Teacher's Pet

8. TAYLOR

I told myself I didn’t know what had overcome me, but I knew what had overcome me. It was him. All of him. The promise of him. The excitement of him. Everything about him. He came over and it felt like the most wonderful cold plash of sweat down my neck. I wanted more of it, like a nerve he pressed to give me a boner I couldn’t let go.

Gabriel had invited me back to the Manor again tonight, since I’d shown so much interest in the place. I refused the advance, even though I would’ve loved to have gone, even if it meant I was able to see what else I could do with my new little kitten. But I didn’t want to eat little meals before my main meal, so I refused the invite.

He still didn’t ask about why the sudden interest, and I was scared to admit to him that it was because of a student. The last thing I wanted him to think was that I was just as sex crazed as he was. He’d slept with people he’d employed, and he’d employed people for sex. This was different to his thing. I wasn’t trying to do something taboo to get me off, but he wasn’t going to be my student for much longer.

In my apartment as I heated soup over a hob and looked at my school emails on the new laptop, I noticed a new one appear.

From: Asher Colson

To: Taylor Stirling

Hi Professor,

I’m just sending you this email to tell you how excited I am for the test on Wednesday. I look forward to proving you wrong. I hope it’s not too hard, we both know I want to graduate and get myself a big boy job.

Anyway, I’m prepared. That’s all I wanted to say.

Are you prepared?

Oh. Fuck. This wasn’t the right place for him to be sending me stuff like this. It was coded with language I knew. But my emails on this account weren’t private. The college could easily go through any of this at any time.

Turning the heat down on my soup so it didn’t burn, I typed back an email.

From: Taylor Stirling

To: Asher Colson

Thank you for your email, Asher. I am glad you’re looking forward to the test on Wednesday. Remember that this is a practice for the final exam you’ll be sitting. And it’s always best to get as much practice in as possible before that exam.

Have a great evening.

That had to have been enough to show it was really about the exam and looking back at my own reply. I wondered if I was coding my own message. “As much practice as possible,” I mumbled as I read. “Oh.”

My body still wasn’t over the way his hands and mouth had made me feel earlier. The way he’d been on all fours and ready to suck and tug until I blew. I didn’t think I would blow so quick, but it had been months since I’d been touched by someone else like that, and it just happened.

Taking a deep breath, I closed the lid of my laptop, so I didn’t feel the need to see if he was going to respond. I poured my soup into a bowl and tore up a day-old bread baguette for dipping.

My TV was already on. The Great Food Truck Race was playing from the DVR. It was a wild show, but I loved some of their creations, even if I knew I wasn’t as experimental as they were to create something so wild.

I owned my apartment, which was nice. It was on the top floor and there was a bar on the street level. I never went in there, they served wings and beer. It wasn’t my scene. I was much more of a nice handmade pasta with a sauce and a glass of wine.

I had to give it to Gabriel for sometimes getting me out of my comfort zone. In my life, I’d had a handful of short relationships. I’d experimented with different things during that time too, but I always felt like I was the one changing for them, and in my forty-two years on earth, I should’ve known already not to change for someone.

“On this leg of the race, you’ll be heading down to the local beach, during this time, you must compete against each other to sell the most crab leg dishes,” the presenter of the show announced.

It was always something weird and wacky like that.

“But Tyler, it’s almost winter, the beach will be empty,” a contestant replied as the camera panned to them in a slow zoom.

“That’s the name of the game, you have from now until I call you to sell. And the truck that sells the most will get an extra four-hundred dollars in the till,” he said with a huge menacing grin before clapping his hands and shooing them away.

This was my idea of fun. Putting people in situations like this and making them do something like that. Perhaps it was the psychology and sociology view of things, but I enjoyed these types of reality TV experiments. Now, if I was on the show, I’d have priced the crab legs at their base value and sold as many as I could.

Dipping the bread into my soup, I looked around at the empty room. I wanted someone I could talk to about stuff like this, nonsense stuff that didn’t affect anyone. I was missing out on that; I was missing out on a lot of stuff.

Asher’s touch and attention had got me thinking. I knew I was touch starved, but at least I knew it wasn’t something I required. All I needed in this life was to be mentally stimulate. And I shouldn’t have even been thinking about Asher like that, he was physically stimulating at most. Mentally stimulating, there was a lot lacking, even if we hadn’t had a full conversation that didn’t revolve around either of our bodies or the sexual tension we’d created.

A knock came at my door just as I finished my soup.

Asher stood there. He swung a backpack around from his shoulder. “You invited me over to practice,” he said.

“I—”

“You invited me over.” He chuckled, gently tapping my shoulder. “Do you always dress like that? I thought you had normal clothes, like the stuff you went to the Manor in.”

I placed a hand at the side of the door. “You definitely got the wrong idea,” I told him. “And how did you find my apartment?”