So I veered away, heading in the opposite direction. Without glancing back, I knew his gaze stayed with me to the building. I felt it blazing along my back.
His undivided attention should’ve scared the crap out of me, but instead, I found comfort in it. I wanted it, and that bothered me most of all.
CHAPTER 12
MAGNUS
The following day, I sat behind my desk and stared at Tinsley Constantine with new eyes.
She stood with her hands at her sides, shoulders back, and expression brimming with self-possession. Not a trace of the ashamed, teary-eyed girl I’d left in this room yesterday. Overnight, she’d regained her strength of will. With a few differences.
Her uniform met the dress code. She’d arrived on time for Mass this morning and sat through the service with little interruption. But I was under no illusion about her sudden compliance. I suspected, after a night of brooding anger and humiliation, she was simply picking her battles.
Or maybe I was the only one who spent the evening in turmoil.
I’d never ordered a student to remove her undergarments. Never even considered it. At the time, I’d told myself it served a practical purpose, knowing full well she would lose the fight with her bladder. I’d counted on it.
But when the tiny scrap of white cotton had slid down her legs, my entire body reacted. My thoughts turned inside out, and God help me, I hungered like I’d never hungered before. I ached for her humiliation so ravenously that when it finally arrived, it took all the concentrated restraint in the world not to fall upon her like a mindless, raging beast.
I had a choice. I could’ve fucked her. Right here in my classroom, I could’ve broken my vow and fucked her with piss on her legs, virgin blood on my dick, and her heavenly tears soaking the hand I would’ve held so tightly to her mouth.
She wouldn’t have survived it.
A demanding whisper in the silence of my heart argued she was stronger than I knew, stronger than anyone realized. That whisper had lured me back to the campus later last night to discover just how strong she was and how loudly she could scream.
Then I saw her. Walking along the wall just before nine, she took my breath away. Her beauty was so otherworldly, so unrivaled and angelic, I wanted to protect her, not hurt her. I couldn’t stomach the thought of poisoning her with my cancer and stripping her soul from her body. I wouldn’t do it.
I made a choice.
I packed away every depraved, immoral thought into a deep compartment labeled, Never open. Then I spent the rest of the night praying the rosary and celebrating my abstinence with a few too many whiskeys.
Nine years ago, I’d successfully buried my sickness in the same way. Since then, I hadn’t misstepped. I hadn’t come apart at the seams. I never caved. My self-control was inviolable.
Tinsley wasn’t in danger around me. Not yesterday. Not now. Not ever. She wasn’t a temptation.
And so this morning, as I stared at her with new eyes, it had less to do with me and more to do with the paper on my desk.
Pressing a finger against it, I slid it across to her. Then I laced my hands on the wooden surface and watched her.
She bent forward, glanced at the page, and little lines of disappointment knitted across her brow, there and gone by the time she straightened.
“Explain this to me.” I kept my tone light, conversational. “According to your enrollment paperwork, you’ve never taken a standardized test for university admissions. Why?”
“You would have to ask my mother.” She shrugged.
Her blasé attitude set my teeth on edge.
“I’m asking you.”
“If my mother has it her way, I’ll never see the inside of a university. An educated woman doesn’t make a good trophy wife in a loveless marriage with a man who’s twice her age. It’s best to keep me dumb, unambitious, and subservient.”
“And if you had it your way?”
“I want to go home.”
“How would that change your mother’s plans?”
“It changes everything. At home, I was well on my way to living my own life. I was exploring universities, experimenting with guys, figuring out who I am and what I want. That’s why she sent me here. To put a big fat stop on my voyage of self-discovery. She’s essentially locked me in a cage, secluded me from everyone and everything. I can’t even choose my own clothes.”
I couldn’t dispute any of that. Caroline held the reins of Tinsley’s life, which made the matter of the paper on my desk increasingly moot. But I wasn’t letting it go.
“The tests you took are proprietary assessment exams, created specifically for this school to place students on an appropriate individualized learning path.”
I was intimately familiar with the structure and intensity of the test questions because one, I used to own the corporation that designed the exams, and two, I’d taken the tests myself. Multiple times.