When everyone else makes their way to the door, I circle the table, pushing in all the other chairs, and I don’t do it quietly, letting my frustration with everyone be known. A few look back at me as I grimace in their direction, having the decency to look a little guilty for acting like children who don’t clean up after themselves.
I shove under the last chair, loudly skidding it across the tile floor and letting it smack into the wood of the table to drive my point home for them not to make the same mistake next time—not that they ever remember, spoiled, lazy-ass fucks. That’s when I hear the sweet, timid voice come from the circulation desk, shocked that she’s actually gathered the courage to initiate a dialogue between us, when usually it’s me who begins our conversations with something that purposely makes her uncomfortable.
“Thank you, Nathaniel. You don’t have to do all that. I’ll get i—”
But I cut Ms. Richards off with a stern look, and her jaw snaps closed. I take slow steps toward her, allowing everyone to finally file out through the door of the library before I approach the desk. And then with the tone I know makes her squirm the most, I bend over, place my elbows on the surface, and grip my hands together as I lean toward her and tell her, “It shouldn’t be your job to pick up after the senior class, Ms. Richards.” I feel a thrill go straight to my dick from the way she shivers at the sound of her name from my lips. “If we’re old enough to be consenting adults—” I pause, letting the message behind my words take hold in her mind. “—then they’re old enough to fucking clean up after themselves.” I don’t include myself in that last part, because I always take care of my shit, and she knows it.
She nervously pushes her hair out of her face and her glasses up the bridge of her nose, her eyes closed tightly behind the lenses while she swallows thickly. She nods in quick, shallow jerks of her head before she meets my eyes. “Th-thank you then, Mr. Black. N-Nathaniel. Better hurry before you’re l-late for your next class,” she responds, the same way she always tries to dismiss me after I’ve fucked with her.
“You’re welcome, Ms. Richards.” I trail my gaze from the top of her straight hair, down her white blouse primly buttoned to the hollow of her throat that just screams for my hand to be wrapped around it, over her small breasts and narrow waist, the gentle swell of her hips encased in navy slacks that hug her luscious thighs before the material flares at the knee, and end my perusal on her little leather flats with the rounded toes. When I meet her eyes again, she’s practically panting with her anxiousness—and I can’t help but fantasize her breaths coming out in this way if I were to drive my cock deep into her pussy.
“Have a good day,” I finish before standing to my full height. When I hit my palm against the surface of the circulation desk, she jumps before nodding in response, not saying another word.
Skittish little mouse.
Chapter 2
Evie
I don’t turn my head to watch him exit, but I can’t stop my eyes from following his obscenely tall form as he makes his way to the door of my library before shoving his way through it. My library—I snort. It’s not my library. It’s his family’s library. Nathaniel Black the fourth, heir to the Black throne upon their very own mountain the academy is nestled beside. Because if your family is rich enough to live there, high over the towns surrounding the mountain or in the neighborhoods nearby, then you’re loaded enough to attend the private school his family built over a century ago. That boy… man is going to be the death of me. No really—he’s going to give me a freaking panic attack that leads to my eventual demise.
He’s done nearly everything to taunt me that I could possibly think of aside from actually putting his hands on me. Yet the words he uses along with his tone feel like a caress and a slap at the same time. Since the first day of the school year, my first day as the librarian of Black Mountain Academy, it’s like he’s made it his mission to… not quite bully me, but make me super damn uncomfortable. And what exactly could I do about it? After the first few weeks of it happening, I’d gone to report him to the principal, and he made it very clear that anything written up about a member of the Black family would be brushed under the rug so not to waste my time. I hadn’t even gotten anything but Nathaniel’s name out of my mouth before I was cut off and dismissed.
And as this is my dream job, I figured I could put up with him for a year, seeing as he’s a senior and will no doubt graduate at the end of it. Because that is one good thing about Nathaniel Black IV—he’s brilliant. Top of his class. Star athlete. Everything about him is perfect. Scarily so. Obsessively so. Aside from my degrees to become a librarian and a teacher, I took extra courses in psychology because I found the subject fascinating and even halfway considered becoming a school counselor at some point. It was easy for me to spot the clear signs of OCD in the young man. But having basically been muzzled when it came to this particular student, I kept my observations to myself.
His school uniform is always pristine. I once saw a food fight break out in the cafeteria, and he stormed out after something got on his shirt. He changed into a clean one he
