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    No Longer Forbidden
    No Longer Forbidden
    No Longer Forbidden
    Ebook37 pages32 minutes

    No Longer Forbidden

    By Portia Da Costa

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    About this ebook


    Only one thing drew Annie to her ten–year high school reunion: Nicholas Laurence, her former math teacher. As soon as their eyes meet, she knows their forbidden desire is as strong as ever. Only this time, there are no rules keeping them apart...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers Australia
    Release dateJul 1, 2012
    ISBN9781460824566
    No Longer Forbidden
    Author

    Portia Da Costa

    Portia Da Costa is a British author who has lived and worked in West Yorkshire, in the north of England, all her life. She began her writing career almost by mistake, when she was asked to write a story for an artist friend to illustrate. A librarian at the time, and a voracious reader since childhood, Portia had never considered becoming an author, but not one to shun a challenge, she took up her pen and wrote her first-ever piece of fiction, a melodramatic tale of the doomed romance between a mortal woman and an unusually handsome and nondecrepit zombie. The story was rubbish, of course, but Portia enjoyed the creative process so much that she resolved to learn how to write properly. After a number of years writing purely for pleasure, Portia's first published story appeared in 1991, and was about a sexy ghost this time. Since then, she's gone on to write well over a hundred stories for magazines and anthologies, and she's also produced almost thirty novels across a variety of genres. Although she's written gentler tales in her time, she's known best of all for her sizzling-hot erotic romances, and her steamy contemporary Suite Seventeen, won the 2007 Romance B(u)y the Book Best Contemporary Erotic Romance Award. Chance of a Lifetime, a November 2008 SPICE Brief, was Portia's first-ever work for Harlequin Books and represents the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream. Her very first attempts at writing for publication were category-length semisweet romances targeted at Mills & Boon. None of these early efforts was successful, but Portia's deep yearning to write for the world's best-known romance publisher has never waned. Portia is a now full-time author and lives in a small, typically Yorkshire town with her husband of many, many years, and also the three beautiful cats they both adore. When she's not writing, she likes to read, just generally chill out and watch television. A lot of television. She also loves to spend time online with cyber friends at her favorite writers' message boards and on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Among her other interests are art, fashion and popular science, and she also shares her husband's passion for the military history of World War Two. Portia loves to hear from her readers via her email: portiadacosta@gmail.com

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      Book preview

      No Longer Forbidden - Portia Da Costa

      No Longer Forbidden

      Portia Da Costa

      Contents

      Begin Reading

      What’s the matter with me? Why am I sitting out here? I don’t usually behave like such a wimp.

      But I’m here and the cold evening air makes me shudder. Or is that just nerves?

      It’s dawned on me today that I’ve been waiting far too long. Dreaming far too long. I wasn’t consciously aware of it until I got here, but now I’ve got to do something. Choose action over inertia. Otherwise, why come here? I was never that keen on school. There was only one thing I remember fondly enough to bring me to a ten-year reunion.

      One person. Really.

      He’s been in the back of my mind all this time, ever since I boarded here in my high school years. He’s been in my heart even when I thought I’d gotten over him.

      Nicholas Laurence. My math teacher from my final year. Off-limits. A no-no. Forbidden fruit. But forbidden fruit always was the most delicious, and now he’s a man, like any other, and available. Available and still driving me crazy!

      I sip my indifferent white wine, staring out into the twilight garden of Walton Wood College. Inside I’m laughing at myself and how I managed to fool myself into believing that I wasn’t coming here today to exorcise the demons of a stupid teenage crush. It’d actually worked until I set eyes on him across the assembly hall and got the shock of my life.

      Oh, Mr. Laurence, still the most utterly beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Still completely edible with your dark curly hair, your bitter-chocolate eyes and your Botticellian–fallen-angel face. Still so endearingly eccentric in your traditional black academic gown that so very few teachers still wear these days. Still the same, but also different. So very different. You’re leaner. Harder. Damaged. There’s grey in those black curls now, and a scar that traverses your brow and your cheekbone. You’ve been in the wars or, to be strictly accurate, a serious car accident. My heart turns over inside me at the thought.

      A short while ago, across a crowded room, our eyes locked, acknowledging in a thousandth of a second all that’s changed and all that’s remained the same. I know I should have just walked across and said hello then and there. God knows I wanted to, and there’s nothing now to stop me.

      But I didn’t make a move. And he didn’t, either. We just circled the room like a pair of wary natives scoping each other out, occasionally catching glimpses and making eye contact through thickets of my former classmates

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