Page 11 of Dark Notes

“Are you…?” He glances at the hall behind me and returns to my face. “You weren’t at the staff meeting this morning.”

“Staff meeting?” Realization punches me in the gut.

He thinks I’m a teacher, and now he’s looking at me like guys do, his gaze dragging over my body and arousing a twisted sickness in my belly. It reminds me how different I look than other girls my age and how much I hate those differences.

I pull my satchel over my chest, hiding my most noticeable parts. “I’m not…” I clear my throat and force my feet toward the nearest desk. “I’m a student. Piano.”

“Of course.” He stands, hands slipping into his pockets, voice gruff. “Sit down.”

His stark, icy eyes follow me, and goddammit, I don’t want to be intimidated by them. I attempt to fortify my swift steps with the confidence I felt walking in, but my legs are wobbly.

As I lower the satchel beside a vacant desk, his impatience thunders louder, sharper. “Hurry up!”

I drop into the chair, hands trembling and my heartbeat a heavy hammer in my head. If I were stronger, more confident, I wouldn’t care that his gaze is drilling into mine and tripping my pulse.

If I were stronger, I’d be able to look away.

Blindsided. That’s the best explanation for the stern volume of my voice and tightness in my usually-composed expression. I wasn’t prepared for this. Not for a tall, voluptuous, sexy-beyond-all-reason woman to walk into my classroom. My first thought? Beverly Rivard found the hottest music teacher in the country to place in my employ. To test me.

But she’s not a teacher.

I relax my fingers on the edge of the desk. Christ, that would’ve been a terrible inconvenience.

Except this is worse.

Distrust steels the girl’s gaze as she studies me from the front row. Sitting stiffly in the chair, she tugs the hem of her skirt over her knees and keeps her legs closed. Not the reaction I’m used to from women—or high school girls, for that matter.

I pride myself on being a strict, respectable educator. I know how female students look at me, and I’m immune to the bubbly-hearted infatuation in their innocent eyes. But there isn’t a hint of naïve adoration in the deep mahogany eyes staring at me now. In my six years of teaching, I’ve never encountered a student who regards me as if she’s summed me up in a glance and disapproves of my intentions.

Maybe this girl heard about the mistakes I made with Joanne, the debauchery that led to her taking my job. Well, fuck that job. Only my parents know the depth of what I lost in Shreveport and the nature of my intentions.

Whatever this girl thinks she knows, I’m not beyond using intimidation or a show of power to demand her focus in the classroom.

I hold her incisive gaze as I speak to the class. “Find a seat and put your phones away.”

Several more students trickle in, and a quick count of eleven girls and nine boys confirms everyone is present.

As the bell rings, the latecomers choose their seats. I recognize Beverly’s son from the pictures displayed in her office. Prescott Rivard is cockier in person, wearing a smirk instead of a photogenic smile. He settles next to the brown-eyed beauty and leans over her desk to twist a finger through her hair.

She jerks away. “Stop it.”

The hipster boy on her other side angles toward her, his skinny body squeezed into tight pants, a checkered shirt, and a plaid bow tie. He stares at her mouth through black-framed glasses and whispers something too low for me to hear.

Her lips thin into a line, and the dark expression on her face seems to come from a place much deeper than simple irritation.

I need to know what he’s saying to her. It’s a weird sort of curiosity, pulsing in my chest, as I level a look at the whispering boy. “What’s your name?”

He reclines, flippantly slouching with his legs stretched out beneath the desk. “Sebastian Roth.”

I walk toward him and give the toe of his shoe a warning kick that propels him to sit straight. “What did you say to her, Mr. Roth?”

He leers at the girl, rubbing his mouth to hide his grin. “I was just commenting on how big her…uh…” He looks at her chest and lifts his gaze to her mouth. “Her lip. How big her lip is.”

Prescott bursts into laughter, followed by several boys sitting around him.

That’s when I notice the segregation in seating. Girls on one side. Boys on the other. With the exception of the girl who looks like a woman. Whether she chose her seat out of urgency or to deliberately sit where hard-dicked boys could flock around her, I intend to find out.

With the tips of my fingers in my pockets, thumbs out, I shift to stand before her. “Your name?”