Praise for the novels of
Jasmine Haynes
“Deliciously erotic and completely captivating.”
—Susan Johnson, New York Times bestselling author
“An erotic, emotional adventure of discovery you don’t want to miss.”
—Lora Leigh, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“So incredibly hot that I’m trying to find the right words to describe it without having to be edited for content . . . Extremely stimulating from the first page to the last! Of course, that means that I loved it! . . . One of the hottest, sexiest erotic books I have read so far.”
—Romance Reader at Heart
“Sexy.”
—Sensual Romance Reviews
“Delightfully torrid.”
—Midwest Book Review
“More than a fast-paced erotic romance, this is a story of family, filled with memorable characters who will keep you engaged in the plot and the great sex. A good read to warm a winter’s night.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Bursting with sensuality and eroticism.”
—In the Library Reviews
“The passion is intense, hot, and purely erotic . . . Recommended for any reader who likes their stories realistic, hot, captivating, and very, very well written.”
—Road to Romance
“Not your typical romance. This one’s going to remain one of my favorites.”
—The Romance Studio
“Jasmine Haynes keeps the plot moving and the love scenes very hot.”
—Just Erotic Romance Reviews
“A wonderful novel . . . Try this one—you won’t be sorry.”
—The Best Reviews
Berkley titles by Jasmine Haynes
TEACH ME A LESSON
THE NAUGHTY CORNER
THE PRINCIPAL’S OFFICE
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER DARK
PAST MIDNIGHT
MINE UNTIL MORNING
HERS FOR THE EVENING
YOURS FOR THE NIGHT
FAIR GAME
LACED WITH DESIRE
(with Jaci Burton, Joey W. Hill, and Denise Rossetti)
UNLACED
(with Jaci Burton, Joey W. Hill, and Denise Rossetti)
SHOW AND TELL
THE FORTUNE HUNTER
OPEN INVITATION
TWIN PEAKS
(with Susan Johnson)
SOMEBODY’S LOVER
Specials
LA PETITE MORT
UNDONE
TEACH ME
A LESSON
Jasmine Haynes
HEAT
New York
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
USA • Canada • UK • Ireland • Australia • New Zealand • India • South Africa • China
penguin.com
A Penguin Random House Company
This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
Copyright © 2014 by Jennifer Skullestad.
Excerpt from The Principal’s Office by Jasmine Haynes copyright © 2012 by Jennifer Skullestad.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
HEAT and the Heat design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61578-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haynes, Jasmine.
Teach me a lesson / Jasmine Haynes.—Heat trade paperback edition
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-425-26624-3 (pbk.)
1. Student counselors—Fiction. 2. School principals—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.A936T43 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013036556
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Heat trade paperback edition / April 2014
Cover photograph: “Girl tied with a bow” © Yarkovoy / Shutterstock.
Cover design by Diana Kolsky.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Praise
Berkley titles by Jasmine Haynes
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Special Excerpt from THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE
PROLOGUE
Chapter 1
About the Author
To Kurt Loesch, a wonderful friend. We miss you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my special network of friends who support me, brainstorm with me, and encourage me: Bella Andre, Shelley Bates, Jenny Andersen, Jackie Yau, Ellen Higuchi, Kathy Coatney, Pamela Fryer, Rosemary Gunn, and Laurel Jacobson. Thanks also to my editor, Wendy McCurdy, and my agent, Lucienne Diver.
1
“HE WANTS ME TO HAVE SEX WITH OTHER MEN.” JEANINE SMITH punctuated the admission with a sob and a dab at her eyes with a moist tissue.
Charlotte had heard a lot of strange things within the confines of her therapy office, but this was definitely a first. She’d read of such behavior, men who wanted to loan out their wives, but she’d never personally encountered it. She dealt with relationship issues, performance and satisfaction concerns, self-esteem and body image difficulties, trauma and abuse recovery, and a whole list of other sexual anxieties. Her watchword was empowerment, and she believed in a compassionate, sex-positive psychotherapy. To her, no client’s problem was greater than another’s, and she never allowed herself to make judgments about whatever matter a client brought her. But she was human, and she could still be shocked.
It had taken Jeanine three sessions to work herself up to this revelation. “I mean he doesn’t want me, so he intends to give me to other men? Isn’t that crazy, Dr. Moore?” She sniffled, blotted her eyes, then her nose, threw the tissue away and grabbed another from the box Charlotte kept handy on the table between them.
Charlotte didn’t believe in the psychiatric couch. She set two comfortable chairs by the corner windows of her office, with a view of the oak trees separating her complex from the neighboring one. Even at the beginning of November, when the weather in the San Francisco Bay area had begun to change from fall to winter, she found the view to have a calming effect on her clients. She didn’t refer to them as patients. She wasn’t a doctor, she was a psychologist, but Jeanine didn’t listen well and Charlotte had stopped correcting her on the title.
Jeanine also paid in cash and didn’t bill her insuranc
e company, all of which made Charlotte wonder if the overly common Smith was a false name. Charlotte had decided to let her keep her anonymity; if she’d pressed the issue, she wasn’t sure Jeanine would come back.
“Let’s discuss the particulars,” Charlotte said, her tone neutral. “We can start with how he brought up the subject.”
Jeanine blew her nose. Despite the red-rimmed eyes and the slightly smeared mascara, she was a good-looking woman. Wavy blond hair past her shoulders, blue eyes, a neatly dressed woman with a trim figure, she was a well-kept forty-three-year-old. Charlotte didn’t even need to add the common phrase for a woman her age. Jeanine had a teenage son with her first husband—who, by Jeanine’s account, rarely saw the boy because he was often abroad on business—and two more children, a girl of ten and another boy aged eight, by her second husband, David. He was fifty-two, and their sex life had ground to a halt two years ago. Of course, most couple’s problems weren’t about sex per se but usually concerned issues in other areas of their relationship that manifested themselves in the bedroom, which was why Charlotte would have preferred couple’s therapy. Jeanine claimed her husband refused to have any counseling. She believed David was suffering from erectile dysfunction and had even gone as far as to suggest Viagra. He’d refused that, too, telling her there was nothing wrong with his . . . parts.
Jeanine grabbed another tissue and held it crumpled in her hand in readiness. “Well, um, it was about a month before I started seeing you, and, um, I’d tried to initiate sex, and well, um, he wanted to fantasize about me and . . . other men . . .” Her voice trailed away.
“And this incident was the catalyst for you coming here?” It often took people several sessions to work up to revealing the real reason they’d sought help.
Jeanine nodded, gulped a breath of air, then everything seemed to rush out. “The worst part was that he actually got hard. He never gets hard for me anymore, but then he starts telling me how sexy it would be if I went out for drinks with the girls after work, and when I got home, he could smell sex on me, another man.” She paused, looked at Charlotte, and lowered her voice, saying, “Another man’s come. He said he’d put his hand between my legs and find me wet, and then he’d—” Jeanine stopped, swallowed, stared at Charlotte.
“You can tell me whatever is necessary, Jeanine. I have no judgment about it.”
Jeanine nodded, her lips working a moment before she spoke. “He said he’d want to lick me clean after another man had come in me. He’d lick me all over.”
Very interesting. “What was your reaction?” Charlotte prompted.
“My reaction? I was outraged, horrified—” Her gaze flitted about the room as if searching for another word. She grabbed a tissue, wadding it up with the other already in her hand.
Charlotte didn’t push, letting the woman work it through.
Finally, Jeanine let out a long sigh. “The terrible thing is, Doctor, I got turned on. I wanted to have sex right then. I just wanted to climb on top of him and take him.”
Well, well, well. “That isn’t a terrible reaction, Jeanine. You don’t need to feel guilty about a fantasy the two of you had.”
“There’s more, Doctor. He said it was the perfect solution to our problem. That I wanted more sex, and he was willing to let me have it. He even said he’d want me to call him while I was, you know”—she threw her hands up, her voice rising—“right in the middle of things. He wanted pictures. He even suggested hiding in the closet so he could watch.”
Charlotte didn’t allow a single facial muscle to twitch. She’d been a psychologist for twelve years, and she’d heard a lot of stories, but while she’d read a bit about this phenomenon, hearing it in practice was, well, quite amazing. She could write a paper on it.
“How do his desires make you feel?” Her job was about discovering her client’s reactions to events and dealing with those reactions.
“It’s like I’m some sex object. Or his personal porn queen. What if it means he’s gay, that he wants to look at other men? Or maybe he wants to have an affair, so he’s giving me permission first. Then he’ll feel justified in doing it. Or maybe this is a test to see if I’ll be faithful.” She stared at her hands, wadding and unwadding the tissues. “I just don’t know what it means.” Her voice was almost childlike. “Well, ultimately, I guess it means he doesn’t want me anymore, which is what I’ve thought for a couple of years. I haven’t let him talk about it since that night.” She raised her eyes. “You know, it’s always been like he has two faces. There’s the outer one where he’s concerned about his reputation. But at home, he was different, like I was his refuge, a place where he didn’t have to keep up appearances.” Her chin trembled. “But this whole sex thing began, and suddenly he became tense even at home.” Her voice softened into a whisper. “I just want him to be the way he was.”
Another thing Charlotte had discovered was that what a client often thought was the inciting incident had seeds in something much earlier. “Tell me, did he ever talk like this before, when the sex between you was better?”
“No.” Jeanine tapped her lips with three fingers, then dropped her hand. “Well, okay, yes, in a way. He always wanted to know about my other lovers before him. Not my ex-husband, but any other men. He liked me to describe what we did.”
“How did he react to your descriptions?”
She was very still, looking deep. “He’d get pretty worked up. And the sex was, well, he was like a wild man.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“It was kind of arousing, actually.”
“I’d like to offer an opinion, Jeanine. Is that okay with you?”
She nodded her permission.
“His fantasy doesn’t sound like it came out of the blue just a few weeks ago. I would venture the possibility that he was subliminally revealing his fantasy when he asked about your past lovers. Now that he’s experiencing performance issues, he’s resurrected that fantasy to excite himself.” And it had worked, at least for him, until Jeanine became upset.
Jeanine pursed her lips. “But it still means he doesn’t want me.”
Charlotte had encouraged Jeanine to bring her husband to one of their sessions for this very reason. To discuss performance issues. Women tended to see it as an invalidation of their own sexuality, while for men, it questioned their very manhood. However, Jeanine was the client, and it was Jeanine’s psyche she needed to work with.
“It’s not about his desire for you. It has nothing to do with physical attraction or lack of it. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
Jeanine began patting her eyes again, ready to burst into another volley of sobs.
“What if you told him you’d do it?”
Jeanine stopped, her mouth gaping. She slapped it shut, stared at Charlotte with narrowed eyes a moment, then said, “That’s a joke, right?”
“No. I’m not saying you should have sex with another man. I’m merely suggesting that you play your husband’s game. Talk to him about what you’d do with another man. Engage him.” She lowered her voice. “Excite him.”
“But that’s sick.” Jeanine shook her head.
“Everyone thinks of sex differently. Diverse activities arouse them. Some people like to watch—”
“You mean peeping toms?” Jeanine interjected.
“No, I don’t mean people who do it in secret at the expense of others. I’m talking about consensual voyeurism and exhibitionism. Some like to watch. Some like to be watched. Has your husband ever asked to watch you masturbate?”
Jeanine’s face colored. “Of course not.”
Charlotte didn’t like labels, but she had to say that Jeanine was a bit of a prude. She wanted sex, she wanted to feel desirable, but she expressed no interest in stepping out of the box. Except for admitting that it turned her on when she’d told her husband about her previous lovers. “There’s nothing wrong with masturbation. It can be part of a healthy sex life.” Charlotte paused, gauged the look on Jeanine’s face.
Some psychologists didn’t make suggestions, never offered opinions. Their technique was to listen and lead the client to his or her own conclusions. Perhaps because she was in sex therapy, Charlotte made a lot of recommendations. Some people wouldn’t consider all the possibilities on their own.
“I have a suggestion, and before you discount it out of hand, I want you to consider it.”
“Yes, Doctor.” But Jeanine toyed nervously with the edges of her tissues.
She was a very buttoned-up woman. She could have insisted her husband join her in therapy to talk about their issues. But she wouldn’t. She needed to stand up for herself more, but when Charlotte mentioned this, Jeanine tuned out. In a roundabout way, Charlotte’s newest idea was designed to help her grow some backbone while at the same time engaging her husband.
“Play his game,” Charlotte said, “but make it your own. Indulge his fantasy in the least threatening manner. Prepare an intimate setting, no kids, no distractions. You’ve already talked about past lovers with him. Take it a step further and talk about a new lover. Ask him what he’d like you to do with this man. Allow him to get turned on by your words. Touch yourself for him. Excite him with your excitement.”
Jeanine closed her eyes as if she couldn’t bear to contemplate it.
Charlotte knew it was unconventional, but her therapy techniques often were. She believed couples needed to step out of their comfort zone. As long as they weren’t doing anything illegal or harmful to their partner, or becoming obsessive, just about anything could have a positive effect. Masturbation, sex toys, role playing, fantasizing, exhibitionism, voyeurism, even bondage and submission, could all be incorporated into a healthy sexual relationship. These activities only became unhealthy in the ways a couple dealt with them, not in the acts themselves.
She was even willing to try a bit of BDSM herself, if for no other reason than to be able to recommend it. Or not.
Jeanine, however, had a long way to go. “What if he thinks I’m going to do it for real?”
Teach Me a Lesson Page 1
