My teacher completely ignores her instead focusing on Daryl. “Out,” Mr. Smith says calmly, and Daryl, who’s well over six feet and built solidly, jumps to his feet from the couch and scurries out the door with his tail between his legs.
Mr. Smith takes a step closer toward me, the floorboards underneath him cracking. Oh my God, he’s going to continue our…oral exam…right here in my house. In my room.
My heart jackknifes as my mom hands him a glass of vodka, whic
h he tips back like a marathon runner polishing off a cup of water immediately following a race, in one gulp.
He doesn’t even break stride as he places the glass right back in my mom’s hand and then takes me by the hip, moving me into my room and kicking the door shut behind me.
“I’m sorry, for this, for—“
Before I can finish a single index finger crosses my lips vertically. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. I’ve been trying so damn hard to stay away from you all semester when I should have just done what I was going to do all along, come here and take you away from all of this madness you’re living with. I can’t believe my angel is living in a modern day hell.” He pauses, his fists tightening. “Something tells me that man in the living room isn’t the first man of his kind to frequent these premises.”
I shake my head side to side.
“Have any of them tried to touch you?”
“No. I stay in my room when mom brings over her…friends.”
“Thank fuck.”
“You said a bad word.”
“Sweetheart,” his deep baritone calls out to me as he moves impossibly closer, “there’s a lot of bad about me that you have no idea about. I’m a dark man, but you’re going to be my light. Because of you I’m going to walk a new path in life. And all roads lead to you and only you.”
“Me?” I gulp.
“You. But damn, it’s so wrong.”
“Because I’m still in school?”
“That, and you’re so young.” The back of his palm brushes against my cheek before making its way down my neck and across my collarbone, sending goosebumps everywhere. “Like I said, I’m a bad man. Don’t let this whole teacher ruse fool you. You shouldn’t even be thinking of me as your teacher, as you know. Alexander, Sir, or my preferred name…Daddy, will all serve us much, much better.”
“Yes, Daddy,” I whimper.
His head moves down and his nose brushes against mine before his lips do the same to my lips. “Wars are fought over a face like that. I’d kill if any man touched this beauty,” he says, his calloused thumb running over my cheek. “Little girl, you are something else. And you are mine.”
“What exactly does that mean?” I swallow hard.
“That means I will take care of you in every way…every way. It means you bring out the animal in me,” he says his big body dropping down in between my legs. “Have you ever come before, Alexa?”
I shake my head, confessing my embarrassment.
“That needs to change. Right. Fucking. Now.”
His big hands grasp my dress and lift it up. It’s so small in his hands it’s almost comical, cartoonish.
A vein throbs in his forehead before his mouth opens, just over my panties, his hot breath throwing fire on my middle. “I’m the answer to every question you’ve ever had and even the ones you haven’t. Anything you want in the future, you come to me. Any problems, you come to me and I solve them by whatever means necessary. My baby girl deserves the best, and that’s exactly what she’s going to get from here on out.”
“Yes, Daddy,” I whimper before his mouth cups my panties, engulfing the entirety of my mound as my hips press into his face.
“But first, you need to learn discipline.”
“Discipline?”
“You belong to me and that means you won’t wear this dress out of the house, like you did today. Your tight little body is for Daddy and only Daddy to see, you understand?”
I nod.