“So what?”
“I can’t sit with you every day at lunch, Cadence. People might start to wonder,” Mr. Connelly replied.
“And you’d rather eat with her,” I added.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” It was the second time he said it, and it sent me over the edge.
“I’m not being ridiculous!” I snapped.
“Cadence, I have work to do,” Mr. Connelly replied. He sounded bored.
Oh, hell no.
“So what? You’re tired of having a teenage girlfriend now? Wanna go bang some loser high school math teacher instead?” I spat.
Mr. Connelly picked up his pencil and started working. It infuriated me.
“I saw the way you were looking at her!” I screamed.
“Do you wanna get us both in trouble?” Mr. Connelly hissed. “Lower your voice.”
“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child,” I spat.
“Then stop acting like one,” he countered.
“I’m not! I’m calling you out for being an asshole!”
“She’s a work colleague, Cadence. Get some perspective. You know I don’t like her. This has to do with your insecurities. Your out-of-control jealousy. I should have been prepared for this.” He dropped the pencil and walked over to me.
“Prepared for what? The fact that I react like a typical eighteen-year-old girl? Well, I’m sooo sorry I can’t be mature enough for you! It’s obvious you’re so much wiser and centered than I am!”
“Evidently.”
“You’re a condescending jerk!”
“And you’re acting like a little bitch.”
I slapped his face. Hard. So hard, in fact, that he hissed, then worked his jaw side to side to ease the pain.
He grabbed my upper arm. “Do that again and I’ll fuck that eighteen-year-old * of yours right here in this room.”
“What?!”
Mr. Connelly yanked me into the storage closet and slammed the door.
“What, Cadence? Are you really gonna try to act offended? I bet if I slipped my hand in your panties, I’d find out you weren’t.”
I raised my hand to him again, and he caught my wrist above my head.
“That’s getting old. And I warned you. You think this is some movie?”
He trapped my arms behind my back and pulled me close against his chest.
“Is that what you think?” he cooed. It was sultriness and arrogance rolled into one. “You wanna turn this into a movie?”
He crushed his mouth to mine, and I bit his lower lip. I couldn’t blame it on instinct. I did that shit on purpose.
“Fuck!” he hissed, drawing back to look down at my face.
I struggled against him trying to free my hands, but he held my wrists firmly with one hand while his other went to the back of my head. He pulled my hair hard, forcing my head back to an almost unnatural angle. I whimpered.
“I want you to kiss me, Cadence. Without biting me.”
He set his mouth on mine once more, and I surrendered to the kiss. I was completely at his mercy with my head tilted at such a sharp degree. He pried my mouth open with his tongue, tasting me violently, sucking my bottom lip until it ached. I whimpered again.
He released me and spun me around, forcing me up against the back wall. His hands went to the button of my jeans, and I didn’t fight him. I didn’t want to. Something about his kiss changed my entire perspective. He didn’t want Ms. Gibbons. He wanted me. He loved me. And he was about to prove it.
He yanked my jeans and panties down my legs, letting them rest around my ankles. I heard the unbuckling of his belt, and then reality barged in, loud and hostile.
“Mr. Connelly, we’re at school,” I whispered.
“I don’t give a fuck,” he said.
It was the second time he said “fuck.” He never said that word, and it scared me. I saw him out of control for the first time.
“Hold on tight, Cadence,” he said, and I felt his arm reach around my lower abdomen. He hoisted me clear off the floor, feet dangling inches from the cold tile.
“Mr. Connelly, I don’t think—!”
“Cadence, for Christ’s sake. Stop talking!” He plunged himself inside me.
I gasped at the sudden impalement, my body slippery with arousal from our fight. What was wrong with me that a fight made me sexually excited? Or perhaps it wasn’t the fight. Perhaps it was Mr. Connelly’s kiss, his anger, his determination to do me in this closet whether I wanted it or not.
“God, you feel amazing! So tight,” he breathed, pumping me hard from behind while I clutched desperately at the wall.
I felt myself slipping and grabbed at a shelf above me, hanging on while he used my body in a new way. It was rough, but not like the forcefulness he’d used in the past. This was pissed off roughness, and I swear he meant to fuck the bitch right out of me. There was nothing poetic or beautiful about the way he did it. It was raw and animal. Deep, dark masculine desire. And my body responded to it, molded to it, yielded to it.
It didn’t even take long.
I. Came. Hard. But I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut. It was desperately unfair because staying quiet seemed to compound the intensity of my orgasm, and I thought I would die. I thrashed about wildly, unintentionally encouraging his orgasm, and he came in me with a strained cry from somewhere deep in his throat.
He continued to hold me suspended in the air after it was over, breathing heavily.
“Cadence? This’ll be a mess,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Can you reach those paper towels above you?”
I grabbed the roll.
“Tear one off,” he said, and I did what I was told.
He took the paper towel from me and placed it between my legs.
“Ready?”
“For what?”
He set me on my feet at the same time that he pulled out of me, and I felt the instant ooze of semen. I was mortified. We’d always used a condom; I’d never felt what it was like to have semen drip from my body. I clutched the paper towel between my legs, facing the wall because I was too embarrassed to turn around. I heard Mr. Connelly buckle his belt.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
I nodded.
“Did I hurt you?”
I shook my head.
“Will you look at me?”