Chapter 13
MAGNUS
S crubbing floors set the foundation for Tinsley’s daily lessons at Sion Academy.
Over the next four weeks, she spent more time learning while on her hands and knees than sitting at a desk. As she crawled along with a soapy sponge, I walked beside her, delivering lectures on physics, comparative government and politics, Latin literature, and Catholicism.
She hadn’t lied about her memory. When she heard something, she could recall it later, almost verbatim. Every test she aced proved she was absorbing my lessons.
The one thing she failed to learn, however, was obedience.
She’d had a few tardies and curfew violations, but the bulk of her misconduct began and ended with her mouth.
She was a vulgar, loquacious wiseass, too smart for her own good, and lived every moment as if her only mission was to annoy me. No one had ever dared to talk to me the way she did, and no punishment seemed harsh enough to deter her.
After four weeks of social isolation, withheld meals, psychological humiliation, and manual labor, I knew what she needed.
Physical suffering.
Bodily pain.
She needed my belt across her ass, over and over and over.
In the years I’d taught here, I’d only used a strap and cane on three occasions.
Those had been extreme cases, where the students were so wild and unmanageable that a physical beating hadn’t even fazed them.
It hadn’t affected me, either. I had no physical interest in the girls, and in the end, all three were expelled.
Expulsion was what Tinsley wanted. Therefore, it was the one thing I wouldn’t give her.
That left scrubbing floors.
Or corporal punishment.
Slapping.
Spanking.
Flogging.
Choking.
I couldn’t. I shouldn’t, for ten thousand reasons all amounting to one.
I want it.
I wanted to put my hands on her so badly, and if I did, if I physically punished her, it would be irrefutably, uncontrollably, gloriously sexual for me.
I’d only touched her one time. Four weeks ago, I’d let my thumb brush her lip. That single, featherlight touch had unfurled a surge of twisted, desperate cravings from the darkest corner of my mind. Since then, I’d kept my hands to myself and forced my black thoughts into nonexistence.
But if I touched her again, if I introduced her to my favorite pastime, it was all over.
As it was, watching her crawl across the floor on her knees teased the hell out of my sadistic nature.
The flagrant sexual symbolism in the act wasn’t lost on her, either.
She called me out on it every time, asserting that no student should kneel for her teacher because it was perverted and sexist and played into the fantasies of predators .
It was a wasted argument. If she kept her disrespectful mouth shut, she wouldn’t be on her knees. Period. The choice was hers.
I checked my watch and paced through the classroom, grinding my teeth.
She was late again.
Closing my eyes, I prayed the Hail Mary to calm my temper. As I finished and began the prayer again, the sound of sprinting footfalls broke out in the hall.
Shoes squeaked against wood as Tinsley tore around the corner and burst into my classroom in a fit of wheezing, spluttering breaths.
“I’m here!” She bent at the waist, a hand in the air and the other on her knee, choking. “Good thing I’m fast.”
“You’re late,” I snarled, torn between kicking her out and giving her something substantial to choke on.
“Oh, come on.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Only two minutes late. Are you seriously going to be a vagina about it?”
“A vagina?”
“The fleshy pink canoe between a woman’s legs.” She panted, trying to catch her breath. “I know it’s been a while since you paddled one, but surely you remember what it is.”
“I do remember. Quite fondly.”
“Yeah?” She grinned, raising her eyebrows.
“Which is why I’m confounded to hear you use that part of the female body as a derogatory term. Given your infernal feminist tongue-lashings, I would expect you to use the word vagina as a compliment rather than associate it with weakness.”
Her mouth hung open, and she made a strangling noise.
“You’re so right.” She smacked a hand against her forehead and groaned.
“I’m an idiot. I wasn’t thinking and… Gah!
There’s no excuse for it. What I said was offensive and ignorant, and I’m sorry.
” She straightened her spine and met my eyes, looking so irresistibly, gorgeously shamefaced.
“I’ll kiss the Jesus or scrub the floors or whatever you decide. No resistance. I’m a total shithead.”
One of the things I’d come to adore about Tinsley Constantine was the ease in which she could be so genuinely humble and wryly deflating of herself.
Rarely did she care about other people’s perceptions of her, but for whatever reason, she didn’t want me to believe she was superficial or weak-minded.
She had no idea how far removed she was from those traits, and that only made her more beautiful, more desirable, harder to go unnoticed. She was unlike any eighteen-year-old I’d ever met.
None of that changed the fact that she was my student, half my age, and completely, irrevocably outside my preferences.
Yet she had enough sex appeal to hold my attention for eternity.
Shut it down, Magnus.
“You’ve been gone for forty-five minutes.” I prowled a circuit around her. “Breakfast ended five minutes ago.”
I knew where she sneaked off to every day. I wanted her to admit it.
She touched her chin to her shoulder, regarding me innocently. “I had to pee.”
I laughed. “That’s the direction you want to go with this?”
“No. I mean, I did have to pee, and I took care of that.”
“Good to know you’ve learned one lesson in four weeks.” I paused before her. “But that’s not why you’re late.”
Her blue eyes lifted to mine, sparking with fire and worry. She didn’t trust me with her secret, and why would she? I had no compassion.
For a spoiled rich girl, she was selflessly devout about protecting vulnerable, unlikable animals. I didn’t understand it and didn’t give her an inch. No assurance whatsoever as I glared at her, making her squirm.
Ruthless, down to the marrow of my despicable soul.
“Magnus…” Her voice pleaded. She used my first name. Her hand reached for my chest.
My brain didn’t know which deviation to rebuke first.
As bold as she was with her tongue, she’d never been brave enough to touch me. Even now, as her fingers made a slow, jerky climb toward my shirt, she trembled with uncertainty.
I caught her wrist before she made contact, my hand closing mercilessly around delicate bones. She whimpered but didn’t try to pull away. Instead, she drifted closer with her whole body, her gaze never wavering from my face. Hypnotic. Stirring. Intoxicating.
My fingers tightened around her arm, preventing her from reaching. But she might as well have put her hand on me anyway. I felt her everywhere, digging in with her nails and sharp kitten teeth while cutting me at the knees with only a look and a plea.
“Please, don’t make me regret telling you this.
” She wrapped her free hand around mine on her wrist and leaned in.
“I’m feeding baby opossums. This isn’t like the bat.
I know they’re joeys. Or they were. They’re nearly ready to survive on their own.
They just need a couple more days to bulk up for the winter.
Please, Father Magnus.” She bent over our hands, lowering her brow to my chest. “Please, don’t hurt them. ”
My muscles ached, contracting and stalling, excruciatingly rigid with the effort to hold her back. Except it wasn’t her. It was me I was holding back.
I pulled away and gripped the doorframe behind me until the edge jabbed into my palm. “I’m not going to hurt them.”
I can’t promise the same for you.
“Really?” She narrowed her eyes, but hope glowed through the slits.
“There are no rules in the student handbook about feeding wild animals.”
“No, but I thought—”
“Let’s go pay them a visit.”
“Now?” Her arms dropped, hanging dormant at her sides.
I needed out of this suffocating room. Turning on my heel, I strode into the hallway and didn’t stop until I arrived in the grove behind the main building.
She ran a few paces behind and slowed as she caught up.
“You know where they live.” Her fists went to her hips, and her bottom lip pushed out like an offering. “How long have you known about them?”
“Since day one. You eat every meal out here, even when it’s raining.”
“So what did you do?” She lowered to her knees and crawled toward the twisted root system of a large tree. “You came out here to investigate and found the cutest little—? Oh, hey there.” She dipped low to the ground, ass up, with the skirt flipped above her thighs.
The wind must’ve caught the hem. I should’ve told her to fix it. The command was there, scraping across my tongue, but it didn’t emerge.
My welts would glow like fire on her flawless, porcelain skin. My hands would leave a ring of blue around her delicate throat. My cock would stretch and tear and split her tiny pussy in half.
I ripped my stare away before I did something irreparable.
“I’m sorry to wake you.” She made a shushing sound at the critters. “But since you’re both up, I have someone here to meet you.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Don’t be rude.” She rose to her feet and held out her arm, drawing my attention to the fuzzy gray marsupials clinging to her cardigan.
“You shouldn’t handle them.” I rested my fingers in my pockets, fighting an inner battle with my overheated body.
“They’re less of a health risk than nearly every other animal in the wild. And they’re clean.” She grinned at the one on her shoulder. “Aren’t you, Willow? Always grooming yourself.” Her arresting smile shifted to me. “She thinks she’s a cat.”
“Handling them makes them less fearful of humans. When they leave here—”
“I know. I’ve tried to keep them off me. But they’re climbers, and since I bring them food every day, they think I’m their mom.” She sighed. “They’ve never been afraid of me.”