Page 44 of The Rest is History
The look of surprise on her face gives me the tiniest jolt of satisfaction. I forge ahead.
‘I’m frustrated that you completely disregarded my lesson plan for yesterday and taught the lesson the way you felt likeit. You’ve put me behind schedule and you’ve messed with the cadence of my syllabus.’
Her mouth curves slowly into a smile as I’m speaking. ‘Right. Of course that’s why you’re angry.’
‘What do you mean?’
She licks her lips as if she’s considering how to phrase what she says next, and God help me, my gaze fixates on the quick dart of her pink tongue.
‘You’re pissed off because I had a bloody great lesson with your class, Charlie. They were on fire, and you don’t like it. Did Tallulah tell you she was practically in tears by the end of the lesson? You could have heard a pin drop in there. It was one of those teaching moments you don’t get very often, and I’m still pretty chuffed with it. But honestly, there’s no need for sour grapes. It’s not cool.’
Of course I’m pissed off that she had a great lesson. It’s like she broke the teacher code, like she betrayed me, even though I know that’s bollocks. But everyone knows that when you fill in for another teacher, you stick to their material. Their style. You do your best, and you leave quietly so they can return and do their job. You don’t undermine them, show them up, dazzle their students so much they still have hearts in their eyes hours later.
You don’t waltz into someone else’s classroom and make their students fall in love with you.
‘That’s nothing to do with it,’ I lie stiffly. ‘Engagement and education are not mutually exclusive. The fascination with those trials, and the downfall of a faction, lie in examining the facts. The timeline. Not romanticising them and stirring up emotions.’
‘Oh.’ She huffs out a scathing laugh. ‘Of course that’s what I was doing. Of course the whole class thought Anne and Henry’s story wasterribly romanticby the time we’d finished. They thought he was a spineless fucking monster and she was a martyr who was way ahead of her time. And of course I shouldstir up emotions. How the hell else should we expect them to engage? Are you telling me you teach this period because you like thefacts? That you dress up as Henry every Saturday to make sure the visitors have theirfactsstraight?
‘I don’t think so. You teach it because you love it, and I love it, and nothing would make us happier than having our students fall in love with it too, in all its glorious, fucked-up magnificence.’
She leans in, and my stupid dick twitches as my eyes drink in her face greedily. Her eyes are shining. Her mouth is so soft, and pink, and beguiling. And right. There. And the insolence of what’s coming out of it is making me so fucking mad I can’t think straight.
‘We’re on the same team, you obtuse, infuriating idiot,’ she says. ‘And if I had a small win yesterday, and got your class even a little bit more engaged with the period, then I thank you for the opportunity.’ She pauses. ‘And that’s your cue to thank me for finding a way to bring these events to life.’
I dig in. Take a step towards her, closing the gap between us even further. At this proximity, she has to look up to me, and I’m rewarded by the exposed white curve of her throat.
‘I’m not thanking you, and you’re delusional if you think I am. I gave you a simple assignment, and you let me down. What you did was disrespectful, and that’s not the way I run my department.’
She stares at me in disbelief before her eyes narrow. ‘Seriously? Listen to yourself! This isn’t some medieval tyranny, Charlie. You are not Richard III. I am an adult, we’re all adults, and we all try our hardest every day to do a tough job with our hands tied behind our back because of the stupid syllabus. I respect that you’re my boss, Monday to Friday anyway, but don’t fucking well talk to me like I should know myplace, because that’s whatIcall disrespectful.’
She glares at me, her breath coming quickly, and I can see she’s shaking, and fuck, I’m shaking too. Because I don’t trust it. I don’t trust the way this conversation is making me feel. I don’t trust the rush of blood away from my head to my cock, making me feel like time is slowing down and my senses are picking up and all I can think about is her eyes and her mouth and her taste and her smell and thatneck.
And the fact that I haven’t felt this alive for months, years, maybe, and that this feels more like Anne and Henry’s form of foreplay than fighting.
I don’t trust it. But I loveit.
‘You are sofuckinginfuriating,’ I hiss, and I make a grab for the back of her head and smash our mouths together.
CHAPTER 18
Charlie
The relief at having my hands and mouth full of Elodie hits me like a tidal wave. This isn’t like last week’s kiss. This is primal. I’m acting on pure instinct, the intoxicating cocktail of her taste and smell blowing all rational thought out of the window.
There’s no finesse from either of us. I claw at the back of her hood to bring our faces as close together as physically possible. I suck her sweet lower lip into my mouth while my tongue makes a desperate plea for access, dragging a line over its pillowy softness.
Licking.
Exploring.
Worshipping.
God. She’s fucking heavenly. She opens her mouth immediately, and I thrust my tongue inside as she scrabbles at my layers with her hands. Thanks to the coat and the padding of my doublet, there’s far too much fabric between us. She gets a hand to my head and knocks my feathered cap off, pulling at my hair, her fingernails digging into my scalp.
My tongue does decadent laps, exploring the sweet, sweet interior of her mouth and entangling itself with her deliciouslittle tongue. That tongue I’ve obsessed over. I aminside her fucking mouth,and she’s so warm and wet I could die. I’m lost in a honeyed paradise, our lips dragging and pulling, the friction building as our tongues dance.
I clamp a hand around the perfect arch that is the small of her back, pulling her as close to my front as physically possible. She’s arching even more now, her breasts smashed against my doublet. My cock is straining against the padding of my ridiculous codpiece, one small step closer to getting what it’s always wanted.
