Lessons In Corruption: A Student/Teacher Romance (The Fallen Men Book 1)

It couldn’t be explained, the way I wanted him. It felt unnatural, beyond a craving, more like a possession, some alien force taking control of my body, urging me to do things that I knew were morally corrupt, socially unsound. It was already overwhelming to be in the same room with him day after day, as he was in two of my grade twelve classes. I was not looking forward to that afternoon after school when we would have our first detention together.

Sweat beaded like a crown of shame on my forehead as I sat in my sixth period English class, consumed with my internal struggle.

Don’t look at him too often.

Don’t walk past his desk.

Again.

Okay, this would be the last time.

The struggle was very real and my only relief came from knowing that he was experiencing the same thing. I was the focus of this class, his contemplation based on the angled slope of my breasts beneath my silk blouse, the exact shade of each strand in my long cascade of golden brown hair. I knew this because his eyes had become an accessory I wore with pride, a necklace I wore pressed tight to my throat, hot and heavy on the exposed skill above my décolletage.

Also, I knew because he told me so.

With his apple poems, but also in the margins of his tests, across entire pages of his notebook where he drew beautiful little sketches of me, fragments of my person so that only someone well acquainted with me would recognize their likeness. I knew even as I sat at my desk while the students wrote poems as a creative writing exercise, that his lean, strong fingers were tracing the tip of his pencil around the lines of my face.

“All right,” I stood up to address the class. “Who is ready to share?”

I smiled when Benny’s hand shot into the air. He had been particularly motivated since King joined our classes.

I was strangely shocked to see King’s hand up, lazily propped on the edge of his small desk. He participated frequently in class discussions, especially during our Paradise Lost unit, but I hadn’t expected him to be willing to share his poetic side to a greater audience than me. For some reason, it made my heart pang.

So, even though I knew it was a bad idea, I found myself calling on him to read. Our eyes clashed as I did so, the impact so tangible that I was sure the class heard the crackling clang of electric chemistry between us. King smiled that long, slow curl of the lips that unwound something inside me, before he stood up.

“Why don’t you read the poem for us, then we will question you as a class about your intentions?” I suggested, somewhat breathily.

He nodded and didn’t take his burning gaze off of me as he began to recite his poem.

“A secret in her smile

Tucked in a rosy furl

I want to pull it out with my teeth

Soothe the paper cut with my tongue

Dip in the well of her blood and write

My own secret on her lips

So that every time she talks

Every lick of those lips

And drag of breath through her mouth

She feels me

Her tongue scrapes the scar of my secret on the inside of her pout

And she can’t deny the truth of it

Of me

Of us

I’ve branded her with it

She’s mine.”

The silence in the class was impenetrable. It cloaked me in faux privacy, enabled me to indulge in a moment of pure, unadulterated awe and lust. There was no doubt in my mind that King was speaking about me. The glittering ice blue of his eyes shone on me spotlight bright. I fidgeted nervously under his possessive regard, fiddling with my left ring finger where my wedding and engagement bands used to rest.

The girls in my class had collectively lost their breath to him, their pheromones heating in the small room so that the cloying scent of their adolescent sweet perfume grew stronger.

Seventeen-year-old girls, and I was no better.

In fact, I was significantly worse.

I’d been a married woman, lived enough years to control my baser instincts, especially after William had successfully cauterized them for so long.

Yet, there I stood in front of my classroom, thighs rubbing together, nipples beaded under my shirt and pulse throbbing like strobe lights, calling King to claim me, to take me like I knew he wanted to.

As if reading my salacious thoughts, King sank back into his chair and winked at me. “So, whaddya think, teach?”

I was grateful for the reminder that I was, indeed, his teacher.

“Interesting, King, I’ll give you that. But why don’t we see what your classmates have to say?”

Immediately, nearly everyone’s hands flooded the air.

King chuckled and slouched further back in his seat, a lazy smirk on his face. “Well, look at that, at least someone liked it.”

Talia laughed and flounced over to King from her seat on the other side of the room. With an ease that belayed their familiarity, she flopped into his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“You are so silly. Of course, I liked it,” she crooned to him as she pressed a kiss to his cheek.

I wasn’t sure who looked more devastated, Benny or myself. My breath froze in my lungs, the iced air expanding until my lungs ached.

King smiled fondly at Talia but gently urged her off of his lap. “Wasn’t about you, sweets. You’re not the only beautiful girl around here, you know.”

Sweets. He had a nickname for all the girls. Sweets was more unique than babe, it was probably unique to her and he called every random girl who rode on the back of his bike, babe.

She giggled. “Whatever, handsome.”

I pursed my lips and forced my posture straighter. This was fine, good, even. King was a teenager, he should be with another teenager. It made sense. Plus, they were both lovely blondes. They would look good together.

Yes, I was happy. It was nice to see two students link up and find joy in each other.

Bullshit, crazy Cressida raged inside the cage of my ribs, shaking them so violently that my breath began to rattle in and out of my mouth. He’s yours!

He wasn’t, had never been and wouldn’t ever be.

Still, rage burned through my veins turning blood to hot lead.

Talia caught the expression on my face and laughed lightly as she settled back in her seat. “Sorry, Mrs. Irons. I’m sure you get me though, he’s so hawt.”

I did get her.

“No worries, Talia,” I said drily as I turned away to sit behind my desk again, needing the space. “Next time try to control yourself though, okay?”

I could feel King’s eyes on me, the necklace now a choker of barbed wire around my throat but I refused to look at him for the rest of the class.

Unfortunately, our class was sixth period so King stayed in his seat while everyone else left the classroom. Talia lingered for a few minutes, leaning against his desk so that her breasts were in his face but I was able to ignore them fairly well as Maya stayed behind to ask me a question about her Paradise Lost final paper. I continued to ignore him when both girls left, the door closing with a sinister snick behind them.

I had papers to grade from my grade eleven History class and a lesson plan to make for my substitute teacher next Friday for when I had to go back into Vancouver for a mandated mediation session with William. It all needed to be done efficiently, because I was frequently interrupted by students seeking extra help or kids who just needed a good listening ear. I fully expected Benny to show up to voice his woes about Talia and King, for example.

So, I bent my head with a curtain of hair between King and myself, and set to work.

This lasted for a surprisingly long time. So long, in fact, that I became jumpy and easily distracted by every single noise. Benny did come, his eyes wide and frenzied but upon seeing the object of his tizzy, they widened even more in agony and he quickly backtracked from the room.

My favorite student, an eleventh grader named Louise Lafayette who was built like a blonde bombshell already but dressed like she was sixty and who had, just last week, been diagnosed with cancer, came in for her customary cup of tea. We shared one every Thursday afternoon, the only free time she had between classes, volunteering and dance classes. Now, the dance classes would have to stop because she was beginning chemotherapy in two weeks. We had our cup of tea, talking quietly huddled together on my side of the desk so I could reach out to push back her hair, touch her hand. Her father was the Mayor of Entrance, a busy man with no time for his daughter, and her mother was the unofficial queen of society, so she too made no efforts with Louise or the younger daughter Beatrice. Therefore, our tea dates were the only times Louise got any sort of affection or attention and I made sure to give it to her in spades.

Detention was nearly over by the time she left, smiling slightly despite her situation. I was grateful for my hour with her even though I didn’t get any work done, because I truly adored her. She was as close to perfect as I believed a person could get; outstandingly beautiful, funny with a quick wit, and kind enough to spend hours every week volunteering at the local autism center. I was happier than I could say that she trusted me to be there for her, just as I felt overwhelmingly privileged every time one of my students confided in me. Even though I didn’t want to teach forever, it was by far my favorite part of the job.

I was also grateful because for one hour, I’d been wholly distracted from the blond king sitting five meters away diligently working on his assignments.

Only when Louise had left and I’d turned back to my grading, did he quietly speak.

“You were so good with her.”

I stiffened. Of course, he could have overheard our quiet conversation and Louise knew we had an audience so she wouldn’t have said anything she didn’t want shared, but I still thought it was rude of him to eavesdrop.

So, I told him so.

His soft chuckle gave me goose bumps. “Not gonna lie, babe, I’ll take any opportunity I can get to learn more of you so I can get closer.”

“King,” I protested quietly, still gazing, unseeing, at my papers.

“Had to give Kelsey Hopkins twenty bucks to spill how you take your fuckin’ coffee. Worth it to see the way you savored every fuckin’ sip. Made me think of how you’d savor me, I ever get in there with you.”

Goddamn, why did he have to be so sweet and sexy all at the same time?

I finally looked up at him, seeing him leaning forward in his chair, forearms on knees, hand resting between his thighs, head tilted down but eyes tipped up so he could look at me from under his golden brows, his eyes blue and pure as a tundra. My breath left me in a soft gasp at the sight of all that beauty in one man.

“There they are. Missed those whiskey eyes of yours,” he said, quietly.

We were both aware of the possibility of being walked in on. It was late, just after five o’clock, but there were still students going home from music and sports practices, teachers loitering over unfinished marking. It lent my classroom an intimacy that I’d never experienced before, our secret attraction making even the rows of metal and wood desks, the textbooks lining the shelves along the back wall and my standard issue yellow wood desk romantic and cozy.

“You can’t say things like that to me, King,” I said, completely without conviction because I was a bad woman in a good girl casing.

“Not gonna stop, Cressida,” he retorted.

I sucked in a breath and held it as he unfolded that long body and ambled over to the classroom door. He caught my eyes as he slowly turned the lock, pulled the thin paper curtain over the little window in the door so no one would see in, and turned off the artificial lights so only the pastel hues of the setting sun lit the room.

My quick breath and the loud tick of the clock over the whiteboard behind me were the only soundtrack to my seduction as he strolled over to my desk and leaned down over it. My eyes skirted over the corded tendons in his forearms, the way the blue of his rolled up sleeves made his arm hair look like pure gold, his skin another shade of the same color.

“You look at me like I’m a King. Can’t even hide it,” he said and his voice was filled with awe, as if me thinking he was anything beautiful and good was inconceivable to him.

I frowned. “You’re arrogance is clouding your judgment. I look at you like the capable and intelligent student you are.”

He made a face, his lips twisting as if to bottle up a secret insecurity that wanted to spring forth.

“Do you doubt you’re smart?” I asked without thinking first, shocked at the possibility.

King shrugged and leaned back to perch his butt (cute, high and tight, I knew, even though I’d tried not to notice) on the edge of my desk. “Gotta be smart to get into this place. Worked my ass off to get the marks, take the exams. Even had to get special dispensation to join the IB program late.”

“So, smart,” I confirmed.

“Sure.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “False modesty doesn’t look good on you.”

Finally, he grinned. “Not false, babe. Been smart my whole life, read a book a day since I could read at six years old. Got a head for numbers too and I’ve always been good with tech.”

I’d heard enough through his teachers to know the truth of what he was understating. “You’re a bit of a biker genius, eh?”

He blinked at me then laughed his musical laugh. I lived for the way his throat moved while he did it.

“Whatever. Truth is, I know I’m smart, yeah, but if everyone I’ve ever met doesn’t think so just ‘cause of who my dad is and what I look like, does that still make me smart? Without the opportunity to use that intelligence?”

It was a really good question. One I didn’t have an answer to.

“That’s why you worked so hard to get into EBA,” I deduced, amazed by his tenacity.

“Wanted options,” was his answer.

“You,” I bit my lip, desperately wanting to know the answer but aware that it would give away my hand, a hand full of hearts. “You aren’t sure if you want to join the club? Or are you already a member? I’m not really sure how it works.”

He cocked his head at me. “You really wanna know?”

I nodded.

“You patch in to the club after spending time as a ‘hangaround’ then more seriously, as a prospect to prove your worth, could be a month, could be three years, depends on how long it takes to show the rest of the brothers your spirit and your loyalty. Once you’re in, you don’t get out, yeah? So prospecting is important. Don’t want a brother who doesn’t want to be there or can’t fit in. The Fallen is a family at the end of the day. It just so happens that it’s literally my family.”

“I met your father when he came into the Headmaster’s the other day.” I hesitated. “He was interesting.”

King laughed again. “He’s a scary motherfucker but he’s a good dad, good Prez.”

“He wants you to, um, patch in?”

“Yeah. It’s a legacy thing. My great-great grandfather founded the MC back in the ‘60s to take advantage of the hippie movement.”

Also known as taking advantage of the booming drug trade.

“And you don’t know if you want to be a part of all that?” I asked tentatively.

King plucked the apple that still sat on my desk, a Granny Smith, which was my favorite and he seemed to have guessed that because it was the only one I got repeats of, and tossed it idly in one hand.

“Love the life. Gettin’ on the back of my bike with my brothers and ridin’ ‘til we gotta stop or starve. It’s a good life, babe, not gonna lie, I could live it. I just wonder, if I got this head, shouldn’t I use it? I applied to some of the best universities in the country. Can’t prospect if I’m in school.”

“No,” I agreed because I didn’t know much about life in an MC but I did know something about student life. “I went to university and even though I didn’t take advantage of all the extracurricular activities and parties, it kept me really busy.”

He nodded. “So, like I said, wanna keep my options open.”

“That makes sense. Can I ask you something though?”

“As my teacher?”

I bit my lip. It would be entirely inappropriate to ask him as anything else, obviously, but I had the feeling he would clam up if I said so. Instead, I shook my head but left it at that.

He rewarded my vagueness with a gorgeous smile that crinkled the skin beside his glacial water blue eyes. God, he was so gorgeous it made my stomach ache.

“Shoot.”

“If you could do anything in the world, regardless of your actual skills or education, what would you do?” I asked.

It was a question no one had ever asked me. My parents and William had encouraged me to go to university because, to them, it was uncivilized not to have a higher education. I’d become a teacher after that because it was the only career they felt would give me the time I needed to take care of my husband and, eventually, a family. It was only after I left William that I realized it was a question I should have and could now ask myself.

King’s lips pursed as he thought about it. I loved that he did that, contemplated everything carefully before he answered. It was part of what made him such a good student but also why he was so irresistible. At the end of the day, I was a woman starved for authentic attention just like Louise, and here was a man capable of giving it to me in spades.

“I’d run my own businesses. More than one because diversification is important but also, I get bored easily.”

“Sounds like university would be a good idea then,” I suggested.

He laughed but it was hollow. “Thinkin’ about it, babe. Don’t push a man when he’s on the fence about somethin’. He’ll keep clinging to it ‘til his dying breath if he feels he might land on the wrong side with the right push.”

I knew from my experiences with William and my father that he was right, so I nodded even though I dared to ask, “Are you saying I could give you the right push?”

This time, his laughter was that beautiful bright peel I found myself living for.

“Says she isn’t interested then likes the idea of havin’ sway over me,” he muttered as he shook his head at me.

I glared at him. “Arrogant boy says he’s interested in me then flirts with another girl right in front of me.”

Triumph lit his eyes, turned them into silver medallions. He was on me like a flash, caging me in my chair with his strong forearms, his face a hair away from mine and angled so he could speak right up against my mouth.

“You want me, babe. I see it every time I’m near you. Won’t look at me but I look at you and I see the raised hair on your arms, the quick breaths that make your sweet tits strain against your prim shirts and the way you rub those thighs under those sexy as fuck skirts. You want me so badly that if I tucked my fingers beneath your panties, you’d soak my whole hand.”

A groan escaped me before I could stifle it. King’s eyes darted down to my lips a second before he swooped down to claim them for himself. His hot tongue owned my mouth, sweeping across my teeth, over my tongue in a wet roll that had my thighs trembling. When I groaned again, he matched it with one of his own. One of his hands fisted in my hair and tugged my head back for greater access to my mouth. I couldn’t move but it made the kiss hotter, knowing that he was in control, taking what he wanted from me. I’d never been kissed so thoroughly, so possessively. It set my skin on fire. My fingers itched to rip off my suddenly uncomfortable clothes and let his wet tongue attempt to put out the flames.

His mouth angled away from mine, his lips wet against my cheek as they brush down to my neck. I panted loudly with he used his teeth to scrape a slightly painful path down the line of my throat.

“Want to take you right here, right now. Spread these thighs and bury my face in your pussy, see if you taste as sweet as you look. I wanna eat you until I’ve had my fill, and Cress, babe, I’m a growing fuckin’ boy so I’m starvin’.”

“Ohmigawd,” I whispered because I’d lost all capacity for rational thinking.

The minute his mouth hit my skin I’d been a goner.

I’d thought I had imagined how good his hands and mouth felt on me during our two kind-of-dates but I was wrong, my memory was a weak thing and the reality of it all was kicking its butt.

My head lolled backwards against my chair as his lips travelled lower, following the path his clever fingers opened for him over my breasts. He didn’t open my blouse the whole way, just enough to lick, suck and bite at the swell of both breasts above the white lace bra I wore.

My hands fisted in his hair as he almost viciously sucked one of my nipples through the abrasive fabric.

“King,” I called breathlessly.

He used his teeth on my nipple, just hard enough to have my hips surging off the chair. His large hands came to my legs, shoved my tight woven skirt up my thighs around my waist and then wrapped over my hips then back between my thighs so he could wrench them open and hold then down.

I looked down at him as he stared like a pious man at the alter of my panty-covered mound.

“Been dreaming of this pussy, Cress, need it now. Gonna take it hard and I need you to stay quiet for me, babe, yeah?” he ordered, his voice so gruff with desire that I could barely discern it.

I nodded frantically as I watched him touch his finger to the panel of lace between my legs and slowly come away with a string of my wetness still attached to him. I’d soaked through my panties.

He dipped his head, lapped his flat tongue over the lace then sucked briefly on the fabric over my clit. I made a garbled sound of ecstasy, unable to help myself.

“Stay quiet,” he reminded me as he hooked two fingers in my panties, shoved them aside to make way for his tongue.

I shook my head back and forth, trying to get a grasp on the slippery slope of euphoria I was quickly ascending as he tongue dipped, hot and greedy inside the well of my arousal.

“Fuck yeah, you taste like fuckin’ sugar,” he groaned into the side of my inner thigh then sunk his teeth there. “Look at me as I eat this cunt, Cressida. Watch how much I fuckin’ love it.”

I saw stars behind my eyes as he attached his mouth to my sex, but it absolutely blew my mind to look down to see him feasting on me, his mouth open wide over my pussy so he could fuck me with his talented tongue. His golden head rocked slightly as he thrust in and out. I tightened my fingers in his silky locks and ground against him, my inhibitions incinerated by each flaming lash of his tongue.

Little sounds started to filter from my mouth but I couldn’t stop them as my orgasm worked like a tsunami inside me, sucking away all my willpower, rearing back with everything I had, everything I was, to crash into me full force.

“King,” I called weakly.

One hand snapped up to muffle my voice. As soon as it was secure, I broke open, that huge tidal wave shattering against me, drowning me almost alarmingly in brutal pleasure. I sunk beneath the sensation and rode it out until I gently washed back onto the shore of my consciousness.

When I did, I opened my heavy lids to see King’s head resting on one of my inner thighs, a hand soothingly stroking the tender skin on the inside of the opposite leg. He looked up at me like a cat that ate the canary.

I stiffened immediately, reality flooding back in the wake of my release. I scrambled away from him, tugging down my skirt, righting my panties and trying to do up my shirt buttons all at the same time. King calmly sat up on his knees again, took my frantic hands in one of his and used the other to redo the clasps on my blouse and smooth my hair down.

“Perfect,” he stated when he was done.

I fell into his cool blue eyes, drowning in a different way at the hands of the same man in less than five minutes.

“King,” I croaked, my throat sore from my muffled groans. “This wasn’t right. I, I’m sorry, but this won’t happen again. I told you before and I’ll tell you again, I am a good woman, I’m not comfortable crossing these boundaries with you. I’m the adult here, the authority figure and I should have said no, most of that responsibility is on me.” I sucked in a deep breath to settle myself. “But you can’t do this anymore. I just proved how pathetically weak I am and I need you to stop putting yourself out there for me.”

His face remained stoic throughout my speech but when I was finished, he stood up to look down on me. I swallowed thickly at the expression on his face because it wasn’t disgust or fury that lurked there, but fierce determination.

“Never met a woman like you. Know I won’t again. You find somethin’ worth keepin’, you find a way to fuckin’ keep it. Not gonna stop, and just so you know, I got it that this could get you fired, that this could cause you embarrassment but what I got to say to that is this: whatever pain and ugliness I bring you by bein’ with you, I promise I’ll bring you double that in sweetness and beauty. You hear me on that, because I may be a man without a normal moral compass, but I’m a man who makes a woman a promise, and I’ll die before I break it.”