Chapter 12
Penelope
Head down as I feed the formula cheat sheets into the laminator for the students to take home next week to study for their upcoming test, I daydream about what it will be like to get my first positive pregnancy test. I know it’s soon and that I shouldn’t get my hopes up, but I can’t help it.
At first, I think it’s Jacob who has found me in the copy room and is sliding his hands along my hips, but then my eyes start watering at the noxious, overbearing scent of menthol. I turn my head when the alcohol on Mr. Andrews’s fetid breath wafts in my face and nearly chokes me.
He slurs, “Finally caught you alone, Ms. Barlow.”
Coughing, I turn and shove Mr. Andrews away. He’s not as big as Jacob, but he’s solid enough that I might not have been able to force him back if he weren’t three sheets to the wind and wobbling on his feet. As it is, he teeters back a few steps and cants to the side momentarily before, somehow, finding his balance.
“Don’t ever fucking touch me again!” Fast as a whip, I lunge forward and slap him across his face, which is slick with sweat in the sweltering copy room since it doesn’t get enough A/C. He’s wholly disgusting, and I hate the thought that I’ve touched his bare skin.
His expression darkens as he looms between me and the open doorway, sealing off the only exit. He pulls a checkbook and a pen from the back pocket of his worn khakis, then closes one eye and squints the other as he flips through it to find a blank page.
“How much does Mr. Prudencio pay you? I’ll pay it, too, if that’s what it takes.”
My breath turns ragged with fear and outrage. “What the hell are you talking about?” I don’t care to listen to his answer, though, only that I find a way out of here. For every inch I take to the side, he copies me, swaying but staying upright.
Mr. Andrews scribbles across the check and rants with deep-seated contempt, “All these years, you’ve been blowing me off, and now I know why. You females are all the same. You don’t care about the nice guys. You just want our money. So how much? Fifteen bucks for a blow job? Twenty for you to spread those legs for me?”
He rips the check out unevenly, crumples it in his fist, and tries to throw it at me. It’s almost comical how far left it goes when we’re only standing feet apart. If I weren’t so scared and sickened by his vile beliefs about women, I’d find the idea of him trying to pay me with a check to sleep with his musty ass kind of hilarious. I slap him again, watching with some small satisfaction as his flushed face turns a deeper shade of red.
“You couldn’t pay me enough to touch your rancid dick,” I spit at him. Then I literally spit at him. My aim is much better than his, and it lands at the base of his pudgy chin.
Mr. Andrews drops the checkbook and uses his gut to press me back against the laminator table. The machine is still running and drowns out my raised voice when I try to shove him away again and shout, “Back the fuck up! Fucking now, goddamnit!” My fear ratchets up when he barely flinches at my third slap.
His clammy hands tremble with a mixture of rage and a poisonous level of alcohol when he tries to grab my wrists and shouts in my face, “Stop fighting me and let—” He bellows when I yank my arms free, grip the sides of his face, and jam my thumbs into the inner corner of his eyes with all my strength, trying to gouge them out. He staggers back and cries out, “Fucking bitch! Mr. Garnet will—”
That’s the last thing he says before he goes flying backward, snatched right out of his loafers. It’s a sight to behold—Jacob on his knees over Mr. Andrews on his back, slamming his fist in the middle of Mr. Andrews’s fleshy nose. Jacob’s broad back flexes every time he snaps his arm back, his muscles threatening to split his black top down the middle as he goes feral. I can’t hear anything over the roar of blood pounding in my head. Only see Jacob’s face twisted with beastly rage until Mr. Andrews finally succumbs to his injuries and loses consciousness.
Jacob’s right. I’m certifiably insane. Because as hot as being tied up and forced to orgasm over and over again is, seeing Jacob get to his huge feet with blood on his fist, sweat dripping down his strong brow, breathing like a wild animal who has just saved his mate from an unworthy male is even sexier. My panties are fucking drenched.
I launch myself at him when he turns to face me, forcing him to support my weight when I pull my legs up around his waist, grip his hair, and ram my tongue down his throat. Jacob lurches forward, slamming my back against the table.
“Mama needs you,” I keen as I wriggle and work my red skirt over my hips, then yank the gusset of my matching wet panties to the side.
Jacob’s eyes flash with undiluted lust, his hand working between us to pull down his zipper. He banks his desire briefly to ask, “Now? After what he did?”
“Right fucking now, baby. Fuck me, fuck me, fuck—” I scream shrilly when he slams inside me, cutting off my begging, my back sure to be bruised black and blue as he fucks me on top of the laminator.
We maul each other, all teeth and claws that rip at each other’s shirts to get to the hot, bare skin beneath. I cry out my orgasm when Jacob bites the crook of my neck after I throw my head back.
“Fuck, you take my dick so good, Mama. I’m gonna cum.” Jacob howls like an animal as he slams inside me twice more, buries himself to the hilt, and then swells with his release, flooding my pussy.
I circle his neck, stroking the top of his tattoo as we kiss and kiss and kiss while his cock softens. I can’t get enough of him. Of his masculinity and virility. His protectiveness and the way he rescued me, though I would have, eventually, been able to get away from Mr. Andrews without help after gaining the upper hand. It’s the simple fact that I didn’t have to do it on my own that’s so damn appealing.
Once my legs start to go numb, and we figure we should probably pull ourselves apart to deal with the Mr. Andrews issue, Jacob sets me on my feet and helps me drag my skirt back down before tucking his cock in his trousers. We’re smiling at each other like fools in love when a laugh that sounds an awful lot like one of Sandra’s cackles breaches our bubble.
We turn as one to find Mr. Garnet and Mrs. Goldstein appearing scandalized as they stand over Mr. Andrews, bloody and still knocked out. Mr. Makris, the skinny second-year algebra teacher, is slack-jawed, staring at Jacob with wide, golden brown eyes, and he has his laptop bag pressed to the front of his navy trousers. It’s both amusing and makes my own possessive streak flare, though I know I have nothing to worry about. Jacob is all mine.
Sandra claps and calls out, “Encore! Damn, you kids make me miss my Larry. He would have gotten a kick out of that performance.” Mrs. Goldstein covers her mouth like she’s going to be sick, and Sandra rolls her eyes.
My knees knock together when Mr. Garnet’s gaze hardens, and he motions us silently to fix our shirts and follow him out of the copy room toward his office. Jacob and I hold hands the whole way down the hall, passing the few teachers who hadn’t left yet while they stare at us, whispering to each other.
I drop into the chair in front of Mr. Garnet’s large desk with Jacob standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders, sure we’re about to lose the jobs we care so much about. Police sirens grow louder outside as they approach the school, and Mr. Garnet fixes his steely gaze on the door behind us.
A few minutes later, I want to spew my lunch when I catch sight of the two uniformed officers who step into the office and introduce themselves. Their voices are one big cacophony of noise as I start to spiral. They’re here to arrest us. I just know it. Public indecency or something worse for having sex on school grounds.
It’s only when Jacob squeezes my shoulders and Mr. Garnet turns his laptop around that I come back to the here and now. I hadn’t known there was a security camera in the copy room. The footage is a bit grainy, but it’s still obvious that it’s Mr. Andrews who is assaulting me. The audio is surprisingly clear, so we can all hear the disgusting things he said to me as well.
Then, Mr. Garnet moves his finger over the touchpad and brings up another view, this one in the teacher’s lounge. The video shows Jacob stalking through it and yanking Mr. Andrews out of the copy room by the back of his shirt, then proceeding to beat the snot out of him. Mr. Garnet switches back to the copy room camera, then quickly closes the laptop as soon as we get to the part where I’m begging Jacob to fuck me.
The principal tugs at his burgundy tie and won’t meet my eyes while the police take our statements, then arrange to get the video footage of the incident . When they leave the office without arresting us, much to my immense relief, and it’s just the three of us, I hold my breath, scared of what’s going to happen next.
Mr. Garnet clears his throat and finally looks me in the eye. “I want to start by apologizing, Ms. Barlow. It is with great regret that I say I wish I had let Mr. Andrews go as soon as Mrs. Barry came to me with concerns about his repeated and unreciprocated…special interest in you. As his friend for over twenty years, I had…firmly discouraged…him from pursuing you, but I clearly didn’t do enough to prevent you from coming to harm at his hands. You never should have been put in this kind of position, and I sincerely apologize for his actions and my own.” Turning to Jacob, he says, “As for you, Mr. Prudencio—”
“Please, don’t fire him,” I interrupt. “He was just defending me. I—he—” I burst into tears.
Mr. Garnet pushes a box of tissues across his desk toward me, somehow managing to look even more uncomfortable than before. “I was going to say, ‘Bravo’, Mr. Prudencio.”
“Oh. So you’re not going to fire us for having—” I purse my lips. No one needs a reminder of what Jacob and I had done in the copy room.
“Ah, no. If anything, I applaud you, Mr. Prudencio, for your actions in defending Ms. Barlow’s honor. Unofficially, of course.” I have to work at not laughing at his old-fashioned phrasing, as oddly sweet as it is. “As for what happened afterward, well…” Mr. Garnet spins the gold frame on his desk around, showing us the picture of his wife in her wedding dress. “Let’s just say I understand.”
By the time we leave Mr. Garnet’s office, still secure in our jobs after promising not to repeat our performance at the school, I have a budding respect for him.
I wave Jacob on ahead when we bump into Mr. Makris—Christopher—in the parking lot after gathering our things and leaving the school. I call to mind the family pictures Jacob showed me and quietly tell Christopher, “Jacob has an older brother. Taller. Full beard. More tattoos.” Christopher sucks in a breath. “Single and wholly uninterested in the opposite sex.” His lips part, something like hope flashing in his eyes. “David lives in Dallas, and we’re having dinner with him next weekend. Would you be interested in going to dinner with us so I can introduce you two?”
“Yes, please,” he breathes out. We exchange phone numbers so I can send David’s picture to him and vice versa to make sure David is comfortable with the arrangement before we head to our separate vehicles.
Holding Jacob’s hand, we make our way to my gorgeous Wrangler—the one in which I sucked Jacob’s cock so hard after it was delivered, he came in less than sixty seconds. He picks me up when I go to the driver’s side door and plops me down in the passenger seat.
“Hey, it’s my car. I’m driving—oh. Another round?” I waggle my brows when he swivels my feet out and yanks my hips to the edge of the seat.
Jacob laughs. “Don’t think we should push our luck after the promise we just made.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right,” I say, deflated.
“Don’t look so glum, Mrs. Prudencio. We’ve got plenty of time for that after we land. Right now, we need to get to the airport.”
“Mrs. Prudencio? The air—what?”
He squeezes my thighs and leans in for a kiss. “You didn’t check the trunk this morning, did you, Mama?”
“No…why would I?”
“If you had, you’d have seen our bags packed and loaded in the back.”
Excitement has me kicking my feet and pulling him in closer. “Where are we going, baby?”
“We’re taking a long weekend and going to The Bahamas. Tonight.”
“Oh? And why would we go there?” I think I know why, but I want to hear him say it.
He leans in and, trying to distract me with his tongue, he slides his hand from my thigh to the laptop bag looped on his shoulder, then produces a ring that he slides onto my left hand.
Pulling back, he says, “We’re going to get married on the beach. You’ll be Mrs. Penelope Prudencio when you take the pregnancy test right after we say our vows. Say yes, Mama.”
And there I go, bursting into tears all over again. Getting proposed to in the school’s parking lot might not be romantic to most people, but for me, I can’t think of anywhere better. This is where Jacob carried me out of my poor Betsy and forever changed my life.
“Mrs. Penelope Prudencio is a bit of a mouthful,” I tease, making Jacob laugh. It’s almost as bad as Larry Barry. Almost. “But, yes. Yes to all of it, baby.”