Page 41 of Love, Academically

Rhys wanted her to be with him because she wanted to be.

Lila’s mouth dropped open ever so slightly, her soft lips desperate to be kissed. He could kiss her, he wanted to kiss her, but this wasn’t the time.

They sat for a beat in silence. She wasn’t going to say anything. Fuck, she needed time. Fine. Time he could give her. He wouldn’t like it, but he could.

“Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Call me when you’re ready, okay?”

He took one more slurp of his actually quite delicious coffee and stood, throwing on his jacket and forcing a smile for Lila. How did she manage to smile all the time? Especially when he wanted to shout and demand and, most of all, scowl. But he wouldn’t, not with her.

The stupid ring of the bell as the door swung shut behind him grated on his last nerve.

He was definitely doing the right thing, he knew he was, but his jaw ticked with tension.

Rhys did not like decisions about his life being left to other people, he didn’t like giving up control.

But she needed this control and he wanted her to have it. It was just difficult giving it.

It was colder today and he zipped up his jacket and turned up his collar against the wind. Dodging annoyingly happy couples out for a Sunday morning stroll, with pushchairs and children, was obviously not what he wanted to be doing right now.

Fuck.

Lila’s surprised face, the O of her plump lips, the awkward way she’d picked at her food.

Yeah, he’d fucked this up good and proper.

He should have left well enough alone. Lila had said that she wasn’t looking for a relationship and here he was, just like Jason, running roughshod over her decisions.

Stopping in the middle of the pavement, he pinched the bridge of his nose. For fuck’s sake.

“Rhys!”

Whipping around, his eyes focused on her, because they always focused on her. Sidestepping a dog on a lead, Lila was a little manic, with her floral coat flying around her, wisps of her hair caught in the wind. She really needed a better hairspray or hair tie or whatever.

“Rhys,” she wheezed, hands on her knees as she caught her breath. “I cannot believe you made me run. I don’t run.”

A wry smile tugged at his lips. Evidently.

“Well?” she said, hands on her hips. “I’ve run all this way. Aren’t you going to kiss me?”

“Is that what you want?”

It had to be her choice. It had to be what she wanted, not just to make him happy.

She stood up to her full height (which wasn’t very tall at all), flushed either from the ‘exercise’ of running twenty metres, the bite of the autumn wind, or from asking him to kiss her.

“I, Lila Cartwright,” she put her hand on her chest, “take you, Rhys Aubrey, to be my boyfriend.”

A smile spread across his lips, because Lila was nothing if not dramatic. He couldn’t bring himself to care that people were giving them funny looks or tugging their children away from their spectacle.

“But,” she jabbed him in the chest with a finger, “we are not calling you my boyfriend. It’s too much for me, I can’t have that label. I know you need that clarity, the specifics and that’s fine, but after…”

Lila trailed off, an uncharacteristic line again between her eyes, pleading with him to understand. Which he did.

“Yes.” Rhys worked his hand at gently unclenching her small fist and flattened her palm against his chest. She took a tentative step forward.

“And,” her voice was almost a whisper. “You have to be careful with me. You can’t hide things from me. I make my own decisions.”

Jesus, Jason had really done a number on her. What a prick. “Yes. Of course, yes.”

He reached for her, sliding his fingers into her hair at the nape of her neck. Her hands slid up his chest and over his shoulders.

Kissing Lila was the best thing. Softly, with promise. The rumble of traffic didn’t exist anymore, neither did the woman tutting loudly about their PDA, or the crying child in the pram. The only thing that was real was the softness of Lila’s lips against his, the way her hair caught in his fingers.

“Yes,” he said.

Lila

They spent the rest of the day together. Rhys introduced her to his dreary, immaculate grey flat and she fully understood how her house both horrified him and filled him with some strange sense of wonder. Like a bruise that you couldn’t stop touching.

It was depressingly cold in his flat. Functional and perfect, but just so…

impersonal. The sofa was more of a punishment for believing you could sit down rather than a hug made of fabric and there were certainly no blankets to be seen anywhere.

It was even tough on her skin as Rhys bent her over the arm of it to thrust into her, gripping her bum hard enough to leave a mark.

He hadn’t been able to keep his hands to himself as he showed her his black and white galley kitchen, pushing the fabric of her knickers aside so he could gently massage her clit, pressing his front to her back. He had made her come with a sharp pinch to her nipple.

She hadn’t been this horny, or felt this wanted since – well, ever.

Rhys circled his thumb on the softness of the inside of her wrist, his fingers slid down the back of her arm, kisses dropped behind her ear.

“Can I pick you up in the morning for work?” Rhys asked.

It was Sunday night and they were back at her house, and she was close to falling asleep in the blanket cocoon Rhys had made for her on the sofa.

She hadn’t asked him to stay and he hadn’t assumed.

Gentle, careful and slow. That’s what she kept repeating to herself.

Don’t rush, don’t go all in, because what if, what if, what if.

It already felt that they were free falling too fast to grab onto any tree branches on the way down, probably because of all the time they’d spent together getting ready for his family thing.

“You don’t have to.” She leaned in to kiss him quickly on the lips.

“I know. But if you’d like me to, I would like to as well.”

Rhys was so aware of asking her, not demanding or assuming anything.

“Well, in that case, Dr Aubrey, yes, you can pick me up in the morning. But,” she hesitated, a wry smile on her lips, “won’t people think that we’ve spent the night together?”

His eyebrow quirked upwards.

“Miss Cartwright, are you teasing me? Because if you are,” Rhys stepped forward with narrowed eyes and bent to whisper in her ear, “I’ll have to punish you.”

His hot breath glided across the shell of her ear before he grazed her ear lobe with his teeth.

Lila could not get over the fact that his mouth was so…

so… filthy, and in more ways than one. Every time he said something about how pretty her pussy was, or how hard he was for her, what he’d like to do to her, it was a jolt straight to her core.

Then he’d grin wickedly, knowing precisely what he was doing to her.

Never, ever, had anyone wielded words to make her skin tingle and wetness seep between her legs, and she loved every syllable of it.

“For clarity, Lila,” he stepped back and smirked at her blushes. “I’d happily tell everyone how much I enjoy spending the night between your legs, but I don’t think you’d want me to.”

“Rhys!”

“Can you be ready by 8? 8.15?”

“I’ll try for 8,” she said, because he was usually already at his desk at eight, if not before, and compromise was the key to success here.

Rhys winked at her (actually winked) before getting into his swanky car.

After he left, she threw herself on the sofa and dragged the blanket around her.

It smelled of his clean, fresh washing powder and the forest-y tang of his bodywash and, like a complete weirdo, she huffed on it like an addict snorts up Tipp-Ex.

Her phone blinked accusingly at her from the squidgy ottoman.

The phone rang in her hand.

“Lila, I’m dreading going back to work tomorrow, just dreading it. My headteacher texted me this afternoon to say that she needs a meeting with me first thing in the morning and it’s not going to be good, is it? Otherwise, she wouldn’t have texted me.”

No ‘hi’, ‘hello’, ‘how are you’, just straight into it, which meant Jasmeet was panicking.

“Firstly Jas, calm down. Okay? Take a breath,” she said gently, smoothing the blanket over her legs. “Secondly, that’s really unprofessional and you should talk to HR about it.”

“HR?” Jasmeet snorted. “You think we have HR?”

“Okay, well someone higher that your Head. It’s not within working hours and it’s ruining what’s left of your weekend.”

And hers, the high from Rhys’s words fading like the promises of a political party the more Jasmeet poured her drama into her ear. Not that she minded, not at all. Jasmeet needed her.

“And thirdly, whatever it is, you can deal with it. You’re a fantastic teacher, you’re an amazing person. You know your stuff, okay? You’re good.”

Lila kept her voice soft, because tough love was something that didn’t work on Jasmeet at all. At. All.

“I am. Aren’t I?”

“Yes,” she said decisively. “One hundred and ten percent.”

“You can’t get higher than one hundred percent,” she said absently.

“You know what I mean,” Lila said, flicking through Netflix. “Seriously, Jas. Don’t let this worry you any more tonight. I know it’s hard but do something to take your mind off it. Do you want to come over?”

Lila immediately regretted the words leaving her mouth.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want Jasmeet to come over, but…

actually, no. It was exactly that. She was in a perfect little post-Rhys bubble and she didn’t want to be disrupted.

Yes, she loved Jasmeet, but if she came over then they would spend all evening dissecting every conversation she’d had over the last week, trying to work out what the meeting could be about and how Jasmeet would deal with it.

It would be draining.

“Would you mind, Lila? I mean, I’m stressing myself out over here.”

“Where’s Dan?”

“Oh, he’s out with Rhys. He called a few minutes ago and wanted to go for a drink, so Dan has gone. He invited me, but it seemed like a boys’ thing.”

“You could have gone. He wouldn’t have invited you if he didn’t want you to go.”

“I suppose so,” Jasmeet said. “I could text him, see if I could go. That would stop me stressing.”

“Yeah, it would.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind? I mean, I just said I’d come over.” Well, not exactly, but okay. “Why don’t you come as well?”

“I’m already in my pjs,” she lied.

“No, no I won’t go. I don’t want to be too clingy. Do you think I’m being clingy?”

In the end, Jasmeet didn’t turn up on Lila’s doorstep, but she did stay on the phone until halfway through Risky Business, going through every possible conversation that could be had tomorrow at 8.15am.

There was a lot of flashing dots before:

She blushed, even though there was no one there to see.