by Lily White
“I don’t think they’d mind if it was the symphony I was attending.”
In truth, I had nothing to wear even if I did go. And without the money to buy something nice, I would only be an embarrassment.
“I can get you a ticket,” he finally said, “but I think you already know we can’t be seen together. It would raise too many questions.”
A spike of jealousy stabbed through me. “Will you be seen with Jillian?”
His shoulders shook with a bark of laughter. “She does nothing but annoy me, Amelia.”
Rolling my eyes, “I did nothing but annoy you when we first met.”
“You also made my dick hard as a rock, but that could have been a result of how much you pissed me off.”
I grinned, my thighs clenching at the thought of all the naughty things he did with that dick.
Lennon’s eyes flicked to the door, his voice quiet when he glanced back at me. “Come here.”
Obediently, I walked to him, his fingers capturing my chin before he tilted my face up to his. With his other hand, he ran his knuckles over my shirt and between my breasts, heat rolling behind his eyes.
“I’d still like to punish this mouth of yours.”
The corner of my lips quirked knowing full well we couldn’t do anything at that moment. From the wall behind him, the muted sounds of a piano filtered into the room. Julia’s class still hadn’t let out for the day.
“We’ll get caught.”
A devil peeked out at me from behind his eyes. “Only if we’re not careful.”
His left hand slid down to take hold of my hand and direct it to his cock. Hard as a fucking rock, as usual.
“Walk around to the other side of my desk and wait for me.”
Anticipation rolled through me. Nervousness as well. I’d never gone down on a guy before. Would my teeth hurt him? How would I fit him in my mouth to begin with? Lennon wasn’t small in the slightest. Not that I had anything to compare him to, but I could barely wrap my hand around him when he was fully erect.
I was in class to learn, wasn’t I?
Doing as he said, I moved to the other side of the desk, watching him as he selected sheet music and walked over to place it on my desk. His eyes met mine.
“You’ll be playing that piece for me next week.”
“I thought it was my choice.”
He grinned. “Not with me, it isn’t.”
Approaching me, he brushed my body with his as he stepped around to take a seat, his legs spread, the thick muscles of his thighs straining the legs of his pants.
“On your knees, Miss Dillon. You’ve been quite the challenge this week. Constantly mouthing off, which isn’t allowed in my class.”
Slowly, I lowered down to my knees, the linoleum floor cold against my skin. Not knowing what to do, I looked up to him for direction.
His eyes flicked to the door again. “Crawl under my desk.”
Lips pulling into a tight line, I shook my head and did as he instructed. We were so going to get busted one of these days, but the threat didn’t stop me. I wanted him too much.
His chair turned once I was under his desk, his hand reaching down to cup my cheek. I leaned into the touch.
“Take my cock out of my pants, Amelia. Explore it. I want you as familiar with it as I am with the pretty pussy of yours.”
Reaching up to open his pants, my hands shook as I fumbled with the button and zipper. I pulled down the elastic of his boxer briefs and my breath caught at the sight of his cock, the tip glistening, a thick vein running down the shaft.
It wasn’t the first time I’d touched it, but still, it was intimidating. My hand wrapped around him, steel beneath soft skin that was so warm it surprised me.
Lennon peeked down at me, his lips slightly parted, his blue eyes hooded with lust. “Stroke it, beautiful. Don’t be shy.”
Yet, I was shy. Scared, actually, that he wouldn’t like it.
With loose fingers, I stroked up and down, not quite sure what to do. How much pressure to use. If it would hurt him if I squeezed too tight.
His hand closed around mine, forcing my grip tighter, stroking me up and down to a beat he wanted me to follow.
“A good blowjob starts with a good handjob, Miss Dillon. It’s not all about the mouth.”
Rolling my eyes again, my cheeks heated to have him teaching me, like oral sex was part of the Hasting’s curriculum.
Fascinated with his cock, I leaned forward to lick the tip. His thighs flinched on either side of my head.
“What the fuck was that?”
“Me being an advanced student.”
A masculine growl rolled out of his chest. “Why don’t you show me what else that mouth of yours can do besides piss me off?”
Still nervous, I continued pumping him with my hand, his fingers traveling to my head to fist in my hair. It burned along my scalp when he tugged, but I didn’t mind. Lennon had a tendency to get rough, and I was learning just how much I liked it.
Taking the tip into my mouth, I pulled my lips down to keep my teeth from scraping his skin and suckled the tip. His fingers tightened in my hair, urging me to take him deeper.
It didn’t take me too long to get the hang of it, the salt of his skin a burst of flavor on my tongue, the sounds coming from his throat inspiring me to take him as deep as I could without choking.
“Fuck, Amelia. I knew that mouth of your would be heaven.”
Grinning, I kept licking and sucking, stroking and kissing, my rhythm dictated by his hand directing my head by my hair.
I thought he might lose his ability to keep from coming in another few seconds, but then Lennon tensed in his seat just before a knock at the door caught my attention.
Stopping out of fear of being caught, I started again when Lennon tugged on my hair, the fear I felt making the experience all the more sweet.
“Can I help you?”
How he maintained such an even voice while I was sucking his cock was beyond me. Still, I kept going, careful not to make a sound.
“Yeah-“
That stopped me, the deep voice all too fucking familiar.
“I’m looking for my sister. Amelia Dillon? She said she was in your class.”
Pure tension ran through Lennon’s body, his hand slowly releasing my hair. “My students have left for the day. And you are?”
“Ben Dillon. I mean, I see that your class is empty, but Amelia’s car is still in the parking lot. Is she staying late to practice again?”
While I was practically dying right there beneath his desk, Lennon remained calm. However, I picked up a note of anger in his voice when he spoke again, a deep tenor of warning.
“She’s not here at the moment, Ben. But she is scheduled for more practice tonight. If I see her, I can tell her you came by.”
Silence flowed between them, my legs going numb beneath me.
“I just find it odd that her car is still here.”
“Maybe she left with some friends from class? Is there something you need from her?”
What the fuck was going on? Both of them sounded pissed, their tones clipped, accusation rolling through every word they tossed back and forth.
“No. Just a family emergency. If you see her, let her know I came by.”
Lennon’s hand fisted over his lap, the skin blanching from how tight he curled his fingers. “I’ll be sure to let her know. If I happen to see her.”
Family emergency.
Oh, god. Did something happen with dad?
The sound of retreating steps helped me relax, but I knew Ben well enough to know that wasn’t the last of him. He’d keep searching until he found me.
“Lennon, I have to go.”
He didn’t move immediately, although his dick was now soft as he stuffed it into his pants.
“You want to tell me what that could have been about?”
“I don’t know, but he wouldn’t have come looking for me if it wasn’t important. Please, Lennon, let me up.”
A moment’s hesitation before he pushed his chair away from the desk, his eyes tracking me as I climbed to my feet and practically ran to pack the music into my bag and hike the strap up my shoulder.
“Are you coming over tonight?”
My eyes closed, indecision pouring through me. I worried that something was wrong with my father. “I don’t know.”
“When will you know?”
Shrugging a shoulder, I looked at him with as much apology as I could. “I have no way of calling you, so if everything is fine, I’ll be over there tonight. If not, then I’ll tell you what happened on Monday.”
Expression tight, he inclined his head. “Take care of yourself, Amelia.”
I didn’t like the way he said those words, but I couldn’t get into it with him. “Bye, Lennon. I mean, Mr. Carter.”
Hauling ass down the hallway, I burst through the front doors, a hand locking over my shoulder as soon as sunlight met my face.
“Where the fuck were you?”
Spinning, my eyes widened to see the rage written in Ben’s face. “I was in the bathroom.”
His mouth quirked at the corner. “Funny, because your teacher said you’d left class, but your backpack was on one of the desks.”
It took everything I had not to react. Ben could tell when I was lying. “Yeah, because my stomach was upset and Mr. Carter must have thought I left. As soon as I walked in to grab it, he told me you’d come by.”
He was suspicious still, but the excuse must have appeased him enough.
“Is dad okay? Mr. Carter said there was a family emergency.”
Ben nodded, “Yeah, Dad’s fine. But we might not be. My job screwed me over on my paycheck and we need cash fast.”
“But we just-“
“I need you to help me tonight, Amelia. For the house and for dad.”
My heart dropped so deep in my stomach I could feel it pulsing in my gut. Not only would I miss spending time with Lennon, but also I’d be breaking his biggest rule.
Still, if we were about to lose everything, it was a risk I’d have to take.
“Okay. I’ll meet you at the house and we’ll figure it out.”
Ben tapped my cheek. “You know I wouldn’t ask this of you unless it was important.”
“I know,” I said, hating that just when life was starting to feel good, it dropped back into the shithole it had always been.
Lennon
Amelia failed to show up Friday night, which left me raging for the entirety of the weekend. Several times I’d thought to swing by the address listed on my student roster to check on her, but I wasn’t sure I could see her brother without beating the shit out of him right there in her house.
Immediately, my mind went to the schemes I knew her brother made her take part in, anger rolling through me every time I wondered if she would be stupid enough to break one of my rules.
What made it worse was that I had a performance coming up in a week, and with class during the weekdays, I was only left with the weekend and evenings to practice.
It was impossible to focus with Amelia on my mind and every time my fingers stumbled over the keys, I slammed my hands down and grit my teeth, furious that I didn’t have a way to contact her.
When Monday rolled around, I was a caged tiger prowling through each session I had with the individual students. Amelia wasn’t scheduled until the end of the day and instead of taking my time correcting the performance of the other four, I was snapping at them with enough bite to make even Jillian stop her bullshit flirting.
Already in a piss poor mood, it only became worse when Amelia strolled in ten minutes late, her head hanging down and her dark hair a curtain over her face.
“You know I don’t appreciate tardiness in my students, Miss Dillon.”
“Sorry,” she answered, rushing past where I sat at the front of my desk waiting for her. “My car wouldn’t start at first and it made me late.”
Dropping her bag on a desk, she pulled out her music and went to the piano.
I cocked a brow at her odd behavior. Remaining at my desk with my arms crossed over my chest, I sat impatiently, eyeing her with every ounce of suspicion, I felt.
A minute must have passed before she finally twisted right to look at me. “Are we doing this, or what?”
My eyes narrowed. “What’s going on with you?”
“Nothing. Just pissed off about my car.”
I was getting seriously fucking tired of her lies.
Pushing away from my desk, I walked toward her, noting how she turned back to the keys, her hands shaking as she opened the sheet music in preparation to play.
The instant I stepped up behind her, I knew she could feel the heat of my body against her back. There was no space that Amelia occupied that I wouldn’t claim as my own, no secret that I wouldn’t eventually rip out of her.
Her entire body sat trembling on the bench, hands in her lap while waiting for me to give the instruction for her to begin.
It didn’t matter how long it took, I would stand silently until she turned to look up at me, until those teal eyes met mine so I could see all her thoughts written behind them.
Eventually her hands crawled to the keys, and I understood she planned to start without being told to do so, a decision she knew damn well would lead to punishment.
“I wouldn’t.” The warning rolled off my lips like distant thunder. If she pushed me, the crack of my hand against her ass would be the lightning.
Voice demure, “I just thought you would want me to start quickly since I was late.”
Bullshit.
“Stand up, Amelia.”
She shook her head, thoroughly testing my patience.
Leaning down, my mouth was near her ear as I spoke past the curtain of her hair. “Are you going to make me say it twice?”
“Please, Lennon...”
That was it. Her behavior was one fucking thing, but the pleading in her voice told me something was seriously wrong. “Stand up.”
The legs of the bench scraped the floor as she pushed to her feet. Despite having technically obeyed me, she continued facing the piano. I rolled my eyes.
“Turn around and look at me.”
Slowly, she spun to face me, hair hiding her face and her gaze locked on my chest. Capturing her chin, I didn’t miss the way her body shook as I tilted her head and used my free hand to brush the hair from her face.
A wave of fire roared through me, every muscle tight across my bones as my teeth ground together. “Who the fuck hit you?”
Black and blue, the bruise blossomed out around the shell of her left eye, the skin below it mottled red. It looked as if Amelia had attempted to cover it with makeup, but the effort was pathetic at best.
A tear rolled from her eye, her lips quivering when she didn’t answer me immediately.
My fingers tightened on her chin. “I won’t ask you again.”
No. I’d just find a torment cruel enough that she would happily toss the information at me just to make it stop. My jaw ticked to think I’d have to get creative to find something that wouldn’t further damage her body in the process.
The first thought in my head was that her bastard brother had done this.
“My dad.”
Family should never be the nightmare that hides in the shadow. I knew that growing up, pined for normal when I watched the other children doing their best to make their parents proud. And maybe for Emaline, our family had been normal. For me, it had been absent. Morose. So empty of parental love that I’d clung to Emaline for comfort.
In a way, my sister had raised me, which is why her death had destroyed me right along with her.
But if I’d ever been made to choose an absent parent over an abusive one, I would have happily chosen the life I’d lived.
At one time in my life, I’d felt jealousy for all the happy, normal families, ones very much like the Dillons. Now, however, the curtain was slowly being pulled aside to reveal the truth of what had
become of them.
I’d had the absent parent.
Amelia’s were apparently abusive.
No wonder her brother was so fucked up. Her father was just another name to add to my ever expanding shit list.
She must have seen it in my expression, the rage, a fury so cold that I knew the space between us would have been coated in ice if it flowed out of me.
Slowly, her eyes widened, her hand reaching up to grab my wrist. When she tried to pull her face from my grasp, she whimpered to feel my fingers clamp down refusing to let go.
“It’s not what you think,” she whispered, the movement of her jaw making the bruise bounce and dance like it was taunting me to do something about it.
With as much control as I had over the tone of my voice, I said, “Then tell me what it is.”
Gaze averted, her lip trembled more, shoulders withering. Seeing her like this was pissing me off. Not my Amelia, not a girl who carried music inside her. If anything, what bled from her now was a dirge, dark discordant notes leading mourners beneath a grey, bleak sky.
“My father has Alzheimer’s,” she confessed on gust of breath. “Lately he’s become difficult. Yelling all the time and violent. I was trying to help him, but he lashed out and accidentally struck me.”
Her eyes were pleading when they met mine again. “He wouldn’t have done this on purpose. Not my dad. Not who he used to be.”
So many answers to my question in that explanation of her life. I knew her mother had died when she was young. Lila had been Emaline’s teacher originally, but when she passed, her husband took over. Emaline was crushed for months after it happened.
If Amelia’s father was sick, it explained why the family was now living in Sheldon.
Releasing her chin, I asked. “When did your dad first start having problems?”
“About a year after my mom died. We thought it was just grief, but as the conditioned worsened and he deteriorated before our eyes, we learned it was much worse than heartbreak.”
“Take a seat.”
She was shaking so badly that forcing her to remain standing was cruel on my part. Still, energy thrummed through me that needed an outlet. Questions echoed in my thoughts that needed answers.
