Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Sebastian
“Headmaster Craig, Delilah Murphy is here. The transfer student from New York.”
“Send her in.” I glance at the file on my desk.
I’ve already familiarized myself with her records.
An exceptional student with a real attitude problem is my general impression.
I have concerns about the two private schools she previously attended, based on my knowledge of their administration.
There’s also something not right about her father.
He made a significant donation to our scholarship fund to encourage this last-minute enrollment.
His approach rubbed me the wrong way, even though we haven’t met.
But that’s not the fault of his daughter. There was something about her file that spoke to me. She’s bounced around a lot but had good grades right until the moment they expelled her. Her transcript is missing credits she probably should have been granted, even if asked to leave a school.
It’s a mess. And at Edgewood Academy, we put students first. So, combined with the opportunity to expand our scholarship program, I was happy to grant a last-minute acceptance to her.
Maybe making a difference for this student will knock me out of the funk I’ve been in lately. I’m not sure what is wrong. Maybe I’m just getting tired of the same old, same old. I’ve been going out on my bike more often. Thinking about heading out West and starting over.
The six years I’ve spent here have been the longest I’ve stayed in one place my entire career.
I was the youngest candidate for headmaster in Edgewood’s history, but the board took a chance on me, and I’ve thrown myself into proving it was the right call.
I set aside my personal life and devoted myself to this institution.
Maybe it’s a midlife crisis. I tell the inner jackass in my head to shut the fuck up. But he’s not wrong. I’ll be forty-one next month. I thought I missed the clichéd meltdown because the big four-oh had been no big fucking deal to me.
Who the fuck knows what’s wrong with me? I have a date on Sunday, a new term to look forward to, and a job to do right now. I shake off my malaise and stand, ready for my newest student.
But nothing could prepare me for who I see when the door swings open—or the sad, sullen look on Lily’s face.
She’s not looking at me. She’s staring at the carved wood desk I’m standing behind, so I have a second to deal with the “Holy Shit I Slept with a Student” klaxon sound in my head.
It’s followed immediately by an equally loud internal alarm at the look on her face because the Lily I met last night is not this woman.
Girl.
Woman.
Last night she’d worn a miniskirt, and that sweet fucking mouth was painted with bright red lipstick. Now she’s wearing jeans and a plain T-shirt, and her face is bare of any makeup.
She looks like a girl. What the fuck was I thinking? I grab her file, hands shaking, and flip it open, relieved to see that she’s definitely eighteen.
Great, I’m just a pervert, not a criminal.
I thought she was in her early twenties.
Very early.
Okay, I thought she was maybe twenty. I’d hoped she was twenty-one, but the depraved dirty man inside me also kind of hoped she was just twenty.
My beautiful, innocent Lily.
Delilah Murphy.
Fuck me.
Blonde waves float ethereally around her heart-shaped face as she lifts her head, confused because her new fucking headmaster hasn’t said a goddamn word yet.
Her eyes go wide, her lips part, and she fumbles for the chair beside her. “Sebastian?”
The way she breathes my name makes my cock hard. Instantly.
But there’s another reaction, a wilder, more dangerous one, right in the center of my chest. I need to make this okay for her. I circle around my desk and close the door behind her, then pull her into my arms.
This will be the last time I can hold her like this, so I fucking cherish it. I breathe in her scent and memorize the shape of her body against mine. I wrap her tightly against me and cradle her to my chest until she stops shaking.
Then I hold her a little longer because I fucking need her, and I don’t want to let go.
It hurts when I step back and shove my hands in the pockets of my suit pants. “This doesn’t need to be a problem.”
She manages a watery laugh. “I don’t see how it can’t be. Fuck, I’m such a—”
“You did nothing wrong. You were—” Perfect. Sweet and sexy and fierce. She’d wanted an escape, she said. Before three months of hell at my school. I’m the hell-master in her nightmares. “You had to let off some steam before you focused on your schoolwork. Why don’t we sit and talk about that?”
She glances at the hard wooden chair in front of my desk. “What we did?”
I groan. “No. Your schoolwork.”
She’s still staring at the chair. Where my students sit when I’m discussing their future.
She’s my fucking student.
Shame tears the next statement out of my mouth. “I didn’t know you were eighteen.”
Her gaze jerks back to my face. And her shock is slowly replaced with something else. Suspicion for a second, then wariness. “Why didn’t you ask?”
To anyone else, I’d lie. To Lily, I give her the whole damn truth. “In hindsight, I think it’s pretty clear I didn’t want to know.”
Her cheeks burn as she absorbs that information. “Are you in the habit of not wanting to know how old your truck stop pickups are?”
“I told you last night.” I exhale, and it sounds a lot like a growl. “That was the first time I’d ever done that. I didn’t want to know how old you were because I wanted you, no matter what. But I wasn’t really… thinking. I just needed you.”
She shrugs. “I didn’t know you were….” The tip of her tongue pokes into the corner of her mouth, and I want to laugh as she tries to speak more diplomatically. “Old enough to be a headmaster?”
She could have just said old. Because yeah, I fucking am. “I promise, yesterday was an exception to my usual life.”
Her gaze drifts down to my suit, then back up again. “I should hope so.”
I raise my eyebrows at the tone. The reaction is instinctive but completely ineffective against a girl—woman—who has bared everything for me and my ravenous mouth.
She shrugs. “What? You want me to pretend I’m something other than what you already know I am?”
“I don’t know anything about you,” I point out. “And vice versa.”
A pink tinge spreads across her cheeks, even as her eyes flash. “We know a few things. Maybe just enough to make terrible decisions.”
Yeah. “There’s that critical thinking ability I’ve read so much about,” I say dryly. I move back around my desk and tap on her file. “I would like to know more about how you ended up here. You’re obviously academically gifted. But you have a problem with authority.”
Her eyes flare brightly. Stubborn Lily, I immediately nickname this version of her in my mind. We all have different versions of our true selves. I try not to assume that any one version I see of a student is their whole being.
I wait for her protest, but it doesn’t come. So I lean back in my chair. “Isn’t that true? You were expelled from two other schools. You had to finish last year, what should have been your last year, at a public school, and you weren’t able to get enough credits to graduate with your class.”
“I was sabotaged,” she bites out.
“By who?”
She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter.”
It does, but trust will take time, and what I did to her last night has fucked up the usual process of a headmaster winning over a new student. “Shall we talk about the three credits you need to graduate?”
She exhales, then sits primly across from me.
“I’ve heard you have an independent thesis project.” Her back gets even straighter. “I want to do that. And take whatever class it is you don’t teach, so no creative writing.”
She knows a lot for having only been in the building ten minutes at most. “Would you take creative writing if I wasn’t teaching it?”
“Would you not teach it so I can take it?”
“Absolutely.” I would resign my whole damn position if it was what she needed to graduate.
She leans back in her chair. “You’re not like other headmasters.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I meant it as one.” She crosses her arms over her chest, and I force myself not to linger there, wondering what she would look like naked, her arms pressed against her slight breasts, nipples peeking out at me.
I never even got her tits in my mouth.
I should hope I’m not like other headmasters. I’m a fucking pervert. It’s obviously a newly gained problem, and one I’m not sure how to handle. I close my eyes, which doesn’t help, because then she’s naked in my mind.
Clenching my fist against the edge of my desk, I force myself to pretend she’s anyone else. Stacey, the office helper this morning. What would I say to her?
“If you do an independent thesis, what would your area of interest be?”
“What are my options?”
“Something that builds on your previous areas of interest. Do you prefer science or the arts?”
“Arts.”
“Comparative literature, then?”
She smirks. “Can I compare Jane Austen to modern retellings?”
I won’t raise to the bait of her smirk when the question is entirely appropriate. She needs to learn her experience here will be different from whatever trauma she had in the past. “Of course.”
Her gaze narrows. “What about fan fiction?”
It’s on the line for a senior thesis, but I know Mrs. Taylor will guide her appropriately. “It’s a good direction.” I encourage her. “Our English Lit teacher will be a great advisor. You can ask her about the wizard world fic she writes.”
Lily’s eyebrows hit the roof. “What now?”
I grin. “Welcome to Edgewood Academy. We do things differently here.”
“How different?”
I take a deep breath. “Not differently enough that we can repeat last night.” Unfortunately. “But we will do our best to foster your curiosity over the next three months and help you get to the next stage in your academic career.”
“That’s a good line.”
“It’s the truth.”
Her chest rises and falls, matching my controlled inhale. “What would you say if I wanted to take creative writing? With you?”
I should say it is a bad idea. I should regretfully decline to teach the seminar this term because I am a bad man who made a big mistake.
But there will be other students in the class, and another teacher can grade her final assignment.
I sometimes ask for help when my workload gets to be too onerous.
Nobody will notice that I don’t want to be the one to give Lily her final grade.
Nobody needs to know there’s no way I could be unbiased about this gorgeous, clever young woman.
And nobody needs to know that I would give anything to spend the next three months watching her learn and grow in her craft.
“I would say….” My voice is a rough rumble, full of gravel and unexpectedly raw need. I swallow hard and try again. “If you want me to be your teacher, I will happily have you in my class.”