Lessons in Sin

by Pam Godwin

  She seemed to perk up at that, and I could guess the reason. She thought I was her ticket out of here.

  I spread out my elbows on the desk, leaning forward. “Spending every day with me does not open opportunities to sabotage your graduation from Sion. Furthermore, any feelings you may develop for me—be it contempt or desire—will be squashed. Our relationship will remain professional, and any efforts to defile that will be punished.”

  “Will my clothes be removed for these punishments?” She fluttered her eyelashes, straight-faced.

  “Depends on your on-going issue with urinary incontinence.”

  “I do not have incontinence.” She made a scoffing sound. “I hadn’t gone to the bathroom since before church.”

  “Find a solution for that, Miss Constantine. You’re far too old to be reminded to use the toilet.”

  “That’s not…ugh!” She paced away, clawing her nails along her scalp and pulling at her hair.

  I rubbed a hand across my mouth, wiping away my amusement. She was way too easy to rile, and I rather enjoyed it.

  Now that I thought about it, I’d never been this eager to converse with a student. Her rapid-fire quips and witty rejoinders kept me sharp and thinking on my toes. Given her test scores, it was no wonder. It would undoubtedly be a long year of stimulating conversation and verbal sparring.

  She pivoted back toward my desk, her gaze drawing a path from my lips to my collar before darting to my eyes. “How long have you been a priest?”

  “I was ordained four years ago.”

  “So you haven’t had sex in four years?”

  “Nine. I entered seminary and discernment nine years ago.”

  “Nine years without sex?” Her eyebrows crawled to her hairline. “In all that time, you haven’t slipped up even once? Haven’t given in to the baser needs of human nature?”

  “Not once.”

  This line of questioning was nothing new. It’d been asked by hundreds of curious students and parents before her. So when she voiced the next question, I was ready for it.

  “Why did you become a priest? And don’t give me a canned response. I already know you were a self-made billionaire and New York’s most eligible bachelor.”

  All common knowledge. She only needed to put my name in an internet browser to learn the highlights of my illustrious career. I had no secrets, save one, and that lay buried beyond anyone’s reach.

  “Before I chose this path, I was a wealthy businessman. I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, and endowed this boarding school with a lot of money because I have a personal connection here.”

  “What personal connection?”

  “Father Crisanto has been my best friend since childhood.”

  “So he suckered you into a life of celibacy?”

  “Do I look suckered, Miss Constantine?”

  “Good point.” She pursed her lips. “But you have had sex, right? You’re not a virgin?”

  “I’m not a virgin. When I reached my thirties, I made a conscious decision to do more with my life, to be more.”

  “And you thought, Hey, why don’t I become a penniless, sexless, heartless teacher?”

  “I donated my wealth and my life to this school because I wanted to become a shepherd.”

  “And we’re your sheep.” She slowly inhaled through her nose and chewed on the inside of her cheek.

  The answers I gave were honest, with one crucial omission. The secret I would take to my grave.

  “That’s very noble of you, Father Magnus. I suppose you’re a better human than me.” She planted her hands on the desk and leaned in. “But that doesn’t mean you’re better at making decisions regarding my life. What becomes of me here, this year, impacts my entire future. Look at me.” She pointed at her face. “Look closely at my eyes, my expression. You’re staring at a woman who longs for one great passion, and always it lies beyond the next asshole.”

  “If you’re calling me an asshole—”

  “You’re the biggest one yet. But guess what?” She bared her teeth. “I want this more than you do.”

  “You want what exactly? What is this one great passion?”

  “Anything. Everything. Independence, self-discovery, romantic love, spiritual or professional fulfillment—whatever it is, it’s mine.” Her rasping breaths fell in a beguiling tumble of sounds, striking the air with tenacity. “The passion is in pursuing the life I want, and no one is going to take that from me.”

  “Very well.” I gathered the papers on my desk and opened my laptop. “You can long for your one great passion while you’re on hands and knees scrubbing the floor of my classroom.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Zero tolerance, Miss Constantine.”

  “Zero tolerance for what?” She gripped the edge of the desk. “Was it the asshole comment?”

  “The comment, the attitude, the blatant disrespect.” I kept my gaze on the screen, dismissing her. “You know where to find the bucket and cleaning supplies.”

  “Disrespect?” She laughed mockingly. “It’s called a backbone, and it’s pronounced, Go fuck yourself.” She spun away and stormed toward the door. “Scrub your own goddamn floors.”

  I was out of the chair before the last part left her mouth. My longer strides beat her to the door, and as she reached for the latch, my hand was already on the wood, holding it closed.

  Her breath caught audibly, and she slowly turned her neck. Her gaze landed on my legs and inched upward, sneaked a drive-by glance at my groin, and skated to my chest. The narrow gap between us forced her head to tip back, back, back, until a constellation of dainty, bewitching features filled my horizon.

  The air buzzed with tension and animosity.

  Then, with a twitch of her lashes, those blue eyes, both hot and fearful, locked on to mine. “Either send me home or spank me. I’m not scrubbing your floors.”

  “Careful, Tinsley.” I fought every instinct that demanded I reach out and grab her by the throat. “You have no idea what you’re asking.”

  Dragging her over my lap and welting her upturned ass didn’t begin to address what she deserved. Or what the sickness inside me craved.

  As if reading my thoughts, she gulped, and the blood drained from her face.

  “When you finish the floors in here, you’ll do the next room over and the one across from it, as well.”

  A muscle leaped in her jaw. “I—”

  “Think through what you’re about to say. There are six classrooms on this floor. There’s also a church and gymnasium with expansive wood flooring.”

  “If I’m playing janitor all day, when will I learn?”

  “Don’t worry about that, princess. I’ll read to you while you work.”

  She groaned miserably. A sound that left me feeling deliciously winded as she marched off to the supply closet.

  This tiny elven minx was going to be the death of me.

  CHAPTER 13

  MAGNUS

  Scrubbing floors set the foundation for Tinsley’s daily lessons at Sion Academy.

  Over the next four weeks, she spent more time learning while on her hands and knees than sitting at a desk. As she crawled along with a soapy sponge, I walked beside her, delivering lectures on physics, comparative government and politics, Latin literature, and Catholicism.

  She hadn’t lied about her memory. When she heard something, she could recall it later, almost verbatim. Every test she aced proved she was absorbing my lessons.

  The one thing she failed to learn, however, was obedience.

  She’d had a few tardies and curfew violations, but the bulk of her misconduct began and ended with her mouth.

  She was a vulgar, loquacious wiseass, too smart for her own good, and lived every moment as if her only mission was to annoy me. No one had ever dared to talk to me the way she did, and no punishment seemed harsh enough to deter her.

  After four weeks of social isolation, withheld meals, psychological humiliation, and manual labor, I knew w
hat she needed.

  Physical suffering.

  Bodily pain.

  She needed my belt across her ass, over and over and over.

  In the years I’d taught here, I’d only used a strap and cane on three occasions. Those had been extreme cases, where the students were so wild and unmanageable that a physical beating hadn’t even fazed them. It hadn’t affected me, either. I had no physical interest in the girls, and in the end, all three were expelled.

  Expulsion was what Tinsley wanted. Therefore, it was the one thing I wouldn’t give her.

  That left scrubbing floors.

  Or corporal punishment.

  Slapping.

  Spanking.

  Flogging.

  Choking.

  I couldn’t. I shouldn’t, for ten thousand reasons all amounting to one.

  I want it.

  I wanted to put my hands on her so badly, and if I did, if I physically punished her, it would be irrefutably, uncontrollably, gloriously sexual for me.

  I’d only touched her one time. Four weeks ago, I’d let my thumb brush her lip. That single, featherlight touch had unfurled a surge of twisted, desperate cravings from the darkest corner of my mind. Since then, I’d kept my hands to myself and forced my black thoughts into nonexistence.

  But if I touched her again, if I introduced her to my favorite pastime, it was all over.

  As it was, watching her crawl across the floor on her knees teased the hell out of my sadistic nature. The flagrant sexual symbolism in the act wasn’t lost on her, either. She called me out on it every time, asserting that no student should kneel for her teacher because it was perverted and sexist and played into the fantasies of predators.

  It was a wasted argument. If she kept her disrespectful mouth shut, she wouldn’t be on her knees. Period. The choice was hers.

  I checked my watch and paced through the classroom, grinding my teeth.

  She was late again.

  Closing my eyes, I prayed the Hail Mary to calm my temper. As I finished and began the prayer again, the sound of sprinting footfalls broke out in the hall.

  Shoes squeaked against wood as Tinsley tore around the corner and burst into my classroom in a fit of wheezing, spluttering breaths.

  “I’m here!” She bent at the waist, a hand in the air and the other on her knee, choking. “Good thing I’m fast.”

  “You’re late,” I snarled, torn between kicking her out and giving her something substantial to choke on.

  “Oh, come on.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “Only two minutes late. Are you seriously going to be a vagina about it?”

  “A vagina?”

  “The fleshy pink canoe between a woman’s legs.” She panted, trying to catch her breath. “I know it’s been a while since you paddled one, but surely you remember what it is.”

  “I do remember. Quite fondly.”

  “Yeah?” She grinned, raising her eyebrows.

  “Which is why I’m confounded to hear you use that part of the female body as a derogatory term. Given your infernal feminist tongue-lashings, I would expect you to use the word vagina as a compliment rather than associate it with weakness.”

  Her mouth hung open, and she made a strangling noise.

  “You’re so right.” She smacked a hand against her forehead and groaned. “I’m an idiot. I wasn’t thinking and… Gah! There’s no excuse for it. What I said was offensive and ignorant, and I’m sorry.” She straightened her spine and met my eyes, looking so irresistibly, gorgeously shamefaced. “I’ll kiss the Jesus or scrub the floors or whatever you decide. No resistance. I’m a total shithead.”

  One of the things I’d come to adore about Tinsley Constantine was the ease in which she could be so genuinely humble and wryly deflating of herself. Rarely did she care about other people’s perceptions of her, but for whatever reason, she didn’t want me to believe she was superficial or weak-minded.

  She had no idea how far removed she was from those traits, and that only made her more beautiful, more desirable, harder to go unnoticed. She was unlike any eighteen-year-old I’d ever met.

  None of that changed the fact that she was my student, half my age, and completely, irrevocably outside my preferences.

  Yet she had enough sex appeal to hold my attention for eternity.

  Shut it down, Magnus.

  “You’ve been gone for forty-five minutes.” I prowled a circuit around her. “Breakfast ended five minutes ago.”

  I knew where she sneaked off to every day. I wanted her to admit it.

  She touched her chin to her shoulder, regarding me innocently. “I had to pee.”

  I laughed. “That’s the direction you want to go with this?”

  “No. I mean, I did have to pee, and I took care of that.”

  “Good to know you’ve learned one lesson in four weeks.” I paused before her. “But that’s not why you’re late.”

  Her blue eyes lifted to mine, sparking with fire and worry. She didn’t trust me with her secret, and why would she? I had no compassion.

  For a spoiled rich girl, she was selflessly devout about protecting vulnerable, unlikable animals. I didn’t understand it and didn’t give her an inch. No assurance whatsoever as I glared at her, making her squirm.

  Ruthless, down to the marrow of my despicable soul.

  “Magnus…” Her voice pleaded. She used my first name. Her hand reached for my chest.

  My brain didn’t know which deviation to rebuke first.

  As bold as she was with her tongue, she’d never been brave enough to touch me. Even now, as her fingers made a slow, jerky climb toward my shirt, she trembled with uncertainty.

  I caught her wrist before she made contact, my hand closing mercilessly around delicate bones. She whimpered but didn’t try to pull away. Instead, she drifted closer with her whole body, her gaze never wavering from my face. Hypnotic. Stirring. Intoxicating.

  My fingers tightened around her arm, preventing her from reaching. But she might as well have put her hand on me anyway. I felt her everywhere, digging in with her nails and sharp kitten teeth while cutting me at the knees with only a look and a plea.

  “Please, don’t make me regret telling you this.” She wrapped her free hand around mine on her wrist and leaned in. “I’m feeding baby opossums. This isn’t like the bat. I know they’re joeys. Or they were. They’re nearly ready to survive on their own. They just need a couple more days to bulk up for the winter. Please, Father Magnus.” She bent over our hands, lowering her brow to my chest. “Please, don’t hurt them.”

  My muscles ached, contracting and stalling, excruciatingly rigid with the effort to hold her back. Except it wasn’t her. It was me I was holding back.

  I pulled away and gripped the doorframe behind me until the edge jabbed into my palm. “I’m not going to hurt them.”

  I can’t promise the same for you.

  “Really?” She narrowed her eyes, but hope glowed through the slits.

  “There are no rules in the student handbook about feeding wild animals.”

  “No, but I thought—”

  “Let’s go pay them a visit.”

  “Now?” Her arms dropped, hanging dormant at her sides.

  I needed out of this suffocating room. Turning on my heel, I strode into the hallway and didn’t stop until I arrived in the grove behind the main building.

  She ran a few paces behind and slowed as she caught up.

  “You know where they live.” Her fists went to her hips, and her bottom lip pushed out like an offering. “How long have you known about them?”

  “Since day one. You eat every meal out here, even when it’s raining.”

  “So what did you do?” She lowered to her knees and crawled toward the twisted root system of a large tree. “You came out here to investigate and found the cutest little—? Oh, hey there.” She dipped low to the ground, ass up, with the skirt flipped above her thighs.

  The wind must’ve caught the hem. I should’ve told her t
o fix it. The command was there, scraping across my tongue, but it didn’t emerge.

  My welts would glow like fire on her flawless, porcelain skin. My hands would leave a ring of blue around her delicate throat. My cock would stretch and tear and split her tiny pussy in half.

  I ripped my stare away before I did something irreparable.

  “I’m sorry to wake you.” She made a shushing sound at the critters. “But since you’re both up, I have someone here to meet you.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Don’t be rude.” She rose to her feet and held out her arm, drawing my attention to the fuzzy gray marsupials clinging to her cardigan.

  “You shouldn’t handle them.” I rested my fingers in my pockets, fighting an inner battle with my overheated body.

  “They’re less of a health risk than nearly every other animal in the wild. And they’re clean.” She grinned at the one on her shoulder. “Aren’t you, Willow? Always grooming yourself.” Her arresting smile shifted to me. “She thinks she’s a cat.”

  “Handling them makes them less fearful of humans. When they leave here—”

  “I know. I’ve tried to keep them off me. But they’re climbers, and since I bring them food every day, they think I’m their mom.” She sighed. “They’ve never been afraid of me.”

  For four weeks, I’d watched her retreat into this grove while weekend visitors came and went. Every student had received at least one visitor since the start of the school year. Most students had visitors every weekend.

  Not one person had come to see Tinsley.

  As we walked back to the classroom, she prattled on about the opossums, sharing stories as if they were her closest friends.

  She was lonely.

  If I looked beneath her misbehavior and sass, I would see just how deep her loneliness ran.

  She was miserable.

  Maybe that misery began long before she moved to Maine. What had she really left behind in Bishop’s Landing? Shallow friendships? A cold mansion? A world where she went unnoticed, unappreciated, and unloved?