“Summer was summer,” Melody muttered.
“So nothing happened that bothered you or made you feel bad about starting high school?” She let her voice rise slightly, making it a question. Enough of the girl’s face was visible for Charlotte to note the tensing of her lips and the clench of her jaw.
Melody looked at her for the first time, lifting her chin to reveal the full ravages of her acne. “You mean this?” She stabbed a finger at her mottled cheek. “Well, yeah, Miss Moore, my face bothers me. And I feel bad about it. And I don’t like people looking at me. And I don’t like talking about it.”
“Have you been to a dermatologist?”
Melody snorted and shook her head. It was neither a yes nor a no. It was simply disgust. “I’ll raise my grades,” she said. “And I’ll play nice with others. And I’ll work on my self-esteem during these trying teenage years. And I’m sure I’ll grow out of it.” She grabbed her chest. “I’m sure I’ll eventually grow breasts, too, so I don’t look like a freak. Can I go now?” Her voice was an ugly sneer.
Melody had already had this talk with someone; obviously it hadn’t worked. Charlotte didn’t think all the trite phrases about inner beauty shining through and ugly ducklings turning into swans would make any impression either. In fact, they would probably make things worse. But Melody needed help.
“I’d like to talk again,” Charlotte said. “I’ll schedule you in for next Tuesday at the same time,” she added, not giving Melody an opportunity to back out.
“You can’t force me to come here.”
“Actually, with your disciplinary history, I can.” Of course, Charlotte hadn’t gone through any channels to do that yet. She would if she had to, but she was hoping Melody would simply volunteer.
“Fine. Whatever. But it’s not going to do any good.”
“I’d still like to talk to you.”
Melody made a face as she left, one that screamed boredom and gave no indication whether she’d return at the appointed time.
Charlotte concocted plans anyway. By next Tuesday, she’d make sure she was armed with more background. First stop, Facebook. People tended to reveal an amazing amount of personal information on social media these days, as if typing it all in while only your computer could see you meant that you weren’t telling everything to the world. But Melody was the anomaly. Charlotte couldn’t find her on Facebook. Or Twitter. Or Pinterest. She couldn’t find Melody anywhere in the social media whirl. It was unheard of. Not only had the girl dropped her friends, she’d dropped off the entire web. There was only one thing for Charlotte to do: She’d have to resort to the age-old world of high school cliques.
So, during lunch period, she headed up to the quad. The school had been constructed on a hill, five long buildings rising up, stairs and walkways in between, lockers along the outer walls beneath overhangs. The first building was Music and Drama, then English, Math, and Science, followed by the student quad, with the cafeteria off to the left, and the Administration building like a sentry just above the quad. Since the rain had stopped yesterday, and the sun was out, most students preferred sitting on the stairs running the length between the buildings. Beyond the quad and Administration were buildings for History, Social Sciences, and the languages. The gym, football field, track, tennis courts, and baseball diamond were down to the right on the flats.
Another person might have gone to Melody’s science teacher—and Charlotte would eventually do that—but if you really wanted to know what was going on, you got it from the students themselves.
Since she wasn’t a teacher and didn’t generally involve herself with disciplinary action, Charlotte had always found herself at an advantage with the kids. She performed more constructive duties with them, course planning, college planning, life planning. And they seemed to like her. She learned a hell of a lot more by listening to what students had to say. So today, she headed for one of her girls. The quad was awash in laughter and young voices as Charlotte approached the steps.
“Hey, Lydia, got a minute?”
“Sure, Miss Moore.”
Lydia jumped up from her seat amid a group of four girls. She was pretty, petite, and blond. A junior with a bubbly personality, she was getting her courses in line for medical school. An aggressive player on the water polo team, she was also on the debate team. Charlotte was sure Lydia would run for class president when she was a senior.
“Let’s walk,” Charlotte suggested. She stuck to the sun, heading slowly back across the quad. “Do you know a freshman named Melody Wright?”
“I’m a junior, Miss Moore, I don’t know any freshmen.”
Class snobbery. Charlotte wanted to laugh. “Don’t kid me. You know everyone, Lydia.”
The girl wrinkled her nose. “Well, I might have heard the name. Does she have—” Lydia circled her face with her hand instead of saying the actual words.
“She has acne.”
“Yeah, well, poor kid, I know who she is.” Lydia’s face softened as she pursed her lips. Her sympathy appeared real.
“What can you tell me about her?”
“Nothing.” She shrugged. “Well, almost nothing. A few idiots make fun of her. But I don’t hang around with kids like that.”
“I know you don’t. But you hear everything.” Charlotte pandered to the girl’s ego. “You know everything that happens in this school.”
“Well.” Lydia smoothed her silky locks. “Some of the worst call her Mudly instead of Melody because her face is like a volcano.” She grimaced. “Then there’s the fact that she’s got the figure of a boy. You just don’t know how being flat-chested can demoralize a girl. She’s got two big strikes against her.”
They were huge strikes. Just when boys started looking at girls and girls started looking at boys—although Charlotte had to admit they started looking a lot earlier these days than they had when she was in middle school. “Have you tried to make friends with her?”
Lydia stopped, looked at Charlotte. “I don’t know her at all, Miss Moore. Besides, I don’t think she wants any friends. Even if I approached her, she’d only think I was doing it to make fun of her. Like I was going to set her up for a fall or something.”
“Oh.”
“I’ve never actually heard anyone calling her names. If I did, I’d say something. This is just stuff you hear. Because, well, she stands out.”
Charlotte understood about the soda spilled on the girl’s shoe and the inappropriate word. Melody had been retaliating for some cruelty perpetrated upon her.
“Okay. So did you hear anything about science class and her lab partner?”
“I don’t listen to gossip,” Lydia stressed. “But there was something about her dumping a whole beaker of sugar water over his head. They were growing crystals with it, I think. At least that’s what Mr. Gunderson had us do in freshman science.”
“But you didn’t hear why?”
“I only heard that it was her boyfriend from middle school.” She widened her pretty blue eyes. “I guess they broke up.”
A boyfriend. Now that’s something Charlotte had never considered. “What’s his name, do you know?”
Lydia shook her head. “What I told you is all I know.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Look, I gotta get back.”
Charlotte realized Lydia’s friends were packing up. So were most of the other kids, crumpling paper bags, heading for the trash cans and recycle bins.
“Okay, thanks.”
“If I hear anyone giving her a bad time, I promise I’ll give them a piece of my mind, Miss Moore.”
“Thank you, Lydia.”
Charlotte sat on the edge of a recently vacated picnic table as the quad quickly emptied. The sun’s warmth seeped into her skin. Melody Wright actually had three strikes against her: her skin, her shape, and not enough self-esteem to appreciate her inner beauty. Because every child, every girl, every human being had something beautiful and special. Melody Wright just didn’t know how to see it in herself.
&n
bsp; Charlotte’s mission was figuring out a way to show her.
* * *
LANCE COULDN’T FIND A STORE IN HIS SCHOOL DISTRICT THAT sold the things he wanted. Which was probably a good thing. A sexual fetish shop probably wouldn’t raise any property values.
The store he’d looked up on the Internet after Charlotte left his office this morning—his personal computer, not his school-issued desktop—was along a stylish mall in a newly refurbished downtown only ten minutes along the freeway. He shared the sidewalk with mothers pushing strollers, poodles prancing at the ends of their leashes, teenagers rushing for after-school coffee drinks or pizza parlors, and a few lovebirds holding hands. The place he had in mind didn’t advertise sexual toys in the window, but instead displayed a variety of skimpy lingerie. Feathered Halloween masks were on sale now that October was over, although Lance figured the masks could be marked back up for Mardi Gras in a few months.
Stepping inside, he found the front room equipped exactly like the window. Racks of colorful bras and panties, a counter displaying bright jewelry and sparkly makeup, hooks on the walls holding costumes and sexy scraps of lace.
“May I help you, sir?” The salesgirl looked young enough to be one of his students. Or worse, his daughter. But if he’d had a daughter, he would have been against the nose ring, the blue hair, and the black fingernail polish, not to mention the short pleated skirt that barely covered her—
He needed to stop being so judgmental. “I’m just browsing,” he said quickly. Under no circumstances would he be able to purchase what he wanted from this . . . girl.
“The garters and bustiers are all on sale this month.” She fluttered exceptionally thick lashes at him.
“Thank you.” He smiled. Charlotte Moore would have a field day with him on this one. She probably recommended sex toys to her clients all the time to spice up their sex lives. Although he was sure that was probably minimizing what she did.
At that point, thankfully, the shop’s door opened again and two ladies entered, providing the diversion he needed to make it to the back room.
He wasn’t a prude, but the kinkiest he’d gotten—before he spanked Charlotte—was using his second wife’s vibrator on her. The experience had been pleasurable enough, until he’d realized she preferred using it on herself when he wasn’t around. Most men would have looked to their own prowess, but Lance had begun to understand that she enjoyed sex in ten-to-fifteen-minute bouts without all the mess and fuss of having to deal with anyone else’s orgasm but her own.
It was this kind of thinking that had given him ideas about Charlotte. He could spank the naughty little wench—cocksucker, that still had him laughing—or he could up the stakes with something special. The problem: He had no idea what. Hence his shopping trip. He was sure something would catch his eye.
The lingerie racks gave way to a narrow hallway filled with shelves of sexual gag gifts: inflatable dolls, inflatable penises, penis joke books, penis eraser heads. Hah, that would go over well at school.
The hallway opened up into a long room that was twice the size of the front area. Well, hell, here was where all the business was done. And here’s where all the customers were. Couples, women, men. There were shelves of how-to books, erotica for couples, for women, for gays and lesbians. All manner of vibrators covered half a wall, all shapes, sizes, colors, one-speed, two-speed, three-speed. Next to that hung cock rings, cock harnesses, cock plugs, cock pins—uh, no, thank you very much. He didn’t even want to know what they were used for. There were gels and heating lotions, wands that looked like feather dusters and would probably cost a hell of a lot less at a discount department store. Leather masks, headgear, hoods, handcuffs, ball gags, nipple clamps, blindfolds, floggers, paddles, leashes, collars. The assortment boggled the mind. But the handcuffs caught his eye. Regular police-style metal handcuffs, leather manacles, fur-lined, silk ties.
“Looking for you or her or him?” A husky voice right next to him.
He hadn’t heard the saleswoman approach. At least she was long past the age of consent, and attractive in an over-the-hill-actress kind of way. He preferred the actresses of his own generation, the ones who played tough, ball-busting executives.
“For her,” he said.
The woman fingered the fur-lined cuffs, sheepskin under leather, with a buckle. “These are comfy.” The blond highlights in her brown hair sparkled in the overhead lamps. She was several years older than Charlotte and had none of Charlotte’s softness.
“She’d probably prefer silk,” he said.
The woman fingered those, too. Her nails were a hard red, her hands unlined, the diamond on her middle finger large. “They’d be a good choice.” She glanced up at him, her eyes an unnatural shade of violet. “New submissive you’re breaking in?”
He gave a wry smile. “More like she’s breaking me in.”
“Ahhh,” she said on a long sigh. “You’re new to being a dom.”
“I’m not a dom.”
“But she wants to turn you into one.”
He didn’t actually know. But he figured Charlotte for a woman who liked fun and games. And she’d started a new one with him. “We’re both new at this.”
He wondered why he was telling this woman anything. Because she was a saleslady in a sex shop? There was a certain freedom in that.
“Perhaps you need a class or two to show you the ropes.”
“A class?” Oh yeah, this place really did boggle the mind.
“I give personal training. I’ll show you how to tie knots on her, how to truss her up, how to apply nipple clamps so they don’t do any physical damage.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a business card. “We can even dominate her together, if you’d like.” She winked. “Just until you get the gist of it. I’ve worked with a lot of couples. Are you interested in giving her to other men?”
He’d stood in front of an assembly of fifteen hundred students—if you weren’t afraid of teenagers, you weren’t afraid of anything—and he had never once in his life found himself speechless. Until this moment.
She slipped the card into the breast pocket of his jacket.
He took one step back. Discovered his voice. “I believe I’ll take the silk cuffs.” He pointed slightly behind and to the right. “And the feather duster.”
She laughed, batted his chest. “It’s a feather teaser, silly man. But I like your choices.” She lowered her voice, tapped the pocket where her card lay. “Just call if you need any pointers.” Then she grabbed one of the cock plugs—a bronze circlet shaped like a snake with a head that would go . . . inside. “And I found just what I was looking for.” Carrying her choice, she paid for it at a counter in the back. On her way out, she waggled her fingers at him.
Good God, the woman didn’t work there at all.
At the last moment, before going to the counter himself, Lance pulled a simple no-frills vibrator off the wall to add to the red silk cuffs and overpriced feather duster. Maybe he was a novice. Maybe he was even a prude. But he removed the woman’s card from his pocket and tossed it in a trash can by the register. Handcuffs, feathers, and a vibrator were as far as he was willing to go. At least for now.
6
THE PRINCIPAL’S HOUSE FORMED A T, WITH THE LIVING ROOM, DINING ROOM, AND KITCHEN ACROSS THE FRONT. THE BEDROOMS were along the length of the T, down a hallway of windows facing a brick patio and a manicured green lawn bordered by a tall privacy hedge.
He’d lit a fire against the cooling November night and taken a seat on the living room sofa situated in front of another bank of windows facing the same patio and lawn as the bedroom hall.
“Now take off your clothes.” He flourished a hand.
“You’re joking, right?” Charlotte had barely walked through the door. He’d directed her to stand in front of a cherrywood coffee table, the fire deliciously warm at her back, the high heels of her shoes sinking into the thick, patterned Persian carpet.
“Don’t argue. Just take your punishment
.” His face was impassive in the fire’s glow. He hadn’t turned on a lamp, the only illumination provided by the fire and the light spilling in from the foyer. Dressed in a black pullover sweater and black slacks, he wasn’t much more than a dark shape on the leather sofa.
“But—” It was like sex; you wanted a buildup, although there’d been very little buildup in the detention hall. And she’d gotten wet this evening as she’d showered, shaved, lotioned, and primped. “My clothes.” She pointed to the tight Lycra top that molded to her breasts and the black leggings outlining her hips and thighs. “I dressed for you.”
“So undress for me.” He leaned his elbows on his knees, legs spread wide, and lowered his voice to a seductive pitch that set her skin on a slow burn. “Tuesday was for high schoolers. Tonight’s detention is for big girls. I want you naked. I want to see your skin turn pink and your nipples get hard.” He sat back in his former nonchalant pose. “So take everything off, or I’ll have to come over there and strip you down myself.”
The firelight glowed in his eyes, the look scorching, and suddenly Charlotte wanted to do anything he asked. Crossing her arms, she grabbed the hem of her Lycra top and yanked it over her head, sending it flying and her curls bouncing over her bared shoulders. Then she slipped her fingers beneath the waistband of her leggings and bent, pushing them all the way to her high heels before she stepped out of the shoes.
“Jesus.” There was a new hoarseness in his voice. “Put on the heels again.”
Kicking aside the leggings, she did as he bid, once again standing before the firelight, this time in only underwear and high heels. In the window’s reflection behind him, the firelight shone like a corona around her.
“Perfect.” He rose, skirted the coffee table, and strolled around her to stop at her back. In the reflection, their coronas merged into one, and the warmth of the fire was replaced by the blazing heat of his body. As he loomed behind her, she felt deliciously overwhelmed by his height, her heart in her throat, a throb deep in her belly.
Teach Me a Lesson Page 5
