She Entered the Academy with a Crush, Three Men Fought to Keep Her novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Director's Desk

Mr. Hunter scolds her and then touches her; she walks out to find Chris at the door.

The stairs went up and up, round and round, past the slow iron guts of a giant clock.

By the top my heart was louder than the gears.

His office was one round room with a wall of dark glass and the whole mountain behind it.

Mr. Hunter stood at the window with his back to me.

He had taken off his jacket.

His white shirt stretched across shoulders so wide that I forgot what I'd planned to say.

"Close the door, Miss Winslow."

I closed it.

"Two students were in your room tonight," he said.

"A fox on your bed and a wolf with his claws out."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I can hear this whole campus." He turned around.

"Mr. Maddox has a temper and Mr. Calloway has no sense of boundaries.

"I wanted to see that you were all right."

"I'm fine."

"You were shaking at the arch."

"That was you," I said before I could stop it.

His eyebrows rose.

I was twenty-three and he was my director and I had walked up a hundred stairs in a short blue dress.

So I said the rest.

"I read your interview eleven times on the bus here."

"I've had your face on my wall since I was nineteen. No, since I was twenty. Fine, since I was twenty-one."

"That is a very specific correction," he said.

"I'm a very specific person."

One corner of his mouth moved.

Then it stopped moving, and he looked at me.

"Miss Winslow, I am forty-two years old."

"I know your age."

"I am the director of this academy."

"I know that too."

"You are my student."

"I'm a grown woman," I said.

"You wrote my name on a note and said come alone. Did you only want to scold me, Mr. Hunter?"

The air in the room changed.

I felt it on my skin, a dry heat.

His eyes went gold, all the way across, slow as a sunrise.

"No," he said.

He crossed the room in four strides.

I thought he would stop a polite distance away.

He didn't.

His hand came up and cupped my jaw, and his thumb pressed my lower lip.

It was so hot it almost hurt.

"Tell me to leave you alone," he said, very low.

"No."

I got my fingers into his shirt and pulled.

He kissed me.

It wasn't polite, either.

It was a hard, hungry, open kiss, and he tasted like smoke and black coffee.

I made a sound against his mouth that I had never made in my life.

He lifted me off my feet and set me on the edge of his desk.

Papers slid to the floor.

I didn't care.

I wrapped my legs around his waist and his breath caught.

"Chloe," he said, and it was the first time he'd used my name.

I felt it all the way down.

His mouth went to my throat and I tipped my head back.

His hand moved up my thigh under the blue dress, slow and flat.

Every inch of skin it crossed went to fire.

"These," he said against my collarbone, fingers hooked in my panties.

"They're in my way."

"Then move them."

He made a low sound in his chest that was not entirely human.

He dragged them down my legs and dropped them on the floor.

I was bare and open on his desk with my dress around my hips.

The dragon who ran Greywater Academy was looking at me.

"Look at me," he said.

I did.

His eyes were molten and fixed.

Two fingers slid through me, and I jerked.

"So wet," he said, rough.

"For me."

"For you," I gasped.

"Since the arch."

"Since before the arch, I think."

He pushed one finger inside me, then two, slowly, all the way to the knuckle.

I clutched his forearms.

Under my hands his sleeves were burning hot.

When I looked down I saw a line of black scales rising along the inside of his wrist.

"Don't stop," I whispered.

"I wouldn't dare."

He curled his fingers and found the place that made my whole body bow.

His thumb pressed my clit in small hard circles.

I bit my lip so I wouldn't scream the tower down.

"Let me hear you," he said.

"Mr. Hunter."

"Gideon."

"Gideon," I moaned.

"Good girl."

I came apart on his hand, shuddering, with my forehead on his chest and his name in my mouth.

He held me through it.

His other arm was around my back, and his heart was slamming.

I could feel how hard he was against my thigh.

I reached for his belt.

He caught my wrist.

"No," he said.

His voice was ragged.

"Not tonight."

"Why not?"

"Because I want to do this properly."

He lifted my hand and kissed my palm, and the gold in his eyes banked slowly down.

"Go, Chloe. Before I forget that I'm your director."

I slid off the desk on shaky legs.

I found my panties on the floor and he didn't look away while I put them on.

At the door, I turned.

"Mr. Hunter?"

"Yes?"

"I'm not going to be good all the time."

For the first time that night, he smiled.

"I'm counting on it."

I pulled the door shut behind me and went down all those stairs on legs made of water.

I pushed open the big door at the bottom and stepped out into the cold.

Chris was standing on the lawn in the dark.

His arms hung at his sides and his silver eyes were fixed on me.

He had smelled every second of it.

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