Student Body

Today it’s the turn of author Rafeeq O. McGiveron and his book Student Body. Don’t forget you can let us know what you think in the comments section.

 

 

“You okay?” Lauren asked him.

“Sudden chill,” grunted Rick. “No big deal. Just a minute and we’ll be back to Morrill.”

They walked before the Human Ecology Building, and Rick warmed one of his hands in the plume of coffee-scented vapor rising from the hole in the cup’s thin plastic top.

“Penny for your thoughts?” Lauren wondered.

“Nothing special,” Rick said quickly.

They moved under the high, rustling canopy of the big sycamore tree. “Nickel?” she tried again.

“Uh-uh.” Rick shook his head.

On this side of Morrill a flying buttress of railed concrete stairs led up to the building’s first floor, which actually was half a story off the ground, just as the basement was only half below. Rick and Lauren walked around the stairs and went into the cut-out by the base, where a corner had crumbled away to reveal rusty steel supporting rods. They started down the steps to the recessed basement door. Partially hidden there by shrubbery and brickwork and overhead stairs, Lauren grabbed his arm suddenly and turned him to face her. “A dime,” she said softly. “Surely the best offer around. Ol’ Slinky pays top dollar.”

Rick winced at the sound of the old pet name, and the way his own words came back at him. He stared helplessly at her porcelain face, so close before him that he could count the dainty, familiar little freckles at the tops of her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. Her dark eyes, beautifully long-lashed. gleamed hugely dilated, and her rich lips were ever so faintly parted. Heavy black hair blew about her flushed cheeks and her pale throat, and again he caught the familiar fragrance of her perfume, so deeply affecting in a way he could never name.

Rick’s chest felt constricted. He licked his lips slowly, trying to shake his head. Why did it have to be this way? he wondered again, pointlessly. God, no wonder he had stayed away, if this proximity sent him reeling even now. He remembered— He remembered everything, and it made the bottom of his belly feel empty. He knew that look in her eyes, saw the longing. Like Rick, she had tried. But it hadn’t worked.

If he wanted, he knew suddenly, agonized, he could do anything—anything! She had always made him feel that way, and all at once the crazy freedom burned in him again, wild and impossibly alluring. He could sweep that narrow young body of hers up in his arms and carry her away to a softly shuttered boudoir, throw her splay-limbed and flushed across silk sheets and strip every thread from her beckoning nakedness, and then, panting in his need, simply fall upon her—wordlessly, gratefully, adoringly—and bury his face in her fragrant hair and his flesh in her very soul and make her all hisagain. That was what her silent dark eyes dared him to do.

He was thrilled, and yet he recoiled, sick at heart. She wanted to lie beneath him again and gaze up into his helpless face in the darkness, wanted to rock him in the cradle of her being, her ankles crossed contentedly behind his striving back. And she longed to cling to him again, afterward, sweat-sheened and happy and limp, feeling warm and close and so very, very wanted, smiling sleepily as her head lolled back across the pillows amid gleaming waves of sable that fanned out against the delicately freckled skin of her moon-silvered shoulders… She wanted it like it had been—like it hadn’t been—like it never could be.

Rick swayed upon his distant feet. He had a wife and three children, he knew, who waited in his apartment back in Spartan Village at the other end of campus. It was a five-digit call from any campus phone, a six- or eight-minute drive by car…and the way he would go at the end of the day, fully half an hour’s hike under the gathering gray of heavy autumn clouds. Suddenly it felt like the other side of the world. He tried to picture his family, but for a terrible moment nothing came, and he had to cling to the abstraction. He was married, he told himself again. He had a wife and children, he was already oh-so very happy—

Rick reached his hand out and gently brushed a wisp of sable from the girl’s forehead. The tip of his middle finger continued slowly down her blood-warmed cheek. “Thoughts?” he said shakily. “Who, me?”

He took her jaw gently in his hand. “No thoughts here,” he whispered desperately. “I— I can’t think anything like that again. You know that, don’t you, Slink?”

She bit her full lower lip and blinked, and her little chin nodded mechanically in his hand.

“It makes sense, doesn’t it?”  He stroked his thumb tenderly across the point of her jaw. “Doesn’t it?” he pleaded.

Lauren cleared her throat. “Of course,” she husked. She licked her lips, then continued glibly, “Why, sure it does, Rick.” She gave a quick smile. “We’re just out enjoying a nice fall afternoon. No special thoughts here, eh?”

“That’s right.” He felt her hand drop from the bare flesh of his arm. “And now,” he continued, feeling cold, “it’s about time to get back to work, huh?”

She tugged open the heavy door and with exaggerated courtesy gestured for him to enter. “Proceed, Professor.”

“Your servant,” he acknowledged with a faint bow. They walked down the hallway in silence. A few paces before his office, Rick stopped and looked her over. “Thanks, Lauren,” he said quietly.

She shrugged with her eyebrows. “Ask a silly question…” She let out her breath. “Don’t worry, Rick. I’ll look for those papers.”

Rick nodded. He almost reached for her hand but then, hesitating, gave his wrist an awkward little twist and caught the gray cuff of her jacket sleeve instead. He clasped the tweedy material earnestly in parting, feeling it warm from her flesh beneath, richly textured under his fingertips.

 

 

You can buy this book from Amazon now: http://www.amazon.com/Student-Body-Rafeeq-O-McGiveron/dp/149529269X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1410727582&sr=8-1&keywords=rafeeq+mcgiveron

And find out more about Rafeeq here: http://www.rafeeqmcgiveron.com/