Lily's Story, A Bentley Sisters Novel

by Lauren Beaumont

  Lily's Story

  The Bentley Sisters, Book Two

  By

  Lauren Beaumont

  ©2012, 2015 by Blushing Books® and Lauren Beaumont

  All rights reserved.

  No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Published by Blushing Books®,

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  Beaumont, Lauren

  Lily's Story, The Bently Sisters, Book 2

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-62750-798-1

  Cover Art by ABCD Graphics & Design

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  About the Author

  Ebook Offer

  Blushing Books Newsletter

  Blushing Books

  CHAPTER ONE

  The high-pitched wail of the school bell rang out and resonated through Lily’s classroom, signalling the end of the school day and interrupting her valiant attempts to explain to the class of nearly forty high school students how the story line and themes in Shakespeare’s Macbeth might still be relevant today, in inner city London. She sighed as the children – well, teenagers, they were hardly children any more – leapt out of their seats at the first peel of the bell and immediately jostle and shoulder their way out of the room, not even pretending to wait for her to bring the lesson to a close.

  “Homework, everyone,” she called out, raising her voice above the relentless din of scraping chairs and shuffling feet, “Re-read Act V scene I. I want us to discuss Lady Macbeth in the next class; what has happened to her and why? Come to class with your ideas ready to discuss.”

  “Sure, Miss.”

  “Yes, Miss.”

  She supposed she should be happy that at least a handful of her pupils had acknowledged her request that they prepare for the next class, even if that didn’t necessarily mean they would actually do anything in practice.

  As the last pupil drifted out of the room, Lily lowered herself down into her chair and slowly exhaled the long breathe she hadn’t even realised she had been holding in. She looped her arms behind her head and gently stretched her aching limbs. It had, once again, been a long day. She had known that it would be a challenge moving from St. Catherine’s High School, a fee-paying school in southwest London that was full of children whose parents spent thousands of pounds on their offspring in a bid to provoke an intellectual curiosity that, as a teacher, Lily could not help but admire, even if she didn’t agree that money was the answer to the myriad of problems facing schools in London. However, after over five years there, she had felt that it was time to move on from the cloistered environment of St. Catherine’s and spread her wings in a school where she was needed more, and where she hoped that she could make a genuine difference to the lives of the pupils she taught.

  She smiled to herself. Her three sisters had all thought she was mad to accept the position as head of English Literature at Clayston Academy. Of course, on the one hand it was an impressive step for her career; to be appointed as a head of department at age twenty-seven was practically unheard of in London. However, Lily wasn’t under any illusions; although she prided herself in being a good teacher with a genuine vocation for her work, Clayston Academy was what was known in London to be a “failing school” and it was unlikely there had been many, or even any, other applications for the job.

  As she looked round the shabby classroom with its graffiti-adorned desks and chairs and aged paint peeling from the walls, she felt slightly sad. There wasn’t even a proper bookcase in the room, and the books were piled up in stacks on the floor. How was she supposed to encourage these children to learn, to want to read, to see the relevance of books above video games and television, if she couldn’t even get a simple bookcase placed in her classroom? She really believed that these children could have a good future ahead of them, if only they were provided with the right opportunities now.

  Slowly, she rolled her shoulders in an attempt to dispel the tension that had worked its way into her muscles. Six months into her new role at Clayston Academy, and she was still surprised at how exhausted she was at the end of each day.

  From her classroom, Lily had a bird’s eye view of the school’s playground and the staff car park just beyond. Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of a Cherokee Jeep pulling into the parking area. Immediately, the tension that she had been trying to rub away from her shoulders increased ten-fold. She recognised the car, and the tall dark haired man who jumped out of it confidently and strode towards the school’s main reception. Most of the children had already gone home, but she could see that those who were still around had clearly registered his presence as he made his way across the playground.

  She walked over to her window and, through the grubby glass, gazed out, wrapping her arms round herself in an instinctive gesture of self-protection. Not that she worried about her physical safely around this man, she thought wryly. No, it was her emotional well being and, dare she admit it, her heart that concerned her more. Tom Sinclair was over six feet of unapologetic, dominant masculinity. Officially, he was a detective with London’s metropolitan police force, but a few months ago – around the same time she had started at Clayston – the Met had launched a new initiative, working with a handful of the “problematic” schools in the inner-city, aiming to improve relations between the children and the police in an attempt to try to combat the ever growing gang violence that was sweeping more and more teenagers into its clutches. Tom was the liaison contact between the Met and the school and had introduced himself to her the day he first came into the school. He made a point of stopping by to see her and chat to her whenever he visited, which these days tended to be at least a couple of times a week.

  She’d tried to tell herself that he was just being friendly and courteous and that he wasn’t actually interested in her romantically. She’d even convinced herself for a while that her Year 10 class was the reason he was so attentive to her. Her Year 10 group included a few particularly difficult boys, whom she knew were suspected of being members of one of the local gangs and maybe that was the reason for his interest. However, although she might not be the most experienced of women sexually, she had had a couple of boyfriends and she knew she hadn’t imagined the way his eyes raked over her, or the tingle of sensation that danced up and down her spine when his arm brushed against her.

  Lily knew she had been a bit wary around Tom at first, and knew that she had failed miserably to conceal that wariness. Despite being the youngest of four siblings, Lily had always maintained an honest self-awareness about who she was and what she wanted from life that had at times astounded her otherwise more worldly sisters. Right from being a teenager, Lily had known that she wanted what would these days be called an “old-fashioned” relationship. She didn’t want someone who she could walk all over, or who would give in to whatever her whim was that day. Her years spent teaching had only con
firmed those beliefs. She saw too many children, even those from privileged backgrounds at her old school, where the family was fragmented. Sometimes it was obvious, if the parents had divorced. Other times, more frequently, the family was still a unit on paper, but she could tell when she met the parents for review evenings that the husband and wife operated effectively independently, and there was no harmony either within the relationship or at home for their children. On more than one occasion parents, unable to contain their animosity towards each other, had screaming arguments in front of her when they were supposed to have come into the school to talk about their child’s progress over the year.

  Lily shivered. She definitely did not want that life for herself or any children she might one day have. However, she knew that in the kind of relationship she wanted, with the kind of man to whom she was instinctively attracted, she had to be wary. Any man could pretend to want the responsibility and duty that came with such a relationship in order to attract a woman initially and gain her confidence, but she suspected that there were far fewer to whom such leadership came naturally. Everything about Tom Sinclair screamed natural confidence, authority and self-control, and she couldn’t imagine him permitting any wife or girlfriend of his to run riot or let their internal conflicts jeopardise their marriage or family. The certainty of that knowledge was, however, unnerving to Lily as she had never before been faced with the prospect of her girlish imaginings and fairy tale longings becoming real.

  With a gasp, Lily hurriedly stepped back from the window as she realised that, in her daydreams, Tom had spotted her staring at him through the glass, and had raised his hand up to wave to her in a friendly greeting. Embarrassed at having been caught spying on him so obviously, Lily purposefully busy herself tidying up the classroom, stacking up papers and putting together the pile of marking she planned to take home with her to get through that evening. Although it was clear that Tom had been heading to see Sam Rawlins, the headmaster of Clayston Academy and a genuine supporter of the new school liaison scheme that Tom was pioneering, Lily still sighed to herself as she couldn’t help but wonder if he would drop in to see her afterwards if she was still in her classroom when he had finished.

  * * *

  Reluctantly, Lily was forced to pick up her bags and papers and make her way outside to her car to go home for the day. She knew she had been fabricating tasks in her classroom, hoping that she could “accidentally” bump into the good-looking detective before she left. It annoyed her that she had been so blatant in her tidying up, but she couldn’t lie to herself and she knew that she was acting like a teenager. So much for being a role model for her students.

  She swung her bag over her shoulder, wrapped her scarf round her neck and briskly walked out into the school’s grounds. She was surprised at how dark it had suddenly become, although she supposed it was now early November and the days were increasingly short and bleak, not that she had helped herself by spending a good hour or so more than she needed to in her classroom! Most of the students had gone home, although she saw that there was a small group gathered in one of the corners of the grounds, in the shadow of one of the few trees that the school had retained between reception and the gates. Dimly, in the poor light, she thought that she saw Ricky and Mike Collins, twins from her Year 10 class, lounging within the group.

  “Strange,” she thought to herself, as the twins didn’t usually hang out at the school after hours. They weren’t bad students, in fact, they were bright and - when they could be bothered – they could debate and argue detailed points on the novels and plays she had been teaching with the best of them. However, she’d heard on the grapevine that they spent most of their time in the company of the kids from one of the other nearby estates and she knew they had a reputation for skipping school at much as possible, having already had half a dozen warnings for truancy.

  She heard the crack of thunder overhead, warning of the oncoming storm. “Urgh,” she thought, huddling deeper into her coat and picking up her pace as she made her way across the grounds and towards the car park. She wished she didn’t have to drive back and forth to work each day; life had been much easier when she used to take the Underground into town to reach her old school, but in this part of London, Underground access was limited and it would have added another hour or so to her journey each way if she had to rely on the sporadic bus network. She hurried along, anxious to get to her car before the heavens opened.

  Then, from the edge of the grounds where she thought she had seen the twins, she heard raised voices and she pricked up her ears. It wasn’t the usual sounds of over excited teenagers, but rather the sound of a fight breaking out. Quickly, she swung around in their direction and, as she did so, saw pandemonium set in amongst the group as one of the twins - was it Ricky or Mike? She couldn’t be sure – launched himself at one of the other boys, upon which the others piled in.

  Instinctively, she threw her bag and papers down onto the ground and raced over to them as fast as she could, her thought only to break up whatever it was that was going on before any of them got hurt. She wasn’t stupid, she knew that – legal or not – some of the students carried knives on them. No way could she let that kind of an incident start up when she was close enough to stop it.

  “Stop that!” she yelled, as she waded into the group of youths, trying in vain to pull them apart physically. Too late, she realised that without exception they were all decidedly bigger than she was and intervening was like pulling and tugging at a series of unyielding iron posts.

  “I’m telling you all,” she continued, “this is no way to solve an argument. You will stop this right now and go home.”

  “Miss, get out the way,” one of the boys yelled back at her, “it’s none of your business. Don’t stick your nose in.”

  “What you do on school grounds is definitely my business,” she retorted, still trying to shove the boys off each other.

  Suddenly, her stomach plunged as she saw the unmistakable glimmer of a knife and she froze on the spot, her mind lurching between the alternatives as to what to do. Then, within a split second, she was falling, as someone, she had no idea who, had violently pushed her away, out of the range of the blade, and she cried out as her shoulder took the force of her fall and she hit the concrete with a thud.

  The whole thing had probably been over in seconds, but to Lily’s mind it felt hours. She heard a shout from the entrance to the school and managed to raise her head enough to see Tom Sinclair and Sam Rawlins running over and, at the same time, heard one of the boys say loudly, “Shit, it’s the police, get out of here. Kid – you’ve got it coming...” followed by the sound of thudding trainers on concrete as the boys ran off into the now properly dark road outside the school gate.

  Lily felt strong hands gently touch her shoulders, neck and arms, probing to check if anything seemed broken, and she knew without opening her eyes that it was Tom Sinclair who was now slowly moving her to take the weight off her sore shoulder.

  “Lily,” his voice resounded clearly in her ear, “I want you to open your eyes slowly, and then I want you to try to sit up. I don’t think anything’s broken, but you’ve taken a bad fall and a hell of a shock.”

  “I’m okay...”she mumbled as she gradually opened her eyes again to see Tom Sinclair bending over her, his face set in a grim mask of barely concealed anger, but around his eyes there was tenderness and his tone remained gentle. Behind him, she could see Sam hovering, concern etched over his features.

  “Let me be the judge of that,” he responded firmly, one hand placed gently under her shoulder blades, steadying her as she moved. Slowly she sat up, wincing a little, but otherwise reassured to find that her limbs all seemed to be working as usual.

  “See?” she said lightly, “all in one piece and fine!”

  Incredulity briefly washed over Tom’s face, and his gaze drifted from her shaky smile to her shoulder, and he commented quietly, “You mean aside from your torn clothes and injured shoulder?”


  Surprised, she jerked her eyes down to her shoulder. “Oh!” she exclaimed, wobbly, as she saw the rip to her coat and the badly grazed skin obvious underneath.

  “Oh, indeed," Tom replied and she flinched under his stern gaze.

  “Really, I’m okay," she repeated.

  “From where we’re standing, you are most definitely not okay. You waded into a fight and were knocked to the ground within seconds. You could have broken any number of limbs, or worse! Who knows what could have happened if we hadn’t heard the shouting from Sam’s office and looked out to see you running to break things up. As it was, we weren’t quick enough to prevent this happening," he told her grimly, before turning to Sam.

  “Sam, did you recognise any of the students?”

  “I think the Collins twins were there, and a couple of others from Year 10, but from the angle I couldn’t make out the rest of their faces," he answered apologetically. “Lily, you really shouldn’t have tried to break up that fight. There were at least a dozen of them; you could have been really hurt!”

  Lily could see the worry set over Sam’s usually calm features and sought to reassure him. “Really, Sam, I’m fine. Just a bit shaken, that’s all. I heard the yells from across the grounds, and thought I could break it up before it got out of hand.” She deliberately avoided Tom’s gaze, “I guess I misjudged it a bit...”

  Sam looked slightly mollified at her words, but still took the opportunity to chide her lightly, “Tom’s right, Lily. You could have been seriously hurt. This isn’t St. Catherine’s. The kids here don’t just meekly go on their way when a teacher comes over.” He sighed. “Sometimes, at best you can get ignored, and at worst you can get caught in the cross fire.”

  He reached down and put his hand on her arm, unaware of Tom’s steely look. “Please, Lily. Promise me you’ll be more careful in the future?”