Just a Kiss

by Caitlin Ricci

  He smiled at me and pulled a sheet of paper out from between two manila folders. I recognized Gwen’s sloppy handwriting, but not what assignment he had. “What’s that?”

  El handed it to me while he explained. “Yesterday I had everyone write a quick one page essay about one thing they remember from their summer. That’s Gwen’s paper. I think you should read it, then you and I can talk about the possibility of moving her into a more suitable English class in ninth grade.”

  This guy wanted to advance my kid? I didn’t have anything to say as I read her work, and quickly got sucked into the words she used and the images she put before me. She was talking about a trip to the butterfly garden near Carl and Mike’s house. We’d all gone and she’d seemed fine with it, but not overly enthusiastic about the trip. Carl had even thought he’d done something wrong by taking her there. Maybe she didn’t like butterflies or maybe it was too soon to think the four of us could do something together beyond a quick dinner out, he’d thought.

  Reading her work now though, I knew he’d been wrong on all counts. She’d not only loved it, but she’d been able to relate to the butterflies. “I was in a cocoon, battered by the wind and the yelling, and now I have found peace and sunshine. My wings are beginning to grow and soon I will find my own metamorphosis. My kid wrote this?”

  El was grinning when I looked back up at him. “Yes, she did. I was impressed to say the least.”

  “Me too.” I pulled out my phone and texted Gwen. She wasn’t supposed to have her phone on her, according to the school, but I knew she did because we’d asked her to. Come to El’s office. He’ll write you a note. You’re not in trouble, but I’d like to talk.

  OK

  “She’s on her way.”

  “She’s not allowed to have her phone on her.”

  I shrugged. That wasn’t a rule I was going to enforce with her because if she needed one of us, or if something happened to her, I didn’t want it to come down to whether or not some principal thought it was an emergency or not that she should get to call us. If my daughter thought it was an emergency then it was and she would be allowed to call us, and if she got in trouble for having her phone or needing her parents then the school would have me to deal with.

  She knocked on the door a few minutes later and she had a bit of fudge in one hand and a bathroom pass in the other, which meant she’d lied to be able to get out of home room and come see us, but I wasn’t upset about that.

  “Hey, El, the fudge is almost all gone and I wanted you to be able to try it.” She put it on his desk like a peace offering between them.

  “Gwen, sit down, please.” She looked at me like she was worried about something. “You’re not in trouble. Just sit.” I pushed the chair beside me out a little bit and put the paper I’d been reading in front of her. “This is freaking beautiful.”

  She picked at the edge of the paper. “It’s nothing. Just a stupid assignment. I don’t even know what I wrote really. I wasn’t paying attention.”

  El laughed. “Well, keep writing like that and you may just get a writing scholarship to a college here in a few years.”

  I saw how much my kid wanted that by the way her eyes lit up and got all big. Gwen looked to me and I smiled at her. “El wants to know if you’d like to be in the ninth grade English class.”

  “It would be harder, but I think, based on this essay, that you’d fit in well there. And if you don’t like it we can bring you back down or see if you’d like to go into tenth grade instead. You have definite potential and I don’t want to see it wasted on journal assignments in my class. I’d love to keep you in my class and you were a great addition yesterday, but I think you’d be more challenged in a higher level English class. What do you think of that?”

  Gwen slowly nodded and brought her knees up to her chest in a classic move that she’d been doing since she moved in with us. She wanted it, but she was scared. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “I’m so proud of you.” She curled up a little against my side, and I squeezed her tighter. “But now you need to go back to class while El works all this out, okay?”

  She nodded, but she didn’t get up right away. “No one’s ever told me that before.”

  “What?”

  She turned to me with tears in her eyes that I instantly wished I could banish. “That they’re proud of me.”

  Oh damn. I kissed the top of her head again and didn’t know what to say. “Okay, kid, back to class. Don’t start skipping school now that you’re in high school. Don’t skip classes, don’t drink, don’t do drugs, don’t date boys.”

  “Or girls,” she quietly added on.

  I chuckled and wished I didn’t sound like I was near tears, too. “Yeah. No dating until you’re sixteen. Now go back to class.”

  She gave me a big hug before I watched her go then turned back to El, who was handing me a tissue. I wiped at my eyes. “Thanks.”

  “Sure. And, feel free to tell me to shove off if you want to, but would you like to go get a real coffee with me after Gwen transfers to another class? I won’t be her teacher anymore then.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, let’s do that. Thank you for showing me this paper.”

  “I thought she deserved to have someone else know how gifted she was besides me.”

  I patted the desk as I got to my feet, but I wasn’t ready to leave yet. I came around the desk and kissed his cheek. His stubble tickled my lips but I didn’t mind it too much. “Try the fudge but don’t blame me for any cavities.”

  “How does Friday night work for you?” El took my hand in his.

  I shrugged and knew I didn’t have anything planned at that point. Most of my life was open. “Sounds good to me. Gwen goes to her other dad’s house at six, so any time after that would be fine.” And he could sleep over then too if he wanted since Carl and Mike kept her until late Sunday night.

  “See you then.”

  He pulled me down to him and gave me a gentle kiss on my lips that had me smiling for the rest of the day.

  On Saturday night, well after Gwen had left to be with Carl and Mike for the weekend, El pulled up in front of my house. I met him at the door with a glass of white wine and he smiled at me.

  “I have a slight confession to make,” he said as he came into the living room with me.

  “Oh?” I asked him. I sipped my moscato and looked at him over the glass. I’d laid out a cheese plate with some dates on the coffee table between us. It was all very mature and not at all like the chicken fingers shaped like dinosaurs and canned corn that I’d had for dinner with Gwen.

  El put his wine glass down on the coffee table and rested his elbows on his knees. “I recognized you as soon as I saw you, but not from anywhere that you’re probably thinking.”

  Now he definitely had my interest, because I knew for a fact I had never seen El before. “Where do you think you’ve seen me before?”

  He smiled at me. “From Spanks about four years ago. I saw you a few nights in a row, and I was going to approach you, but you were always with a guy.”

  I put down my wine glass with a shaking hand. I had no idea what to say to him about that. He recognized me from there? And from that long ago? Shit. I couldn’t have that part of my life bleed into this one. I just couldn’t. “Are you going to tell Gwen?”

  El looked genuinely surprised by my question. “Tell her what? That her dad has a healthy appetite for sex? That doesn’t seem like an appropriate thing for a teacher, even one who isn’t her teacher anymore, to say to any student.”

  He was right, of course. And I nodded quickly. “Are you going to blackmail me then?”

  “No. Of course not. Nothing like that. Look, I was just wondering if you were still into the kinds of things I saw you doing back then. If you were, then I was wondering if you’d be open to experimenting with me. I’d be very discreet. Absolutely so. You’d never have to worry about that at all.”

 
; El had this hopeful expression on his face and I quickly swallowed down the rest of my wine while I thought about his offer. Carl and I had stopped going to kink clubs as soon as we’d wanted to adopt a child. We didn’t want someone to find out and that be the reason that we were considered unfit parents for some lost soul like Gwen. I hadn’t played with anyone like that since Carl had left. Now here El was, offering himself up to me, and I had no idea what to say to him. “Uh...” I was completely lost.

  “Can I kiss you? Maybe? Just one little kiss?”

  I swallowed deeply and tried to remember some part of myself that had stood in a crowded, dimly lit club and commanded my boyfriend to crawl to me on his hands and knees to suck me off in front of everyone. I’d loved being in control of him like that and putting on a show for everyone. Now I couldn’t even figure out how to say yes to one little kiss from an attractive man.

  I finally managed to nod and El got up from the couch he’d been sitting on to come over and lean toward me. I held perfectly still as he gently pressed his mouth against mine in the barest brush of a kiss. He was hesitant and perfectly trusting, just the kind of man I would have wanted before I’d met Carl. Just the kind of sub, too. I brought my hand to the side of his neck and ran my thumb down his throat as I felt his pulse jumping under my skin. He was excited, which was easy to tell, but I wondered if he was worried too. Or if there was any amount of fear in him in that second. I’d done a lot to Carl at the club, not all of it pleasant blow jobs. He’d loved every second of it, but now I was wondering if El wanted to feel the harsh bite of my whip against his back, or if his kinky side only extended to being kissed.

  He tried to pull away but I brought my hand to the back of his head and held him in place as I deepened the kiss. I flicked my tongue against the seam of his lips, asking for permission at first then forcing my way into his mouth when he didn’t yield to me fast enough. The old, nearly forgotten part of myself, that Dominant I’d put away for years and shoved into the back of my mind, that part of me was starting to wake up again, and now I didn’t want to let El go anytime soon.

  When he was breathless, and we both desperately needed air, I let him go. I tasted him on my tongue. The sweet hint of wine mixed with his obvious need. He was flushed as he panted and looked down at me with such blatant want reflecting in his eyes.

  I smirked up at him and settled into a role I’d once loved and had only put away for the sake of my daughter. “What do you expect out of this?”

  He licked his lips and shuffled his feet on the floor. “One night to show you that we could be good together?”

  “I could never have this getting out,” I told him. “To anyone else we’d be dating, if we like each other after tonight, but you’ll never be anything but my partner or my boyfriend outside of either my house or yours. No telling anyone that you’re my sub. Ever.”

  El nodded quickly. “I didn’t expect that to be any different, actually. I’m still a high school teacher. I can’t go parading about at the clubs. What if the father of one of my students saw me?”

  I chuckled and was glad that we were on the same page there. “What are you into? And your limits?” I didn’t like that he kept moving about as if he was nervous. So I tossed a cushion from the couch onto the floor next to my feet and pointed for him to kneel. “And I want your safe word, too.” This was all so familiar to me, like coming home, as he knelt beside me on the cushion and I ran my hand through his soft, short hair.

  “Nothing can show, so everything has to be on my back, chest, or butt. I have to look like a nice, presentable, completely vanilla English teacher during the day, you know.”

  I laughed at that, because I had a feeling that El was anything but vanilla, and I was looking forward to exploring what he liked with him.

  “No body fluids is my big limit. I don’t like it, and I don’t want to do it.”

  “Okay.” Which meant that I could take my whip to his back and hear him cry out while I had him holding onto the column in my kitchen with nothing more than my command to keep him there. I was hard and lightheaded from the heady mix of images pouring into my mind as I imagined El in different positions around my house. “And your safe word?”

  “Poe.”

  An English teacher with ‘Poe’ as his safe word. It was so utterly perfect. “You need to be naked. Now. I’ll have you take your time some other night but right now I want all of your clothes off and folded on the coffee table.”

  El was quick to get to his feet and he took off his shoes and socks in a hurry. Then he started on his pants and removed his briefs and his jeans, leaving him in just a button down shirt as I stared at his hard cock and wondered why he hadn’t started with his shirt like I’d expected him to. I got my answer to that unspoken question a few minutes later when he’d taken off his shirt to expose a wide, pink scar that went from one side of his ribs to the opposite hip.

  I gently touched that raised, pink line and looked up at him.

  “Car accident when I was a kid. I don’t like it.”

  Well, no one would like to have a scar like that, I imagined. But I also understood what he wasn’t saying as well. “It makes you self-conscious.” He nodded and I pulled my hand back. “Fold your clothes up on the coffee table. Shoes underneath it. Then I want you over my lap.”

  “You want me despite my scar?” He seemed so uncertain. It was endearing.

  I nodded to him and he was quick to obey my orders. Minutes later his clothing was folded neatly on my coffee table with military precision and he had positioned himself across my lap. I grabbed his arm to hold him where he was then brought my cupped hand sharply down on his right butt cheek. He cried out sharply and I felt him rub his stiff cock against my jean-covered thigh in response. It was involuntary so I didn’t correct him. This was only to tease him, after all. I wouldn’t be giving him enough to get off on.

  I didn’t play with him with useless word games like telling him he was a bad boy and needed to be punished. I found those kinds of games to be ridiculous in the extreme. I only wanted his honest pleasure and every response he could give me. I loved his harsh gasps as I gave him another spank across the other cheek. He squirmed and whimpered.

  I hadn’t expected this so I didn’t have any lube handy, but a bit of my spit and I was able to start stretching him open for me. He whimpered as I started stroking my fingers into him. “I have condoms in the back pocket of my jeans,” he told me brokenly as I switched between fingering him and rolling his balls gently in my palm.

  “Good. You’ll be able to get one in a second.”

  El nodded against the couch and I spanked him again. He jerked in surprise, and I smiled down at him. He was so honest with his reactions, holding nothing back from me. It was as if he didn’t know how to hide what he was feeling, even if he wanted to. And I loved having that from him.

  When I was satisfied with how ready he was for me I let him go. “Get the condom.” He had it in his hand for me a second later. But I was busy getting undressed myself. I kissed him again as soon as I was naked. With him pressed up against me, I could feel his warmth, and the soft hairs that covered his skin, brushing against me. His scar rubbed against my lower stomach and I held him close as I ran my fingers over the soft muscles of his shoulder blades and down his back. I loved that he wasn’t fit. He looked average and even had a little bit of a belly. It was refreshing. I was so used to being around men like Carl and Mike who both lived for their fitness routines and their time in the gym.

  “I can eat healthier. I’ll go work out. I know I could lose a little weight.”

  I kissed him to shut him up. “You’re perfect. Stop it.” I slid my hand around his length and wrapped my arm around his back to keep him against me. I kissed him again. I was so eager to have his mouth under mine. He mumbled into my kiss, but I didn’t let him go to hear what he was saying. Instead, I kissed him back even harder than I had before. I bruised his lips, and I felt his teeth against
mine. I stroked his cock roughly in my palm until I felt him go weak against me and the other noises that were left for him to make were soft whimpers. Only then did I let him go, back to his knees on the pillow, with my heavy cock right in front of his face.

  El needed no encouragement as he began licking my head and gently lapping at my shaft. I was gentle with him as I held the back of his head and fed my cock between his lips. I loved the little moans that he made as I controlled this moment between us with my thrusts. He held still and kept his hands on top of his thighs as if he trusted me to hold back and not fuck him as deeply as I could simply because he was at my mercy. I spent far too much time in his mouth, getting myself too close to my own climax before I finally pulled out. “Stay on your knees but keep your arms on the couch. I’ll let you know when you can come.”

  “Can I beg?” El quietly asked.

  “You can. It won’t make me speed up or let you come any faster, though.” It felt so good to be able to be in this position again, where I had control over when someone could climax and what they felt while they were with me. I was lost somewhere wondering why I’d ever given this up. Sure, I’d done it for Gwen, but I could have kept this part of my life hidden from her. I was sure of it now, when back then I’d fought so hard against every part of myself that could have been considered taboo just for the sake of trying to be the perfect parent for someone to judge whether or not Gwen would be okay in our lives.

  Because I had him in that position, and because I wanted a few more moments with him, I spanked him hard on each of his cheeks after I’d slid the condom over my thick cock. He yelped and shuddered. I leaned down to bite his reddened right ass cheek, and I got a soft moan from him in return.

  I moved behind him and positioned myself against his hole. He was trembling, I hoped from anticipation, as I slowly slid into him. He groaned and I took my time pressing myself into him. He arched his back and I soothed him with long strokes of my hands over his tight muscles until he’d relaxed around me. When I was sure he was fine, I began to slide in and out of him. I was slow at first, not wanting to rush either of us, but it was hard not to go faster. Even as he panted under me and started mumbling out his need, I kept my pace. I wanted him to be a good kind of sore in the morning, not the kind that had him sitting on an ice pack and hating my guts.