Page 48 of Taming His Teacher

I grin but narrow my eyes. “Hush, you, or you won’t get your story.”

She covers her mouth with both hands before she lowers them into her lap. “I promise I’ll be good. No more interrupting.”

Is it wrong I get a little hard from hearing her promise to be good? This is going to be rougher than I thought.

I tell her about the night I met Mordecai. Erin’s a fantastic audience for a story. Her eyes go wide and her hands clutch the blanket during the anxious parts. She claps, a tiny thrilled motion, before she laces her fingers together to keep from interrupting as she’s promised when I tell her how I stepped in. I try not to make a big deal out of it—it wasn’t courageous or anything—but her eyes glow with something like hero worship and damn if it doesn’t make me feel good. Really fucking good.

“So, that’s how I met Mordecai. And started working at his club.”

“What kind of club? Another strip club?” Her eyes have gone round and curious, and I take a hard swallow. If only. She hadn’t blinked when I said we went to the strip club. She’s worked with adolescent boys long enough not to be shocked by that.

“No. It was a fetish club. A BDSM club. Does that mean anything to you?” I talk slowly, not knowing how she might react. Erin’s this mass of contradictions; so smart and so in control in the classroom but sometimes so innocent and naïve. Which end of the spectrum is kink going to fall under?

She flushes bright red. “Yes, I know what that is.”

I can’t tell if she’s embarrassed or horrified or uncomfortable or what. She’s usually so easy to read. But her fingers twisting in her lap could mean any number of things. “We don’t have to talk about this—”

“What did you do there?” She’s still flushed but her expression is one of earnest curiosity. At least I haven’t scared the crap out of her. She hasn’t kicked me out of her apartment or called Headmaster Wilson to tell him he’s got a pervert on staff. But that could change.

“At first I worked the door, checking members in. Sometimes I’d get there early or stay late and help with whatever Mordecai needed help with. I needed the money and we got along well, so I did whatever needed doing. Books, paperwork, cleaning up. He taught me a lot about the business and about…”

“About what?”

“About power exchange. The games people play, how to be safe, how to use the equipment at the club, how to tell if scenes were getting out of hand. After a while, he had me start taking shifts as a dungeon monitor. You know, to make sure people were following the rules?”

She nods thoughtfully, her eyes cast down and her mouth twisted up.

“Erin, am I freaking you out with all this? I can’t tell.” My heart takes a few solid thumps before she looks at me and holds up a finger. She disentangles herself from the blanket and starts down the hallway. I’m left on the couch wondering what the heck she’s doing. Is she going to come back with a can of Mace? But when I hear her fuzzy-sock-clad feet pad down the hallway, I look up to find her with an armful of paperbacks. What the hell?

She doesn’t say a word, but sets them on the coffee table, and proceeds to lay them out in a single layer over the beat-up surface. As soon as I see the first one, I stop breathing. Title after title of classic and contemporary kinky romance and erotica. I haven’t read hardly any of them, but I recognize a lot of the titles and authors from talk I’d overheard at the club. Holy shit.

She kneels in front of me after she’s finished and looks up with a nervous smile. “Still think you’re going to freak me out?”

* * *

Erin

Shep is gobsmacked. That’s the only word for the expression on his face. I want to laugh, but I’m worried he’s going to get up and walk out the door. He thinks of me as sweet and sheltered. This might blow the lid off that. But it shouldn’t, not entirely. Reading and doing are two different things; I’ve done a ton of one and none of the other.

I hope I’m not ruining some fantasy he’s had about leading a complete and utter newbie into the lifestyle.Don’t be ridiculous.As if he’s fantasized about me. I’m sure he had plenty of women at school or at the club (a fetish club!) who were more appealing than dowdy Erin Brewster, his silly math teacher. God knows I’ve had enough fantasies of him, most of them involving things I’ve read about in those books.

It’s been a minute and his wide blue eyes are still running over the titles again and again. Otherwise he’s not moving.

“Shep?”

I’ve broken a spell and his eyes shift to mine.

“Have you read all of these?”

“Yes.” Some of them repeatedly, but maybe I’ll save that for later.

“Where do you keep them? Because they sure as hell weren’t on your bookshelf.”

I smile. No, not on my bookshelf. I’d noticed the two-thirds finished Harry Potter book lying face-down on the armchair in my bedroom where he’s parked himself for the past few days. If I’d known, I could’ve directed him to myotherstash of books.

“Under my bed.”

“Of course.” There’s another pause and I wait for him to collect his thoughts. “So I’m all tiptoeing around this stuff and you’re the world’s foremost expert?”

---