William turned around to face me. “You were three when she died, right?”
“Yeah.”
When he appeared to be doing math in his head, I laughed. “Ansel and I are half brother and sister. My dad remarried four years after my mom passed away.”
At what must have been my apparent disgust, William asked, “Hmm, a true wicked step-mother?”
“Pretty much. She was this rodeo groupie who saw my dad and this farm as a meal ticket. Even though he was still grieving my mom, he was a man with needs, and here was a twenty-year-old throwing herself at him.”
“Let me guess. She got pregnant and trapped him?”
“Pretty much. Not that my dad didn’t want more kids. He just wanted them with a woman who wanted to be a mother. Wendy didn’t.”
“How long did she stick around?”
“Until my dad got his official MD diagnosis and was no longer able to compete.”
“How old was Ansel?”
“Just three.”
“Another one of your bad ‘threes’, huh?”
I sucked in a breath at the fact he had remembered that. William read my surprise. “No. I didn’t forget. It also hasn’t escaped me what today is.”
“August 3rd,” I murmured.
“Yes, it is.” William turned back to look at one of the pictures of me sitting on a horse with a toddler Ansel on my lap. “You’ve pretty much been a mother to him, haven’t you?”
“Yes. My grandmother helped out a lot.”
William leaned back against the stall door. “That’s interesting.”
“How do you mean?”
“One would think because of the life you’ve led—and continue to lead—that you would want to give up the control for a while and be a submissive. Yet you continue to remain controlled through domination.”
“That’s because I’m not a true dominant. Being a Domme was a job.”
“Deep down, you know you’re a true Domme.”
“Only with you. I’ve never felt anything with it but with you.” William reached for me, but I stepped back. “I can’t—we can’t.”
“We could yesterday.”
“Yesterday you weren’t my boss. Everything has changed.”
“Nothing has changed about the way I feel about you,” William countered.
I yanked my fingers through my hair in frustration. “There are some lines you cannot cross, and this is one of them. If someone found out, it could ruin our reputations. The one thing I had drilled into my head in my teaching classes was how important your reputation was when it came to a job. I’ve worked too hard for this to lose it.”
“What do we do now? Just pretend like nothing ever happened between us?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“You’re going to have to.” When William started to protest, I shook my head. “Deep down, you know that we can’t pursue this. You’ve sat through enough professional education classes to know how dangerous it would be.”
“Yes, I do. But I came out here hoping that no matter how I felt about it, you would want to give it a chance—give us a chance.”
“There is no us.”
William flinched. “You don’t honestly believe that, do you?”
“A weekend hook-up hardly constitutes something meaningful.”
With a shake of his head, William countered, “Both you and I know it was more than just a hook-up.”
I shrugged. “Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe even if you weren’t my boss, we would have discovered after a few weeks that what we had was just physical.”
An expression of disgust mingled with sadness came over William’s face. “If that’s what you want to believe, I can’t change your mind.” He started for the barn door before pausing. “You don’t have to worry about me saying anything else or things being weird at work. You deserve the best first year of teaching, and I won’t do anything to interfere with that.”
“Thank you,” I murmured.
“Good-bye, Sophie.”
“Good-bye, William.”
As I watched him walk out the barn door, pain shot through my chest, crippling my lungs. I fought hard to breathe. Although there was no other choice but to tell him good-bye, it sure hurt like hell.
The next few weeks of school rolled along. Each day I was in the classroom, the more it began to feel like second nature. As I stood before each group of students, I couldn’t help feeling like I had truly found what I was supposed to be doing in life. Being a Domme had certainly given me the training I needed to stand before a class with confidence and assurance, and it didn’t take but a few days for the students to realize that regardless of me being young and new, I would not be shaken.
Of course, there was one person who rattled my confidence. And that was William. It took a will of iron to maintain my control whenever I saw him. After the day he came to my house, we had diligently worked to maintain our distance from each other. Even though he had promised things wouldn’t be weird, they were.
For me, there was something about seeing him outside the club that still jarred me. It wasn’t just about him being a constant reminder of my former life—the one I wanted to leave behind. More than anything, I felt a physical reaction each and every time I saw him. I remembered in aching detail what it felt like to have his lips and tongue on my breasts and between my legs, and the way he filled and stretched me with his cock. It’s not so easy to forget the man who gave you the best sex you’ve ever had, least of all the one who somehow managed to chisel away the finely constructed wall you had built around you.
So far, we were giving the best professional performance of our lives. If I ran into him in the office or in the hallways, he always gave me a polite smile and hello—the same he did to anyone else. But I could see past his carefully constructed façade. He was struggling just as much as I was.
A gentle stream of rain drizzled against the window beside my desk. The only sound echoing through the room was the scratch of my pen against paper as I worked my way through grading a mound of narrative essays. The last class had left around ten minutes ago, and now I found myself in my mid-morning planning period.
The beep of the intercom over my head caused me to jump in my chair. “Ms. Jameson?” a female voice questioned.
“Yes?” I called, as I rubbed my chest to still my racing heart.
“Dr. Foster needs to see you in his office immediately.”
A jolt of anxiety rippled through me. “I’ll be right there.”
The click and clack of my heels echoed along the hallway tile. As I pushed through the glass door of the office, I forced myself to take a few calming breaths. Absentmindedly, I spoke to a few people on my way to the back. When I got to William’s secretary’s door, I rapped lightly.
Mrs. Cleary glanced up from whatever she was doing on the computer. I must not have been hiding my anxiousness because she gave me a reassuring smile. “It’s all right, honey. It’s not about your teaching. It’s your brother.”
My moment of relief was fleeting as anxiety and worry once again pricked itself over my body. I automatically thought the worst and blurted, “Did he get hurt?”
With a sheepish grin, she said, “Actually, he’s in trouble.”
The panic pulsing through my body slowly evaporated to be replaced by anger. “I see.” I motioned my hand down the hall. “May I go in?”
Mrs. Cleary nodded. When I started down the hall, her words momentarily froze me. “Go easy on him, honey. He’s dealing with a lot…just like you.”
The reference to my dad caused my anger to momentarily dissipate. The familiar ache of sadness filled my chest, causing me to fight for breath. Unable to look at Mrs. Cleary, I merely nodded in acknowledgement at her comment. Once I had regulated my breathing, I made my way to William’s office.
When I opened the door, my gaze spun around the room. William sat behind his desk with Ansel in a chair in front of him. At the sight of me, William stood up. “Ms. Jameson, thank you for coming. Please have a seat.” He motioned for me to take the chair next to Ansel.
Ignoring him, I marched across the room to stand in front of Ansel. “What have you done?” I demanded.
He snorted. “Way to have my back, sis.”
“Excuse me for jumping to conclusions, but in my experience, one doesn’t go to the principal’s office for good news.” When he opened his mouth to protest, I held up my hand. “Don’t try arguing that you could’ve been here about a scholarship. Mrs. Cleary told me you were in trouble.”
Ansel then turned to look at me. The left side of his face was a mess of cuts and scratches. I gasped. “What happened?”
William cleared his throat. “Have a seat—”
“Don’t tell me what to do. You need to tell me exactly how my brother got hurt!” I snapped.
William’s dark eyes flashed with both surprise and something darker—something that momentarily made me forget my anger and my concern for Ansel. I had somehow forgotten my position in the dynamic I now found myself in, and instead, I was playing the Domme and barking out orders.
“Jesus, Soph, calm down,” Ansel said.