My Stepbrother Is My Secret Master novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Teach Me

Beckett lectures on obedience while her Master starts a lesson by text, and when Laurel types her answer under the desk, her professor stops mid-sentence and orders her to his office.

If he recognized me, he didn't show it.

He took his glasses off, cleaned them on his shirt and put them back on.

A girl in the front row raised her phone and took his picture without even pretending not to.

She had glossy blond hair and a camel coat that cost more than my car.

"Professor Lockwood? Blaire Coburn. We met in New York last spring, at that gallery party in Chelsea."

"I don't remember."

"You told me I had good hands."

"Then I was being polite. Put the phone away, Miss Coburn."

Somebody behind me choked on a laugh.

Blaire lowered the phone, smiling.

It did. Her ears had gone pink.

Beckett turned to the whiteboard and wrote.

RULES.

"The body follows rules," he said. "Weight goes somewhere. Muscle pulls against bone. Nothing on a living person hangs there by accident."

He tapped the board with the cap of his marker.

"You'll learn the rules in this room until you obey them without thinking. Then, maybe, you'll earn the right to break one."

A model in a robe climbed onto the platform and let the robe drop.

"Two-minute gestures. Go."

Forty pencils started scratching.

Beckett sat on the edge of the desk with his phone in his hand, timing us.

My phone buzzed against my thigh.

I knew the pattern of that buzz.

I slid it out under the lip of the easel.

Pup. Your new lesson begins now. Are you ready?

My pencil skidded right off the paper.

Ready, Master. I'm in class.

Good. Then pay attention. First lesson: authority. Obedience. How rules train a body to obey.

I looked up.

At the front of the room, Beckett was saying almost the same thing.

"Rules aren't a cage. They're how the body learns where it's allowed to go."

The skin on my arms prickled.

Everything about him felt like Master.

The voice. The calm. The way he said "obey" like it was a gift.

No.

I pressed my nails into my palm until it stung.

Pull yourself together. You belong to one man, and he isn't sitting on a desk in front of you looking bored.

My phone buzzed again.

Pup. Time for you to learn something new.

I bent my head and typed fast, before I could think.

Teach me, Master. Your pup will learn anything for you.

I hit send.

The room had gone quiet around me.

When I looked up, Beckett had stopped in the middle of a sentence.

He was completely still, his phone face down on his knee.

He was looking straight down the row.

At me.

At the phone in my lap.

I shoved it into my pocket so fast I nearly knocked over the easel.

"Time," he said.

His voice hadn't changed at all.

Forty pencils stopped.

He came down off the desk and walked the row, looking at drawings.

He didn't stop at Daisy's. He didn't stop at Blaire's.

He stopped behind me.

I could feel him there, the heat of him, the smell of turpentine and coffee.

He leaned in and looked at my two-minute gesture for a long time.

"Interesting," he said. "Miss Prewitt, is it?"

"Yes."

"Were you drawing, Miss Prewitt, or texting?"

The room went dead quiet.

Every face turned toward us.

"Drawing," I said.

"Then someone in your phone must be more interesting than this class."

I knew I should say sorry.

I'd been polite my whole life.

"Than this class?" I said. "That's a pretty low bar."

Daisy made a tiny sound.

Somebody in the back laughed out loud and then turned it into a cough.

Beckett didn't laugh.

He reached past my shoulder, took my pencil out of my fingers and set it down on the ledge of the easel, very precisely.

"Miss Prewitt," he said, quietly enough that the whole room had to lean in to hear it. "Your attitude needs some serious adjustment."

He straightened up.

"My office. After class."

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend