Sheila Lane - The Tutor_s Suitors

And that was exactly the way Jay chose to interpret the action. Grinning lewdly, he leaned forward and licked his lips.

"Sinful, lusting woman!" Paula heard her father's voice shouting in her mind and jerked her eyes away from Jay.

"Miss Swan, are you going to camp with us or not?" Barb Randall asked, her blue eyes clouded and her voice tense.

"Well, Barb, I… No, I don't think so," Paula said, wondering why it, should be so important to the girl. Barb was a year younger than her brother but was just as tall and good-looking and just as interested in sports. They really could have passed for twins and until recently had been as close as twins. Paula had noticed their apparent alienation and deplored it but put it down to Mike's having discovered girls and Barb's being jealous. She couldn't think of anything else that could be troubling Barb, and she'd been meaning to talk to the girl and try to explain that this was part of the natural growing-up process, but she'd been too preoccupied with her own strange cravings to get around to it.

"But we had so much fun last year," Cindy Davis spoke up. "Remember the long walks we took in the woods, Miss Swan, and the rap sessions after lights out?"

"Yes, Cindy, I remember," Paula said, smiling at the thirteen-year-old and noting with a slight sense of shock the high, full breasts and lusciously curved arms and thighs. Later on, Cindy might be fat but right now in the first budding of adolescence, she was adorable with her carroty-red hair falling softly to her shoulders and her turned-up nose with its sprinkling of freckles. How quickly they all grew up! "'There will be plenty of people for you to talk and rap with, I'm sure. Dr. Muster and his wife are sympathetic and understanding, and with all the interesting things there are to do at Mountain Grove, you'll never miss me."

"But we will," Mike said, lifting his eyes from Paula's legs to her face. "We'll miss you terribly, Miss Swan. Camp just won't be the same without you."

Paula's face felt flushed. She knew what Mike was thinking, knew he was speculating about the opportunities for intimacy between camp counselors and young people at Mountain Grove. She knew, because the limited supervision and scattered cabins had been uppermost in her own mind for the past few weeks. That was the main reason she had decided not to go. She was afraid of what might happen there in the pine-scented woods with the tanned and usually half-naked bodies of so many boys,around. She was afraid that no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn't be able to control herself.

"There will be other years," she said briskly to cover her uneasiness. Perhaps some other year she would be more sure of herself, more certain that she could make her body live up to her ideals, more positive that she could be a good rather than an evil influence on the young people of the church.

"But a year's an awful long time," Barb said forlornly.

"What's the matter, Barb? You having boy problems?" Jay's voice was sly and insinuating.

"Shut up!" Barb flared and blushed scarlet through her tan. "Mind your own business, Jay Divan! I was talking to Miss Swan!"

Jay smirked and winked knowingly, and Paula looked from one to the other of them, her mind in a turmoil. Surely she couldn't be pregnant, could she? Not intelligent, athletic Barb! Not Barb who had won a dozen medals in high school swim meets and whose teachers considered her one of their most promising students! Paula had always found the girl to be sincerely religious and dedicated to.Christian concepts and ideals. Surely Barb was too open and aboveboard to be hiding a thing like that, but why was she so flustered and angered by Jay's implied accusations? Had she actually been with a boy? Had she perhaps been suffering and given in to it and been trapped by her inexperience into an unwanted pregnancy? If so, Paula felt that she was partly to blame, because she had been so selfishly occupied with her own problem that she had failed to realize the girl was so troubled.

"Would you like to have a nice long talk this afternoon, Barb?" Paula asked. "If you have some difficulty I can help you with, I'd be only too happy to."

"Does that go for me, too, Miss Swan?" Jay asked, looking from her crotch to the swollen front of his pants. "I got an awful big problem I need help with."

Paula's eyes flicked at him angrily. She hated Jay for the sneering, cynical young brute he was, but she couldn't suppress a shiver of excitement as her glance swept over the outline of his engorged phallus. "No, Jay, I won't be able to see you," she said quickly, knowing she had to fight off the feelings running rampant in her, the senseless lust for boys she had no business wanting, the strange craving for men she met casually through her job as secretary for a large trucking firm.

"You can come by my place this afternoon if you want to, Barb," she said, keeping her voice calm and steady. "Or if this evening is more convenient, that'll be fine, too I'm not going out."

"What, no date on Sunday night?" Jay said and nudged Mike. "Man, the fellows sure are missing something, ain't they, Mike?"

Paula felt her face flush, but she ignored the remark and spoke to Barb again. "Shall I expect you then?"

"I… I suppose so, Miss Swan, but…"

"I'll go if you don't want to," Jay said. "Can I come by, Miss Swan? I need counseling awful bad. Can I come by, huh? Can I come?"

Paula knew he had deliberately used the term to taunt her. What must the boy think of her to believe he could get away with something like that?

"You'll have to talk to Dr. Muster if you want private counseling," she said sternly, frightened by his insistence and shocked by her reaction to it as well as by her lewd behavior that had brought his leering suggestions into the open. If the opportunity presented itself and' the two of them were alone, would she let him do what he so obviously wanted to do, or would her pious upbringing assert itself and save her? She didn't know, but she did know that she didn't dare take a chance on finding out.

She pushed back her chair and got to her feet, smoothing her skirt down and trying not to notice the disappointed looks on the faces of the three boys sitting on the floor. "That will be all for today, class. Don't forget to register for camp. I'll see you this afternoon, Barb, and the rest of you next Sunday. Be sure and stay for services."

She was gathering up her lesson book, Bible and papers as she spoke, wanting only to get away from the scene of her shame, to run from the knowledge that she had deliberately exposed herself to the gaze of three barely pubescent boys and aroused them to sinful lust. She would never be able to forgive herself, never! She had to do something about herself. She had to find a way to control herself or something dreadful would happen.

The young people were still milling about aimlessly when Paula hurried from the room and down the hallway toward Dr. Muster's office. Her face was warm, and her thighs felt hot and sticky. She thought she even detected a faint aroma drifting up around her from the wet crevice between her thighs.

"You smell like a bitch dog in heat," her father would have said if he were alive and aware of her condition. "It's a wonder every male within miles doesn't come sniffing after you."

Paula wanted to talk to Dr. Muster, wanted the calm assurance of his deep voice, wanted to strengthen her faith with his dedicated idealism. She wanted to tell him how she'd been suffering, get his advice and his sympathy.

She flung open the door to Dr. Muster's office and entered without knocking, too agitated to observe the amenities. The minister looked up from the papers on his desk, mild irritation replaced almost immediately by pleased surprise on his handsome features. A tall, strongly built man in his late thirties, he had silver-gray hair and a low-pitched voice that rumbled like the deep notes of a pipe organ. Everyone in the congregation thought of Ephraim Muster as a dedicated and brilliant minister; Paula thought of him as a saint.