Sarah Dickens sat alone at the table sipping her coffee. Around her mums and their young children went merrily about discussing the holidays and shopping. It was such a foreign concept to her: family. She had grown up in a string of caring and decent, if not permanent, foster homes. Her mum had been a drunken slag, who vacillated between beating and neglecting her young child. At the age of four, Sarah had been taken into care following a particularly brutal attack that left a nasty burn scar over much of her back. Even twenty-three years later that scar had faded very little.
Her first home had been with a very nice older woman, who had grown children. But less than a year into the placement, Mama Grace had fallen and broken her leg. She had been unable to continue to care for Sarah and had instead moved into her son's. So began Sarah's odyssey in care that would continue for the next twelve years. Fifteen foster homes and five social workers later, Sarah had entered an independent living centre while finishing her A-levels.
At university, Sarah could almost blend into the crowd, except at holidays like these. When her friends scampered home to their families, Sarah remained virtually alone, save for the rare international student whose budget was too tight to allow them to return home for the holidays.
Now as a reception teacher, Sarah both loved the chaos of the season and lamented it. During the days leading up to it, Sarah lived vicariously through her students the joys of the celebration. Her class always worked hard on their part of the Christmas play and made home-made decorations for the huge tree that graced the corner of the room.
But Sarah dreaded with a deep emptiness the final day of school for it heralded the bitter end to the holiday fantasy, which she had built around the twenty-seven young lives of her students -- her children. It stood as a stark reminder that she had only borrowed them; that they must return each night, each weekend and each holiday to their real families. Something she had never had.
Of course, the other side of the coin was that although Sarah could easily empathize and form close bonds with the children, her early relationships or more accurately lack there of had resulted in a profound lack of trust, which resulted in the early demise of her two attempts at adult relations. Her first relationship, if you could call it that, had been with another girl at the independent living centre. It had actually been more like friendship because the sex actually ended it all. Then her final year in university, Sarah had given into the repeated pleas of one of her best friends for something more. But once again, the sex seemed to sour what had been one of her closest relationships. Even though she and Jack still kept in touch with the occasional email or phone call.
"You are even more beautiful than your pictures." Sarah was woken from her day dreaming by the cool crisp American accent.
Her eyes lifted to meet the dark black ones ensconced in a distinctly handsome dark coffee color face. He was tall; his head completely shaven as well. For half a second, Sarah once again wondered at the folly which had brought her on this seemingly crazy errand. Aware that her silence was now bordering on rudeness.
She shook her head just a bit as if to clear her mind, "Actually I was just thinking that I have completely lost my mind and should get the hell out of here." Sarah tried to make her excuses. "I'm sorry I wasted your time like this." Her eyes dropped to the floor.
His large hands wrapped softly about her upper arm as she made to rise. He leaned forward and brushed a soft kiss across her cheek. His lips were against her ear; his voice deep and hypnotic when he whispered, "You are every man's fantasy of the innocent little school marm. God, I want to fuck my baby into you so bad."
At that moment, Sarah's legs would not have worked if she needed them to. Her fingers tightened into little fists at her side as they always had when nervous. All the bravado of one hundred and seven emails and hours upon hours of online chats instantly vaporized.
Although they had both talked about this meeting, teased about the things they would do to one another; his words brought home to Sarah the truth. This man, this gym jock, the dark Adonis before her was way out of her league. With her limited sexual experience, she could not fake her way through the next two days.
Collapsing back into the booth, Sarah tried very hard to think of a way out of this incredibly uncomfortable position in which she found herself. It had been the desperation of yet another holiday alone that had driven her to such an uncharacteristically brash action as taking a train over seventy-five miles to meet a virtual stranger for sex. Unprotected sex. She was certain that her psychologist would have a complete field day with the Freudian and Jungian implications of her behaviour.
Staring into the almost empty cup of hot chocolate, she tried to summon even a tiny bit of the brashness, which had come so easily in the written word. Not that she had not had the same reservations when she woke up this morning. On the short walk to St Pancreas train station and every single mile that the train drew closer to Cambridge. She had rehearsed all the cute lines she might try.
The reality of the man before her was too much. And the fact that she had actually seen photographs of the more intimate parts of his anatomy hidden in those loose jeans made her even more uncomfortable. Sarah had just assumed somehow no one on those naughty sites were real. But the man sitting before her was very much real and very much resembled the pictures he had emailed. If others things did?
A pub would have been a better choice for a meeting place, Sarah thought, forgetting for the moment that she never drank. Without consciously thinking Sarah's blue eyes drifted to the crotch of his jeans as he pulled out the chair in front of her and straddled it.
His deep chuckle drew her eyes back up to his handsome face then. "Yes, those pics are real too, Teach." His answering wink sent Sarah's pale cheeks an even deeper shade of fuchsia, if that was possible.
Sarah was not certain what to say then, as if she had been sure of anything for the past few days. The only thing that had driven her on this crazy escapade at all was Britney. Her god-daughter turned two soon. Ever since she had been born, something inside of Sarah had grown restless. Britney was the only child of her best friends Kasey and Todd, both of whom were teachers at the same primary school where she had worked since finishing university.
It had been their first day as well. The three of them had just naturally become close. Of course, that closeness had grown into something more for Todd and Kasey. And most of the time Sarah was happy for them, especially when Britney was born. From the moment that she had held the tiny little café-au-lait baby girl, one of her deepest held beliefs had come into question. Sarah had always thought that children of her own just were not in the cards, but she could no longer deny the want and yearning inside her.
This past weekend Sarah had kept Britney so that Kasey and Todd could have some time alone. In fact, it was the pain of lifting her sleeping body into her mother's arms, another parting, which had driven Sarah to this rash behaviour in the first place. And it was that thought which she had to hold onto.
As if reading her mind, he spoke again. "I promise, Teach, if this is really what you want, then you could not have found a better guy. Like we talked about in the emails, you can walk out that door right now. I won't stop you. It's totally your choice." Picking up her pale hand and bringing it slowly to his lips, he brushed a soft kiss across her knuckles like the almost prefect gentleman he had been on-line for the past six weeks.
"But then you won't get the baby you want." His smile widened as he lowered his voice to just above a whisper again, "And I won't get the pleasure of your hot, wet, tight cunt wrapped around my cock for the next two days. And trust me, Teach, I am so hard for you right now it hurts like hell."
