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[RECAP: Sera was stunned to get a birthday kiss from Mr Marek last week. What was going through his mind?]
Black was the sky above, the bonfire burned their faces hot while their backs froze with cold. Sera was wearing gloves but her fingers still felt stiff. She watched the flames crackle and soar. It was an absolutely vast pyre.
"I love Bonfire Night," Lois was saying. "The frostier it is, the better the fireworks look."
They were high up on Romany Hill where a local farmer put on an annual pig roast and fireworks display. It was supposedly to commemorate Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot, but Sera always felt it was far more primaeval than that. Beacon fires lit against the oncoming winter: a last defiant show of human spirit before the ice and cold and darkness closed in.
It was one week since her birthday and as she had come to expect, Mr Marek was blowing cold again. They'd also had to skip today's session because he had to sort things out for his father.
Sera hadn't told her friends about the kiss. She wasn't sure exactly why; perhaps it felt more significant to keep it to herself, hugging her secret inside herself.
Also there wasn't much to tell. Nothing had happened since, and maybe it didn't mean anything. After all it had been kind of perfunctory. Maybe it was just politeness, given she had requested it.
Though he had chosen to kiss her on the lips not merely the cheek...
Joel and Lois had gone off on a quest for more food and drink, leaving Sera temporarily alone. As she stood holding a sparkler, and realising she didn't have a way to light it, she spotted Janette from school.
"Hey." They greeted one another. Janette was wearing a bobble hat and a thick scarf, the firelight reflected in her glasses.
"It's a great bonfire, isn't it?" Janette said.
"Bigger than last year."
Janette gazed at the flames. "I love fireworks and fires," she said. "They're so clear and bright and colourful."
Sera had never liked to ask Janette about her vision problems but now she felt bolder. "I noticed you use a lot of colour in class. Do you find certain colours easier to see?"
Janette was happy to answer. "Bright things, yes. They're much clearer."
"I wondered what exactly your eye condition was?" Sera asked.
"Multiple things, since I was a baby mainly. The good news is that I got cleared for a driving license, thanks to these - " she indicated her thick lenses " - though I choose not to drive at night because it's much harder."
Sera was impressed by her spirit. It couldn't have been easy for Janette growing up and going to school with hearing aids and huge spectacles. Children could be cruel. Janette had only joined their school in the sixth form and Sera hadn't got to know her very well.
"If you'd like a lift back, feel free. Lois drove and there's plenty of room."
Janette smiled. "Thanks, but I already have a lift. I appreciate the offer. I loved your picture of Lois in class the other day. Do you know what you're going to do for your main project yet?"
Sera didn't, and it was something that she was starting to stress about. So much rested on it, her exam results and probably her whole future. "Not yet."
"Me neither. Other than it's going to have to be a huge canvas with plenty of bright colour."
They chatted for a few more moments and then Janette left to rejoin the people she was with. Where were Joel and Lois? Sera wondered. Either one of them or both were doubtless getting chatted up by some hot guy. It surely couldn't take this long to queue for baked potatoes and mulled cider?
Sera still wanted to light her sparkler and Lois had the cigarette lighter. None of them smoked but they had brought it especially for this purpose. After all, what was Bonfire night without sparklers? Making glittery circles and tracing letters in the air.
Would it be safe to somehow stick it in the embers of the fire? She took a step closer and realised that her face would melt if she approached any nearer, so stepped back again. It really was a furnace.
As she looked down wishing she had a box of matches, a lit sparkler, fizzing its white fire, was pressed against the tip of hers. She looked up, expecting to see Joel or Lois, but it wasn't them.
Instead it was the last person she had expected to be there.
And the one she wanted to see most of all in the world.
Mr Marek.
Just as she looked up at him her sparkler finally flared into life, catching alight from his, and she started.
"Sera."
He looked Satanic in the firelight, the flames dancing over his face and the blackness of night behind him. He could so easily have avoided her, she was surprised he had actually come to greet her.
Let alone light her sparkler for her.
"Thank you for the light." She shivered, suddenly feeling the contrast of hot and cold again. When you turned from the fire the air was icy.
Without speaking Mr Marek took off his scarf and wound it around her. It was soft and light and warm.
"I can't have my muse getting frostbite." His expression was cynically amused, even in the darkness she could see the gleam in his eyes.
"Only frost bite?" Sera emphasised "frost".
"You had some other bite in mind?" His face was shadowed, his height loomed over her and Sera felt both turned on and momentarily scared.
"Maybe." She let her lips part slightly after she said this. I'm here, she thought. I'm right in front of you and I'm warm, and it's freezing on this hill, and I know we both want this.
Mr Marek wavered. He leant closer to her. "You are far, far too young for me," he said, his voice a seductive murmur.
Sera closed her eyes.
She felt his lips brush hers, so warm against the chill of the night air. Before the kiss could deepen he broke off. She opened her eyes, confused, but his hand brushed her hair back and roughly pulled the scarf aside.
For a second the icy air on her neck made her shiver and then the heat of his mouth covered her skin, making her gasp. He was sucking and drawing on her flesh as his teeth grazed her lightly.
It almost hurt but it was a good pain: she wanted more.
But he broke away from her once again.
"I can paint over a love bite." His smile was sardonic, there was triumph in his gaze. Doubtless at her shocked reaction, he must have heard her gasp.
Before she could react there was a voice to the side. "Sorry we took so long, the queue was forever." It was Lois. Sera turned to her, then back to Mr Marek.
He had gone. Vanished.
She tried looking for him among the crowd of people but it was so dark away from the fire that it was impossible to spot anyone.
"Who are you looking for?" Lois asked.
Sera looked at her sparkler, which had just died out. "Mr Marek was here."
"Was he? I didn't see him," Lois said.
Where had he disappeared to so quickly? Had she imagined the whole thing? Wondering, Sera touched her neck where he had embraced her. Then she felt the scarf. His scarf. So it was real. She had physical evidence that she wasn't delusional.
Joel handed her a cup of cider. "Are you sure you're not hallucinating? Heat from the fire making you swoon?"
"No, he gave me his scarf. See?" Sera showed him.
"He gave you his scarf? Why would he give you his scarf? It's cashmere, good quality too. Expensive. He has taste, anyway." Joel typically ended up more interested in the item of clothing than the question at hand.
"He said he didn't want me getting cold."
Joel was incredulous. "Marek came up, just gave you his scarf, and vanished?"
Not quite. "He lit my sparkler too."
Lois started laughing. "Sorry, Sera, but it sounds so bizarre. I mean showing up, lighting your sparkler and handing you a scarf. Like the imaginary bonfire fairy."
"And he kissed me."
That shut Lois up. "Seriously?" Joel asked.
"Only very briefly, like before." Damn. She hadn't meant that to slip out.
"What?!" Now both Joel and Lois were rounding on her, demanding answers. Sera was going to have to tell them everything.
Just then the sky cracked into a cascade of fiery colour. The fireworks had started. "Come on! Let's go nearer the lake, the reflection is amazing there!" Lois dragged Joel off and they disappeared into the crowd once again.
Sera never knew what made her linger, why she didn't go with them. The view was better on the other side. But she held back, alone once again.
As she stood there two strong arms slipped around her waist from behind. She felt herself pulled against a hard, strong body.
She didn't dare turn around. He was back. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, opening them at the next explosion of colour. It was warmer with him holding her, though her whole body felt shivery in a different way.
While the sky was lit up with golden showers and dazzling rockets and exploding chrysanthemums his lips were on her hair, brushing it aside, behind her ear, on her neck. She whimpered when he embraced a sensitive spot and hoped he didn't hear. It was very hard trying to just stand there. Sera knew her breathing was increasing.
She wanted to twist round and face him, have him kiss her properly. She longed for him.
But she sensed he was doing this deliberately. After all he hadn't tried turning her around. He was playing a game with her and so far, he was winning.
The fireworks reached their climax and died away but Sera was left on edge. She wanted them to go on forever, because as soon as they stopped, she knew he would withdraw.
"I'll see you in class." His voice, near her ear, was husky.
Sera swivelled around then and looked directly at him. Mr Marek ran a finger around her cheekbone and over her lips, tugging on her lower lip.
Please kiss me. It must be written all over her face.
But he simply smiled at her, a strange, inscrutable smile, and melted once more away into the darkness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you can't wait for next week and are looking for a wonderfully fun romance, I highly recommend Maureen Fisher's "Fur Ball Fever" (which is a complete, full-length novel on Wattpad).
This chapter is dedicated to Maureen, so you can click the link to her profile in the Dedication to find her book!
FUR BALL FEVER
After a lifetime of impetuous mistakes, pet spa owner Grace Donnelly outdoes herself when she loses Miss Coco Chanel-a shoo-in to win the annual Jersey Shore Fur Ball. Money, careers, and lives are in jeopardy. Too bad her helpers consist of an aging hippie aunt, a renegade schnauzer, and a drag queen. Worst of all, the only man truly qualified to help is her former flame, the hunkiest bodyguard north of the Mason-Dixon Line.
A smokin' hot bodyguard with his own agenda ...