“My mobile,” I gasp. “Can I answer?”
His response is physical, precipitating a long ‘Oooooh’ of pain at the fresh sting on my burning cheeks, but then he fishes into my bag and draws out the chirrupping phone, handing it to me.
It is Dearbhla.
“Hello,” I say, craning my neck round to look up at Sinclair’s impassive face.
“What the hell is going on? You’ve been in there ages. You’re not in bed with him, are you?”
“Not exactly.” Sinclair adds a couple more strokes to the total. “I’m on the phone!” I shriek, outraged at his…effrontery. “Look, I’ve got to go…I’ll be with you in…” I give him a querying look. “Fifteen minutes?? Fifteen?? OK, fifteen minutes. Get me a pint in…ouch! No, I’m fine. Bye.”
For the next ten minutes he sears my rear in fine style, making it abundantly clear that I can expect a lot more of this during our forthcoming ‘private lessons’. Relentless and painful as it is, it is also making me insanely horny…and I’m not the only one…unless he has a gun in his pocket. Regardless of the heat of my ru
mp and my annoyance at his bloody endless nagging, I feel a little disappointed that he is going to send me to meet my friends in the pub in only five minutes time. Not long enough for anything untoward to happen. Though if this isn’t untoward, I don’t know what is. I imagine the scandal that would ensue if my lips sprung a leak in the vicinity of Mags Parker, the editor of the university newspaper. Heh heh. It would be fabulous.
But then it would never happen again…and that is not what I want at all.
He casts the final few handprints on my derriere and then rests his weary spanking arm with a long sigh.
“Well, that’s a start,” he opines. “Stand up, Miss Newland, in front of me, if you please.”
It is almost more difficult to stand up and face him than it was to go over his knee. I can barely look at him, I am so overwhelmed with a fatal commingling of mortification and lust.
“Some appreciation of the time and effort I have just expended on you would not go amiss,” he snaps severely. He wants me to thank him! He is such a perve. Mmm.
“Thank you, sir,” I say meekly.
He inclines his head in acknowledgement, never lowering the menacing look he has fixed me with once more.
“Now go and join your friends, and I hope the discomfort you experience when sitting will have a salutory effect on your behaviour, Miss Newland. I will see you here again at seven on Sunday. Yes?”
“Yes, sir. Goodnight.” I lunge for my tote bag, throwing the contended essay on to the sofa beside him. He gives me the merest flicker of a smile before pointing silently to the door.
I run out, down the stairs, along the gravel drive, down the road. It isn’t until I am out of range of his vast windows that I lean back against a wall, beneath a bush and breathe. Really breathe. My posterior is stinging like a bastard but my heart is full. What a man. I think I’m in love.
Chapter Two
“You what? He’s going to give you extra lessons at his own place? You did go to bed with him, didn’t you?” gasps Emily.
“No, I didn’t!” I insist, shifting about uncomfortably on my arse and trying to use lager as an analgesic.
“What were you doing in there all that time then?” demands Dearbhla. “Looking at his etchings?”
“Yeah, if it’ll shut you up, we shagged each other senseless. He said he’d loved me ever since he first set eyes on me and threw me on the floor then and there.”
Emily looks at me mistrustfully. “It’s just a bit strange, though, isn’t it? Do you think he really does fancy you?”
My heart is shot through with a lancing pain. Is it too much to hope?
“Obviously, judging by the way he ruthlessly dismantled my self-esteem, he’s mad about me.” I swig moodily at my pint. “Hi, James.”
James Winthrop from Opsoc smiles shyly on his way past. He is very cute. No Professor Eliot Sinclair though. Oh dear. This has really thrown me for a loop.
I excuse myself and sidle into the Ladies’ to check the state of my backside. A lobsterous crimson meets my eye, unlikely to fade for some time – I can’t convince myself it was a dream. Is he really going to do it all again on Sunday?
For the first time in…well, ever, actually….I leave the pub before closing time, wanting nothing more than to lie on my stomach in my bed and revisit the event over and over in my head. Already his harsh approach is mending my ways! By Monday perhaps I will have quit smoking as well.
*