Monday came all too soon. From the moment she stepped through the school gates Alice was on edge, anticipating that she might encounter Mr Walker at any moment.

Assembly was an absolute ordeal. She kept her head down and tried to hide in the crowd as she entered the hall. She deliberately avoided Becky and Jules, fearing they would be more recognisable as a threesome. To her relief Becky and Jules weren't sitting together either. Jules was late and had to take a seat nearer the front.

For all her worry Mr Walker didn't even appear in assembly that day. It wasn't completely mandatory for teachers and as a cricket coach he wasn't even full time.

At lunch they came up with a plan. "Biting the bullet is best," Jules had decided. "We'll go and watch the cricket after tennis and let him see you. Get this over with. Otherwise you'll just be distracted by it for days."

It was a beautiful late April day, flawlessly sunny. Warm in the sun though cool in the shade. Their tennis skirts were also extremely short and much more alluring, so Alice thought, than normal school uniform. You were supposed to wear huge regulation gym knickers underneath. But as these were only sold in the school shade of bottle green which looked awful through white tennis wear, no one ever did unless they were playing a match.

They walked together over to the school cricket pitch and sat on the grassy slope near the pavilion.

"He's going to freak you know," Jules said.

"Maybe he won't recognise her in different clothes."

"He'll recognise the three of us."

They watched the play for some time. Mr Walker was focused on his job and not on any spectators around the place. Alice was impressed by how athletic he looked as he walked about the pitch. He really was stunning with his tan and his tall, muscular figure. All the First Eleven boys looked wimpy next to him.

It was when he passed near to where they were sitting that he finally saw Alice, stopped and froze. Her stomach lurched. Then he turned away and went back to the practice.

"See, he's decided to ignore you," Jules said. "All for the best."

Alice said nothing. She hadn't really thought about how he might react, but she still felt crushed.

"Should we go?" Becky asked.

"No, that would look really weird, and besides Mike Jackson looks totally fit in cricket whites."

Mike captained the school cricket team and was one of the heartthrobs of Fairmount. But the problem with being in the Upper Sixth was that most girls preferred to date boys a year or so older. These were now long gone to university and the boys in their own year were in turn dating girls in lower years. Alice could also remember when Mike was several inches shorter than them and it detracted from his charms now.

"I wouldn't have thought Mike Jackson was your type," Becky said.

"He's not. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy looking, though. You know his older brother's playing for Worcestershire?"

"I don't remember him having an older brother."

"A few years before our time. Joe Jackson." Jules said.

Alice remained silent throughout this. She was still feeling disappointed and uncertain. She tried to tell herself it was for the best. Really, she should be grateful that he had just decided to move past it.

But she still felt embarrassed. She picked at the grass next to her, pulling off a small flower, avoiding looking at the play.

Then a shadow fell over them. She looked up.

It was Mr Walker.

"I want a word with you. In the pavilion, now," he ordered her. His eyes pierced into hers and he looked furious.

Numb, she obeyed, walking ahead of him.

Inside it was empty and he closed the door behind them and turned to her.

"What the fuck do you think you're playing at?"

He was absolutely incensed. He stood there, suddenly the adult, the authority, not just some guy she had kissed in a pub.

Someone she had compromised. Alice couldn't think of anything to say.

She stood there in front of him. His scent of faint cologne and sun-warmed skin was disturbingly familiar to her, mingling with the dusty wood and sports equipment smell of the pavilion.

"Did you know who I was?" he asked.

"Yes." There didn't seem to be any point in lying.

He glared at her and she looked back at him. His eyes pierced into her, their light grey-blue contrasting with his tanned complexion. He was one of the most devastatingly attractive men she had ever seen. All the more so now as his anger turned his face into carved steel.

As terrified and awkward as Alice felt, she also felt slightly defiant. After all she hadn't done anything wrong or illegal.

Then suddenly he grasped her by the shoulders and brought his mouth down on hers, hard. Surprised, she initially squirmed to escape his grasp then yielded as her forced his tongue into her mouth. His lips were bruising hers, he was almost biting her yet she wanted more.

Her hands, which had pushed against his chest to try and get away, went round his neck and she arched against him.

He was trying to hurt her, devour her. Punish her. All at once. But he wanted her too. She could taste his need, raw and urgent. Feel the hotness of his breath as he nearly suffocated her with his kiss.

His mouth left hers and moved to her neck, half embracing, half biting it. She tasted blood on her lip where he had crushed it with his own. He was gripping her hard and she clung to him. She didn't even care that he was hurting her.

He could have ripped all her clothes off right there and forced himself upon her. She had never wanted anyone so much.

Then just as suddenly he thrust her away from him. He swore under his breath as he tried to recover himself.

"Is that what you wanted?"

"No... yes... I mean..." Alice had no idea what to say. She was shaken and half in misery, half in ecstasy.

His face was like granite, its angles unyielding.

"Get out and don't come back here again. Stay out of my way," he said.

Too stunned to respond Alice went out. She thought she heard him mutter something about "jailbait" as she left.

Outside, still sitting on the grass, Jules and Becky were agog to know what had gone on.

"What the hell happened in there?" Jules saw Alice's bleeding lip. "Oh god, did he hit you?"

"No, of course not." Alice involuntarily put a hand on her neck, which drew Jules' attention to it. She grabbed Alice's hand away.

"You have a love bite on your neck? What the hell?"

"Let's just get out of here," Alice said. She wanted to get away. She couldn't face his anger or contempt any longer.

"Okay, but you'd better tell us exactly what's going on."

"Nothing's going on," Alice said as they got up and walked back to the main school. She couldn't even bring herself to look behind her and see where he was.

"He summons you into the pavilion and you come out moments later with a bleeding lip and an enormous love bite and that's nothing?" Jules was incredulous.

"How are you going to cover that?" Becky asked. "You can hardly wear a scarf in May. And your collar won't go anywhere near it."

"I don't know, a Band-Aid." It was the last thing on Alice's mind.

"You can't wear a Band-Aid on your neck, everyone will know exactly what it's concealing."

"Forget about concealing the bloody love bite, Becky. How it happened is more to the point," Jules said.

"He was angry, and then he kissed me, and then he was angry again."

"Jesus!"

"Are you ok, Alice?" Becky asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Well no I'm not fine, I don't really know what I am, but I'm ok," Alice said. She was absolutely confused. How she felt about him, how he felt about her, what any of this meant, what she was going to do. It was like he hated her but wanted her at the same time.

Again and again she re-ran it in her mind, every second, every sensation. She wanted his hunger and even the pain again, his anger. She imagined it dissolving into something more sensuous as their embrace continued. He couldn't maintain that level of rage for long. Or could he?

* * *

Becky was thrilled when Brett rang her on Monday night. She'd been suffering silently as well, hoping and hoping that he'd call her and that he hadn't lost her number.

She told the others the next morning as they filed into Assembly. "There's a barbecue at some guy's house on Sunday. Loads of the players are going. We're all invited."

"I can't go," Jules said. "Kate's invited me to this thing in Lechlade over the weekend, some sort of festival at a quarry."

"Doesn't sound like your sort of thing," Alice said. Jules' stepsister's friends were much more crusty than they were. They went to folk festivals and eco protests.

"I said I'd give it a go." Now Jules and Kate would soon be going their separate ways at university it had defused some of the tensions between them.

"What about the cinema on Sunday night, can you still make it?" They were planning to see Basic Instinct which had finally been released in the UK.

"Sure, I'll meet you there."

"What about you Alice? I can't go by myself to the barbecue. They're expecting a group of us," Becky said.

Alice was in two minds. On one hand she wanted to support Becky, but the thought of seeing all the cricketers again just reminded her of her humiliation with Mr Walker.

But if the roles were reversed she would have been desperate for Becky to support her. "Okay, I'll come," she said.

Becky was so profusely grateful that Alice felt bad for having wavered.

As they entered the Assembly hall Alice fought with herself not to look around for Mr Walker. In the end she lost her nerve and kept her head down.

"Mr Walker's here," Becky whispered to her so loudly that Alice thought he'd hear them from the far side of the room. She felt herself go red and tried to stoop down and hide even more. "He is really good looking isn't he?" Becky continued. She was saying it to return the favour to Alice as Alice was supporting her with Brett. Though it was undeniably true.

Alice couldn't help looking up and across at the cricket coach. His eyes met her for a split second, his expression unreadable, and then he turned abruptly.

"He's looking at you Alice!" Becky said.

"Shut up Becky. She's not blind and half the school can hear you."

Becky looked crushed but buttoned her lip.

Alice could only see Mr Walker from the back now as he went to the seating area at the reserved for staff. He was tall with amazing shoulders, the back of his head perfectly sculpted. She forced herself to sit down and face the stage, so he wouldn't see her looking at him when he turned round again.

All through Assembly she could feel his eyes burning into the back of her head. She tried to tell herself that he probably wasn't even looking at her.

Becky couldn't resist twisting her head round to see. "I can't tell if he's watching you but he looks really serious," she said, managing to whisper this time.

Jules could still hear her. "Stop looking around. He's already pissed off enough."

Alice wondered how he actually felt. Angry? Embarrassed? Disappointed? Maybe he had been really intending to call her before he discovered her real age?

She bitterly regretted having let him find out. Perhaps she could have hidden from him for at least another week at school and maybe gone on one date with him. Though that might have made it even worse when he did finally realise.

What's done is done, she thought. She wondered whether it was her age or being at the same school that bothered him most. Both probably.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I hope you enjoyed this preview! The full story is on Amazon Kindle and in paperback on Lulu.com. You can click on External Link to get to the Amazon page.

http://www.amazon.com/Summers-Edge-Noël-Cades-ebook/dp/B00P5KM1ZM

I also have two Completed student-teacher romances: French Kissing and Tempting Her Teacher - both available to read in full on Wattpad.