My Stepbrother Is My Secret Master novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Storm

I didn't sleep.

I lay under the comforter with charcoal still on my hands and did math I didn't want to do.

A voice.

A blindfold in a box of props.

A raised scar under my thumb.

Two words at a door.

And one thing I'd promised Master the night we met, that I would never try to find out.

I texted him at 4:15 in the morning.

Are you awake?

Always, for you. Sleep, pup. You did good work tonight.

I stared at that last word until my eyes burned.

Tonight.

I hadn't told him I was working tonight.

Then I scrolled up and saw that I had, at dinner, in a text I'd forgotten sending. Fifty studies. Wish me luck.

I put the phone face down and pulled the pillow over my head.

At nine o'clock I set fifty-one drawings on Beckett's desk in front of the whole class.

He didn't look at me. He went through them slowly, page by page, while everyone waited.

Then he pulled one out and pinned it to the board at the front.

It was the line of his own side, armpit to hip, in one long stroke.

Nobody else in the room knew that.

"Bold lines," he said. "Excellent grasp of muscle tension. This is the only drawing in this class that understands both bone and pull."

He turned around.

"Keep it up, Miss Prewitt. Class dismissed."

Daisy grabbed my arm and squealed into my shoulder.

Across the room, Blaire Coburn snapped her sketchbook shut.

She waited until we were all crowded at the door, and then she said it loud.

"Professor Lockwood praised you in public. On day three." She smiled. "Tell me, Laurel. How much time did you spend in his bed, studying his anatomy?"

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