by Olivia Harp
Table of Contents
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
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
EPILOGUE
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
Epilogue
PRIMAL DESIRE
By OLIVIA HARP
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events reside solely in the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters are eighteen years of age or older.
© 2017, OLIVIA HARP. No portion of this work can be reproduced in any way without prior written consent from the author with the exception for a fair use excerpt for review and editorial purposes.
This title is for adults only. It contains explicit sex acts, adult themes, and material that some folks might find offensive. Please keep out of reach of children.
Table of Contents
PRIMAL DESIRE
PRIMAL BEAR
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PRIMAL DESIRE
CHAPTER 1
Enzo Gallagher took the last book from the shelf and put it in the box. It was “The Will to Fight,” a book he loved and shared with students so often it was full of creases and earmarks.
He sighed, it had been what, four years since he arrived at Jefferson’s High? Yeah, four years this summer.
Maybe they’ll give me a bigger office. He snorted, he could always dream.
Someone knocked on the door, it was half open, meaning they could come in if they wanted, but people respected his space.
“Mr. Gallagher? Are you busy?”
Enzo opened the door to see Cameron Hall, a troubled senior that rose up against adversity and became one of the best students the school had seen.
“Hey man, nah, I’m not busy. Come on in.”
The teenager swaggered into the room, carrying a thin folder in his hands. He sat on the leather armchair and practically sank in it, sighing as he always did when he used to come for either small talk or counseling, just a year ago.
“How are you?” Enzo continued, “long time no see.”
“Pretty good, Mr. Gallagher, pretty good,” he replied, staring at the piles of cardboard boxes covering the floor.
“You going away, sir?”
Enzo chuckled, “hopefully not, they’re gonna use this office, I just need to take everything out.”
“Do you need help? I could bring—”
“Nah, don’t worry, I’m practically done, what brings you here? Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Cameron smiled, he was beaming, “came to say thanks.”
“For what?”
He gave Enzo the folder, “take a look.”
Enzo opened it, there was a single piece of paper in it.
“Dear Mr. Hall,” he read out loud, “we are pleased to announce that you have been accepted to...”
His voice trailed off, it took him a couple of seconds to fully understand what he was reading, then looked up to the student.
“I got accepted to MIT,” Cameron said, unable to hide his pride, “full scholarship and all.”
“Are you freakin’ serious?”
Cameron shrugged, “I’m gonna be an engineer.”
“God damn, Cameron, congratulations! I told you you could do it!”
Enzo offered his hand and Cameron shook it.
“Thank you for everything, Mr. Gallagher, couldn’t have done it without you.”
“You did it all on your own, man, you just needed to focus.”
Cameron started to shake his head when Darcy knocked on the open door, her hands full of papers, as usual.
As the secretary of the of the hardest, most impoverished school on the district, she played her part just perfectly. She’d seen it all, throughout the couple of decades she’d been there, she even had a pair of pointy glasses and a no-excuses attitude that helped her deal with the students
“Hi Cameron,” she said with a nod, then turned to Enzo.
“Hey, Darcy.”
"The new principal is about to arrive; you need to take everything out ASAP.”
“Sure thing, Darce, I’m almost done here.”
She rolled her eyes, “all right, sorry to bother you but I don’t want to start things out with the wrong foot. They say she’s pretty hardcore.”
“Just what we need, right?” Enzo said.
Darcy did not laugh, “exactly.”
Cameron spoke up.
“Are you sure you don’t need any—”
“I’m cool, Cam, go celebrate, you deserve it.”
The student chuckled, “I will, but not until after the interview.”
“You still need to do that?”
“Final step of the process, so yeah. I’m not officially in until I talk to them.”
“Do you need help? Some coaching or—”
Cameron pressed his lips, he was going to say no but changed his mind.
“You know what? That’d be great. I’m kinda nervous about it, not much of a people’s person, you know?”
“I’m here, just send me an email.”
“Will do, sir,” Cameron said already out of the office.
“That kid. What happened?” Darcy asked, her tone of voice completely flat.
“Nothing. He just got admitted to MIT, sharing the news.”
“MIT? That’s nice,” she said, adjusting her glasses.
Nice. That was more than nice, but this was Darcy, nothing ever fazed her.
“To think he was a gang-banger—”
“He wasn’t a gang-banger, Darcy, he just hung around with the wrong people.”
“Well, you sure straightened him up.”
“He’s smart. He did most of the hard work himself.”
“If you say so.”
Enzo picked a pile of heavy boxes and started walking out to the hallway, “thank you for your praise, Darcy, now let me finish taking this stuff out before the new principal arrives. We don’t wanna give her the wrong impres
sion.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” she said, already walking away, “with the state the school is in, I don’t think there’s much we can do.”
Enzo chuckled out of politeness. The school did look bad, and some of the kids were troublemakers, but it wasn’t the worst place in the world to work at, even if it had the lowest grade average, the poorest students and was the least funded high-school in the state.
CHAPTER 2
Audrey wiped sweat from her forehead and continued scribbling in her notepad. The air conditioner was off; she didn’t think writing down everything the school needed fixing or improving would take her this long.
She’d been at it for over twenty minutes now.
The first impression is what counts.
She’d visited the place, seen pictures, got a list of important tasks to be handled when she arrived. But before she started working on that, she wanted to first cover everything she noticed at first glance, when the students were there.
“East wall covered in graffiti,” she carried on, the list growing larger and larger, “paint falling off on facade, windows broken...”
And that’s only on the outside. She put the pen in her mouth, looked out at the students near the premises. They seemed to be all right, at least.
Gangs used to prowl these streets.
“Things are much better now,” the School Board administrator told her when they met, before she really accepted the offer. “No violence in years.”
Let’s try to keep it that way.
The bell rang and droves of students poured out of the building.
This is it.
She knew the moment wouldn’t last long. Adrenaline rushed through her veins. The excitement of a new start flooded her. She was anxious to go in.
The school needed a lot of work, and she had her plans all ready to go. She dreamed of turning Jefferson High into the best school in the country. This was the moment before putting her plan into action.
She could pretend everything would go perfectly, but you have to be realistic, nothing ever goes perfectly.
She cleared her throat and exited her sedan. She was supposed to begin work tomorrow, but first wanted to have a short meeting with the teachers, and have some time to roam the school, get a feel for it.
I’ll get a feel of the place.
It looked better than she imagined, though. “The worst school in the district?” her friends said when she told them she was moving to Oregon, “why would you wanna go there?”
I like the challenge, She said, eight months ago.
She crossed the street and walked up the steps into the building. No one paid her any attention, she could be a kid's mom for all they cared.
The hall choked up with people. Old, faded lockers adorned every step of the way to her side.
Darn it, we’re going to have to start in here.
The floor was dirty, it looked like it hadn’t been swept nor mopped in days, she held a gasp as she walked through a big patch of stickiness.
Relax, this can be fixed easily—
The rank, sour smell of trash and dirty bathroom stalls almost made her gag.
“Damn,” she blurted out, covering her nose.
“I said the same thing this morning,” a deep, baritone voice, said behind her, raising goosebumps on her arms, as if the sound vibrations passed through her and rattled in her skin.
She turned around and felt her heart stop for a second. An impossibly tall, ripped-as-hell hunk of a man, smiled at her. She looked small compared to him —and she wasn’t the least bit small— but his broad shoulders and thick, strong arms made him look like an ancient gladiator.
For a second, she worried about his shirt ripping apart at the seams.
Who is this man?
He stepped forward, she had to look away from his hazel eyes, she didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.
He stood out from the crowd, as if the latest fashion model just climbed out of a magazine and got lost in the most inappropriate place for him to be.
The man picked up the trash bags just outside the toilets.
She didn’t remember him from the staff profiles the School Board sent her.
Then he smiled.
Oh, shit.
“Larry hasn’t started on the bathrooms yet,” he continued, tying a knot on the plastic bags so they wouldn’t spill, “I’ll take care of this, don’t worry.”
“Is he the head janitor?”
“Head... janitor?” the man repeated, his face turning from surprise to holding back laughter.
“Yeah, I mean...” she signaled at the floor she’d just walked, “needs a little mopping, don’t you think?”
“I agree. But the school’s too big, we give him a break, he can’t be everywhere at once.”
“Wait. You only have one janitor?” she asked, taking a step away from the man.
He shrugged, looking around at the connecting hallways, the big bag of trash still in his hands, “I guess he’s busy somewhere else. He’s a good guy, though.”
Audrey’s mouth fell wide open.
“Careful,” he said, grazing her chin with his finger, “we try to keep our cool around here. These kids are ruthless.”
She immediately closed her mouth, realizing how dumb she must have looked.
“I’m Enzo Gallagher, by the way,” he said extending his hand to her.
She raised hers to shake it.
“Oh wait,” he said, pulling it back, “it’s all dirty now.”
Yeah, he held a big bag of trash.
“Are you looking for someone?”
“Not really.”
His green-brown eyes bore deep into her, trying to understand.
“Then why...”
“I’m Audrey Rodriguez, the school’s principal.”
His smile quickly disappeared, he couldn’t hide his astonishment even if he tried.
“Oh,” he said, straightening up even taller, he coughed and cleared his throat, then, in a much more professional tone, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think I’d meet you like this.”
She smiled.
“No need to worry, I don’t bite.”
He looked at her up and down, without saying a word.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“I just, I didn’t think you’d be so...”
She put her hands on her waist, defiantly.
“So what?”
“Young.”
She chuckled.
“You’re saying I can’t do the job?”
“No, that’s not what I meant. I thought you were someone’s mom or something, I’m glad you’re here.”
She nodded, smiling.
“What do you do here, Mr. Gallagher?”
“I’m a—”
“Miss Rodriguez!” Darcy shouted from the distance, waving at her, holding a bunch of papers under her arm, hurrying towards them.
Audrey took a quick look at Enzo, and waved back at the secretary.
She didn’t want to blow her cover yet, even if some students were already eyeing her, wondering who she was.
“That’s Darcy, your assistant—”
“I figured. I’ve talked to her on the phone, but hadn’t seen her before, how did she know—”
“She probably found your profile online, she loves doing that.”
Audrey nodded, she’d have to be careful with her.
Darcy adjusted her glasses and shook Audrey’s hand.
“You’re here early! So glad to finally meet you!”
“Thank you, Darcy, you too.”
“I see you’ve met our school counselor.”
So, he’s not a teacher.
Audrey took a brief glance at him, he didn’t look like a psychologist, or like any other counselor she’d met before: in the two schools that had a male one, he’d been a smaller, quiet, less imposing kind of person. More friend-you-can-tell-your-problems than barbarian-who’ll-rip-you-apart-if-you-don’t.
&nb
sp; Not that I’m complaining. She thought, and immediately pushed the idea aside.
He saw her.
Relax, girl, you’re so tense. There’s important business to be done.
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Enzo said, “I gotta put this away, happy to have met you.”
She nodded and saw him stride away, his perfect butt finishing up the image of a perfect man.
You did not just think that.
Darcy patted her on the shoulder.
“So what do you want to—”
“Give me a tour of the school,” she interrupted her, “but first, we need to find Larry.”
“Sure, Miss Rodriguez.”
“Just Audrey,” she said, “and please, tell me how you knew it was me.”
“Oh! I...” Darcy blurted out, not admitting she stalked her on social media.
“I’m just kidding,” she said with a laugh, “come on, let’s explore.”
CHAPTER 3
Enzo put the last box on the hand truck and rolled it out of his office. The room was finally empty.
He wiped sweat from his forehead, the whole ordeal had taken him longer than expected, he was surprised at the quantity of books he had there.
He smiled.
When he started working at Jefferson’s High a few years ago, he only brought four books with him, not counting all the worksheets he thought would be useful.
He shook his head. The first student I met made me almost throw all the theory books I had out the window.
The reality of the kids was much harsher than he imagined.
Turns out growing up in poverty amidst gang violence is not something you can just get rid of by talking.
But now, he knew he made a difference. Even if it was small. Most kids were just misguided.
He dedicated all of his free time working away from the mountain, with the people who needed it the most.
Being a White Paw bear, he was at the forefront of the fight against the Shadowlands, but after its last incursion a few years ago, it was gone for good.
He could do other things, now, like helping people.
The animal inside of him growled, as if mocking him.
Damn beast.
His bear was restless. Ever since he saw her that morning it—
No. Don’t think of that. You’ll only make it worse.
The bell rang and teenagers poured out of the classrooms, filling the hallway. Enzo knew a lot of them personally, but kept a healthy distance. It was for the best. If he waved or addressed them in public, they’d probably be embarrassed.
