Lessons in Sin - Pam Godwin Page 0,4
to back up that threatening scowl.
Was he angry? Or did he look at all his students like he wanted to break them over his knee?
“What are you doing?” Pulse racing, I continued to retreat until my spine bounced off the doorframe. “Back off. Don’t touch me.”
He didn’t lift a finger. No physical contact between us. But he didn’t ease up, either. His steps were deliberate and unhurried as he forced me into the hall with nothing more than his proximity.
I couldn’t ignore how tiny and breakable I felt next to him, how physically inferior I was compared to his strength and size. But it wasn’t just his unexpected physique that had me seeking distance. It was the meanness in his eyes. The unholy promise in them.
This wasn’t a teacher who gave a fuck about my circumstances. He was a sick, twisted bully who got off on intimidating his students.
How many girls had he reformed? Brainwashed? Abused? How many lives had he broken?
The backs of my legs hit the bench in the hall, toppling my balance. My bottom collided with the seat, and he dove in, bending over me with a hand splayed on the wall beside my head.
Don’t cower. You can handle whatever he dishes out.
“I’m going to say this only once.” He thrust his other hand, palm up, between us. “Give me your phone.”
My insides shriveled at the sound of his voice. A terse command that tolerated no argument. A gravelly timbre that vibrated in my chest. A sculpted mouth that dragged me into the darkness.
The corridor faded away as I stared at the brutal beauty of his face. He was close, so goddamn up in my space that I felt the heat of his breath, and oh my fuck, he smelled good. Seductively dark and woodsy, like exotic incense and something more. Something carnal and manly, unlike anything sold in a designer bottle. My nose rejoiced in the aroma, my nostrils flaring, taking deep pulls, savoring.
Snap out of it.
I held my breath and averted my eyes. What was happening to me? I couldn’t be in thrall to a man who meant to hurt me. Nausea swirled, stirring icy fear in my stomach.
He didn’t need words to scare the shit out of me. His nearness alone frazzled my nerves all to hell.
I just needed him to leave, and the quickest way to make that happen was to give him what he wanted.
Tugging the phone from my pocket, I slapped it in his waiting hand.
I knew that in a couple of hours I was going to find myself lying in a strange bed, scared and alone, cursing my decision to surrender my connection to the outside world. My phone was my lifeline to my brother.
Keaton was annoyingly overprotective of me, but only because he cared. He was the one I turned to when I needed help, words of advice, or a shoulder to lean on.
I was going to need him more than anything tonight.
My chest ached as I watched the phone vanish in Father Magnus’s pocket. Out of my reach.
He returned to the classroom and paused just inside, his hand resting on the doorframe. Every sinew in my body was strung tight as he glanced over his shoulder and met my gaze.
I expected indifference, but what I saw in his expression was worse.
His eyes glinted with triumph.
He thought he’d won. He thought, from here on out, I would cower and cease resisting, that I would be malleable and easy to control. He thought he had my capitulation.
As if.
He’d never crossed swords with a Constantine.
My destiny was of my own making, and I was willing to ruin my reputation to get the hell out of here. If he stood in my way, I would take him down with me.
“I promise you this.” I squared my shoulders and stood, facing him head-on. “I’m going to make your life a living hell.”
“Hell is fast approaching, little girl. But I assure you, it’s not coming for me.”
With a cruel twist of his lips, he stepped into the classroom and shut the door in my face.
CHAPTER 3
TINSLEY
Standing in the corridor, I pressed the heels of my hands to my eyelids and waited for the threat of tears to dissipate.
Tinsley Constantine was a lot of things—and sometimes, she referred to herself in the third person—but she wasn’t a crybaby.
Why didn’t they ever talk about my finer points on social media?
They don’t know me.
No one knew the real me. Not even my friends in Bishop’s Landing. They