Much has been said about Cordelia Channings, but it usually boiled down to one fact - she was a queen bee. She had the aura and arrogance to make her peers fall all over each other to fulfill her every whim, and she knew it and took advantage of it. She was also sixteen and, while already becoming a woman in her own right, still carried the playful and innocent complexion of youth. She was tall, blond, lean and tanned, and she set trends.
One developing trend, though, was to completely ignore whatever happened in my classroom, and that was where I drew a line. It had been getting worse over the last few periods, and I was aware that she was testing me. I let the fiberglass pointer crack hard against the top of my desk and enjoyed the ensuing shocked silence. All eyes were on me now, where they should have been all along.
"Miss Channings," I commanded in my best stern voice, "if you and your gaggle of followers cannot be bothered to follow my teaching, I’ll have to physically separate you. Please take the empty seat in the front."
If I had expected her to argue against my request, I’d have been sorely disappointed. But that wasn’t Cordelia’s mode of operation anyhow.
"Of course, Miss Wilkins." She quickly stowed her book in her bag, gave her friends a quick wave and sashayed to the front, looking like a young tennis star in her white tank top and miniskirt, where she sat down gracefully at the table right next to my teaching desk. She even sent me a bright smile.
"So back to the developments that led to the French revolution. We talked about the circumstances for the peasants and the bourgeois for the first half of this period." Something moved at the edges of my field of vision. I turned my head slightly but quickly looked away again. Cordelia had removed her sandals and the balls of her right foot were caressing her right. I cleared my throat.
"Now I want us all to have a look at the changes in arts and literature that preceded the revolution. There are, for example, a number of books typical for that era that are still in print today. Who can name one?"
That was one question that usually took some time, but it inevitably ended with the one author's name everybody had heard about. Though it used to take repeated prompting until one of my pupils could muster their courage.
Today, it seemed, things were going to be different. Cordelia’s hand was up the moment I had finished the question.
"Yes, Miss Channings?"
"Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre de Laclos."
I was startled, though I tried to hide it. The short glint in her eyes told me that I had failed.
"Uhm, can you tell the class what the book is about?"
Another sweet smile. "Why of course." And as if with practiced ease, she stood up and turned around to face her classmates, seating her youthful bum on the table and resting her still bare feet on the armrest of her chair.
"Les Liaisons dangereuses, or The Dangerous Liaisons in English, is an epistolary novel about seduction. The main characters, a male and a female aristocrat, play a game where they dare each other to seduce somebody with the sole intention to humiliate and degrade them."
Her voice was casual, but she wiggled her toes and one hand’s blood-red fingernails trailed up her thigh, toned and soft and without any blemish of age. I closed my eyes for a moment and focused back on her words.
"...noblewoman, while the woman, the Marquise, plans to corrupt her daughter Cécile. There’s a lot of haggling and conspiracy going on, and the Vicomte ends up seducing both the mother and her daughter…"
Her skirt had travelled up her thigh. With a small start I realized that the rest of the class would undoubtedly get a completely unobstructed look at what lay below it. With her style of dress and her self-assuredness, I could picture her wearing nothing else but the tiniest of thongs. My face grew hot and I swallowed. I should say something, stop her from flashing to the whole class, but by doing so I would acknowledge that I had only now realized this and, even worse, that I was thinking about it at all.
"...betrays him by exposing his machinations and goes back on her promise to sleep with him. He ends up dueling the Chevalier, who hits him with a deadly bullet. Before he dies, he hands the younger man the letters…"
She pulled up her right leg, bent at the knee, and the side of the miniskirt fell back, exposing parts of her bum up to her hip to me. The sight of a narrow, dark-green band of fabric confirmed my earlier musings, and the flush on my face became a burning nuisance. From where I was standing, she might not be wearing a skirt at all, it wouldn’t make a difference, and I wasn’t the only person on this side of the classroom. In fact, those girls and boys in front of her got an even better look.
I bit my lip. Where had the word "better" came from?
She stood again, turned around and slowly bent forward while she sat back on her chair. The neckline of the tank top fell away and exposed a pair of small breasts, shaped like the halves of an apple and perfectly firm, with tight, pointed nipples as pink as the sugar cones I liked to lick as a child.
She sank a bit lower and our eyes met. The knowing smirk playing on her lips made my stomach clench and my head grow dizzy. I took a few deep breaths and looked down at my script, hiding my face and giving myself time to re-assemble my splintered countenance. I didn’t know what was happening, but I didn’t have the time to think about it. There was a classroom full of expectant eyes waiting for me to continue.
"Thank you very much, Miss Channings," I finally managed to say with a halfway composed voice, "that was a very insightful and complete description of this novel."
I got up and started to walk up and down in front of the blackboard. The movement helped to get my mind back on its track and to keep my eyes from becoming focused on a single person. "Everyone of your surely noticed the carnal topics of the book. Compared to the literature we encountered in earlier years, which was mostly religious or economic in nature, this is quite a step, and it is exemplary for its time. Laclos, DeSade, Diderot, Rousseau. These are some of the more prominent authors of that time, and what they all had in common was that they introduced eroticism and sexuality into their writings without any flowery language trying to obscure that fact."
A relieved sigh almost escaped me when I realized that I was back on track. "They could only publish their books with the support of the nobles, though, because it was, for one, rather expensive, and, for two, a commoner without protection may have suffered the wrath of the church for indecent behavior. Decency however was not a concern for the nobles, they had the church bought and made their own rules. Your textbook has two pages on the entanglements between nobles and clerics that I want you to read until next period."
I could hear from the rustling of paper that at least a number of them were clever enough to take that down.
"Many think that these kinds of books, freed from the restrictions of religious morale and often written under the cover of exposing the sick behaviors of the aristocratic, added kindling to the fire of revolution that was already starting all over the country, and that without it, that fire may have burnt out. That, in a way, by enabling the publishing of those books, they paid for their own downfall."
I stopped in front of the blackboard and wrote in big letters: Significance of libertine literature in the French revolution. "I want at least two pages in which you argue that topic until next week. Read the topic in the textbook, if you’re unsure use the Internet, and feel free come by my office over visiting hours with any questions. Thank you."
The bell sounded. Perfect. A small smile played over my lips while I listened to the rustling and scratching sounds that announced my students’ rush to get out of the last class of the week and start their weekend.
I sat down and put away my notes, the tension finally flowing out of my body.
I heard the door click shut and took a few deep breaths in the silence.
"Miss Wilkins?"
I jumped in my chair and almost yelped when Cordelia’s voice suddenly sounded right next to me. My heart beat like mad.
"Yes, Miss Channings?"
She sat down on the edge of my desk and I had to look up at her.
"I was wondering if you have some reading recommendations for that time."
She pulled up her left leg, and I really tried not to look. But my eyes had a mind of their own, and when her skirt rode up all the way, they drank in the sight of the moss-green strip of fabric between those soft thighs. They also noticed the clear outline of the adolescent plum hidden beneath, and the slightly darker stain in its center.
And she was aware of it. Alarm bells started ringing in my head.
Her voice grew quieter and husky. "I’ve read those authors you mentioned, and I found them most…" She paused for a second, and I looked up into her eyes, "intriguing." She licked her lips, which glistened invitingly, like ripe, sweet fruits.
"Not the gory parts and the shootings, mind you, but the seduction and the sex. And the power games."
She turned her body slightly towards me and extended her leg a bit, resting her heel on the desk, right in front of me. She wiggled her manicured toes and I felt my mouth go dry and small beads of sweat appear on my forehead.
"The taboo," she whispered, "the forbidden lust that makes people do unspeakable things."
A whiff of something sweet and musky filled my nose. A voice in the back of my head screamed that something abhorrently wrong was going on.
"I can see it on your face, in your eyes," she purred, "you want to lick my feet, taste my yummy toes, suckle on them and worship them. Aren’t they beautiful?" She wiggled them some more.
I could feel wetness seep from between my legs and moisten my panties. I couldn’t do this. I’d risk my career, everything I’d been working for.
"It can be our little secret. Nobody needs to know but us. You know you want to taste them. Do it!"
I felt like in a trance. My heart was missing beats and my stomach tied in knots. But I couldn’t stop myself, entranced by this youthful beauty and her self-assuredness. I bent forward and stuck out my tongue, leaning in closer and closer until my vision was filled by soft skin and bright red nails. My tongue made contact and my pussy clenched.
The taste was sweet and slightly salty. It coated my tongue and made me shiver with arousal. I wrapped my lips around her big toe and softly suckled.
She answered with a quiet moan. "Good teacher." Her hand brushed over my hair, patting me like an adored pet. "Don’t stop. Undress for me."
"Oh my god! I can’t," I mumbled, barely comprehensible with the toe in my mouth, "someone might come in!"
"Nobody’s going to come in," she cooed. "Everybody’s already left for the weekend, the other classes ended an hour earlier so your colleagues are away too, and the janitor won’t start cleaning for at least an hour."
She was right. There was always some risk that someone unexpected might drop by. But that hadn’t happened once over the last three years. My fingers shook as they nestled with the buttons of my blouse.
When it slipped down my arms and the cool air brushed over my exposed skin, it did nothing to ease the heat I felt. I suckled harder and lifted my bum an inch, brushing the over-knee skirt down to puddle around my feet while she cooed encouragements.
It took me a few tries to unhook the bra, but it finally slipped down too. My whole body was trembling by then. My nipples were hard points, almost painful with arousal. Pulling down my panties, white cotton, their front completely soaked, was almost too much, and I hesitated. Until her big toe wiggled in my mouth and all thought went out the window.
"Kneel." The order was barely a whisper, but it filled my whole being.
The chair scraped backwards and I sunk to the floor, only hesitantly letting her toe slip from my lips, but then I was on my knees, her foot right in front of me, and I felt breathless and impatient.
"Lick my sole. It’s dirty and sticky from running barefoot. Be a good pet and clean my beautiful foot with your soft, wet tongue."
The thought of licking the grime and dust from her foot was revolting. But also so forbidden and sensual. I could only imagine how it felt to her. I licked, starting from her heel and running my tongue all the way up to her toes and delving in the cleft in between. The taste in my mouth became slightly sour, but her moans and delighted giggles more than made up for it.
"Play with yourself, enjoy the moment," she purred, and it was like I’d been waiting for the command all along.
I didn’t need foreplay. My finger dipped into folds to pick up some moisture, and then I rubbed small circles around my clit, already free from its hood and yearning to be touched.
My own moans answered hers, and my hips started to gyrate on their own volition. I was already close to the edge and my breath grew ragged.
I saw her look to the side and grin. "Did you get all that?"
My mind took a few seconds to process this, but when another female answered, "yes, everything, and in full detail," it quickly caught up.
At first I thought the world was crumbling down around me. Heat and cold raced over my skin and panic clenched my heart. But my depraved body took the flood of emotions as a trigger.
I came. Harder than I had ever before. I shook and trembled and toppled over, one hand clutched between my legs and my knees pulled up to my chest. I gasped and moaned as waves of pleasure exploded from my pussy and traveled all the way through my body, even while I watched the back of the girl, a camera in one hand, carrying my future out of the classroom.
Tears trickled over my cheeks, even as the last convulsions from the climax shook my body. "What," I croaked, feeling elated and devastated at the same time, "what’s going to happen now?"
Cordelia climbed down from my desk and crouched down next to me. "Nothing much," she told me with a smirk, all tenderness gone from her voice, "besides you kissing a lot of feet. And other things, if I feel so inclined. All in the libertine tradition, of course. I might make you do other things too, but I’ll probably keep the pictures for myself."
My head was spinning. She was holding my future in her hands, and she was going to play with me. I should have known that from the start.
"Or perhaps I’ll share them. With your relatives perhaps, or your friends. Not with anybody who might leak them to the school, of course. I’ve still got more than a year left here, and I want to keep you around."
Knowing that I would be able to keep my job, at least for now, was a measure of relief. But the thought of people close to me seeing what I had done made me shake in panic. "Please don’t," I begged her.
Instead of answering, she roughly pushed a finger into my still wet pussy. I gasped and stared at her with wide eyes, my feelings on overload for a moment.
"Don’t you like the idea that all the people around you know what a depraved little slut you are?"
I desperately shook my head, but my pussy repeatedly clenched around her fingers.
She grinned. "I thought so. Oh, I’ll drop by your house tonight at eight. Make sure that you have snacks and drinks available. I might bring some friends."
I sat there a long time, naked, my arms wrapped around my shins, slowly rocking back and forth and staring at the door. I avoided conscious thoughts, but the enormity of my situation still found me. I hated my predicament, but at the same time I was aware that, given another chance and tasting her perfect, youthful body, I would jump at it.
She was a queen bee, and I was a simple worker. She didn’t even need the pictures. But they were the excuse I needed. I slipped my rumpled clothes back on, closed up the classroom and drove away. The champagne and Italian sausage I bought on my way home may have been a bit over the top, but it was what a queen bee deserved.
