“You should go home,” she blurted out.
“Do you really want me to?” Tom asked when he moved right in front of her to remove any chance of escape.
Mary’s pulse raced. She wanted to shout yes, but her chest heaved as she couldn’t get the word out and in truth she knew that the answer to the question was really no. She might be the teacher and Tom the student, but it was him that was now in control of the situation and she was powerless to stop what was happening. She knew that her silence would encourage him and held her breath.
His hand came up and the gentle touch of his fingertips on her chin made her tremble. Things were fast getting out of control and the tension between them grew as their eyes locked together.
“So beautiful,” Tom said quietly as his fingers moved to her cheek.
Mary was frozen in place as he leaned forward. She knew the kiss was coming and the electric touch of his lips brushing against hers made her gasp.
“I can’t do this,” she let out quietly.
“Then stop me,” Tom teased her.
His lips brushed against hers again and her mind was suddenly blank. All she wanted was the kiss and her lips parted slightly as it pressed harder against her mouth. She closed her eyes as their bodies came together and a shiver rippled through her. It was the most exciting moment of her life and she never wanted it to stop. Tom’s fingers caressed on her neck as the kiss became more intense and she was lost to it. The moment stretched out as their lips remained together and she let out a rush of breath when they parted. She opened her eyes to look at him, but it was a movement that caught her attention. A glance across the schoolroom got her the sight of the door being closed from the outside and the panic lit up in her mind.
“Someone saw us,” she let out in a harassed voice.
Tom seemed unconcerned by her words and it was obvious that he thought she was making them up to get him to back off. The smile spread across his face as he kept her trapped against the wall in the corner of the room.
“I’m serious,” she said as the unease grew in her mind. “I know someone was here and saw us. Let me past.”
“One more kiss,” he said.
“What, no…, we can’t,” Mary replied.
She tried to look past him to see out the window, but couldn’t quite manage it.
“Just one before I go,” Tom insisted.
“Please,” Mary begged.
She needed to get around him and see who it was that closed the door. Forcing her way past wasn’t an option. He was far too powerful for her to do that. She glanced up as he leaned in and there was nothing she could do but let him kiss her again. Even in the panic of knowing they might very well have been caught, the electric sensation of their lips coming together took her breath. The seconds ticked by as his muscular body pressed against her petite frame and her head was trapped against the wall as Tom’s fingers ran in her hair. It was the passion she dreamed about and she succumbed to it.
Mary let out a gasp of breath as the kiss ended, but her mind was now on something else. When Tom kept to his word and moved back, she immediately stepped past him and rushed across the room to look out the window. It was to the sight of a wagon turning the corner at the end of the street. She didn’t manage to get a view of the driver and the alarm bells rang in her mind.
“You need to go,” she said as she turned to rush back across the room.
The panic was really beginning to take hold in her mind and she knew she needed to get out of the schoolhouse. She hurriedly tidied the schoolbooks on the table then reached for her coat on the back of the chair. All she could think about was finding out who it was that closed the door when they were kissing and she fumbled for the keys in her pocket as she moved to the door.
“Come on,” she urged Tom in an almost desperate voice. “You need to get out of here right now.”
The smile remained on his face and he still seemed unconcerned as he made his way to the door she was holding open. He stopped beside her as she slammed it shut, but she ignored him as the urge to get moving grew stronger. She locked the door and avoided looking at him as she turned and hurried up the path.
“I’ll see you again,” Tom shouted after her.
Mary almost stopped and turned around, but forced herself to keep going. The memory of the kiss was fresh in her mind, but she tried to clear it away. It was one of the best moments in her life, but as she hurried along the street she knew it might also be one of the worst. She turned the corner to a deserted view and stopped dead. It was already too late to find out who was riding the wagon she saw. She was in no doubt it was the person who closed the door of the schoolhouse and that meant they must have saw her and Tom kissing.
Thoughts raged through her mind, but they distilled down to what she suspected and it made her hang her head. Since arriving in town and starting work in the schoolhouse there were two people she knew of that came to it in a wagon. The first was her fellow school teacher with the second being the mother of the man she was there to marry. If it was Annie that saw her kissing Tom, Mary knew there wouldn’t be a problem. However, that wouldn’t be the case if it was Jenny.
The despair welled up at how foolish she’d been to get herself in a situation where she was alone with Tom, but she couldn’t deny that she wanted the kiss. She closed her eyes and rocked back her head as she let out a sigh. There was no shaking off the thought the either Annie or Jenny saw her in a compromising position.
The only problem was that she didn’t which it was.
Chapter 10
Mary tossed and turned on the mattress in a vain attempt to get comfortable, but she knew there would be no getting any sleep that night. Her mind just would not switch off and it was proving impossible to relax and get some rest. When she got back to Mrs. Lester’s home after leaving the schoolhouse, she did no more than make herself some sandwiches to eat before retiring to her room. She dreaded the knock on the door that might signal the arrival of someone to see her, but it never came. Whether that was good or bad was debatable as far as she was concerned.
Not knowing who was at the schoolhouse when she thought she was alone with Tom was killing her and it was a torture that was keeping her awake. She didn’t want to scandalize the town after only being there for a few days, but couldn’t get the fear out of her head that she might very well have done just that. Knowing it didn’t stop an image of Tom forming in her mind when she closed her eyes and that just brought back the memory of the kiss.
The passion of the moment was something she’d dreamed about for so long, but things weren’t exactly working out like she planned. Coming to Oakford was her chance for a new start, but she might have messed it up already.
“Idiot,” she berated herself at one point, but she knew that resisting Tom’s advances would have been impossible.
The attraction between them was inescapable and when she was a single girl in Boston, she would have embraced it wholeheartedly. In truth she was still single now, but somehow it felt like she was a betraying a trust by even thinking of getting involved with a student.
She remembered Annie’s words of the day before about her being effectively abandoned in town by the Addison family and it irked her that they’d done it. Still, she couldn’t shake off the notion that her attraction to Tom was wrong. It was the conflicting emotions that were keeping her awake and she was bleary eyed when she got up the following morning.
A growing sense of dread filled her mind as she got washed and dressed, but she knew that she would need to go to the school and talk to Annie. Mrs. Lester was already in the kitchen when she walked in it.
“Morning dear,” the elderly woman said brightly.
Mary forced a smile on her face even though it was the last thing she wanted to do.
“Good morning,” she replied.
Moving across to the coffee pot, she grabbed one of the cups sitting next to it and filled it. Her gaze was on the table when she sat down and she only looked up when Mrs. Les
ter spoke again.
“Not eating today dear?”
“I’m not really hungry,” Mary replied.
She wasn’t sure she would be able to keep any food down the way that the rising nerves were making her stomach churn. It was a struggle for her to get the coffee down and she answered the comments coming her way as Mrs. Lester continued to chat. When her cup was empty, she got up to wash it then looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. The hands showed it was just coming up to ten minutes before seven. She briefly considered pouring herself another cup of coffee, but knew she would only be doing it to put off the inevitable and decided against it.
“Are you working today?” Mrs. Lester asked.
“No,” Mary replied. “But I just need to go and see Annie to let her know how yesterday’s lessons went.”
In the rush to get out of the schoolhouse the previous afternoon after kissing Tom, she didn’t write out the note of how the day went. It was only fair that she went and told Annie although she knew that wasn’t the real reason she wanted to see her fellow school teacher. The sense of dread grew stronger still when she left the kitchen to go and get her coat. She was slow in putting it on and could see that her hands were trembling as she closed the buttons.
“Relax,” she told her reflection as she looked in the mirror.
She was wasting her breath though and her anxiety only got worse as she walked to the front door and left the house. Her pace got slower as she neared the school and it was more than just her hands that were trembling when she stepped through the gate and walked up the path to the building. A deep breath almost stuck in her throat as she opened the door to move inside. She saw the smile spread across her teaching colleague’s face straight away, but said nothing as she moved across to the table to sit down.
“Well, well,” Annie let out in a teasing tone. “If it isn’t little Miss Kiss Kiss.”
The relief swept over Mary and she leaned forward to put her head in her hands. There was no doubt it was the schoolmistress that was there the previous afternoon.
“Are you OK?” Annie went on.
“Why didn’t you say anything yesterday?” Mary complained when she lifted her head.
“You were otherwise engaged as far as I recall,” Annie joked. “I didn’t want to get in the way.”
“I’ve been panicking all night not knowing who it was that saw me kissing Tom,” Mary went on. “I saw the door closing then a wagon going around the corer. I thought it might have been Mrs. Addison that caught me.”
“Sorry,” Annie apologized then laughed. “So…”
“What?” Mary replied.
“Tell me what happened,” Annie encouraged.
“Nothing happened,” Mary blurted out.
“It didn’t look like nothing from where I was standing,” Annie went on and laughed again. “It looked very much like you were enjoying a passionate kiss with a ruggedly muscular young man.”
Mary let out a sigh.
“It was just a kiss,” she said. “But I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
“Oh nonsense,” Annie exclaimed. “Did you like it?”
Mary dropped her gaze, but nodded her head.
“Then of course you should have done it,” Annie said. “If I was you I would be looking forward to doing it again.”
“I can’t,” Mary let out in a despairing voice as she looked up.
“It didn’t look to me like you would be able to stop it,” Annie replied. “There’s no resisting it when the sparks fly and the passion is let loose.”
Mary let out a sigh. Before yesterday she wouldn’t have known what Annie was talking about, but she did now. She’d been unable to stop things when Tom kissed her and knew the truth was that she didn’t want to. If she ended up alone with him again, she was certain that she would be overwhelmed and unable to resist. The thought of that both excited her and scared her.
“I’m not sure I can handle it,” she confessed.
“You haven’t been with a man before, have you?” Annie said quietly.
“Is it that obvious?” Mary replied.
“No,” Annie went on. “It was just a guess on my part.”
Mary let out a weary breath. She knew that Annie was no blushing virgin. The size of her growing belly was proof of that, but she suspected that her new friend didn’t lack experience when it came to the opposite sex. It came through all too clearly in the cheeky comments and vivacious confidence.
“So what do I do if it happens again?” she asked.
“Give in to it,” Annie said and laughed. “It’s definitely what I would do.”
“But…” Mary started.
“No buts,” Annie interrupted her. “You told me already that you liked kissing him and I saw the passion sparking between you with my own eyes. Trust me when I say that it doesn’t come around all that often. When you meet a man like that, you don’t want to miss out on the love…, on the lovemaking they can give you.”
Mary believed what she was being told, but there was still a nagging doubt at the back of her head that it would be a betrayal of why she came to Oakford. She’d agreed through the agency to meet and marry a man and couldn’t get that fact out of her head.
“You’re thinking about the Addison family again, aren’t you,” Annie said to cut in to her thoughts.
Mary nodded her head.
“Well at the end of the day the choice of what you do is up to you,” Annie went on. “But if you ask me, you don’t want to give up on the chance of being with the right man for someone that hasn’t even come to see you in…, how many days have you been here.”
“I saw Jenny Addison again,” Mary confessed.
“And…?” Annie asked.
Mary shrugged her shoulders.
“And I basically got the same story she gave me when I first met her,” Mary admitted. “Things are busy at the farm, her son is working all day and I would need to wait in town until things settle down.”
The sound of shouting from outside caught their attention and showed that the students were arriving. They both glanced across at the windows of the schoolhouse before they looked at each other again.
“Don’t miss out on being with Tom because of some loyalty to a dream that might never happen,” Annie said. “He might very well be interested in learning, but there’s no doubt that’s not the only reason he is coming to school. In might be a coincidence that he only turned up on the days that you were working, but I think there’s more to it than that. He has his eye on a school teacher and it’s not me.”
Mary rocked her head back and didn’t know what to say. She was sure that her friend was right, but didn’t really know what to do about it.
“Anyway,” she said when she dropped her gaze back down to look across the table. “I didn’t get the chance to write you a note yesterday, so better tell you about the lessons.”
Annie nodded her head and listened as she was given the details. Mary got to her feet when she finished.
“I would have invited you to the ranch this weekend,” Annie said. “But we are going to see Walter’s parents tonight and won’t be back until Sunday.”
“It’s OK,” Mary said. “Mrs. Lester is good company and I’m sure I’ll find something to do.”
“No kissing boys,” Annie teased her and laughed.
“Stop it,” Mary complained. “That’s not funny.”
“It is for me,” Annie joked. “And if you do kiss a certain boy, remember what I said.”
Mary just shook her head and couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face.
“You’re terrible,” she said.
“Yeah, that is my reputation,” Annie let out and laughed louder. “But look at the man it got me. I know what I’m talking about and you should listen to me.”
Give in to the passion was Annie’s advice. As Mary left the schoolhouse to walk back to Mrs. Lester’s home the fantasy of doing just that started to take hold in her mind. The flicker of arousal it caused
began to burn brighter when she walked in the house and closed the door. She waited for the shout of the elderly lady checking it was her, but it didn’t come.
“Mrs. Lester,” Mary called out.
She stood for a few seconds waiting for a response and shouted again when none came. It showed that she was probably alone in the house and when she was sure of it, she hurried along to her room. She knew there was only one way to relieve the growing pressure in her body and threw herself down on the bed.
The fantasy was raging through her mind and she was well past the point of just kissing Tom. She imagined what it would be like for him to strip her naked and explore her virgin body. It sent shivers down her spine and the flush of arousal spreading through her body became stronger. She closed her legs tightly together and squirmed as the heat of pleasure burned between her thighs. There was no way she could stop herself and she lifted up her butt, so she could drag her dress and petticoat up around her waist.
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