Page 34 of Breaking Ophelia

But not fast enough.

After five minutes, the teacher starts calling on people at random. Most of the room is legacy kids—names that have been carved into this building for generations. The rest are hangers-on, scholarship cases, and Board-experiment fuck-ups like Ophelia.

Cabot breathes before his nasally voice is unleashed, “Ophelia Morrow, what is the difference between authority and power?”

She’s caught off guard. I savor the second it takes her to recover.

She speaks, voice bored. “Authority is permission. Power is what you take when permission isn’t enough.”

Cabot blinks. I try not to laugh.

“Excellent,” he drones. “And how does one acquire power?”

She flips her pencil, balances it on her knuckle, never once looking behind her. “You find someone weaker and make them bend.”

The room shivers. I want to stand, right now, and show her how that works.

But I wait.

She keeps her posture perfect, head down. The air between us vibrates. If I reached out, I could snap her neck or her resolve, either would be satisfying.

Cabot stumbles through the rest of his questions, but the room’s attention is broken. Every time I shift, every time my breath gets a little louder, she feels it. She tries to keep her focus on the page, but her pen starts to slip, the writing less legible with each line.

She taps her foot. She bites her lip. Her body is betraying her, even if her face refuses to show it.

If the clench in her thighs is anything to note, she’s thinking about this morning. About last night.

I want that fear in her blood. I want her to think about my hand over her mouth, my cock inside her, the way I forced her to wake up with my cum in her pussy, taking root.

I let her stew in it for the whole hour.

Cabot assigns a project—partners, of course. I already know what he’ll do, because he’s a coward and a suck-up: he pairs me with Ophelia.

“Montgomery and Morrow. You’ll present first. The topic is ‘Coercion: The Invisible Architecture.’ Figure it out.”

She doesn’t look at me. She just circles the assignment in her notebook, then draws a straight line through it.

She gathers her things with mechanical speed, but I’m faster. I stand, blocking the aisle before she can slip past. She looks up, finally, and the look in her eyes makes me want to ruin her in front of everyone.

Her mouth is a flat line, but her eyes are screaming.

I lean in. “You didn’t eat lunch.”

She doesn’t answer.

“Eat before our meeting, or I’ll feed you myself. You’re losing weight and being thin doesn’t suit you.”

A flush rises on her neck. She wants to tell me to fuck off, but she doesn’t. She just moves past, brushing my arm with her shoulder.

A jolt, electric.

When she’s gone, I linger in the empty room, replaying the way her throat pulsed, the way her hand shook on the pen. I imagine, next time, making her hold still while I do whatever I want. I want her to fight. I want her to lose.

I run my tongue over my teeth and taste the ghost of her, still stuck in the creases of my memory.

Leaning against the door frame, I watch her saunter off, ignoring the world and pretending like she doesn’t want to come apart for me.

I give her a full thirty-second head start. Enough for her to think I might not follow. Enough for the hall to fill with students, voices, bodies. That’s when she relaxes, just enough to let her guard down.