Page 50 of Taming His Teacher

“But you had a girlfriend who could help you with that.” I state it as fact so he won’t have to. I’m not that foolish. Ugly, oafish, horrible guys get laid and have partners. Shep is none of those things. He frowns and I wonder if I’ve dredged up some awful breakup story. Maybe he’s still in love with her, maybe that’s why—

“No, I didn’t.”

“She didn’t want to play with you?”

“There was no she, Erin.”What?“Between classes and practice and the club, I didn’t have time for a girlfriend, and one-night stands aren’t my thing.”

“So…”

“So I spent a lot of time in the shower, and rubbing one out when my roommate had an early morning class.”

I clap my hands over my mouth and my cheeks heat with the fire of a thousand burning suns. Shep masturbating? Under a stream of water with a forearm pressed up against the tiles, his eyes closed, and his forehead pressed into his elbow? Or lying on his narrow dorm bed with his boxers shoved far enough down so he could take himself in hand and—

“God, I’m sorry. That was crass, I shouldn’t have. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

Embarrassment is not what I’m feeling. Unless you’re going to count embarrassment over how hot that got me. “No, I’m fine. I work here, don’t I? I know what goes on. You guys think you’re all subtle, but…” I widen my eyes and he laughs.

“Fair.”

So if Shep didn’t have a girlfriend at Northwestern, didn’t want to go the whole wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am route, and I’m almost positive he didn’t date anyone his senior year… “Can I ask you something?”

“You can ask me whatever you want. I want you to have all the information before you decide anything.”

“When’s the last time you had sex?”

I’ve surprised him. He probably thought I was going to ask what his favorite kind of nipple clamps are or something. His brows crease and he scrapes both hands through his hair before he looks at me. “You really want me to answer that?”

The thought of Will and Lana comes into my head unbidden. What if Shep’s been sleeping with someone here? How is it going to make me feel if he says last week? At least it hasn’t been in the past three days, unless that’s what he was doing while Aunt Tilly was here. Oh my god, it is, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have asked, but now that I have… “Yes?”

He shakes his head and raises his eyes to the ceiling, sliding his tongue along his teeth. I can’t help my rapid blinking and my hands clutching my blanket, waiting for him to say something awful because that’s what my head defaults to. Or does now, anyway, after Will.

“Never,” he says, his eyes on the ground. “Never.”

I would’ve been less surprised if he said yesterday. “Never?”

“Never.”

* * *

Shep

Could I crawl under Erin’s coffee table and die? I’m guessing it’s always rough to tell a girl you’re a virgin. Probably you always worry she’s going to point and laugh or whatever, even when you’re a teenager and odds are she’s a virgin, too. But I’m twenty-two. I worked at a fetish club. That’s right: I’m twenty-two, kinky as fuck, and I’ve never gotten laid. It’s ridiculous. Erin’s not going to laugh. At least, not a lot. And it wouldn’t be nasty. But I still don’t want to look at her. Let her get it out of her system before I look at her.

When I finally sac up, her face is pinched and sadness is tugging down the corners of her pretty mouth.

“Is that why you didn’t want to be with me? Because of Will? Because I’m not… Because I’m…ruined?”

Rage bubbles up inside of me. Who made her—? For fuck’s sake. “No, Erin. I wasn’t trying to keep myself pure or whatever. It just, never seemed right. I don’t care how many guys you’ve been with. That doesn’t matter to me. I need you to listen to me very carefully, okay?”

She nods and bites her lip, her eyes brimming with tears.

“The only reason I wanted you to stay away from me, the only way I could keep myself from hauling up these steps and pounding on your door the second I stepped foot on campus and knew you and Will were over, was that I don’t think I could be happy in a completely vanilla relationship. I liked what I did at the club. It turned me on in a way nothing else has and I don’t want to live without it.”

Her teeth are sinking into her lip so hard she might break the skin. I want to tell her to stop, smooth the pad of my thumb over her mouth to make the mark go away, but instead I finish.

“I didn’t want to scare you. I’ve always wanted more than anything to protect you. And I didn’t want you looking at me like I was some sick freak. I didn’t think you’d be into it and I couldn’t stand the idea that you wouldn’t want to talk to me anymore. It’s not for everyone and I respect that. But it is for me, and the occasional spanking and fur-lined novelty cuffs aren’t going to do it. You’ve told me you read that stuff, but reading it and living it aren’t the same. But that is the only reason. There’s nothing wrong with you. I know people say it all the time—it’s not you, it’s me—but in this case that is the absolute truth. Are we clear?”

I’ve slipped inadvertently into my Dom voice, but when she’s sitting there all adrift, how could I not? And because I’m in that headspace, when she bursts into tears, I’m not confused or at a loss. She’s relieved, because she was terrified of what I was going to say, that I thought she was dirty or used up. I should’ve punched Will Chase while I had the chance.

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