by Watson, Rhea
As eleven o’clock crept closer, I had decided to abandon my work—for a little while, anyway—and see that my castle was sealed tight, then call security inside. Given the raging winds and the smattering of freezing rain on the windowpanes, it was unlikely students would risk it. Still, those on the outdoor detail could post up by the doors, just to keep an eye on things. This new batch of roving warlocks replaced those I nixed after Bjorn’s kidnapping, but they were speedy hires—just adequate. Sufficient. Satisfactory. Hardly the cream of the crop. Iris wouldn’t shut up about their failings, and for once, my second-in-command and I were on the same page.
All these plans, all this storm preparation that I as headmaster didn’t need to do but felt responsible for all the same…
They all vanished when I spotted the light in her greenhouse.
The thought of Alecto braving the tempest when it finally struck had a knot twisting and twining beyond reprieve in my chest. Unable to leave her to fend for herself, I took a sharp detour, stalking through the empty Root Rot corridors, footsteps falling like thunder, thick wool cloak thrown over my shoulders and a scarf looped around my neck for good measure.
Come inside, little one, before the storm gets you. That thought had quieted all the rest, everything else falling to the wayside until I ushered her safely indoors where she belonged. At this hour, weekend or not, she wasn’t the only professor working into the night, but she was the only one with a classroom outside, and I couldn’t stand the idea of her being thrown around in this gale as she tried to get back inside.
It was supposed to be a doozy, this storm.
And when I shouldered through a small door at the north end of the castle, the one closest to the hillside stairs that led down to the greenhouses, the highlands told me at least that prediction had been true. Met with screaming winds and a wall of cold, misty rain, I tucked my chin into my scarf and marched into the black, noting we should add a railing to those steps.
Steps where I found her, a drowned witch crawling over the stone, stumbling along without a coat, her curls stuck to her forehead and her eyes hauntingly broken. While I had witnessed Alecto off before, this was something else entirely.
The moment she saw me, she sank to her knees in the cold and the wet, shivering almost violently. My chest tightened, fury detonating and going nuclear in a second: she looked as if someone had attacked her. Hair disheveled. Long dress shirt untucked and messy. Mud splashed up her leather knee-high boots.
Teeth gritted, I sprang into immediate action, straddling the razor-thin line between panic and rage as I dropped to her level and took her by the shoulders. The Dom side of me demanded I scoop her into my arms. Tuck her under my cloak—shield her from the world. Wrap my scarf around her head to blot out the mist.
But I wasn’t her Dom, despite our previous conversation, and…
And it didn’t matter what I wanted.
All that mattered was her.
Fixing her. Making it right.
So I clutched Alecto by her arms instead. Helped her to her feet. For the sake of balance and stability, I tucked her against my side, then marched my weak-kneed professor out of the wet and under the stone outcrop that extended over the doorway. Candlelight danced in the lamps on either side, each of us backlit by warmth, our faces marred with shadows.
My hand hovered an inch from the door handle when she came undone against me. Breathing hard and fast, Alecto collapsed in on herself like I wasn’t even there, arms limp at her sides and shoulders rounded, seconds from plummeting back to the ground. Steely-eyed and focused, I situated myself directly in front of her, blocking out everything but me, and stooped to her eyeline.
“Alecto?”
She wasn’t there—not really. Those amber orbs darted about, from the lamps to the awning to my forehead, but they were glazed over, lost, as though she wasn’t processing a single thing.
I knew that look.
I loathed that I knew that look, but my anger didn’t change the fact that I had seen it on Darcy’s face before, my sister the victim of a brutal assault in our teens.
Father strung up the assailant by his guts—metaphorically at first, but then literally when the high council handed the bastard over for punishment.
An old friend.
An academy chum who thought he had the right to touch my baby sister.
And now here was that look again in Alecto’s eyes, and I had to steel myself against it, remember that she wasn’t Darcy—that I had no bloody idea what had happened to set her off like this, but it wasn’t good.
“Alecto, look at me,” I ordered, soft but firm in my delivery. When she refused, I grabbed her chin and cuffed it between us, jostling her just enough to bring back the light in her eyes. Her chest bobbed in uneven shudders. All the color had drained from her cheeks. She stood shivering before me, gasping, fighting for breath, sobbing without making a sound. “Alecto—now.”
There they were—my good girl—eyes like gold and flecked with sorrow. They latched onto mine like I was her only life preserver, and that certainly cemented things for me—finally settled on the decision my rational mind refused to even consider. Logically, I ought to usher Alecto to her flat and have Bjorn take care of her. Seven hells, maybe even the infirmary was the better choice. But my office was closer, just up a flight of nearby stairs, then down the hall to an empty admin wing.
No one could see her like this. She tried so hard to put on a good show—they all did. No one wanted a reputation, and people had been whispering about her, Bjorn, and Gavriel all month. No. I refused to add to that; when she sobered, just the thought of me witnessing this breakdown would likely be humiliating enough.
“What happened?” I whispered, a last-ditch effort to quash this before I had to take further action. Cheeks hollow, Alecto just shook her head furiously in response, then tried to twist out of my grasp. “Alecto. You’re safe with me. Tell me—”
Her protesting whimper forced my hand. Keeping a firm but not bruising grip on her rain-slicked arm, I escorted her inside, then up the stairs, down the hall, and into the silent north-end administration wing. Curtains drawn back, a few desk lamps lighting the space, I walked the familiar path through to my office with Alecto’s shuffling figure at my heels. In those thirty seconds, the skies shattered. Mist turned to fat, punishing drops of freezing rain, lashing the windows, pummeling the glass. Lightning split the black above, followed by a calamitous boom that made quill feathers shiver. Not a soul around, I had no qualms kicking open my office door and tossing Alecto inside rather than putting on a show of politely coaxing her along.
She needed a small, safe space to decompress.
She needed the quiet but also the power of the storm.
I closed the door soundly behind us but didn’t lock it. In fact, when she shambled around, I made a point to open and close it so she knew she wasn’t trapped inside. Escape was always an option, though I had a serious issue letting her leave in this state.
Arms wrapped around herself, curls flat, rainwater dripping off her clothes and muddy footprints on my floor, Alecto enjoyed a brief moment of calm. A few steady breaths, as if the change of scenery offered just enough to soothe whatever had her mind and body racing.
But the quiet never lasted.
Like the storm, she came undone again, quickly ramping up to hyperventilation, shaking, squeaky little sobs caught in her throat.
Fuck.
For an intense physical and emotional episode, I personally only had one cure.
Something I had put off and buried deep in my mind because it was too inappropriate for a headmaster to pick up the whip again.
But given our last conversation, her eagerness, the darling gleam in her eyes at the thought of pain, Alecto was, at the very least, open to all of it.
And in a moment like this, her wildly out of control and me perfectly in it, the burden fell to me—it was my responsibility to think clearly.
My responsibility to help her in any way p
ossible.
All the while aware that she was compromised, that a lesser man would have taken advantage of it.
Clemonte men weren’t lesser.
After peeling off my outer layers and tossing them onto one of the chairs in front of my desk, I undid my dress shirt cuffs and jerked my sleeves up to my elbows. From there, I made a beeline for my desk. Grabbed my forgotten black suit jacket off the back of the chair I had spent several years of my life in at this point, then placed it on my desk. Smoothed it out. Spread it wide enough to accommodate her. Everything else had been neatly set aside or put away before I left, which gave me a clear workspace.
“Alecto,” I beckoned her with a crooked finger, speaking, just this once, as her Dom and not her boss, “come here.”
Unlike before, she moved without hesitation, crossing right to my side, still shaking, still battling with her breath. Exhaustion rimmed her eyes, all those tears shed making her look gaunt and worn—beaten down but still standing. With a soft exhale, I smoothed the slowly frizzing curls away from her face, then dried her cheeks and forehead with my thumbs. From there, I relied on magic to warm her—to make her feel as though every garment was fresh from the dryer.
“Arfacio.” Wand tip grazing her arm, a soft whoosh of marigold yellow rid her of the rain that continued to pound the windows. For a moment, I thought—once again—that that was enough: a safe space, dry clothes, a firm touch. But then her eyes watered, and she tried to turn away from me.
Tried to leave without permission before it was time.
Wand set aside, both out in the open and out of reach, I blocked her escape with my body, herding her between my chair and my desk, and then motioned to the latter with a flick of my eyes and a snap of my fingers.
“Alecto, bend over.”
Lips tumbling open, she blinked up at me, then down at the desk. Back and forth, the order processing in a mind that must have felt so scattered and frantic. The goal was to calm it—to center it on one sensation, one thought, not a thousand.
It shouldn’t have surprised me that she followed orders unquestioningly. After all, she had done so ever since I’d known her, always complying with my requests, never arguing, never talking back or questioning me. But the moment she veered toward my desk, to my jacket splayed wide like a lover’s embrace, I caught her again, first by her arm, then her chin, needing her to hear this clearly—needing to see understanding in the amber before I went any further.
“You say the word rot, and it stops,” I told her. “You say the word rot, and I step back. Do you understand?”
Not exactly my most creative safeword, but given she hadn’t uttered a single thing since I’d found her, I wanted it to be simple and unmistakable, one syllable with hard sounds. Swallowing thickly, Alecto nodded up at me, slower this time. I almost made her say it, just to test how loud she could speak, get her accustomed to the word before it started, but those watery eyes, those pale cheeks, her shivering body had me releasing her and guiding her to the desk. No physical contact, of course. I couldn’t bend her over myself—not in this situation, anyway—but my hand hovered at her lower back because…
Because not only did I delight in pain, but I had always craved the role of protector and guardian. By now, it came naturally, especially with her.
Without a word, Alecto eased over my desk, widening her stance just enough to accommodate. She went right into my jacket, hands flat over the fabric, thighs quivering under my scrutiny. Wearing a pinstriped dress that resembled a man’s dress shirt, the thin cotton nipped at the waist and framed her figure perfectly, leading my eye down to black leggings and the leather boots that had muddied up my floor. Ordinarily, I preferred to play with a naked sub while I remained fully dressed—red, warm, worked flesh was just such a fucking turn-on. Goosebumps and pebbled nipples and telling blushes.
But that wasn’t the point of tonight. I made no move to push her shirtdress up, nor drag her leggings down. Instead, I gently brushed the hair from her face, gathering that rebellious mane to one side, and then braced my left hand on the desk.
“Turn your head to the side,” I urged, wanting her to be able to breathe, to look at something that wasn’t the abyss of my black suit jacket. Alecto complied, the strain of holding her head up visible in her neck, her breath suddenly catching. “Cheek down. Relax into the desk.”
Another order gobbled up by a woman made to submit. I angled my fingers so that the gold Clemonte family ring on my left index finger was obvious, a shiny token for her to focus on. And she did, eyes falling to it, locking onto it, hooded and bloodshot. Good.
Good girl.
A quick glance toward her backside was all I needed to ensure my right hand lined up for the big swing. Fingers slightly curved, hand cupped just so. Years of abstinence fell away, muscle memory kicking in. Had I less self-control, I might have faltered at the thought of this—of spanking a professor to calm her down, of realizing that this was the first time I had done this with anyone in far, far too long.
But I was lost, just like her. Lost to the moment, the scene, the storm battering the windows.
Calm swept through me, top to bottom and back again, glorious relaxation trickling through my limbs.
The first smack of my palm to her ass echoed through the room, followed swiftly by her startled gasp. Alecto’s eyes shot open, shock and surprise obvious—but something else muddled the pair, too, like a light had been switched on back there and shone through now. Gods, whatever it was, it was bloody beautiful.
Hand firm on her backside to alleviate some of the sting, I waited. Gave her a moment to sift through the chaos in her own mind and digest what had just happened. Her headmaster had spanked her. Hard, too. Some submissives needed to be worked up to that pressure, but given her state, her predilections, our strange but impossible-to-ignore courtship in dominance and submission, I had gone for the jugular from the start. And while her mouth opened and closed, the little witch said nothing. She adjusted herself, rolling her hips as a lone tear swelled in the corner of her eye and dribbled over the bridge of her nose.
Nothing.
Still, I waited.
Waited until her breathing evened out just enough, a barely there calm slowing her panicked gasps, nudging her away from the ledge.
Only then did I strike again, this time to the other cheek, hard enough to slam her folded figure into my desk. To jerk her supple body forward. My cock twitched with interest, the sight so fucking mouthwatering, to see her maneuvered by my hand, and a languid, oozing desire throbbed in my low abdomen when her fingers curled over my jacket and twisted into the fabric.
Settling into my Dom second skin, I let loose. Spanked her, one side, then the other, back and forth. Never harder than the first time, but faster, totally fixated on her face as her body jerked back and forth on the desk, driven by my intensity. Alecto blinked hard, squeezed her eyes shut. She winced and grimaced, gasped and whimpered, fisted my sprawled jacket and bunched the fabric up around her face.
But she stayed put.
She took it—me, my firm hand pounding her rounded backside.
She took it until I decided she’d had enough. At no point did her lips even start to curve around her provided safeword, and a filthy, dark whisper at the back of my mind insisted she could have taken much, much more.
But this wasn’t a scene, per se. We weren’t here to have fun. I had always found calm in kink. Strength and focus and power. From my conversations with subs, they found much the same. If she was as naturally submissive as I’d always thought, this would help her.
Therefore, while my cock strained against my briefs, pulse pounding between my ears and every part of me quivering with a need to push on until we had found a mutually satisfying end, I withdrew. Backed away when it was obvious she had lost herself in this, not whatever had made her eyes look so terribly hollow before.
Unable to help myself, I smoothed both hands over her ass. Just a little sturdy pressure to will away the ache of the
spanking, followed by an adjustment of her striped dress. Then, keeping a hand on her lower back so that she wouldn’t stand—not without permission, little one—I ducked down and grabbed the half-drunk bourbon bottle from the back of my bottom desk drawer. I’d been nursing this since my first day, but its burn felt beyond appropriate for aftercare, especially when I couldn’t—shouldn’t—cuddle her like I wanted.
Patting her lower back, a silent reminder to stay, I eased around my desk and grabbed a china teacup, the same she had slurped her chamomile from during our rather telling conversation all those weeks back. After splashing in a shot of bourbon, I capped the bottle and left it on my tea tray, then hurried back, refusing to leave her like that for longer than necessary.
Submissives were so fragile after a session.
She wasn’t mine, but what had just happened, her intense emotion leading up to it, left her ripe for another meltdown if I wasn’t careful.
Behind her once more, my hand found the back of her neck and cuffed it firmly, but then guided her up gently, allowing her to set the pace. While I trusted she could stand on her own, I kept that hand there to hold her in place so that she didn’t nudge back into my cock, into the erection to end all erections.
Still, she was close enough to feel my presence—close enough for me to feed her the shot of bourbon. Bringing the teacup to her mouth with my free hand and tipping it back when her lips parted, those amber eyes locked on mine over her shoulder, somehow felt more intimate than anything we had done up to this point.
After finishing her chaser, shuddering through the bourbon’s bite, Alecto stood perfectly still, no longer shaking, gasping, or crying, as I set the cup aside and wrapped her in my jacket. Just around the shoulders, mind you, the sleeves much too long for her. I then steered her toward my high-backed chair, the leather worn but still padded enough for her tender backside.
Normally I’d make a sub sit on the floor, on her heels, just so she could really feel her Dom’s claim on her body—that I owned her and her pain, just for a little while.
Again, not a scene, no matter how aroused I was, no matter how she looked at me—no matter how delightful the hot pink flush in her cheeks.
