by Sofia Daniel
“You can alternate.” I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice.
“Very well.”
Kendrick parted my thighs again and swept his tongue from my hot core, up the length of my slit, and over my nub. A shockwave of pleasure slammed into my body, tearing a moan from my lips.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop,” I whispered under my breath.
He swept his tongue down again, with more pressure on my clit, making me shudder. After that, Kendrick limited his strokes to that sensitive bundle of nerves, lapping, teasing, keeping at that pace until my thighs clamped around his head, locking him in place.
My throat grew parched from all the panting, and I trembled and clenched under that tongue. If he continued like this, I would climax in minutes. The pads of my fingers dug into his muscled shoulders. How the hell could he be so talented?
Kendrick paused. “Do you want me to—”
“Keep going,” I cried.
He switched to the swirling movement, each rotation of his tongue making my core muscles tighten and spasm around nothing. A moan tore from my lips. I wanted more, needed it.
“Please,” I said with a gasp. “Stick your fingers inside me.”
“One or two?” he asked from between my folds.
“Anything.”
The first finger that breached my opening sent bolts of pleasure across my core. I clamped down on it and rocked my hips back and forth in a silent request for him to move. Kendrick pumped his finger and out of my pussy while he pleasured my clit, and my entire body melted against the mattress.
For the next few moments, he kept me suspended on a tightrope of pleasure that quivered with every gorgeous swirl of his tongue. My muscles clamped around his finger, still needing more. If this was anyone else, I would yank him up and beg him to pummel me until I saw stars. But this was Kendrick, and I’d already promised not to push.
Biting down on my lip, I clenched and unclenched around his thick finger. My whole world reduced down to my pulsing clit and sopping core. His warm breath tickled my folds, and his pleasured hums vibrated against my skin.
All feelings of annoyance evaporated as I lay on that mattress, panting, moaning, shuddering at his touch. Just knowing it was Kendrick doing this to me made everything ten times hotter.
He changed his movements back to the up-and-down motion, this time using the flat of his tongue. Right then, my clit was so sensitive and swollen that I swore I could feel every taste bud brush against that bundle of nerves.
As Kendrick inserted another finger into me, the pleasure around my clit and core built and swelled as though it had taken form. Every movement of Kendrick’s fingers felt like it was brushing against my clit and pushing me over that tightrope.
My muscles clenched and I clutched at his hair as he continued his relentless assault. Sweat beaded on my brow, across my skin, in the crook of my bent legs. The lick and flick of his tongue intensified to that precipice between pleasure and pain. Just when I thought something inside me would explode, a wave of ecstasy swept from my core to the rest of my body.
I arched and moaned and spasmed and clamped around his fingertips as the pleasure burned me from the inside-out. What the bloody fuck was happening to me? This was insane. Kendrick eased off the pressure of his tongue but continued lapping at me through the climax.
As my cries faded into panting breaths, he withdrew his fingers and scooted up to the pillows.
“There’s no need to ask how much you enjoyed that,” he said with a smirk.
“Good, because I’m not answering any more of your questions.” Wrapping my arms around his neck, I placed a kiss on his lips. I drew back and slid my hand down his bicep. “Let me return the favor.”
Kendrick chuckled. “That won’t be necessary.”
“You already came?” I gazed into his smiling eyes.
“Twice.” He kissed me on the lips. “Despite your shoddy instructions, that was a most enlightening experience.”
My eyes narrowed. Did I say Kendrick was like Gideon? I’m pretty sure my best friend wouldn’t have sprouted a thesaurus after an explosive experience with a hot guy. “You’re such a—”
“Dick?” he said with a smirk.
I rolled my eyes. “Let’s just go to bed.”
Kendrick and I slipped under the covers, and I nestled against his chest just as I had the night before on the train. The lights were already off and the only source of illumination came from the fireplace.
“As first times went, that was pretty spectacular.” I kissed his jaw.
“I know.”
A phone buzzed.
“Is that yours or mine?” I asked.
“Max isn’t meeting the Liddells until Monday, so I doubt it will be him. Perhaps your mother changed her mind about helping Mr. Burgh?”
I scrambled off the bed, picked up my fallen jacket from the rug and fumbled from my phone.
A message on the standby screen read:
From: TEMPLAR ACADEMY
Dear Miss Hancock,
We have approved your request for indefinite compassionate leave. If you decide to return to the academy before the allotted time, we will require you to attend a hearing. For the safety of the female students, you must be willing to detail the abuse you suffered under the former headmaster.
I hissed through my teeth.
“What’s wrong?” Kendrick sat up.
“Those fucking bastards just gave me an ultimatum. Fall in line with Elizabeth’s lies or don’t come back.”
Chapter Eighteen
Kendrick and I caught the first flight to Glasgow and took an Uber back to the academy. The car slowed in front of Mr. Burgh’s tall gates, where a covering of frost reflected the morning sun like a dusting of glitter. Outside, a biting wind swirled through the air, chilling the outer layer of my skin. Kendrick walked me across the courtyard and up the stairs.
I placed my finger on the brass doorbell, having left my keys behind in my room.
Kendrick stared down at me with solemn eyes. “I’ll wait with you in case the headmaster is still helping the police with their inquiries.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pressed a kiss on his lips. “Thanks for everything.”
He placed a hand on the small of my back and pulled me into his warm, hard body. “This weekend was not without its benefits.”
Translation: I’m too well-bred to say I had a good time, but you’re welcome. I drew back and gazed into his smiling eyes. Even though his words said one thing, he couldn’t keep his feelings under complete control. Maybe our time together had shifted the stick in his ass.
The door swung open, letting out a gust of warm air. Mr. Burgh stood at the doorway in a pair of black pajamas and a tartan dressing gown, looking like he’d spent the entire weekend wallowing in whiskey. His red-rimmed eyes narrowed at the sight of Kendrick, who murmured a goodbye and hurried down the stairs.
“Lilah,” he croaked.
I stepped into the entrance hall, wrapped my arms around his middle, and buried my head in his shoulder. The mingled scents of whiskey and cigars filled my nostrils. I hugged tighter. If I’d been here instead of out of town, maybe he’d have had someone to talk to instead of drowning his sorrows.
“Mother wouldn’t agree to come up and prove Lady Liddell a liar,” I murmured into his dressing gown.
Mr. Burgh drew back, his brows pulled together. “You went to London?”
“I had to do something.” I released the hug, placing my hands on my hips. “It was on TV, all over Twitter, and the stupid police tried to get me to say you did the same to me.”
“They brought you in?” He ran his fingers through his hair.
I placed a hand between his shoulder blades and guided him through the hallway, down the stairs, and into the kitchen, where a gust of steamy air engulfed us from a kettle boiling on the stove. Boxes from packaged meals littered the kitchen counter, some of them still containing their plastic trays full of food.
I’d have to check the dates to see if he’d taken them out of the freezer or had been in the middle of unpacking his shopping.
“Sit down and let me make you a drink.”
“You don’t have to do that.” Mr. Burgh shuffled across the room and plonked himself into a seat at the large table.
While I gave him the highlights of everything that had happened since we parted ways in the hospital, I made a huge pot of strong, milky tea and prepared a hangover butty. It was a toasted sandwich my friends and I invented for the day after our monthly girls’ nights out. Two fried eggs, two rashers of bacon, a fuckload of cheese crammed between two thick slices of bread and fried in butter.
“How was Abigail?” he asked.
“Selfish.” I plated up the butty and placed it in front of him with a bottle of ketchup.
Mr. Burgh stared down at the fried monstrosity and didn’t ask for more details about Mother, and I didn’t volunteer them. The poor man was in the biggest trouble of his life and the last thing he needed was to worry about a woman who hadn’t spoken to him in over seventeen years.
He gazed up at me with a crooked smile. “May I have a knife and fork?”
“Sure.”
He cut the butty into quarters and pushed the plate in the center of the table, his way of saying he couldn’t eat it all. With a shrug, I poured a huge dollop of ketchup on the plate, added Worcestershire sauce, and gave my piece of butty a healthy dunking.
“Can we sue the Liddells for libel or unfair dismissal?” I bit into my buttie, filling my mouth with the oily, tangy mix.
He shook his head. “I’ve been suspended from duties pending an investigation.”
I stopped mid-chew. “What does that mean?”
“That the investigation can take place anytime,” he said. “That they can keep me in this limbo for the next two years until I retire.”
I chewed on the butty, not quite understanding the technicalities of being suspended. If he was still in the house, I guess they might still be paying his salary. After all, they knew he didn’t lay a finger on Elizabeth. He was also only doing his job when he told the police about the cocaine and the gun.
“You know what this is?” I took a sip of my tea.
He reached for a quarter of butty and dunked it into the sauce. “A smokescreen to cover up for Lady Liddell handing Myra Highmore a gun?”
My mouth dropped open. “How did you—”
“I’ve seen every Machiavellian trick the staff and students have performed over the years.” He chuckled. “I never thought His Grace would allow his family to direct their animosity to someone who has served the school his entire career.”
Despite the laugh, poor Mr. Burgh sounded like someone who had been pumped and dumped. A tight fist of sympathy squeezed at my heart. I leaned into his side and rested my head on his shoulder. “What are you going to do?”
“If they think they can run me out of Templar Academy with a few false accusations, they’ll be sorely disappointed. I’ll support Miss Highmore’s claims and coordinate the parents to raise a lawsuit regarding the cocaine.” He took a bite from my butty and winced. “What the bloody hell is this?”
“Something that will make you forget your hangover.” I placed a hand on his back. “Eat up.”
I spent the rest of the day taking photos and cataloguing the damage Elizabeth did to my room before calling the police to make a formal report. It wasn’t as though I was expecting them to arrest the girl, but I just wanted documentary evidence of her descent into madness. Right now, I didn’t know what to do with the information, but it might become useful later in a court of law.
Mr. Burgh went back to bed for a few hours and joined me in the afternoon for a late lunch of shepherd's pie with steamed broccoli. The sleep, shower, and shave took the redness out of his eyes, but did nothing to restore the color to his cheeks or straighten his posture. He sat at the dining table with his shoulders sagged and picked at his food.
My heart ached for the man who had devoted nearly a lifetime to the Liddells only to find that one of them raped his daughter and sent her into a spiral of drink and drugs. Then Lady Liddell plotted to kill me and ruined his career with Elizabeth’s false accusations. His only course of action after this shit was revenge or justice, if such a thing was possible against such powerful people.
After sundown, Mr. Burg got a roaring fire going in the living room, filling the space with heat. We opened up a manilla folder the housekeeper left for him and went over its contents with a red pen. It looked like something Mrs. Campbell had prepared and seemed to lift his spirits.
Maxwell texted to say he was about to have dinner with the Liddells, and Orlando texted to ask what the hell I’d done with Kendrick. Gideon texted to ask if he could come over. I texted back to ask if we could meet tomorrow and got another message from one of the girls who had been expelled for lewd conduct.
Elizabeth was my friend until she got me drunk and tried to take off my bra.
If you promise to bury that bitch, I can send you all the shit I have on her and her family.
Tara x
The doorbell rang. Mr. Burgh rose to his feet, but I rushed to the door. “Let me get it.”
He exhaled a long breath. “Lilah—”
“When you make your grand appearance, you’ll be shaved and in a suit.”
He glanced down at his crumpled shirt and nodded.
As I rose off the sofa, the doorbell rang again, only this time, in several staccato blasts.
“Alright,” I shouted.
Whoever was behind the door pressed their finger on the bell to make a continuous ring. Bugger this. I slowed my steps out of the living room, letting the dickhead make an idiot of themselves. There was absolutely no reason to ring the bell like the house was on fire. It was probably some first year being a twit.
Or reporters.
The front door was one of those solid wood barriers from the times when people had an army of servants for invaders to slash through, letting the master of the house escape through the back door. In Richley, people had door chains and peepholes. And if they could afford it, security cameras.
A heavy fist pounded on the door, filling the hallway with the mingled sound of banging and that bloody awful bell. It was so noisy that I didn’t hear Mr. Burgh appearing at my side.
I turned to him and scowled. “You should be back in the living room.”
His features darkened. “If you think I’ll hide in the shadows while my granddaughter opens the door to whoever’s out there, you don’t know Duncan Burgh.”
“It’s probably reporters,” I said. “Do you have a door wedge?”
“What?”
“The moment we open the door, whoever’s out there is going to storm inside. We need a piece of slanted wood to block it.”
His face went slack with shock, and he looked about to ask why I thought this but shook his head. Maybe he’d worked out that angry fuckers at the door were a weekly occurrence where I lived. We’d sort of met in a similar situation.
Mr. Burgh disappeared into the living room and reappeared with exactly what I wanted. He wedged it in the middle an inch away from the wood so it would only open a handspan. Enough space for the asshole still ringing the bell to say what they wanted and fuck off.
He raised his hand to turn the latch, but I scooted in front of him. “What if it’s reporters?”
“Then they will get pictures of me, not you,” he said over the continuous banging and ringing.
“I’m not the one people are accusing.” I placed my hand on the latch. “Let me tell these people to bugger off, and I’ll make us a cup of tea.”
His shoulders sagged, and he took a step back. All his life, he had protected young people. Now, I was protecting him. It was hard for me to muster up the words to explain how much he had meant to me, hard to pour out my heart without tearing up and opening the door with red eyes. Instead, I gave Mr. Burgh a sharp nod and cracked open the front door.
&
nbsp; A middle-aged woman stood on the doorstep, dressed in a tweed coat that stretched over her ample bust. Her boxy funeral hat with a turned-up brim sat on her oversized head. Beside her stood a gaunt-looking priest, and on her other side, a red-faced man who looked like he was auditioning for the part of Vernon Dursley in Harry Potter.
I narrowed my eyes at a second mousy-looking woman standing at the very end of the doorstep, who released her finger from the bell and gave me an apologetic wince.
Behind the quartet, over fifty people in dark coats gathered on the stairs leading up to our doorstep.
“No, thank you,” I said. “We do our charity donations via direct debit.”
The woman in front’s nostrils flared, and she swept her gaze down my sweatshirt and jeans. “And who might you be?”
“You’re the one knocking,” I snapped. “What do you want?”
“I expect you’re the incest child, protecting your father,” she muttered.
“If you came all this way to slander an innocent man, you’re wasting your time. Good evening.”
She shoved at the door. It opened a few more inches before getting caught in the wedge. “Where is he?”
The Vernon lookalike fumbled in his pocket and raised his smartphone. I ducked behind the door. If he wanted to take pictures, he should have developed better reflexes.
“Show yourself, Man,” he bellowed.
Mr. Burgh and I closed the door.
“The mobs have already started.” He shook his head. “These people won’t give me a moment’s peace until I leave the grounds.”
Chapter Nineteen
The ringing and banging carried on for another ten minutes until Mr. Burgh called the police, and a squad car arrived, complete with a siren and flashing lights that lit up the darkened courtyard. We stood at the living room window, watching a pair of policemen step through the tall gates and approach the crowd with notebooks.
