Teach Me Read online

  “I’m sure, Daniel.”

  “For all our sakes, I hope you are.” He sinks back into his seat and massages his temples. For the first time ever, I wish he was still glaring. This new, desperate Dean Pierson makes me more freaked out than his usual shouting. Because if he’s this worried, I need to be, too.

  He grunts, seeming to snap out of the funk. “When can you have the analysis ready to present to the warden?”

  Ah, there’s the pushy old git. “It’ll be ready for the end of term, like we said.”

  He’s already shaking his head. “Not good enough. They’re pushing the restructure through before the Christmas break. I need this in two weeks.”

  “Fucking hell, Daniel, do you understand what you’re asking?” That’s like writing a whole thesis in two weeks, when all you’ve got so far is half an outline and the research ready.

  “Make it happen, Kingston. Or it’s both our arses on the line.”

  Harper

  Professor Kingston, you do not look very well rested. I text him from the middle of the classroom, a full ten minutes before we’re about to start. I got here early just so I could express my appreciation—for last night, for breakfast this morning, for the signature with his phone number written in the margins . . . All of it.

  I watch his phone vibrate on his desk, and lean forward so my cleavage peeks through the low-cut T-shirt I donned for the occasion.

  He hasn’t noticed the phone yet; he’s still busy reading some letter that has him scowling. There’s only three other students in the classroom so far, and a quick peek reveals they’re all deeply embedded in their smartphones at the moment.

  What do you think about this skirt? I need a second opinion, I text. Then I cross my legs, letting my skirt ride up just a little higher. I’m wearing the same stockings I wore the day he fucked me in his office. The same garters, too. I let one peek out from beneath the hem of the skirt, and when he finally picks up his phone, only to glance up with his eyebrows raised, I smile straight at him, my grin widening as his eyes roam from my cleavage to my hips and back up.

  His eyes, too, dart to the other students around me. Then his hands fly across the screen.

  I shut my ringer off, just in case anyone notices my phone buzzing just after he types. The message arrives within seconds.

  Why, Ms. Reed, I don’t believe that outfit is up to the standards of our dress code here at Merton.

  I trail my fingers along my thigh, under the desk where they’re hidden from view. His eyes are glued to me legs as I hitch the skirt an inch higher. Is that better? I pause to text.

  The door to the classroom opens and a few more students flood inside, making my cheeks flush red. But I don’t smooth out my skirt. I keep my eyes locked on Jack, and he can’t tear his from me, even while he types out his response.

  Terrible. See me after class for your reprimand.

  What if I can’t wait that long? What if I want you to take me right here?

  He swallows hard when he reads that one. I watch his lips compress, and I have to fight back a smirk. I wonder if he’s having difficulty concentrating. I lift one eyebrow when he glances at me again, and there’s a fire smoldering in his gaze.

  Students who need to be disciplined do not get to decide the where or the how. They surrender to whatever punishment deemed fit.

  Two minutes until class starts now. The room has nearly filled up. He’s trying not to look at me now, but his eyes keep stealing glances in my direction every time they sweep the room. I wonder if anyone else notices.

  I don’t care if they do.

  Why, do you have a specific punishment in mind for me? I reply.

  Oh, I can think of a hundred things I want to do to you, Harper Reed.

  The bell sounds to indicate start of class, and I curse inwardly, my fingers frozen over a reply. Goddamn it. Now I’m all hot and bothered with no sign of release for the next . . . How long is this class?

  Ugh, an hour.

  Jack stands and starts straight in on his lecture. At first, I’m offended. How dare he be able to think straight right now?

  Then I notice the way he’s standing directly behind his desk, not walking around the room the way he usually does, and I feel somewhat ameliorated. He keeps his eyes fixed somewhere three rows behind me, probably freaking out whatever poor student is sitting up in that seat.

  For my part, I can’t help imagining some of those hundreds of things he wants to do to me. It definitely doesn’t do anything to help my complete lack of concentration.

  I smooth my skirt back down, cross my legs, and try to force myself to focus. Halfway through the lecture, Jack asks us to open the text we’re studying now, a compendium of the best of English poetry.

  “Ms. Reed,” he says, nearly startling me straight out of my seat in shock. “Would you please read the poem on page 141 aloud for the class?”

  Even before I’m done flipping to that page, I hear snickers building in the back of the classroom. I snap the book to the right section finally, finding the poem he wants under a handful written by John Donne. My whole face flushes bright red. I swallow hard, wet my lips, and start in on the title.

  “To His Mistress Going to Bed,” I read, my voice faltering only slightly on the word mistress.

  You can do this, Harper.

  I clear my throat and imagine myself in Jack’s room, the way we were last night, our naked bodies wound tight around one another. I imagine I’m reading this to him, in the private, safe space of his townhouse, no one to hear me except the man I’m starting to fall for.

  “ ‘Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers deify / Until I labor, I in labor lie . . . ’ ” My voice grows steadier and stronger with each word, and the rest of the classroom fades away. Every time I glance up from the lines I’m reading, all I see is Jack’s face, that fire still bright in his eyes, a faint smile lingering at the edges of the lips I kissed just hours ago.

  At first, there are still titters from the back of the classroom. I ignore them and speak louder, completely absorbed now. “ ‘License my roving hands, and let them go / Before, behind, between, above, below / O my America! My new-found-land . . . ’ ”

  By the time I reach the final stanza, the classroom has fallen quiet, listening.

  “ ‘To teach thee, I am naked first; why then / What needst thou have more covering than a man,’ ” I finish into complete silence. For a moment, we all sit still, so unmoving that I almost imagine I can still hear myself speaking, confident and easy, in a way I’ve never read in public before.

  Then Jack claps his hands, and half of us startle again, followed quick by more nervous laughter. “Right,” he says. “What can this poem, which was likely written in the early-to-mid-1600s, tell us about the more contemporary work we’ve been reading? What are some themes that we can see in the twentieth century that arose from the wit and metaphors that Donne was known for? Keith?”

  Jack moves around the room, starting a spirited discussion on the topic, while I still sit there half-stunned, my heart pounding out of my chest.

  I don’t read in public. I never read in public. Not well, anyway. I stammer through other people’s poetry, and nearly choke to death if I need to read my own.

  So how the hell did I just read aloud the smuttiest poem ever, without freaking out once?

  A smile touches my mouth when Jack launches into an explanation of the very contemporary metaphors Donne used. “ . . . Likening an exploration of his mistress’s body to sixteenth-century explorers charting the Americas.”

  Ironic, to talk about Donne’s wit and metaphors, when he just made me read a poem about a guy stripping his beautiful and presumably secret mistress naked before bedding her, complete with American and British references.

  When Jack asks us to take the last ten minutes of class to work on essays about the use of theme, motif, and symbols, I’m sorely tempted to start in on an essay about corrupting your students with dirty talk. Instead, I sneak my phone under the
desk for a quick rebuttal. When you threatened to discipline me, I have to admit, that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

  My phone lights up only a minute into our writing time.

  Oh, don’t worry. There’s far more to come. You, however, won’t be coming until I’m good and ready to make you . . .

  My lip curls. Is that a challenge?

  No, my dear. That is a promise.

  By the time the last student files out, I’m already wet. I stay in my seat, eyes fixed on Jack, until the door shuts behind the final person. Then I can’t hold back any longer. I practically launch myself toward the front of the room.

  He meets me halfway, catching me halfway up the stadium seating of the classroom, and pushes me down into a chair, bending me backwards over it as his lips crash into mine.

  Our hands find one another, mine slipping under his belt buckle, his sliding up my skirt to brush against my damp panties.

  “Someone has been behaving even worse than I thought,” he murmurs. “We’ll have to make this really last.”

  His fingers circle me in ever tightening circles, so close I can’t help thrusting up against his hand, wanting him to make me come, to hit the release I’m dying for.

  Finally, his finger hits my clit, strokes me hard once, twice, and I’m rising toward it, so close I can feel my whole body clench in anticipation.

  He pulls his hand back and smooths my skirt down, before dropping a gentle, chaste kiss on my lips. “You’re late for your next class,” he says, grinning.

  I scowl up at him. “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “I told you.” He taps my lips with his finger—I can smell my scent on his skin, and it’s driving me fucking crazy. “You’re going to have to wait for it.” He grabs up his bag and starts toward the exit, waving over his shoulder. “My office hours start at 4:00 p.m. today. Don’t be late.”

  And then he’s gone, and I can’t decide if I want to fuck him or strangle him later.

  #

  The rest of the day is pure torture. I spent most of Professor Butler’s class zoned out completely, my mind still stuck on Jack in an endless loop.

  It doesn’t help that about 30 minutes into class, my phone buzzes with a message from him. I hope you’re behaving, and not touching yourself in anticipation of what I’ll be doing to you later.

  I squirm a little in my seat. What if I’m not behaving?

  Hmm. Not sure these handcuffs will be sufficient, then . . .

  He is evil.

  It gets so bad that the fourth time Butler calls on me and I have no idea what to reply, she actually sighs and pushes her glasses up her nose. “Harper, can you stop by my office after class? Thanks.”

  Great. Just what I need.

  For the rest of the lecture, I manage to follow along well enough to take notes, though I’m not sure I’ll understand the full context of them later. To be honest, I’m struggling in this class—I expected medieval history to be interesting, like the poetry I’ve read from that time period. Full of stories and factual tidbits about life in the middle ages.

  Instead it’s all memorizing dates and trying to decipher medieval English, which is about as comprehensible as that one guy from Glasgow in my dorm when he gets totally wasted. I’m not even sure whatever it is he’s speaking should count as English.

  So it’s with a sinking feeling that an hour later, I approach the office door of Professor Hannah Butler, according to her nameplate.

  “Come on in,” she calls, and when I open the door, she’s pulling her long, blonde curls into a perfectly disordered topknot that makes my hair on a good day look like utter trash. “Hey there.” She flashes a smile and yanks a stack of paper off her spare chair.

  Hannah Butler’s office looks like the complete opposite of Jack’s. There’s stuff everywhere, and none of it looks particularly organized. Stacks of manuscripts are piled on every flat surface (most of which is the floor, so I tiptoe around them to the chair). Books are piled haphazardly on the shelves in no particular order, and with weird odds and ends stuffed between them, like the snow globe from Austin, Texas jammed in between a compendium of ornithology and an English translation of an Icelandic saga.

  “Sorry about the mess,” Professor Butler says as she leans on the corner of her desk, just high enough to tower over me. “I just got back from a sabbatical, so I’m still in the middle of reorganizing.”

  I’m not quite sure how to respond to that, so I just nod.

  Her friendly smile falls a little, which makes me feel guilty. Then she hitches it right back into place. “So. Your course grade.”

  My stomach sinks, if possible, even farther. “Yeah, I know, I’ve been struggling a little here—history isn’t my strong suit I guess.”

  “You’re a poetry major, right?” She’s still smiling in an almost too friendly way.

  “Yeah, I needed an elective, so I thought . . . ” What the hell did I think when I signed up for this? “Well. Actually, I thought this might help inspire some poetry,” I admit with an apologetic grimace.

  To my surprise, that makes her nod emphatically. “I completely understand.” She lowers her voice to a knowing-smirk kind of level. “I’ve dated poets.” She winks. “I know all about the hunt for inspiration. And you know, you’re actually right, there’s a lot of interesting content we’re covering, if you look closely . . . ”

  She spends the next half hour talking about the texts we’ve been going over, including some elements I completely missed while struggling through the readings on my own. Like in a lot of the heavily Christian texts, where we can deduce some of the things people actually believed at the time (for example, that fish reproduced asexually, and therefore, since they weren’t “tainted” with sex like other animals, they were okay to eat on holy days).

  After our conversation, I leave her office with a new spring in my step, and a fresh appreciation for what I’ve been struggling to read all semester. If I could make myself pay better attention in this class, I decide, it might actually be worth more than just an elective after all. I make a silent vow to try harder, if not for my sake, than for Professor Butler—Hannah, as she insisted I call her. She seems really sweet, and like the kind of professor who truly cares about her students.

  Now, if only the rest of my afternoon will pass this quickly, I’ll be set . . .

  #

  Check your mailbox before you get here is the last text I receive from Jack, half an hour before I’m supposed to meet him in his office. I stopped at my dorm to change into spiked stilettos and a skintight dress, since with my winter coat on overtop, no one in the halls will be able to tell how I’m dressed. I don’t have any more classes after this. Nothing but me and him, and the whole night ahead of us.

  Well, me and him and whatever’s in my mailbox.

  I shuffle through a couple of reports and letters (mostly junk mail) until I spot one particularly fat envelope at the bottom. I undo the flap, and a single silk length of fabric falls out. At first, I mistake it for a tie.

  My breath hitches when I realize what it really is. A blindfold.

  I’ve never done anything like this. The most adventurous I’ve gotten in the sex department before meeting Jack was occasionally hooking up in the empty library with Derrick.

  But I’ve always wondered what it would feel like. Total surrender.

  My heart beats louder as I reach the hall leading to his office. There’s a note taped to the door. Report season—Do not disturb.

  I rap twice and wait, my breath trapped in my lungs. We’ve done this before, of course. But it feels different now. Purposeful. Another student passes me in the hall, and I bunch up the length of silk in my fist, flashing her a nervous smile.

  I didn’t think about this last time. Last time, at the kind of early o’clock in the morning when hardly anyone was around to begin with, we didn’t stop to think about anything much. Not about people overhearing us, or passing in the hallways. Not about who might see us, what they
might think.

  I’m talking myself into an endless loop of nervous when the door in front of me clicks open.

  “Ms. Reed?”

  I sidestep into the office, and wait for the door to shut behind me, the subtle click of the lock turning. I’m facing the empty room when he comes up behind me, his body pressing against mine, and wraps his hands around my wrists. “Did you bring what I left for you?”

  Wordlessly, I lift my hand with the silk trailing from it. He plucks it from my fingers and lets the fabric trail up my arm to my shoulder. I shiver. Then the world goes dark as he wraps it around my eyes.

  “I’ve been thinking about the filthy things I’m going to do to you all day,” he murmurs against my ear, before he licks his way down my neck. I let my head fall to the side and stifle a groan. “But only if you’re a very, very good student. Do you think you can do that for me, Ms. Reed?” His hot breath scalds my skin where he’s just tasted me.

  “Yes, Professor,” I whisper.

  His hand wraps around my neck. “Good. First lesson.” His other hand travels up my chest, his fingers pulling at my nipple through the fabric of my clothes. “Be absolutely silent.” He tugs hard, and I gasp out loud. That only makes him tighten his grip, and I clench in anticipation. “Do you understand, Ms. Reed?”

  I open my mouth to reply, then think about what he just asked, and close it again. My only answer is a nod.

  Even with my eyes covered, I can hear the smile in his voice when he replies. “Good.” His knee slides behind mine, nudges me until I get the idea and take a step forward. One, two, three. My leg bumps the desk, and I lean forward, expecting him to bend me over it again.

  Instead, he pulls me upright again, one hand coming down firmly on my ass as he does. “Ah ah. Not there.” I try to count steps and get an idea of where I am in the room, but I give up in a few more.

  Then his hands grasp my waist and my shoulder and dip me suddenly backwards, like a tango, only farther, because after a moment I feel something soft against my back. A carpet? No, too soft. A blanket, maybe?