Barely by Madison Faye

She's mine, she just doesn’t know it yet.

Her name is Tempest Kensington.

She’s eighteen years old.

She’s my student, and I want to know how sweet she tastes when she’s claimed for the first time.

I’m her headmaster. I’m twenty years older than her. But damn the implications. Screw the consequences. I know I’m blurring the lines, but I. Do. Not. Care.

Tempest Kensington is a grade-A brat. And she’s about to get a very thick, very firm dose of my discipline – over my knee and on hers.

Barely legal. Entirely off-limits. My temptation, my addiction, my obsession. My ruin, in a plaid skirt and knee-high socks.

It’s time for this little tease to learn exactly what happens to bad girls who look for trouble.

Sweet, filthy, and oh-so-wrong in the best kind of way. If you’re looking for something extra hot and wildly over-the-top, this one’s for you! Utterly obsessed alpha hero, sassy, untouched heroine, and enough insta-love, kindle-melting steam, and sugary-sweetness to make you beg for more.

As with all my books, this standalone novella is safe, with no cheating, and a HEA guaranteed.

Chapter 1

Christian

What a little fucking brat.

My jaw tenses as I digest the shit-storm that’s just been dumped on me by my assistant principal concerning a very particular problem student.

Suspended twice senior year — once for ditching school and smashing the shit out of a professor’s car, and the other for being caught drinking during fifth period.

This student, Jesus Christ.

I wasn’t expecting to take over as Headmaster of Thornbull Academy until this fall, but here I am barely two months into the job — a full summer earlier than expected, I might add — and I’m going to have to deal with this shit. Wonderful.

Academia is hardly the career path most guys who get out of the SEALs in one piece choose, but for me, it was a calling. After all, my dad may have been a military man, and that's the path I took young, but it was my mom who was the reader and the studious one. She taught preschool. Maybe it was a combo of both of them that’s led me from squad sergeant in Afghanistan, kicking down insurgent doors and dodging bullets, to be the firm hand of control and discipline at one of the richest, most academically focused private schools in the country. The studiousness from my mother, the discipline from my dad. The courage and firmness to carry through from the SEALs.

But like I said, I wasn’t supposed to start until fall. That was before ancient Doctor Lindon, my predecessor, passed away two months before the end of the school year and his retirement day. Not a bad way to go — quietly in your sleep next to your wife — I’ll grant him that after some of the shit I’ve seen in the Middle East. But still, it sort of put a damper on my plans to settle into the affluent seaside town of West Haven.

On top of that, Thornbull Academy is so academically prestigious, and it’s students so insanely driven, that it offers a post-senior-year, pre-college “summer semester.” For some schools, summer school is a last chance for the fuck-ups — a hail Mary for the slackers to get their shit together and graduate.

Not at Thornbull, let me tell you. At this place, it’s a way to add even more pages to a resume before you start in at Yale, or Harvard, or Cornell, or wherever. It’s a way for go-getter students to pack in as many college-level freshman credit classes as they can, so all these little valedictorians and salutatorians can hit the ground running at Ivy League schools. I mean hell, apparently last year, three guys used their summer program to build a stock-trading algorithm, and before they started college in the fall, they cashed out for a cool billion dollars.

Fuck, right? These kids are eighteen, rich, connected, and have their whole lives taken care. I mean they should be out chasing tail and drinking beers on the beach, not cramming more shit into their trust fund brains.

Not exactly the best mindset maybe for the new Headmaster, but fuck it, those are my thoughts on the matter.

I tap the desk in front of me before stretching my arms up and straining my muscles, feeling them pull against the still not-quite-familiar feel of a dress shirt and tie.

Whatever my feelings on this summer school thing though, it's my new duty to oversee it and all the students attending, all while prepping for a very big jump into the deep end come fall. Let’s just say Dr. Lindon left some big damn shoes to fill, and as progressively liberal and forward thinking as this town likes to think it is, I’ve seen the way most people around here look at my physique, or my combat record, and hell, at the tattoos that even a full suit won’t hide, and wonder just how the fuck I got a job as Headmaster.

And I’ll tell you how: because I’m a goddamn smart motherfucker.

That’s not just a boastful brag either. Stanford undergrad, top of my class and an MBA from Wharton that I worked my ass off for in-between tours. Yeah, papa may have raised a good little soldier, but mama didn’t raise no fool, that’s for damn sure.

But, this fool has a long damn summer ahead of him. Because on top of everything else, there’s this — the file on my desk.

This student.

Most of the kids in this summer program are goody-two-shoes, straight-as-an-arrow go-getters. This one is here because not taking the two classes necessary means no graduation. And seriously, this file is bad. Back-talking. Swearing at teachers. Drinking in an empty lecture hall at twelve in the afternoon. As a recently “graduated” senior, this student should be out of my hair already. Except, here we are.

I glance through the reports, and the police write-ups for the vandalism to Professor Hershman’s car last year. I mean Jesus fucking Christ, breaking the windshield was one thing, but pissing on the steering wheel afterwards?

I shake my head and drop the thick file on the desk. Yeah, this will need dealing with. Immediately.

Something catches my eye, and I frown as I turn to glance out the large windows behind my desk. There are three of them — two boys and a girl, all summer semester students. The bell’s already rung, but there they go, off behind the gymnasium, glancing around nervously.

My jaw tightens.

My blood roars.

Because right there in the mix, is my problem student.

So cavalierly bad news, leading these other two off to do God knows what behind the gym. Showing a total disregard for the rules, and moreover, my authority. Because this damn student thinks that just because they’re eighteen, and “technically” graduated, and probably from money and privilege, that they don’t need to obey my rules.

I stand, my muscles tensing, the blood running hot in my veins.

Yeah, there goes my problem student alright — flagrantly waltzing past my damn office, knowing I can see them skipping. Blatantly breaking the rules, with a goddamn smirk on their face when they do it.

…And showing a bit too much fucking thigh under that uniform skirt, I’ll say that.

That. Little. Fucking. Tease.

Oh sorry, you thought I was talking about one of the guys, didn’t you? Nope. Wrong. Neither of those two are my problem student. You see, my problem student is a she. My problem student is five foot three, one-hundred-and-five pounds of pure, tantalizing, teasing, inappropriate, irresistible, trouble. Capital fucking T.

My problem presented herself on my first day of school, two buttons undone up top, three inches rolled up below, in my office for telling Ms. Bernard, her French professor, to go to hell before storming out of the classroom.

She did it in French, at least.

But there she was, sitting in my damn office waiting for me looking every inch the Nabokov tease. Knee-high socks, blonde hair up in pigtails, and her soft, pink, pouty lips wrapped around a fingernail. Those big blue eyes had drawn up from my shoes, up my legs, up my abdomen, over my chest and up to my “tough” face — the one I used to give grunts in the desert who were hungry, tired, and out of line.

And she’d grinned. Those teasing, too perfect, too pouty, too tantalizing, and just this side of wrong lips had pulled back in a sultry little smirk.

…And I’ve been fucking hooked ever since.

Consumed. Obsessed. Addicted. One damn look and she managed to bring out every fucking alpha caveman desire to the surface. She brought out the raw masculine need in me — to claim her, to corrupt her, to make her mine. She brought out the depraved pervert in me — the part of me that wants to wrap those pigtails in my fists and use them to pull those soft little lips down over my throbbing cock. The part of me that wants to spread those long, lithe legs, grab that pert little ass, and drive every inch of my dick into her tight, sweet little pussy until I’m sure she’s ruined for any other man.

Forget easing into my new job. Hell, forget getting a damn minute of work done or even being able to fucking sleep at night. My waking thoughts are filled with her doing all sorts of dirty things to me, and in my dreams, I’m doing every single one of them back to her.

Her name is Tempest Kensington.

She’s eighteen years old.

She’s my student.

And I want to know what sounds she makes when she comes. I want to know how tight she’d feel as I emptied every drop of my sticky cum deep inside her fertile young womb.

She’s off to Harvard this fall, but until then, over the summer, she and her track record are my problem. My very big, very tempting, very off-limits problem.

I don’t realize I’m gripping my hand in a fist until I feel the pencil in my fingers snap in two places. I blink out of my filthy daydreams, dropping the pencil into the trash by my desk and turning to watch her walk off behind the gym with those two shit-heads.

I feel my blood burn to a boil.

I could be reading the situation wrong, but I don’t care. And I’m probably not. Teenage guys are pieces of shit, and pieces of shit smell trouble like Tempest Kensington a mile away. A million scenarios run through my head, all of them involving those assholes putting their hands on her — on what's mine.

Because she is mine. She just doesn’t know it yet. She will bend to my authority. And I will taste that sweet fucking candy pussy of hers.

Barely legal. Entirely inappropriate. My temptation, my addiction, my need. My ruin, in a plaid skirt and knee-high socks.

I whirl on my heel, slamming her file shut on my desk and storming for the door. Time to start this summer semester off right.

I’m claiming what’s mine.

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