by Tia Siren
The other teachers took notice and began talking to one another and notified the principal. The teachers and the principal stopped dancing and gathered to the side. Now the only people dancing were Liana and Lance and a few other students. Eventually, the students saw what was happening, and it was just Liana and Lance.
“Do you see what is going on around us?” asked Liana.
“Of course,” replied Lance.
The snow continued to fall on them, and the music continued to play. The ground was now white with only Liana’s red dress flowing across it.
“Everybody is looking at us,” said Liana.
“No, they are looking at you,” said Lance. “You have no idea how beautiful you look right now.”
“This dance can last forever, right?” asked Liana.
“Of course it can, because every Christmas we are going to dance, from now until forever,” said Lance.
“You promise?” asked Liana.
“Promise”
Lance kept his promise. They did dance every Christmas, and do to this day. Lance lost his job of course, but with Liana by his side, he took up freelance work doing stuff he really enjoyed. Being the couple that they were, with such a vast age difference, and racial difference, they could never blend in. But that is how they wanted it. They never wanted to return to being normal again. For it was only in following their hearts that they found each other, and with each other found happiness.
*****
THE END
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Here is a FREE bonus 10.000 word romance story by Blue Sky Books, “Mr. Learner”
Mr. Learner – An Older Man, Younger Woman College Romance
“Alright, who wants to discuss the significance of Hamlet’s soliloquy in Hamlet?”
Swallowing thickly, Alice tried her best to pay attention to the man standing at the front of the classroom. A part of her wanted desperately to look anywhere else, but of course, a good student would pay attention. Under normal circumstances, she would have raised her hand almost immediately. She knew Hamlet back and forth – as well she should as a graduate student of British Literature.
But just now, she didn’t dare.
Raising her hand would mean having to speak directly to her Professor, which for Alice, was impossible.
She didn’t think she’d be able to talk to Thomas Learner again for a long time.
What the young woman could do, however, was look. And she certainly looked her fill.
When Thomas Learner had joined the staff at Saber College, none of its female students had been able to believe their luck. Almost none of the faculty members were younger than fifty; but at only thirty-two, Learner was only a few years older than they themselves.
He was a British Import, hailing from North Eastern London – and quite possible the most gorgeous thing in the entire cosmos. Close to six and a half feet tall, the statuesque man looked more like a basketball player than an intellectual. His dark brown hair hung haphazardly around his face and it, along with the constant five o’clock shadow he sported, gave him a more relaxed appearance than most of the university’s other professors. A strong jaw, high cheekbones and intense blue eyes that could see right through any excuse his students had were enough to render the female ones breathless
And watching the way the muscles of his broad shoulders contracted beneath his crisp shirt when he wrote on the board called more attention than many of his lectures.
Alice, for her part, had always loved British Literature. She’d been hooked on Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen almost since she’d learned how to read, and she’d been a talented writer since her early teens.
But nothing could have prepared her for the first time her Professor read aloud from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. It had been sometime during the first two weeks of class, and Learner had chosen an excerpt to demonstrate Shakespeare’s particular style.
The way his low, British lilt had all but caressed the syllables made Alice’s knees so weak she was glad that she was sitting down. Her heart had stumbled in her chest and, to her utter embarrassment, she grew instantly damp between the legs.
In all her twenty-six years, Alice had never encountered a man who could make her wet purely with the way he sounded. It was both exhilarating and frightening at once.
She carried her torch for Professor Learner in silence until, one day, he pulled her aside after class to discuss a paper she’d written. Alice was terrified that he would ask her to write it over. While she wrote she’d been able to think of little more than what she’d rather be doing to her professor instead of her homework. Instead, however, Professor Learner had praised her paper, and invited her to dinner to talk about her writing technique.
It was the beginning of what the young woman tried to tell herself was a platonic relationship. Not once – at least in the beginning – had Learner put his hands on her. They had lunch once, maybe twice a week, and discussed how he could better help his students with their papers. Of course, while the breathtaking man had spoken to her about syllabi and grading curves, Alice memorized the scent of his cologne – the way his dimples made themselves known when he smiled, and the way he liked his burger cooked.
She relished every moment she spent with him – and, one day, her indulgence got the better of her. After one of his classes, the young woman sat next to his desk, reading through her most recent paper. After a night of little sleep, she found herself nodding off – right into Learner’s lap.
Where she discovered his hard-on.
Her professor acted dreadfully embarrassed, apologizing profusely for the two minutes it had taken for Alice to seize her opportunity.
Very shortly, she discovered that the man who spoke to her of poetry and metaphors had secretly been just as hungry for her as she was for him. The experience culminated with Thomas locking the door of the lecture hall and taking her right there on the desk. As gentle and mild-mannered as he appeared, the man had done nothing less that screw her silly – pound her hips against his desk until they bruised and made her come so many times it was hard for her to see straight.
Even now, as she watched that divine, full mouth of his form the syllables of his lecture, she remembered how divine they’d felt kissing and biting at her nipples, sucking at her neck as long, slender fingers clutched almost desperately at the creamy white skin of her thighs.
She had never known sex could be like…that.
And yet…it had been a mistake.
The thought made her bite down on her lower lip as her gaze darkened. Who the hell slept with their professor? It was like a clichéd porno plot, complete with the naïve girl who all but jumps onto her lover’s cock. Alice had every intention of actually getting her master’s degree, and how was she supposed to do that when the man who played the biggest part in her education wasn’t able to see her objectively?
Once their lust for one another had cooled and they came back to their senses, she and Learner had agreed never to speak of what happened between them again. They would go on as if nothing had changed – that would be the best policy.
Yet, here Alice was, three weeks later, still throbbing between the legs every time the man so much as looked at her. She could avoid him all she wanted, but nothing could burn the memories of how he’d made her feel from her mind.
**
He missed her.
So much so that he almost regretted what they were together – almost. Thomas didn’t know whether he could ever regret how right it felt to be inside Alice – how divine her body felt against him and how gorgeous her face looked in the throes of orgasm.
Despite all the physical chemistry, however, there was no chance of recapturing the
way they’d been before they got their hands on each other. Alice was a brilliant student, and Thomas admired her drive both as a professor and as a man.
That, he supposed, was where all the trouble had started. He’d done everything he could to keep a fair distance from her, but Alice stood out in a way too remarkable to ignore. She had a true passion for her subject, and her papers were publishable even though she had yet to finish her graduate degree.
And, of course, she was gorgeous enough that he fought his body’s reaction every time he saw her.
Long, dark hair that she liked to keep pinned up in a no-nonsense way at the base of her neck, wide blue eyes that gleamed with curiosity; a full, utterly kissable mouth – and that body of hers? Bloody hell, it was a crime that she kept it so goddamned covered. Alice liked to wear modestly cut tops and demure skirts – clothes that didn’t do her a bit of justice.
For weeks, Thomas had suspected the figure she was hiding beneath her dour wardrobe, but the reality had been beyond his wildest dreams. Lush, ample breasts, wide hips and a minuscule waist. God, how many times had he lie awake at night remembering the silky feel of her thighs as he gripped them?
As he pressed deep inside her delicious warmth?
He knew he was being an idiotic cad. Thomas had only just acquired his position at the college, and he’d already put it in jeopardy by becoming involved with one of his students. Of course, his graduate students were more than of age, but it was the principal of the thing that mattered. He’d always considered himself a morally competent man – and sleeping with his students had never been on his agenda.
Lord knew there were plenty of willing women in the States who all but threw their knickers at him once they learned where he was from and what his profession was. It was like some kind of fetish to them…
But not so with Alice. He’d always felt comfortable with her – at least, intellectually. Physically, it had been a struggle from the very first.
A struggle that had culminated in him giving into his baser instincts and taking her right on the main desk in a classroom.
He both revered and regretted the memory. In the heat of the moment, nothing could have felt more right than the way she moaned his name and clutched at his shoulders hard enough to leave bruises later.
But in hindsight, he wished he’d, at least, had the willpower to get her to his office. At least, things might have been a little more leisurely there. He could have worshiped her body, spread her wide open on the couch and buried his head between those gorgeous legs of hers…bent her over his desk and…
Christ.
Thank God he’d been teaching long enough that he only needed to keep half of his mind on the lecture. The other half was firmly in the realm of reviewing what he hadn’t had a chance to do to Alice Cantor – and that, he knew, would never do.
He’d already put his job in jeopardy enough.
“Alright, thank you all for seeing your way to come to one of the last lectures of the semester. I’ll post notes within the next few hours and feel free to e-mail me with any questions that you may have. I’ll see you next week.”
The twenty or so students set about to gathering their things as they spoke of their end –of-semester papers. He’d been looking over the few drafts that had been submitted to him, and they were, for the most part, readable. Thomas found himself worried, however, that Alice had yet to turn in her paper.
While she was still doing perfectly fine with the assignments they’d been given, ever since the incident between them, she had stopped consulting him as she worked on her project. Though Thomas would never attempt to profess that the physical chemistry between them was mind-blowing, he found that he missed her quiet brilliance just must, if not more than the way she gasped his name when he touched her.
As he gathered his papers near the edge of his desk, he watched her from the corner of his eye. These days, she was in a rush to be one of the first people out of the classroom. She all but shoved her papers into her bags and gazed around fearfully before fleeing the lecture hall.
Except, today, something was different. As she attempted to beat her colleagues out of the classroom, she collided with another student who was entering.
It was a spectacular event. Her bag ripped open completely, spilling books and papers all over the floor and Alice herself stumbled over long legs and landed hard on her pert behind with a yelp.
Thomas was up like a shot – almost before he had time to think.
“Oh, fuck, I’m sorry.” Even as the other man apologized, bending down to grab at the papers that had slid almost halfway across the room. “I wasn’t watching where I was going-”
“Are you alright, Alice?”
Thomas cut him off, reaching for Alice’s slender hand as she grimaced in pain. She reached out instinctively, her eyes only widening when she realized it was he who was helping her up. The young woman only maintained contact with him for long enough to make it to her feet. Then, she withdrew, almost as if she’d been burned.
“I’m fine, Professor! Thanks!” Immediately, she turned from him to kneel and began gathering her things.
“Christ, I’m a klutz. I killed your bag.”
“It’s ok. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, really…I’m an idiot.”
Standing over them, Thomas tried not to watch as the young man all but fell over himself to apologize. Though Alice liked to wear her reading glasses in class and cared more about identifying different literary periods than attracting men, you’d have to be blind not to realize what a beauty she was – and this student – Ryan something-or-other, if Thomas’ mind served him correctly – was no different. Under the guise of helping Alice gather her things, he was trying to look down the front of her sweater, and the Professor found himself seething.
It was none of his affair, he knew. So far as they’d agreed, nothing had happened between him and Alice. She wasn’t, nor would she ever be his.
So...why did watching her interact with another man make his blood boil?
He watched Ryan’s half-hearted attempts to flirt with his best student until he was forced to pick up his lesson plans and leave the room. Once he reached the solitude of his office, he sank down in his chair and exhaled slowly, trying to clear his head.
Alice was a perfectly attractive young woman. Of course men would try to hit on her – of course they would try to stake their claim.
Even if he himself had already staked it quite thoroughly.
It was odd, Thomas knew, but ever since the first day she had smiled at her, he’d begun to think of Alice as his own. She was both delicate and strong all at once – fiercely independent, intelligent and alluring while being demure and withdrawn. Had it not been for their little mishap, he might have asked if she’d like to intern with him, or even have him be her mentor for a possible PhD.
But all of that had been shot to shite.
“Fuck,” Thomas whispered quietly to himself. Three more weeks left in the semester. Then, hopefully, he could take the holiday break to forget about her entirely. If that meant he had to fuck his way through half of the city, he might be willing. Thinking about Alice was painful – and he didn’t like to be reminded of what could have been.
**
She couldn’t ever get a break.
Shuddering, Alice spit up the last dregs of bile at the back of her throat into the small container the nurse held below her chin. She’d been out of sorts for the past few days, and though she thought she could handle the situation herself, she ultimately ended up in the university clinic when she could hardly keep anything she swallowed down.
At her roommate’s urging, she’d booked herself a visit, only to run for the toilet the moment she was settled in the office.
They did all the usual tests – they’d taken blood and urine samples before settling her as comfortably in bed as they could. The real issue, they impressed upon the young woman, was that she needed nutrients. Thusly, they’d hooked her up to an
IV – probably one of the most sucktastic things in the entire cosmos, considering that she abhorred needles. But it beat passing out entirely.
She didn’t have time to be unconscious. She had a paper due, and it was hard enough to write when she couldn’t stop thinking about her damned professor. Out of the thirty thousand words she needed, she’d completed about half – and to go on seemed utterly useless sometimes. She couldn’t think about turning the damned think in without her stomach erupting in butterflies.
She’d have to confront him…they’d have to interact.
And she’d have to remember what his arms around her felt like – what his face looked like on the cusp of orgasm. The way he laughed when she made ridiculous literature jokes that no one else could possibly understand and that devastating smile of his…
She had fucked up. Monumentally – and she had no one to blame but herself.
It was hard to even look at herself in the mirror; For God’s sake, she’d made herself sick over it. What was she supposed to do for the next two years while she got her degree? Avoid one of the foremost minds in her department? Even if she never had another class with him (which, in and of itself, would be a minor miracle), he would still be one of the men in charge of awarding her degree.
And after her behavior, she wouldn’t be surprised if things were stacked against her.
“Well, Ms. Cantor, how are you feeling?’
She looked up, surprised to see that the nurse tending to her had disappeared and that Dr. Brighton had returned. The kindly woman held out a small paper cup of water for her to wash out her mouth; and though Alice’s stomach twinged at the sight of it, she forced herself to drink. “Pretty awful.” She finally admitted, swallowing thickly and praying that she could keep it down.
