Dark Blue: Study in Seduction, Book 1 (4 page)

She tried to be rational. He definitely wouldn’t mention the party now. Not in the middle of the student union. Perhaps he was as embarrassed as her at being at that party, especially now he was a tutor. The best policy might be to pretend it had never happened and they’d never met, but how the hell was she going to keep that pretence up for the rest of the term?

She blew on her coffee, and Alex’s face was obscured by tendrils of steam. She heard his voice through the mist and half imagined the Gallic edge to it. “I’m so glad I caught you,” he said.

Caught me?
Her pulse headed skywards, and she cursed herself and covered her disquiet with a laugh. “Oh? What have I done?”

“Nothing
wrong
, I assure you. Please don’t worry. I wouldn’t want to intimidate you. I may be way off the mark, you seemed a little bit uncomfortable at some points in the tutorial. I hope I haven’t pushed you too far beyond your comfort zone. Not, of course, that being taken beyond one’s comfort zone isn’t healthy once in a while.”

Was he playing cat and mouse with her again? Was it possible that he really hadn’t recognised her? After all, he hadn’t had his specs on that night, and she’d been masked and wearing, oh God, a bustier so tight her boobs had almost spilled out of it. Carla shook her head firmly, and her coffee wobbled in her hand. “Not at all. I was well within my zone.”

“Good. I’d hate it if you felt you couldn’t contribute fully to the discussion because of something I’ve done.”

“Something you’ve done? Not all, all Prof—Alex. It was a very stimulating tute. I really enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to the next one.” Bugger, every word she said to him was doomed to be an innuendo.

“Excellent. So I’ll see you next week for our one-on-one session on nineteenth-century novels?”

“One-on-one session?”

“Yes. Why, did Dr. Bhide not do individual tutes with students? I thought she did.”

Individual tutor meetings were one of the shining beacons of the Oxford system. They gave the students the chance to “enjoy” a whole hour of their brilliant and usually world-famous tutor’s undivided scrutiny.

“Yes, of course she did. I’d forgotten, that’s all. It’s been a long time since last term.”

“I’m sure you’ll be back up to speed in no time, and I’m hoping your fresh insights will revive my enthusiasm for some of these nineteenth-century novels. I find them rather tedious myself. However, we have to cover the exam syllabus, no matter how boring parts of it may be. Let’s start with Austen, shall we? I expect you to amaze me with something about dear old Jane that doesn’t make me want to rip my own entrails out.”

Dear old Jane?
Carla’s spirits took a nosedive. Jane was her favourite. In fact, Austen was the main reason she wanted to study English lit at all, but Alex was right in one way: Jane Austen had already been dissected to death, and Carla knew that any ideas she could offer would hardly light Alex’s intellectual fire. At least she knew there would be no coupling or tingling in Austen. Shut up in a personal tute with Alex, she definitely could not cope with an hour of swiving.

“I’ll look forward to hearing your Rochester essay at the next group tute. You can e-mail the Austen one to me, if that makes you feel less inhibited.”

Alex Lemaitre was surely the only man she’d ever met who could smile and smoulder at the same time. Any more of this and there would be scorch marks on the floor. As for less inhibited? She smiled weakly as he headed out of the JCR, coffee in hand.

She’d fantasised about meeting this man again for so long; now she was going to be shut up alone with him, and she was scared—of what they might do, and what they might not. Even if she’d wanted to take her opportunity with him, it was impossible now. The game had changed beyond recognition. He was her tutor, and any relationship between them was forbidden. Just as he’d promised, it could only end in tears.

Chapter Two

“What the hell’s got into you, Alex? You ran that last few K like you had the devil on your back!”

Alex straightened up to find his friend Rana hobbling onto the driveway of his house. He waved a hand, because it was all he was able to do between drawing in lungfuls of air. Rana was right in one sense—he really did have the devil on his back. She was called Carla Jonas, and after their tute earlier that day, he’d just tried and failed to run her sweet ass out of his system.

He checked his watch and clicked the button as Rana staggered up to the front door and leaned against the porch.

“We both broke our PBs today,” he said as his breathing settled a little.

“Yeah, great, shame I almost broke my bloody ankle too.”

“You’re a doctor. You can fix it.”

Rana grimaced and ran his palms down his sore calf. “Thanks for the sympathy.”

Alex slapped him on the back. “It’s a pleasure. Want a drink?”

“Yes. Then I’ll stagger home. My wife will think I’ve been kidnapped, and it was my turn to take the kids to karate. How far did we run?”

“Fourteen point three kilometres, according to the GPS. Not bad. I’ll get us both some Gatorade before you pass out.”

After Rana had left, refusing Alex’s offer of a lift, Alex headed for the en-suite. Running Carla out of his system hadn’t helped, so maybe washing her away would, but thinking of her in the shower was probably not the best idea. He ended up in there far longer than it should have taken to scrub the sweat from his body.

Alex turned off the shower control and slid open the door of the cubicle. The tiles were cold under his feet as he reached for a towel from the rail and rubbed his hair. He ran the towel over his chest and backside, too impatient to dry off properly. Then, after dropping the towel on the tiles, he strode into his bedroom, still unsatisfied, still with a head full of Carla.

After the party, he’d never thought he’d see her again.

Now he wished he never had.

He’d drawn the curtains before his shower. While he had no problem with walking about his own house naked, his neighbours in this sedate part of North Oxford probably would. He also had no wish to draw attention to his private life, even if a degree of notoriety in academic circles was necessary for the sake of his TV work and writing.

If he admitted it—and he liked to be searingly honest with himself as well as his students—he enjoyed his austere reputation within college. It kept people safely at arm’s length. It also wasn’t wholly undeserved, he had to admit. He knew his manner could be changeable at best—
il souffle le chaud et le froid
, as
Maman
kept telling him—but he did rather cultivate the aura too.

He wanted to push his students; they were supposed to be the brightest—the crème de la crème of the intellectual elite. They’d worked hard to get to Oxford, just like the scores of other young people to whom the college could not offer a place. So when they’d won their place, he was bloody well going to make them achieve their full potential.

St Cuthbert’s not only had a reputation for being at the top of the college academic league tables but for offering places to students from a wide range of backgrounds.

Like Carla.

Alex hadn’t been able to interview her because of a family crisis. Instead, Dr. Bhide had stepped in, and she’d shared his openness to picking bright students with unconventional academic histories. Carla had managed to achieve brilliant A levels while working full time in her job. After so long out of high school, getting into the exam mindset must have been a huge challenge, and she more than deserved her place. He knew she was a widow, wondered how she had coped with that, and if it was why she’d wanted to study at St Cuthbert’s so much.

However, Alex was determined not to patronise her by treating her with any less rigor than his other students. If that meant being seen as harsh on her, then so be it.

Merde
.

He swore under his breath even though there was no one around to hear. He knew he was overcompensating. How could he treat Carla like any other student after their encounter at the party? She was one of the sexiest women he’d ever met, and delightfully unaware of it. In fact, he’d fancied her even more in her demure little dress and cardigan she’d worn to his tute than in her fetish outfit. It had driven him mad knowing that her studious exterior hid a pert bottom and lush breasts, not to mention something far more arousing. A hunger radiated from Carla Jonas, desires he was certain were as yet unfulfilled.

He’d caught her quick glances at him when she thought he couldn’t see her. Noticed the moistening of her lips with her tongue that could be nervousness and desire. Seen her thighs crushed together when he demanded she read the poem. Heard her breath hitch as she’d tried to utter the obscene text. Almost felt the warmth of her blush as she hurtled through the verses. Felt her shame as she’d slammed the pages shut and glanced up at him, so fleetingly and undeniably for his approval.

And he’d held back that approval, denied it to her. It was cruel of him, but necessary.

The April evening had turned cool, chilling his still-damp skin. He pulled on a fresh pair of shorts, grabbed his jeans from the chair, and a T-shirt. He suspected she was single—hoped she was single—and then cursed himself for even speculating on the fact. Dr. Bhide’s condition meant he’d to stand in and take over her first-year tutor group for their summer term. Now he would be seeing Carla at least once a week, including their one-to-ones. If he let his guard slip, if he ever again gave in to the desires she aroused in him, the forbidden desires for a tutor and his student, where might it end this time?

Carla’s mobile rang as she unloaded her laptop and books at her hostel flat later that day. The name on the screen made her smile and was a welcome distraction from thinking about Alex Lemaitre.

“Hello, Mum!”

“Hello, Carla, darling, how are you?”

“Fine, Mum.”

“Good. Now, you’ll
never
guess who’s here with me.”

By the tone of her mum’s voice, Carla instantly guessed, and sure enough, she heard her mother-in-law’s horsey guffaw in the background. Mrs. Jonas Senior ran a stables, and Carla thought it might be catching. However, her mother adored her mother-in-law, and since Stephen had gone, they’d been devoted to each other.

“Gillian wants to know when you’re coming home next,” said her mum.

“Well, I’m really busy working. I have Mods up in a few weeks.”

“Mods?”

“First-year exams, Mum. They’re called Mods, short for Honour Moderations. I’m revising for them, and I’ve got an essay to finish.” And what an essay; the mere thought of reading it out loud under Alex’s exacting eye sent hot and cold shivers up her spine.

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t like to interrupt your studies. The thing is Gillian and I have something special planned for the weekend. Nothing huge, of course, but it’s
that
time, Carla. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

Carla
had
forgotten, and the guilt thudded down like a thunderbolt. She’d never forgotten the date before. How could she have? It had been four years since Stephen was killed in a car accident on his way back from a conference. Every year on the anniversary of his death, his family and friends had met at his grave to light a candle and afterwards held a little gathering to remember him.

“When did you want to have the Gathering, Mum? Next weekend?”

They couldn’t call the Gathering a “party”, although Carla knew that Stephen would have approved if they had. He had been the life and soul of any social event, and if he could see them now, she was sure he would itch to tell them one of his stories or open up the piano and sing one of the rugby club songs that had their mothers covering their ears and shrieking with horror. The whole club had packed into the church for his funeral, along with colleagues from work and the neighbours. They had to pipe the service outside through loudspeakers because so many local people had turned up. Stephen used to raise money for the local hospice. Everyone loved him.

“Of course. You will be there, won’t you? I’m sure you can take a day off from revising. Stephen would have wanted you to,” said her mum.

By now, Carla was so used to people telling her what Stephen would have wanted that the words rolled over her without angering or hurting her. Yet there was a time, a few months after he died, when the phrase made her hands shake and her stomach twist into knots. That was when she realised that no one knew what Stephen had really wanted, least of all her.

“I can pop home Saturday afternoon; then I’ll drive straight back to Oxford after the Gathering.”

“Drive home? Oh, rubbish! We’ll all be tiddly. I’ll clear Dad’s snowboard off your old bed and make it up for you.”

“Thanks,” she said firmly. “I’ll stay at my house. I’m sure Yoav won’t mind me going back to my own home.” Yoav, Carla’s lodger, looked after her house while she was away at college, and he was used to her dropping in at short notice. She hoped.

“That means you’ll have to get a taxi back after the Gathering.”

“It won’t do me any harm. I’d like to sleep in my own bed after being in college accommodation for the past few weeks.”

“Oh, well, if you must. I suppose we’re lucky you can spare the time at all. Hold on…” She heard her mum in the background
. “Of course she’s coming, Gillian… She was waiting for me to call her, and she’s interrupting her exam revision for it, not that any of that stuff really matters. Stephen will always come first.”