Kissing lesson
During a cold January, Headmaster Neill has taken Natalia on a secret trip to London. After a day with his friends to whom she pretended to be 19, she's walking with him along Blackfriars’ Bridge after dark. He is about to give her a lesson to remember... but this is just the start!
‘Thought I said to wrap up warm?’ He took his hands to pull her coat collars, now the sides of her face, softly stroking, which felt like tingling, almost tickling, that made her smile grow like a weed in the sun.
‘Sorry I had to kiss you earlier at brunch. Did it frighten you?’
‘Shut up, no.’
Her eyes lowered, as he drew away again to rummage for a fag, and she watched his lips pucker up illuminated, as he cast a sultry look of query at her.
‘Has a man or... boy, ever kissed you before?’
‘Er... no, that was the first,’ knowing that any attempt at a lie wouldn’t work, but with a cock of her head, looking away, she thought of Ryan, and what was a rather distinguishable conquest to have been asked out by him the other day, and murmured back:
‘But there’s someone at school I might, er...’
‘Who?’ his eyes glinted with the light of the lamp-posts.
She was silent.
‘Tell me who!’
‘Ryan. In my class,’ she said, glancing over the river.
‘Ryan Welsh?’ he looked bemused.
‘Well, I don’t know. He’s alright.’
He chuckled as he dragged. ‘Pretty naughty isn’t he, for a goodie-two-shoes like you?’
She stared with a frown of irony. ‘Opposites attract.’
‘You like bad boys?’
She shrugged.
‘Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,’ he sighed, putting his fag-holding hand on her shoulder. ‘And how bad do you like them to be?’
‘I saw Ryan once swear at a teacher. One that deserved it. I liked that.’
‘Meanwhile I just fire and... roast them. But the chances of Ryan having any experience with girls are the same as getting higher than a dismal D on a single one of his exams... ’
She laughed.
‘Shame, for a girl so bright as you,’ he continued, his eyes now lingering over her face, ‘although maybe that’s why he’d go for you. To help put him right again.’
She cast him a sceptical look.
'And if you really want a date with... Ryan Welsh—′
She grinned, glaring, 'shut up.′
‘Then this trip gives you a little practice, hmm? At least one of you two rigid, doe-eyed virgins should know how to kiss. So come here, and I’ll give you a lesson.’
‘Oh, really,’ as her face started to colour.
‘Besides, the weekend’s only half done and you need to get used to it.’ He crushed the remaining fag end against the wall and dropped it on the ground, as if it that were the starter and she were the main course, reached his hand to her shoulder in a most decided fashion - which prompted that rattling feeling inside her again - as he uttered:
‘Come here.’
He brought his hands to either side of her face again to seize her toward him, whilst she recollected herself as well as she could, trying to fast plaster a smooth look of nonchalance over her inner Niagara of nerves, as her darting eyes slowed onto his, and all of a sudden his face was on hers - and there was a moment of ‘oh my god’ coming from her lips as his lips caught them. Moist softness and the taste of tobacco was upon her, intermingled with those pricks of stubble again, as the motion slowly moved through three seconds and she was frozen in a moment of greater intimidation and awe than the kiss earlier; the blood drained from her legs and seemed to pop like fireworks in her stomach, as he now withdrew and dropped his fingers to either side of her neck, as she blinked at him.
He smiled. ‘How did that feel?’
She recollected herself with a smirking ‘yeah,’ blinking to the river.
‘That’s not the lesson by the way. That’s just a hello.’
‘Er, oh.’
‘The Tate is eleven minutes’ walk from Blackfriars. We’ve walked six. I’m doubling the remaining time for this lesson,′ as his hands swivelled her bewildered face back to his: ‘So do your Maths, young lady, and tell me how many minutes this next one is going to be?’
Blinking in his hands, barely able to think where she even was:
‘Well, er, that kiss was like five seconds, so...’
‘Times that by how many calories Ed said a cake slice was.’
‘Ohhh. God. I’m confused...’
He scooped her back to him. ‘Five times sixty is...?’
‘Three hundred.’
‘And three hundred seconds is?’ with a teacherly tone. ′Five...?′
‘Minutes,’ she said sceptically.
‘Aww, you’re so much better at Maths than Ryan,’ he simpered, as he caught her laughing face into a thick arm around her neck and planted his lips again on hers; this time they were parted, on her parted lips, but just as slow, and she could feel his tongue slightly, just resting within, and this time she was moving her lips back on his, which lasered shock into her insides, to feel herself participating, as if in just that micro reciprocation she was approving of everything salacious said and ‘done’ to her by Neill and this illicit trip, and his little breathy moan of approval back, which only served to make her shudder and fall a centimetre from his lips for a second to gasp, during which he muttered softly, fag scent impregnating her nostrils:
'So very good... but you’re got four and a half minutes left...'
She giggled now, clinging to humour as her shield for her awkwardness, but his hand clung just as fast to her, returning to her face to guide her cheek: ‘Back.’ - ‘Oh fuck,’ shot out her whisper, and he took both his hands firmly to her face again, and his lips uttered before they landed: ‘This time you open your mouth more,’ and kissed her heartily, for a full minute of pure delirium, slipping his one hand away halfway through, with an intermittent purr of ‘good, good,’ as his other hand shifted to clamp around the back of her neck, and her breaths, now deep but regular, sailed her through this ongoing odyssey of lips and tongue and saliva and breaths and stubble and tobacco... whilst figures walked past on the now-dark Blackfriars Bridge; they stood mouth-locked on the river, as though unseen amongst a mighty sea of important London no-ones. Oh my fucking god, she kept thinking, Neill is kissing me like a full-blown lover, Neill likes me, this can’t be bloody pretence, oh my god, when will this even stop, it’s weird, but it’s fucking lovely, it’s everything I wanted, but oh god...
By the time he came off, her pelvis felt like a mass of soft pulverised meat, softly throbbing in various vague areas that her brain, fuzzy and muddied, couldn’t even operate to identity. Gazing dazed at the pavement, half falling or being pulled by him, into his chest, his voice was now somewhere in her hair, saying:
‘Turns out I don’t mind teaching.’
She buckled over the wall ledge. ‘I can’t walk. How long even was that?’
‘Think there was about three minutes left. But come on.’ With a sudden thrust he picked her up, as she gasped and laughed to find her hands around his neck and her legs wrapping somewhere around him below as he jostled her along like this a few yards in a frisson of squeals till she came slipping down his body.
‘Are your legs recovered enough to walk to the Tate, Art student?’
‘Umm, yes,’ she slurred - he could have said he was going to throw her off the bridge and she would have said the same, as his arm drew around her shoulder and they walked on through the drifts of people, whom Natalia looked upon with slow, intoxicated eyes and an inane smile fixed to her face, as though her brain was somewhere up by the moon and she had never felt so full of carefree delight. Sauntering along with Neill at a pace that allowed them to side-snuggle, the Tate Modern loomed ahead with its chimney like a huge crude cock drawn into the black sky, beckoning the continuing drama of their secret jaunt.
Read on, because it gets MUCH hotter from here...!
From Chapter 32: River Mouth Lock, in The Headmaster’s Flame. The full novel is here on Inkitt. Add it to your reading list now!
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