Lessons in Sin by Pam Godwin

CHAPTER 15

TINSLEY

Aweek 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.