Hot for Teacher
OVER FIVE MONTHS LATER…
Ilobbed my backpack from the backseat and checked the dark circles under my eyes in the rear-view mirror before sighing.
Not going to win Prom Queen, but at least the black eye from the night before was relatively hard to see under layers and layers of concealer.
Thanks to my body’s propensity towards quick healing, tomorrow the bruise would be barely noticeable.
So, it wouldn’t likely require the beauty-queen-thick application of makeup to hide it.
Someone knocked on the driver side window, and I turned just in time to catch sight of the blinding smile of an angel. Okay, maybe not an angel but close. More like a gorgeous specimen of male perfection.
“Are you going to get out, or should I just leave you to do…” he paused, his smile growing, “—well, whatever it is you’re doing? Working on your resting B face?”
The moment was gone. He’d ruined it.
Spitefully, I threw the door open and caught the brute in the knees. His laughing pain was enough to calm the raging hormones coursing through these teenage veins of mine. If not that, then definitely the disarming smile he offered only a second later when I tried—unsuccessfully—to glare at him.
“You’re late,” I complained.
The crowd of my fellow there-but-not-happy-about-it cohorts filed into school after the final bell rang, suggesting I should haul ass or risk Mr. Reed’s clown wig of shame.
No, really. Mr. Reed, my first period English teacher, was a sadist of the cleverest nature.
He used a clown wig and bright red nose to punish tardy students.
And unlike Nigel, I didn’t look good in everything I was forced to wear.
Some of us weren’t gods gifted with a perfect mug and drool-worthy physique.
Some of us also didn’t want to unintentionally become a GIF to commemorate the moment of unparalleled shame.
“Well, I don’t really need to be here on time,” he argued.
Right. Nigel wasn’t technically a student anymore. He graduated last year, and now he worked as a volunteer assistant coach to the gym teacher, Mrs. Flank. And yes, I found her name giggle worthy. Nigel did the assistant bit all while attending his college courses.
Well, that was the story, anyway.
Nigel had become something of a partner of mine to my missions lately.
In the last few months, the uptick in vampire activity had the Organization on the edge.
Too many were coming into the state for no apparent reason, and even Grams came out of retirement to work with the upper crust to game plan the new surge of hostiles.
“You should be resting today,” Nigel said while trailing after me.
But I wouldn’t be distracted by his glorious beauty.
Not today. I picked up speed to get to class on time.
No clown wig for this chick. Definitely not when I spent all night hunting down a vampire who thought it’d be a great idea to surprise punch me in the face and take off running like some kind of five-year-old with no sense of direction and a shrill scream.
“And miss out on my fourth period Calculus quiz? I think not,” I snarked, not the least bit ready for said quiz. “What are you so late for, anyway? Trouble in paradise?”
“This,” he said, gesturing to his clean outfit and fresh, handsome man look, “doesn’t happen without careful attention. I just lost track of time.”
“Sounds an awful lot like an excuse to me,” I rebutted with a sideways grin.
“Aren’t you just going to dress up in gym clothes and yell at lazy teenagers in an hour?
Why even bother putting a suit on?” His look of disapproval was reward enough.
“Can’t even pretend what you beautiful people go through to look so… clean.”
I just woke up like always, tamed a frizzy mess of ginger hair that would rival a caveperson, and threw on whatever pair of jeans didn’t smell like dirt.
Grams once hoped I’d play pretty princess on occasion, but when I only wore clothes to run and fight in, she stopped trying to encourage me to dress up.
She knew it was pointless.
We were never off the clock. Hunters didn’t get a night off. The only time I felt like a real teenager was when I struggled to stay awake in classes and took tests for subjects I barely studied for. Luckily, I was smarter than most and didn’t have too much trouble unless it was English.
Mr. Reed didn’t appreciate the sparkling sarcasm in my writing—called it reckless prose and marked me down for a lack of direction and formula. For a dude who put every tardy student in his class into a clown ensemble, he didn’t really have a great sense of humor.
Ironic, huh?
I waved Nigel away and headed to class. But when I closed in on the entrance, a subtle feeling of being watched struck me.
I paused and looked over my shoulder, then carefully panned the area.
It was daylight and no reason to be concerned it was a vampire, but something felt off.
The silent alarm in the back of my head rang.
My spidey senses were going off, and I couldn’t pretend it didn’t make me uneasy when I found nothing and no one to connect the feeling to after scouring the area three times over.
“Something wrong?”
Shoulders hunched, I slowly dragged my gaze to the source of my upcoming humiliation. “Well, good morning, Mr. Reed.”
“Thought I’d find you here.” The offensive wig and nose were already cradled in his arm, and my English teacher’s smile rivaled my worst nightmare. “After you…”
Shit on a stick. I was going to be a GIF by the end of the day, and it was all Nigel’s fault.
“Who is that?!” someone whispered as a gorgeous man in an expensive suit, likely beyond what a teacher’s salary could afford, strode into the room.
His thick, dark hair was swept back into a smart look, and his piercing light eyes landed on me the minute he strolled into the classroom, trailing our principal.
Even in a suit, it was apparent the dude spent a fair amount of time at the gym.
The way he walked, his eyes taking in the room in several short pans, also indicated some sort of military training.
Maybe he was ex-army or marines? The way he checked for all the exits and swept his eyes across the corners of the room suggested some sort of tactical training, and it intrigued me.
When my gaze wandered, I caught sight of tattoos along his neck and hands. That stalled me for a second. Tattoos in those areas almost always meant there were others. Lots of others.
Tattooed neck and hands? If not some kind of ex-military man, he’d be something else entirely. So, what was this dude, an ex-convict?
“This is Mr. Smith,” our nearly bald, extra love around the middle principal introduced. “He’ll be taking over Mrs. Johnson’s classes for the rest of the year.”
I’d never seen a man look so dangerous and delicious at the same time.
Honestly, I didn’t want to feel the twist and echo of my girly regions responding to the sexy new teacher on campus, but here we were.
I wasn’t impervious to hot guys, especially not ones who looked all bad and mystery.
And when his eyes didn’t leave mine for what felt like hours, I couldn’t even pretend not to be entranced by the air he put out.
That was one dark and handsome bad idea.
My phone vibrated in my pocket, forcing me to break the uncomfortable eye contact so I could slyly drag it out. Then guilt settled like the weight of a cheating girlfriend in my stomach when Nigel’s message came up, nothing but sweet and concerned about how I was feeling.
Well, Nigel, I’m a terrible girlfriend.
The guilt might actually feel worse than the huge bruise on my side from the night before when I took a sucker-punch to the hip.
“Vivienne.”
My head jerked up, and I did a poor job of hiding my phone, my cohorts immediately laughing at my expense. “Sir?!”
“Mr. Smith has requested for you stay back to show him around. I have a few things to do. Since you were tardy this morning, I figured you must have plenty of time to tour the school after class.”
Mad burn, Principal Ricardson.
“Yep! Sure thing. That’s me, the goodly little student.”
Kate gave a very unsubtle fist-pump. “Way to go, V.”
Her dirty blonde hair was mussed up into a little ponytail, and she sported her favorite local band t-shirt over some denims.
Since I could remember, she had been a friend.
Granted, I barely paid attention to anyone who wasn’t a vampire, but Kate worked her way into my heart one weird conversation after another.
Soon, it was a much-too-empty day when she wasn’t rambling off about cute guys from bands she found in obscure haunts around town.
But I couldn’t gather the enthusiasm to fist-pump back at my friend in victory. The shame and guilt of drooling over a new hot teacher when I had a super hot, super sweet boyfriend concerned about my well-being smothered out the joy and excitement of a bad boy fantasy.
“How is that a punishment?” Cici, the hottest girl in class, complained to her group of equally attractive friends. “He’s like, so hot.”
“Something you want to add, Cecilia?”
“No, sir,” she replied, beaming a perfect smile. “Just admiring your suit today.”
Principal Ricardson loved Cici, and his red face was sure to say so a second later when he waved off her compliment like some sort of shy boy and not an over-fifty, twice-divorced man.
Gross.
The bell rang, and while most of the girls and sexually fluid boys, some who hadn’t the balls to say so, lingered to greet the new beast of a Biology teacher, I dragged my feet all the way to the front.
“I heard someone call you V?” His smirk was beyond sexy. But his accent was something else entirely. German? Russian?
“V is my preferred name. Some accent you got there,” I remarked, internally cursing my thoughtlessness. “German?”
Something about the way his lips rose said repeat offender, and I would be the last to admit how much it appealed to me. “Austrian. But most don’t guess Austrian. To be fair, very few guess German. Color me impressed.”