by Ella Frank
The suffocating stillness of the classroom was alleviated when the door to my right crashed open and the first student stepped into the empty space. Boy, girl. Boy, boy, girl. One after another they trickled in, and as the seats filled I remained in the far corner, leaning up against the wall with my legs crossed.
I always did this whenever I started a new class, especially at a new school. I observed. It was interesting to see how the students interacted before they knew I was watching. Before they put on a good show and behaved as they were expected to.
Talking, giggling, and flirting, the students on the first day were always excited to see one another and it was the perfect opportunity to catch them in that snapshot of their true selves. That moment of unobserved freedom.
As everyone took their seats and the second bell peeled through the halls, I pushed off the wall and moved to stand in front of the old wooden desk at the front of my classroom.
One by one, heads lifted and eyes found me waiting on them, and as they realized I had been standing there all along, they immediately settled. The talking subsided and slipped into whispers, and then finally, silence.
I remained steady and still for several minutes, until I had every last person’s attention. Then the door opened for the final time that morning and she stepped into my classroom. Late.
I looked at her—she looked at me.
My ending, staring right at me from the very beginning.
~
Stepping through the classroom door, I was shocked to be faced with a man, instead of Mrs. Ross, our regular History teacher.
This was a stranger. A stranger who knew nothing of one Addison Lancaster, and he was looking at me, with a scowl of annoyance plastered across his face.
That was the moment I first saw Mr. McKendrick.
He was the teacher that every girl dreamed about. The one we would all have a crush on by the end of the year. Hell, maybe even by the end of the class. With brown hair streaked gold by the sun, pulled back into a short, messy ponytail at the nape of his neck, he was unlike any teacher I’d ever seen before.
“And who would you would be?”
That voice. I swear it touched me—I was that affected.
“Miss?”
Blinking once, I pulled my mind back into focus and realized that for one brief moment, the ticking had stopped. My body had taken over my mind, which is something that never happened with me.
“Miss? I’m talking to you.”
Laughter erupted from the classroom and then it was back, tick, tick, tick—three. My new teacher turned to the students, their mouths shut and the room plunged back into a tense silence.
Wow, that was some kind of authority right there. One glance from this man and my unruly classmates shut down and became respectful—and we weren’t even ten minutes into the period.
Again his eyes came back to mine and even as they conveyed his irritation, they also held something else. Something I instantly craved.
Like a lion, his eyes were fierce as he stared at me, appraised me. All men did, they couldn’t seem to help it. No matter how inappropriate they knew it was, I always drew their attention.
With my wide, bowed lips, innocent blue eyes, and a figure that belonged on a twentysomething, not a teen—I knew what I had and I was never afraid to use it. Unlike most men, whose eyes betrayed their interest, I pictured this one stalking me from across the room, and me allowing it.
“Miss? I asked you a question.”
I’d forgotten what he’d asked the minute I’d looked at him. I was too busy imagining his hands touching me, his mouth tasting me.
It took him four long strides to be close enough that I could see the stubble dotting his upper lip.
“You’re late,” he stated, his tone impenetrable as he opted for a different route, since it was obvious I was not going to answer him. “On your first day. Not a fantastic way to start the school year, would you say?”
Aiming a coy look at him from beneath my lashes, I finally found my voice and as usual, my runaway tongue got the better of me, assuring a firm place on his shit list.
“Maybe you could keep me after school, teach me to tell the time.”
“Since it’s the first day, I don’t think that will be necessary. But from now on be on time. Your name please.”
“Addison. Addison Lancaster.”
“Thank you. Now go and take a seat.”
Shrugging my bag further up on my shoulder, I spun on my toes, making my way down the second aisle toward the back, with a little more sway to my hips than usual. Glancing at Brandon, I noticed he looked up at me and winked, reminding me of exactly why I’d been late. Returning the sexy gesture, I owned the sensual smile I aimed his way as it spread across my mouth. Taking my seat, I grinned at my friends and smirked at any others looking my way.
Flirting, to me, was like breathing to everyone else. The boys and the girls, they all adored me. With a laugh or a scowl, it was easy to see the way they were affected by my attention and I reveled in the power that afforded me. I strived for perfection and I liked seeing the results of my efforts.
As the school’s track champion I was their role model, their person to love—and their person to hate. I was important because I was their star. Everyone, including the teachers, knew me, and everyone loved me. Except for the man standing at the front of my World History class, he definitely did not love me yet, but I’d always liked a challenge. It was in my nature to win.
Slowly my bag slid down my shoulder and onto the floor. I crossed one leg over the other and returned my focus to the man whose eyes were moving methodically over each and every one of us, before finally coming back to rest on mine.
He studied me for a moment in a way that felt calculated before moving on to Kylie, who was seated in the aisle to my right. Just like that—I was dismissed.
“My name is Mr. McKendrick. I’m obviously going to be your World History teacher this year, not Mrs. Ross. I have very few rules, but one of them is to be on time,” he stated in a perfunctory tone as he paced across the front of the room. “The other is a little unorthodox. I want you to be curious…but respectful. Ask questions. Challenge one another. I want you looking outside the box, so to speak, because that is where you’ll find some of the most fascinating discoveries.”
Mr. McKendrick.
He was intriguing and definitely outside the box.
I was without a doubt, fascinated.
~
She watched me from her seat—third row from the back, two aisles in—with eyes so blue I could see them from where I was seated. They locked on to me the second she settled, and she continued to scrutinize me.
As I stood at the front of the class, introducing the course and myself, I waited for my morals and drummed in ethics to assert themselves. To remind me that I wasn’t supposed to be affected by a student’s inspection. Thirty minutes later and I was still waiting.
I moved to sit behind my desk, watching the students quietly, but my eyes continued to be drawn back to the young lady who had shown up late.
She was positively captivating in a way that punched you right in the solar plexus. From her porcelain skin to the waves of chestnut hair that swayed against the curve of her high, full breasts—Addison Lancaster was more woman than girl, and she was dangerous.
The other males in the room knew it too, if the way they acted around her was any indication. They seemed caught on every lick of her plump red lips—and yes, I had caught those too.
So there I sat, trying to work out what it was that was making her impossible to ignore, and then she glanced up and I knew.
It was those eyes. They held emotions they shouldn’t have. Dark, sad, and inviting all rolled into one, and yet she was far too young to possibly understand any of those emotions in their absolute form.
Breaking the searing connection, I looked down at my textbook, but all I continued to feel was Addison Lancaster, watching me.
~
The
first day of school went by quicker than I expected and everything was exactly how it should be. Except for Mr. McKendrick, I had not expected him.
Lying between the white cotton sheets of my bed, I enjoyed the coolness of them as I parted my bare thighs and slipped my hand down between—to touch. Nighttime was my time, a time where I could imagine whatever I wanted and that night, I imagined my World History teacher.
The man who had dismissed me in the blink of an eye. The man who was making my body weep as I lay in my bed. Why I found his rejection so appealing, I was unable to pinpoint, but it was almost…challenging.
Biting my top lip, I slid two fingers along the elastic edge of my panties. I wiggled them in under the pink cotton and flexed my toned thighs. As I parted my legs further and arched my back, I pushed my body into the weight of the sheet, enjoying the feel of it over me, imagining that it was him. I teased myself, flirting my fingers over my bare mound. My mouth parted on his name as my fingertips grazed my clit and then dipped below to slide inside.
I’d been doing this from an early age, learning my body and exactly the way I needed to be touched. Brandon never got it right, he was always in a rush and it was over before it began—didn’t that apply most boys? But Mr. McKendrick…
I knew he’d be different. He would touch me the way I desired and he’d fuck me the way I craved it. Not like a boy—but like a man.
Special Thanks
As always, Candace and Alyssa, thank you for being available for me to laugh, cry and scream with.
This book would not have been possible without you.
Xx Ella
P.S. We made it!! What a ride!!
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Prologue
Chapter One