‘Because I’ll get the sack.’
‘No you won’t.’
‘I will.’
‘Who’ll tell?’
‘I don’t know that you can be trusted,’ she replied coyly.
‘So it’s not that you don’t want to then?’ he said and placed his lips on the soft flesh where her neck met her shoulders. She shivered with a pleasure she wished she had more strength to resist.
‘You’re a boy,’ she repeated weakly.
He took her hand and placed it on his trousers. ‘Is this the behaviour of a boy?’ he asked.
She felt the solid evidence of his desire and giggled again, more out of nervousness than merriment. ‘I suppose not.’ She chuckled.
‘I’m ready for you,’ he breathed into her ear.
Bea couldn’t help but find the situation amusing. She suppressed her laughter. ‘I’ll bet you don’t know what to do with it,’ she said, gently squeezing it with her hand.
‘I’d like you to show me,’ he said. Suddenly Bea felt like a temptress and she liked the sense of power it gave her. The wine had made her reckless, dulled her reasoning so that tomorrow seemed another lifetime and tonight a magical limbo in which anything was possible. She turned and allowed him to kiss her. As his wet mouth descended onto hers she forgot that he was a fifteen-year-old boy, the son of her employers. He kissed like a man. It was only when they fell onto her bed that she was jolted back to reality. He was hard and energetic and yet he was ignorant of the complex labyrinth of the female body. After the initial kiss she lifted his fumbling hand off her breast and resolved to teach him how to make love like a man.
The following morning Bea was thankful it was Sunday so that she could
spend the entire morning in bed. Before Sam had returned to his room in the early hours he had boasted that he could have gone on all night and probably all weekend. She had believed him. He was a quick learner and like any child with a new toy had been reluctant to put it away and go to bed. She smiled to herself in that pleasant heavy-eyed limbo between consciousness and unconsciousness and recalled with pride her eager student who by five o’clock in the morning had mastered the art of a soft touch, a slow kiss but not quite managed the patient restraint. That would come, she thought to herself, with maturity. Then she panicked as she remembered he was only fifteen years old and she sunk deeper beneath the blankets.
She was awoken a short time later by a sensual licking of the spaces between her toes. She writhed in her sleep as a warm sensation crept up her legs and into her belly. When the feeling of a wet mouth on her thigh became too intense to be imaginary she managed to open her eyes and peer down her body. ‘Sam. Not now,' she protested and rolled over.
But he persisted. ‘You can’t send me away, I know how you like it. You can’t resist me,’ he said, running his hand over her naked leg.
‘Just watch me,’ she replied, pulling the pillow over her head. But Sam was right. She was defenceless. He knew her vulnerable places and how to stimulate them. She was powerless against the responses of her body in spite of her mind that cried out for more sleep. She allowed him to coax her onto her back where she feigned reluctance as he practised the lessons of the night before.
Sam could think of nothing but sex. Seducing Bea had had the opposite effect to the one he had hoped for. Instead of toning down his lust it had only intensified it. He was now less able to concentrate on his studies than before and spent most of the day gazing out of the classroom window imagining what he was going to do to Bea when he next saw her. The fact that it was illicit made the whole affair irresistible. He enjoyed sitting across the breakfast table having sneaked out of her bed only a few minutes before, talking to her with his usual indifference, relishing the fact that no one knew of their nocturnal adventures.
He took her wherever possible whenever they found themselves alone. Behind the pool house, in the barn, beneath the apple trees in the orchard, down on the beach or in the hidden caves that still echoed with the urgent whispers
of long-dead smugglers. Bea worked hard in the day looking after Lucien and Joey, who needed constant supervision and entertainment, then serviced their elder brother through the night. She was exhausted but she couldn’t refuse him. He gave her too much pleasure.
Sam didn’t boast about it at school. He didn’t need to. He had changed and the other boys sensed it and admired him for it. Ingrid was too vague to notice her weary nanny or the self-satisfied expression on the face of her eldest son. Inigo rarely left his study and the girls were too preoccupied with their childish games to pay attention to their little brothers’ nanny. They considered themselves too grown-up for a nanny.