Lessons in Sin

by Pam Godwin

  But every suit of armor had a chink. I was equal parts determined and terrified to find it.

  That night, as I put away my new clothes, a knock sounded on my door. I opened it to find Nevada standing on the other side.

  “I heard your brother was here today.” She strolled in without invitation. “Everyone’s talking about him.”

  I didn’t give a fuck about their girly crushes. “I’m busy, Nevada. What do you want?”

  “Aren’t you going to welcome me back? It’s the least you can do after getting me suspended.”

  “Uh…” I wrinkled my nose. “You got the wrong girl.”

  “I know you told Father Magnus about Morning Worship.”

  “Wrong again.” I snatched a shirt off the bed and draped it on a hanger.

  “He ran that path for years. Then you showed up. The morning you caught us watching him was the last time he ran. Because you fucking told him!”

  I could tell her the truth, that it was Carrie who ratted them out, but…

  “I’m not a snitch.” I grabbed another shirt. “Tucker said Father Magnus runs with the football team now. Maybe he just wanted to change up his routine.”

  “Yeah, don’t even get me started on Tucker. He was dating Alice, you know. But you came in and fucked that up, too.”

  “I’m not loving the accusatory tone you’re taking with me. I didn’t tell anyone about Morning Worship, and I’m not out to steal Alice’s boyfriend. I didn’t even know they were dating—”

  “You told Father Magnus I had pills in my nightstand.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t play dumb. I know you saw them when you were pilfering through our rooms and stealing Alice’s cookies.” She thrust a finger at my face. “You got me suspended for two weeks!”

  “You’re so far wrong it’s like you’re trying to point fingers through your butthole. Just stop.”

  “You’ve been spending a lot of time with Father Magnus.”

  “Yeah. He’s my teacher.”

  “You know what happens to a teacher and his student when they get caught messing around together?”

  “Well, since you told me you have plans for that holy creature the next time you get him alone, I’m guessing you know the answer to that question.”

  “He’ll go to prison, and you’ll forever be labeled a priest’s whore. Can you imagine the tabloids?”

  “Cool story.” I stepped to the doorway and waved her through it. “Have a nice night, Nevada. Somewhere else.”

  “I won’t forget this, Keaton’s sister.” She marched into the hall, tossing a scowl over her shoulder. “Karma’s coming for you.”

  CHAPTER 15

  TINSLEY

  A week later, I sat in the third row of Magnus’s classroom, listening as his deep baritone oozed sex into the statistical analysis of economic relationships.

  Not sure when I started thinking of him as Magnus instead of Father Magnus. I only knew that it was crucial in helping me separate the man from the authority figure, mentally speaking.

  Separating the man from his job in the literal sense was a whole other story.

  There were fifteen girls in this econometrics class, including me. As he bent down to grab the paper he dropped, all of them stared at his ass, including me.

  Chiseled perfection. There was no other way to describe those taut gluteus muscles. As a matter of fact, chiseled perfection could be used to describe all of Magnus Falke. Except his personality. For that, I would lose the perfection and just go with chiseled.

  Or squared.

  Old-fashioned and lame.

  But also mysterious.

  He was an enigma to me, and that made him dangerously intriguing. I wanted his secrets. I longed to know what corralled him into priesthood and prevented him from returning to his former sexual self.

  My internet searches yielded nothing but praise for his past achievements. Self-made billionaire? One hundred percent. He’d gotten rich by flipping businesses. In essence, he bought flailing corporations, fixed them up, and made an astronomical profit when he sold them.

  By day, he was the king of the corporate world. By night, he was New York’s most eligible bachelor.

  There were very few photos of him as if someone diligently erased them from the internet. But the ones I’d found showed him wearing suits and tuxedos, attending extravagant parties, each taken with a different woman on his arm. Always older ladies, closer to my mother’s age. All perfectly built and strikingly beautiful. Fashion models. Beauty queens. Celebrities.

  Looking at those pictures made my stomach turn. He could and did have any woman he wanted, and I hated that for reasons I refused to examine.

  Even now, dressed in his priestly black on black, he was an effigy of desire and temptation. Shadowed jawline, wicked mean mouth, brown hair falling over his forehead as he crouched to the floor. Then he straightened, turning. His lashes lifted to half-mast, and his piercing blue eyes landed directly on me.

  Bedroom eyes.

  I imagined they looked just like that, sensual and heated, when he was in the throes of orgasm.

  Now that I had his rapt attention, I slid my finger between my lips and slowly sucked from tip to knuckle. As I withdrew it, I painted the wetness from my mouth along my slack bottom lip, rolling my tongue a little and—

  “Class dismissed.” He clipped out the words, never taking his eyes off my lips.

  I smiled.

  He scowled.

  “We still have ten minutes.” Carrie, so desperate to be the teacher’s pet, didn’t move from her chair.

  “Get out!” His roar rattled the windows and cleared the room in under three seconds.

  I might’ve peed a little, but I forced myself to remain seated. Forced my gaze to stay with his.

  Something had changed since the night he returned my phone. I’d deliberately shown him my underwear, and just like that, he’d stopped punishing me with labor that put me on my knees.

  No more floor scrubbing.

  All week, I’d argued through his lessons, spat obscene words at his face, and engaged in my usual ornery way. But each infraction was met with forced prayers and Bible study.

  Boring.

  My sore knees were happy about the reprieve from scrubbing, but sitting in this classroom reading passages of scripture wasn’t doing him or me any favors. It only inspired me to be naughtier.

  Theoretically, I represented everything he should avoid. My age, his vow, our student–teacher relationship—so many obstacles. I was forbidden, prohibited by state and church, taboo in every sense of the word.

  Not to mention that the Constantines, one of the most powerful families in the country, had threatened him more than once.

  I had to separate him from all that, physically, emotionally, and mentally, so that he could become engrossed with me. I needed to be too seductive to resist.

  Last month, I would’ve never believed I could do it. But during Keaton’s visit—oh man, my brother would die if he knew this—his reaction to the way Magnus looked at me gave me perspective. Very little sneaked past Keaton. He knew how to read people, and if he suspected Magnus was having inappropriate thoughts about me, he was onto something.

  It made me feel desirable.

  So today, my forty-first day at Sion Academy, I came to class prepared to play dirty.

  The door shut behind the last student, leaving Magnus and me and the crackling tension in the air.

  “Here.” He pressed a finger to the desk in the front row, indicating I was to move to that spot without question or delay.

  I took my time. Stretched my arms. Gathered my books. Rolled my hips. Tried to exude seduction in a fugly, green plaid skirt that hung like a sack and clashed with my complexion. But hey, I had to work with what I had.

  When I finally lowered into the chair before him, I returned my finger to my lip, stroking the wet flesh.

  His hand slammed down on the desk, making me jump. Then his face moved in. Dark
brows, firm lips, unwavering glare. Furious. Terrifying.

  Panic spiked, but I leaned forward to meet him head-on, heedless of the warnings emitting from his stiff posture.

  I wanted this too badly.

  I wanted to go home, and at the same time, I wanted to grab his collar, rip it from his throat, yell at him to fly apart and give me everything he hid from the world. I wanted the man who roared behind those eyes, not the priest who imprisoned him.

  “What are you doing?” His voice abraded with unconcealed rage and untold secrets.

  “All that sexy talk about economic regression models was getting under my skin. The sounds you make with numbers and formulas raise my temperature and lower my inhibitions.” I slid a hand over my skirt, between my legs, and tried not to blush. “You make me wet, Father Magnus.”

  “You’re playing with fire.”

  “You’re about as fiery as an iceberg. I think what you mean to say is…” I directed my eyes at his groin. “I’m playing with the South Pole?”

  “Not a chance in hell.” He released a chilling laugh, the sound pelting my skin like splinters of ice. “The fact that you think I would stray for you, that I would break my promise to God for an overindulged, ungrateful heathen…” He shook his head, disgust carved in his features. “You’re just like all the others, and here’s a spoiler. None of them succeed. I will not sin for you. I will not violate my vows for you. Never.”

  Pain flared in my chest. It consumed. It dragged me under a dark tide.

  “Sending me home is sinless,” I said quietly. “Add that to your vows.”

  He stepped away, snagged a Bible from the rack, and thunk. It dropped on my lap.

  “Pick up where you left off last night.” Acid stained his voice as he stalked to his desk.

  The school day was officially over. While the main building emptied of all students and teachers, this was where I remained every single afternoon.

  Because I didn’t know when to keep my mouth shut.

  He seemed content to endure these daily punishments with me. Sitting in his chair, he’d already plunged into his work on the laptop. This would go on for the rest of the evening. Him, typing away. Me, reading the New Testament out loud.

  Except I couldn’t do it again. Not another night. Not another second.

  “I don’t hear you reading.” His eyes remained on the laptop.

  “I only read this stuff because I don’t have a choice. But you can’t force your faith on me. These are your beliefs, not mine.”

  “I still don’t hear you reading.”

  Last night, I ended on the Gospel of Mark, but I wouldn’t be picking up there as he wanted. Instead, I opened the Bible to Ezekiel 23:20.

  Blanking my face, I read aloud. “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.”

  “Wrong passage.”

  “This is your book. Besides, I don’t think this part’s so wrong. Genitals like donkeys? Emissions like horses? Sounds poetic to me. Evocative.” I met his unfriendly eyes. “Why can’t you be more like Ezekiel? He was a dirty little prophet.”

  “Turn to the Gospel of Mark.”

  “Okay, hang on. This one’s disturbing.” I sensed him rising to his feet and approaching as I quickly flipped to Deuteronomy 22:20. “If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.” I closed the book and stared at the ominous black cover. “It’s stories like this that make it difficult for modern, liberated women to read the Bible.”

  I felt him above me like an overcast sky. Rotating thunderclouds. Static in the air. A looming storm about to fuck up my world.

  Slowly tipping my head up, I watched with fascinated horror as his chest expanded and his hands furled into fists. What was that expression? His lips formed a smile, but it wasn’t a smile at all. It was skin-deep and scary.

  What lay beneath was a man breaking his restraints.

  Stiffly, he turned and prowled toward the door as if it were either that or wrap his hands around my throat.

  I wanted his hands.

  Didn’t I?

  Watching him walk away filled me with uncertainty. There was something off about him. He held himself differently, his composure impossibly colder, less human.

  My mind raced as he reached for the closed door.

  Then, in a tone as black as Satan’s abyss, he said, “You foolish girl, all you had to do was read the correct passage.”

  My hackles bristled. “Here’s a passage for you, straight from the Gospel of Tinsley. Thou shalt fuck off.”

  He stood there for a moment with his back to me, one hand on the door handle, the other shifting in front of him, near his groin. Adjusting himself?

  I held my breath.

  He locked the door.

  Click.

  A teeny sound, one that exploded into a swarm of bees inside me.

  CHAPTER 16

  TINSLEY

  Breathing wasn’t an option. All the air in the classroom had fled.

  Magnus removed the phone from his pocket, tapped the screen, and moments later, church music strummed in my ears. Loudly.

  I didn’t know the name of the song, but I heard it every morning during Mass—the slow chime of bells, haunting flute, and hypnotic thrum of a harp.

  In church, it sounded peaceful.

  In this room, with him, it rang of pain and damnation.

  Paralyzed, I didn’t take my eyes off him as he walked toward me in a slow, menacing manner.

  I suppressed the need to swallow and jutted my chin higher.

  For six weeks, I’d poked and pushed and drove the beast to the edge. I wanted to watch him unravel so completely he would have no other option than to send me home. I was here for the ruination. Mine. His. No matter how badly it hurt.

  This could’ve been so much easier. He could’ve gotten rid of me on day one, but his arrogance stood in the way. Now, we would both pay the price.

  He set down the phone, the ghostly music pealing around us. He didn’t try to speak over it. Instead, his hand shot to my hair, fingers closing around the roots, and with a force of aggression that emptied my lungs, he swung me out of the chair.

  My hips slammed into the desk as he threw me face down across the surface. The rough treatment should’ve panicked me, but I loved the feel of his iron grip, the heat of his legs against my backside, and his single-minded focus on teaching me a lesson.

  I wanted his lessons in sin.

  Stars danced across my vision as he shoved me harder against the desk. Then he was on me, his whiskered jaw scratching my cheek, his heavy frame folding around my back, tucking me against him as he panted in my ear.

  “I tried to protect you.” He curled his fingers around my throat and scraped his teeth against my jaw. “I tried, and now, it’s too late. I won’t be able to stop. Not with you.”

  Every thought, every snarky retort, died with my breath. The collar of his fingers around my throat squeezed harder, sending my nails across the desk, scratching, breaking, my entire body fighting for sips of oxygen.

  “I’m not a liar, Tinsley.” He lowered his free hand to the front of my thighs and gathered my uniform in his fist, dragging the hem up my legs. “But I lied to you once. I’m interested in everything beneath your skirt. Every hole. Every drop of blood. Don’t make a sound.”

  Holy sweet Lord Jesus. He was going to fuck me. For once, I would do every damn thing he told me to do. I wouldn’t make a sound.

  At my nod, he released my throat. Then his weight was gone, taking all the heat with him.

  Turning my head, I clutched my neck and angled my chin upward to gulp air into my lungs. Standing behind me, he wasn’t looking at my face. His eyes were fixed on my ass.

  He lifted my skirt.

  The material flipped over my back, and goosebumps stampeded acr
oss my skin. Bare skin.

  No panties.

  Yeah, I’d come prepared.

  His outrage was immediate.

  “You’ve been like this all day?” His voice roared, his expression thunder, booming, deafening in his anger.

  “You said you didn’t want to see my underwear again.”

  So I’d stopped wearing them, holding out with wicked hope that he would get an eyeful the next time I scrubbed the floor. Well, he was getting an eyeful now, and it produced a quivery, satisfying rush of warmth between my legs.

  He was right. I craved his attention. Good or bad, positive or negative, platonic or sexual, I was crying for it.

  His heated gaze gave it to me, never leaving my exposed backside as his hands fell to his belt. In a swift movement, the leather strap pulled free and dangled from his fist. Then…

  Crack!

  I lay there, suspended in that split second of shock between the strike in my ears and the pain it would bring. With my neck craned, I watched in frozen silence as he reared back the belt and swung again.

  The second blow landed just as the fire from the first erupted. It spread outward, radiating across my buttocks and stabbing deeply and with precision directly into my bones.

  Mouth dry, muscles locked, I gasped without sound.

  Then he beat the unholy hell out of me.

  The instrumental church music played on. His strikes kept time with the toll of the bells, and his labored breaths built in crescendo with the flute.

  I couldn’t breathe at all. My teeth sank into the insides of my cheeks, and the metallic taste of blood wet my tongue. The urge to reach back and protect my burning butt was enormous. Instead, I clutched the edge of the desk and focused on him.

  The unfazably frigid priest was gone, and in his place was a feral, ravenous, vengeful god hell-bent on punishing my ass. He grunted through every hit, his teeth clenched and bared, and the sounds of his breathing so heavy and fast he drowned out the music.

  I’d never heard or seen a man so worked up. And I was the source of that. The fuel for his fire. I was freeing him.