meant two things for my sex life: no vibrators, and I’ve learned to master the silent orgasm.
Tonight though, I long for something other than my own fingers. Because something tells me that they won’t do justice to the fantasy I’ve been concocting on my car ride home of Nathan towering over me. His praises of my classroom work shifting in the bedroom to the tune of those unsaid words. I get more and more wet with each pass that the Nathan in my head calls me a Good girl.
Unfortunately, as my slim fingers slip past my waistband, as I swirl over my clit, bypass it, and go straight for my wet pussy, I am right. Two fingers aren’t enough to satisfy the image of Nathan’s hard on that I saw earlier with what I imagine he would do to me behind closed doors. Not when the man in my head has my ankles up by my shoulders, is slapping my clit before tapping the thick head of his cock against my opening.
I’m usually so, so quiet, but all of a sudden, I’m reaching for a pillow to cover my face before that hand is blindly slipping under my tank top, pinching my swollen nipples as Fantasy Nathan flicks his tongue over one and bites.
His cock is thicker than it is long, but it fills me so so good, and I know I draw blood as I bite down on my bottom lip, slip a third finger into my wetness, and swipe my thumb over my aching clit.
It doesn’t take long at all for me to come. For the first time since I started locking my bedroom door, I actually fear I might make a noise that sounds the alarms. But I keep it to a shrill whine that is mostly muffled by my pillow, as the Nathan in my head demands that I come, and I give him exactly what he asks for.