Daddy’s Naughty Little Lesson by Penny Snoak
CHAPTER THREE
Meghan
“I dunno, Meg. I think you might be playing with fire.”
“Hot,” I say, reflexively, lying on my bed in my dorm room, with my laptop open to a video chat with my best friend back in Boston.
We discuss the current situation and the recon I’ve done in my first class with Professor Nigel Cartwright. I have reported that he is decent-looking, not a complete ogre, and I can visualize myself fucking him brainless as a regular arrangement in exchange for a passing grade in his class.
“I’m serious. It’s not just teachers who get in trouble for this kind of shit. You could be trashing your entire academic career.”
“Bethany, you cannot even imagine how little I care about my academic career.” I throw the air quotes up around the word like it’s a concept that’s just been made up. Truthfully, I could do better, and I know I could, but I don’t want to. I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to take a year off and do a backpacking tour around Europe. I’m only here because my parents forced me and bribed me with a car.
I can feel Bethany’s disapproval radiating from the east coast. “Have you even Googled this guy? Who told you to get into this particular class? What if it’s just some huge catfishing thing, and someone’s setting you up to get expelled?”
“Beth, have you been getting into your brother’s shitty weed again? Because this is some weapons-grade paranoia, you’re rocking here, babe.”
Bethany scoffs on her end, and I hear her fingers clatter over her keyboard. Fucking gamers. “I’m going to Google him. What was the last name? Carter?”
“Cartwright. He has a very subtle Daddy vibe, which I am extremely into. I’m going to wear pigtails to class tomorrow and see if that gets a reaction.”
“Oh, ew. Meg. Ew.”
“Don’t knock it until you try it, Beth. That’s all I’m saying.” But I’ve given myself an idea. “Maybe that’s how I’ll do it. Just sort of gradually start ramping it up. The first day, pigtails. On the second day, a Hello Kitty t-shirt. On the third day, a little schoolgirl skirt. On the fourth day, Mary Janes and kneesocks. Finally, on the fifth day, a big gigantic lollipop---”
“I hope you hear yourself right now. You are disgusting. I don’t know why we’re friends.”
“Because your life is boring, and mine is great,” I tell her smugly. “Find anything good?”
“He used to be on the rowing team at Oxford. Like thirty years ago.”
Bethany is more intelligent than I am. That’s why we’re still friends. She’s also better at finding things out about people. This isn’t the first time I’ve had her do an informal background check on someone I’m interested in. I sit up in bed and scoot around to face my laptop. “What? Lemme see.”
She sends me a link to an old website, the sort built by well-meaning proto internet users, back when Geocities and LiveJournal were still a thing. This page is meticulously crafted with the best technology the late nineties had to offer. Against a dignified woodgrain background, it commemorates the ten-year reunion of this particular rowing team. I pore through the page until I find one with the name Cartwright in italics beneath it and then zoom in on a grainy photo of Professor Cartwright in the late 80s. He’s probably my age, maybe a little older. He’s blond and slender and handsome, squinting in the sun as he smiles at the photographer.
“I like him better now,” I admit. “Did you look at his page on the university website? Mmm, Daddy.”
In the corner of the screen, picture in picture, Beth cringes visibly. “If you’re gonna be gross, I’m gonna go.”
I grin directly into the camera and run my tongue over my teeth as I inform her, “I’m about to start being really gross.”
“Bye, Meg.”
The call ends abruptly, and I’m left staring at my reflection on the black screen.
I scroll through the rest of the website, but it’s mostly boring. I go back to the picture of ol’ Nigel (young Nigel) from back in the day and study it some more. I find myself wondering if he knew back then what he wanted to do with his life. There’s my entire lifetime and then some between us. He’s easily old enough to be my father. I wonder if he has kids of his own, but the idea suddenly repulses me and kills the beginnings of my arousal.
I do some more idle searching, but I’m not as good at it as Beth is, and I don’t turn up anything I haven’t already found in the course of deciding to join his class. I tab back to the university faculty page and read through his sparse bio for what seems like the dozenth time. It doesn’t reveal anything about the man personally, except that he likes to play tennis.
I wonder if he’s going to like fucking me. I close my laptop and climb off the bed to start planning my outfit for tomorrow.
The bottom drawer of my dorm-issued dresser has a built-in lock and key for valuables. What I have inside isn’t valuable, so much as it is private. I kneel in front of it and unlock the latch. I was exaggerating when I started planning my outfit for tomorrow, but not by much. I smile to myself as I unpack the contents of the drawer. Professor Cartwright isn’t going to know what hit him.
