by Madison Faye
And if getting there means I have to suffer through Hershman’s class for the rest of the year and pretend I don’t see the way he looks at me, then fine.
I’ll do it, if it means getting Christian.
The class starts to get up, everyone grabbing their things, when a voice stops me cold.
“Ms. Kensington.”
It’s Hershman, hissing out my name from behind me.
“Stay a minute. We need to go over your grades.”
I shiver, and part of me wants to just grab my bag and run. But then there’s that voice again, reminding me of what the prize is here. So I take a deep breath and stop myself, and instead, I turn and face Hershman.
“Yes?”
He sneers at me. “How about with a little respect, Tempest.”
My lips purse shut, and he narrows his eyes at me.
“I will have your respect, you little bitch,” he hisses, standing from his desk and stepping around it. He marches past me, and I watch with an icy horror sliding over me as he locks the door, draws the shade over the window, and shuts off the lights.
“Now,” he says maliciousuly, and every nerve in my body screams to run.
“I believe we discussed the various ways you’d be passing my class?”
He grins, and a nauseous feeling sinks into me.
“We’ll start with you pulling up that skirt and showing me what I want to see.”
I stare at him, my mouth open.
“Now, Ms. Kensington.”
I shake my head. “Not a chance.”
Hershman glares at me, his eyes narrowing as he steps closer. He reaches for me, but I step back. Anger clouds his face, and his teeth flash as he lunges for me.
I scream and turn, but he’s much faster than I think he is, and much stronger than he looks. I cry out as he grabs my wrist, spinning me and slamming me against the chalkboard.
“I’ve waited long enough to get a taste of the class tease, you little bitch.”
“You’re delusional,” I spit, muscles straining as I try and break free of his grasp.
“Don’t lie to me,” he chuckles. “I heard all about you taking Jonathan Price and Michael Sterling off behind the gym the other day.” He makes a tsking sound as he shakes his head, grinning at me. “What a dirty little whore you are.”
His words are like a poisoned knife, slashing into me and ruining all the perfect thoughts I’ve had in my head of Christian all day. The tears come hot and heavy, the sob wrenching from my chest as Hershman slams me against the wall.
“I swear, I’ll tell everyone what you did to Amy—”
The slap comes faster than I even know how to react to it. I gasp in shock, the sting from his hand searing across my cheek and making my eyes water.
“Go ahead,” he hisses. “Like I said, no one is going to believe a little troublemaker like you, especially when I tell them you’re making the whole thing up for attention. I’m a tenured professor. I have respect around this town. And you? You’re just a little slut.”
His eyes narrow at me, his teeth flashing.
“So be a good little slut—” His hand goes to his zipper, and I feel my blood freeze, before suddenly, I think of Christian.
Strong. Confident. Bold.
I realize right there that I really do love him, with everything I have. And I also realize that the man I love would never stop fighting, not ever.
And so I don’t. I won’t stop fighting, not against a sadistic asshole like Hershman, and I refuse to let this happen.
And so I react.
My knee jerks up with every bit of strength I have, connecting right into the softness between his legs. Hershman screams, dropping his grip on me and doubling over as he falls to the ground. I scream at him, hauling back and then kicking out, letting the toe of my flat sink right into his crotch again, twice, before I whirl.
I make it halfway to the door before he grabs me. The scream rips from my lips as he yanks me around, and when the slap comes again, the tears spring to my eyes.
“Oh, you are going to pay for that, you little bitch!”
My blood curdles as he slams me over a desk, bent over. I can feel him leaning over me, his sour, hot breath on my ear as his words slide into me.
“Now, Tempest, I’m gong to take—”
The door to the classroom splinters and comes crashing into the room right off it’s hinges. The both of us whirl, and my heart suddenly soars as Christian comes roaring inside. Hershman screams and turns, but Christian hurdles a desk and comes barreling right into him, slamming him to the ground.
“You son of a bitch!” Christian roars, yanking Hershman up by his tie and slamming a fist into his mouth. The man screams, but Christian doesn’t let up — punching him again and again until he slams him back to the floor and stands. His whole body is tensed up, muscles bunched in his shoulders and straining at the rolled up sleeves of his shirt as he jabs a finger menacingly down at a whimpering Professor Hershman.
“You ever touch her or anyone else again, and I will bury you in the fucking ground, is that understood?” he roars, his face a mask of rage as he stands over the professor.
But suddenly, Hershman just laughs. Christian’s face tightens, and he’s about to drop down to pummel Hershman all over again, when the older professor shakes his head, snickering as blood trickles from his mouth.
“Save it, dickbag,” he hisses. “I know all about you, Headmaster.” He leers at Christian. “Drive all your students to school do you?”
My blood runs cold.
“Do you drive them all home, too? To your own house?”
He snickers, spitting blood out of this mouth.
“Yeah, I followed you, and I saw her.” He jabs a thumb at me. “Going into your house. And I’m willing to be you kept her there all night.”
He glares at me.
“Didn’t he, you little slu—”
He grunts as Christian jams his foot into his ribs.
“Keep it up, asshole!” he spits. “You can beat me up all you want, but you’re fucking through here, Knolls. I’m tenured. But you?” He chuckles. “I’ll have you blacklisted from every private school in the goddamn country, but not before I tell everybody about your little shenanigans here with your student!”
There’s a cough, and suddenly, we all look up, and I freeze.
Half the school is crowded around the shattered doorway, jaws dropped, eyes wide, and every single one of them holding a cellphone in their hands, recording. Other professors, vice-Headmaster Dalton, students, and most of the administrative staff.
The whole room is silent, and I swear I’m about to melt through the floor when suddenly, he’s right there, holding me up, taking my hand in his, and pulling me away from Hershman. And suddenly, before I even know it, he’s spinning me around, pulling me right against him, and there, right in front of everyone, Christian kisses me.
He kisses me deeply, and I feel every part of him pouring into that kiss until the rest of the room just melts away and I swear it’s just us, floating through space. Slowly, he pulls away, his eyes locked on mine and a smile on his face.
“You know what, angel,” he murmurs. “You were right. Fuck this town, and fuck this place.” He grins. “All I want in this world I’ve got right here in my arms, and the rest is just background noise.”
He kisses me again, dipping me low as my heart soars.
“You’re it, Tempest,” he says softly. “My perfect storm.”
I throw my arms around him and kiss him fiercely, and when I hear a snickering from the crowd, I don’t stop kissing him, I just raise one hand and flip them all off.
He’s right: screw the rest of these people. Because all we need we’ve got right here with each other, and the rest?
Well, the rest is all background noise.
Epilogue
Christian
Red and gold leaves blow across my path as I cross the street, and I turn up the collar of my coat against the fall chill. Inside
, however, I’m warm, because I’m headed home.
To her.
See, despite all the shit with Hershman, and everything blowing up like it did, Tempest did end up heading to Harvard. As it turns out, even in a snob-nosed and financially corrupt town like West Haven, a teacher threatening the future of a student and demanding sexual favors is, well, looked down on.
The administration wasn’t exactly happy with me either, I’ll say that, but they also didn’t object to me personally leading the investigation into Hershman’s questionable scruples, especially when it came to Tempest’s history with him as a teacher. Turns out, if people had bothered to dig deeper than Hershman’s word, they would have seen what I’d guessed all along: Tempest didn’t fail any classes her senior year, he’d goddamn nuked her grades after she’d told him to stop trying to put his fucking hands on her. The whole incident with his car, and then being caught with a stolen beer in the library the following week had all been fallout from her finding out about Amy Sanders and what he’d done to her. People act out, and she’d done so exactly how I’d expect my perfect storm to.
We dug deeper, and it turns out it’d also been Hershman who’d then leaned on her economic professor, Dr. Snell, to fail her there too.
Fuck that shit.
They — well I — also reached out to and convinced the Sanders family to speak up again, and this time, I made damn sure people fucking listened to them.
And they did.
Hershman didn’t go to jail or anything, like he should have, but he did get booted from Thornbull. I also called in some favors with some ex-jarheads I know, who went to his house and basically took their time with him. He now has the word “rapist” tattooed across his forehead, and as far as I’ve been told, won’t have an easy time getting an erection basically ever again.
Fuck him.
The wind hits me and I duck down our street right off the Harvard campus. So, she’s here now, at school where she belongs, with a clean permanent record and everything about that car incident expunged from her record.
And wouldn’t you know it, she’s still fucking her professor.
Not Headmaster, Professor.
See, my staying at Thornbull was honestly never going to happen. I knew that the second I crashed into Hershman’s classroom. And I definitely knew it when I kissed her in front of half the school. And I’d do it all over again, a million times.
Hell, I’d known I wasn’t long for Thornbull the second I’d walked into my office and set my eyes on Tempest. And really, Headmaster wasn’t for me. It wasn’t teaching, it was just directing, and I’d done enough that in the service. I wanted to teach, like my mother. I wanted to foster learning and help minds grow and expand, and I wasn’t going to do that as the school’s task master and rule maker.
So I quit.
Well, no, the town paid me to leave. Same difference though. Technically, I’d done no wrong. What’d happened with Tempest and I was inappropriate, for sure, but seeing as she was eighteen, and a legal adult, and it was all obviously consensual, the only real foul was that I was her Headmaster, and things had happened on school grounds.
Hey, I never claimed to be saint, and I wasn’t going to lie.
Paul and Carrie, the couple who’d raised her, actually seemed like they were okay with it once they’d come home early from their trip and been filled in on what had happened. Okay, at first, I’ll grant them being pissed that a guy basically their age had somehow fallen for the girl they’d sworn to raise. But, when they met me, I think they put aside any misgivings they might’ve still had. They saw that I wasn’t some creep who was just after her for her youth. And besides that, they knew Tempest was always way older than her years anyways, and so us ending up together really just made sense.
Hell, I agree.
They got behind it so much that they ended up leading the call for me to be rewarded for my efforts in saving Tempest, bringing the Amy thing to light, and actually stopping Hershman from hurting anyone else. Turns out, there were a few other girls he’d been creeping on, and their parents also joined in when they found out I’d upended the monster.
So in the end, to settle it all, Thornbull ended up giving me a very nice settlement to walk away, and so I did. Paul stepped up big time, and pulled in some favors with some old colleagues of his who just so happened to work in the administration at Harvard.
And so, yep, here I am — the brand new military history professor at an ivy league school.
Who’d have thought.
I moved up here the same day she did, proposed that very same day, and the two of us have an apartment together right off campus. It’s made for some interesting questions around the faculty water cooler, but I don’t give a shit. So long as she never decides to take “Intro to the Napoleonic Wars” or “Saddam and the Gulf: A Retrospective,” we’re on clean ground.
Downstairs, I fish my keys out of my pocket and then step into the foyer of our building. The apartment’s a new building, and the space isn’t huge, but hey, it’s all we need right now. Besides, Tempest’s discovered she loves molecular biology, and remember how I said she was a genius? Well, I wasn’t really exaggerating. She’s fucking brilliant, and the work she’s doing is so intense and so groundbreaking, even in her lower level classes, that she’s already getting future-offers from some of the biggest labs in the country. So, something tells me, we’re going to be upgrading to a bigger place soon.
We’ll have to actually, eventually.
No, she’s not pregnant. Yet. But the only reason she’s not is because I’m insisting that she finishes her degree first. But the fucking day she gets that diploma, mark my damn words: I’m throwing her birth control pills away and filling her with my cum all day every goddamn day until she’s swollen with our child.
The thought makes my cock twitch as I ride the elevator up to our top-floor apartment. I step out into the hall and grin at the smell that I know can only be coming from our place, since it’s Tempest’s famous — at least to me — bolognese sauce simmering on the burner. It’s her dad’s old recipe, and damn is it fantastic.
The smell floods over me as I unlock the door and step inside, but I’m forgetting it and food entirely as I take in the sight that greets me.
And I growl.
Black, thong panties, and an old t-shirt of mine. It’s all she’s wearing as she stands up on her tiptoes to glance into the pot simmering on the stove. The motion strains her calves, stretching her lean legs out so fucking enticingly and pulling the shirt up over her tight little ass. My cock goes rock fucking hard at the sight, and this time when I growl, she must hear me, because suddenly she gasps and whirls to face me.
“Fuck, you scared the shit out of me!”
Her shoulders heave with her shocked breath, but she grins when she sees me. But then she must notice the look on my face, because her eyes dip lower. She sees the bulge in my pants, and when she drags her eyes back up to mine, her gaze is as hungry as mine.
“And how was your day, honey?” she purrs.
I don’t say a word, I just drop my briefcase, shrug off my coat, tear my tie off, and march right for her. Tempest squeals, giggling and running from me, but I scoop her up easily and spin her in my arms. She moans as I crush my lips to hers, her arms going around me and one leg raising to curl around my hip. I groan, feeling the heat between her legs even through her panties and my pants, and it sets something on fire inside of me.
I growl, picking her up into my arms and marching us over to the couch in the living area. I push her down into the plush cushions, only pulling away enough to tear my dress shirt off and yank my belt open. Tempest moans, yanking the t-shirt over her head and exposing her soft, full breasts to my gaze. I move back to her, pinning her to the cushions and kissing her fiercely as my hand skims down her body.
I work my mouth down to her neck, kissing her collarbone and biting her softly before I move lower. I trace my tongue over her nipples, and tease the underside of her breast
before I move even lower. My fingers hook into her thong and pull it down slowly as my lips trail down her belly, and damn do I love the little mewling sounds she makes and the way she arches her hips in anticipation.
Luckily for her, she’s not going to have to wait long.
I toss her panties aside, spread her legs wide, and growl lowly as I move in.Tempest cries out as my tongue finds her slippery wet pussy. I drag it over her lips, drawing the honey from her opening and tasting it hungrily. I move to her clit, lightly swirling my tongue over it as my hands move to cup her hot little ass in my hands possessively. I push her legs back, spreading them wide in my hands and opening her up as I push my tongue deep inside of her.
Tempest moans, her hands in my hair and her hips bucking against me as I tongue her tight, sweet cunt for all I’m worth. I’m fucking addicted to the taste of her — a damn junkie for her sweetness. I slide a finger inside of her, and my cock actually lurches at how fucking tight she is, even just around one finger. I suck her clit between my lips and tease it with the tip of my tongue as I drag the finger in and out, stroking her inner walls and making her moans fill our damn apartment.
It’s when I wet the thumb of my other hand with her slippery juices and move it down to her tight, puckered ass that she really goes crazy. I tease her mercilessly, one finger curling in and out of her, my thumb tracing circles around her asshole, and my tongue swirling around her clit. She pants faster and faster, her hips moving harder and harder against me, until suddenly, she crashes over that edge.
And fuck if the sound of the woman I love coming for me isn’t the single greatest sound in the world.
She’s barely caught her breath when I stand and yank my pants and my boxers down. My cock springs out, rock hard and throbbing with need to be buried inside of her slick, tight little pussy. I move over her, stroking myself and groan as the pre-cum coats my shaft.
But Tempest only grins coyly, and before I can even react, she’s tackled me and flipped me onto my ass on the couch. I chuckle, but then she’s pouncing on me, her legs going to either side of my hips as she settles her pussy right on top of my cock.