Page 13 of Disciplinary Action
When they were finally alone, Bastian looked at him. “What do we do?”
“What do you mean?” Cal asked, startled, like Bastian could read all his innermost dirty thoughts about their new headmaster.
“I mean, Mrs. Abernathy said you have to go meet the new headmaster. She’s totally gunning for you. She’s going to use your fight as an excuse to finally expel you. You know what you have to do, right?”
Cal frowned. “No. What?”
“Uh, dude. He’s a headmaster who just fucked a student. I mean, you’re nineteen so it’s not illegal, but it could get him fired if the wrong people found out,” Bastian reminded him.
Cal’s eyes went wide. “You want me to get him fired? Hillary would shit a brick.”
“How are you so smart about trigonometry but so dumb about life? Blackmail him. Threaten to tell the board or the newspapers or his day job about his canoodling with a student so they can’t expel you.”
Cal chewed on the inside of his cheek. The idea of blackmailing Gideon was terrifying. He wasn’t the person Mrs. Abernathy wanted people to think he was. There was a time when she’d fallen all over herself to get two minutes alone with Cal’s father, but that was before his father had ended up in prison.
“Do you think I could get him to do it again?” Cal asked, his tongue darting out to lick over his suddenly dry lips.
Bastian frowned. “What do you mean? Do what again?”
Cal flushed. “Do you think I could get him to be with me again? Like he was that night?”
Bastian stared at Cal for so long he started to fidget. “You fucking let him kiss you, didn’t you? I swear to fuck, you never listen. I don’t think you want to do that. It’s not a good idea.”
Cal wasn’t listening any longer. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that this was meant to be. “It’s perfect. I get six more weeks of school, and he gets six more weeks of being my Daddy.”
Bastian was shaking his head. “Dude, you’re delusional if you think Gideon is going to thank you for this. He has a lot of fucking baggage. He needs to inflict pain just to get himself off. I heard from Hillary that he was into all kinds of heavy BDSM shit back in the day, like when he was married and shit. You’ve only gotten a little taste of what that life is like. You aren’t ready for that kind of lifestyle, and forcing a Dom into that kind of situation is just asking for retaliation of the painful kind.”
Cal shivered at the thought. Sure, there’d been pain…a lot of it even. But with that pain had come this blissful foggy feeling of floating that had made Cal forget about his shitty fucking life for a while. He wanted that feeling again. He needed it. He was going to make Gideon give it to him, and when he did, Cal would repay him by being the sweetest, most attentive boy. He’d do anything to hear Gideon rumble ‘Good boy’ into his ear, to feel his arms around him, his cock filling him up, to relive the way he’d held him and taken care of him afterwards.
“Yeah, you’re right,” Cal lied. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll just make sure that I can finish out my six weeks of school and find some other guy to play with.”
“Yeah, maybe somebody your own age.”
“Can I still blackmail him for money?” Cal asked. Bastian’s mouth fell open before Cal smiled. “I’m kidding, dumbass. You should probably get to class before they find a reason to kick you out too.”
Cal watched Bastian sling his book bag over his shoulder and head out the east door into the hallway. Cal headed west to the office. Abernathy waited for him behind the giant mahogany counter. “Sit,” she barked, pointing to a seat by the door. Cal did as she asked, dropping his backpack into the chair beside him. “I wouldn’t get too comfortable, Mr. Whyte. Today is probably your last day here with us at Roosevelt Prep.”
“Is it?” Cal asked, forcing himself to keep his tone conversational.
“Mm,” she said, lips flattened into a thin line of superiority.
“Well,” Cal said, “if that’s the case. Let me take this opportunity to tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that you are a miserable hag.”
Her face split into a nightmarish grin. “You seem to forget that nobody cares about your opinions anymore. Tonight, I’ll drive my fancy car home to my great big house where I’ll sit down and have dinner with my husband and loving children, while you, Mr. Whyte, you’ll be begging for spare change to buy a dollar burrito from the corner bodega before you crawl back into your rat infested cardboard box under whatever overpass you’ve made your home.”
Cal didn’t give her the satisfaction of letting her know that her words had hit their target. He just leaned back in his seat and laced his fingers behind his head, crossing his feet at the ankles. “Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t count me out just yet.”
Gideon leaned back in the leather office chair, lacing his fingers behind his head, his gaze on the clock. Twenty minutes into his first day as the acting headmaster at Roosevelt Preparatory Academy and he was already regretting his decision. He’d only agreed to this stint as a favor to the head of his department over at the university, who was the golfing buddy of Bernard Leighton, the school’s actual headmaster, who was still recovering from hip replacement surgery and wouldn’t return for six weeks. The last six weeks of the year. The most important weeks. Gideon didn’t think the timing was an accident.
A brisk knock sounded on the door, and then Evelyn poked her head inside. “Do you have time for me yet? I know you need to get acclimated, but the board believes this cannot wait.”
Gideon waved her in. Everything about his new assistant was severe, from the gray hair she scraped into a bun on the top of her head to the cat eye glasses that sat on her beak-like nose. Her face was all sharp planes and angles, her black dress hung on her rail thin frame, and she wore low chunky heels that clopped when she walked. In her hands, she clutched a manila folder, which Gideon imagined contained the information the board had determined couldn’t wait.
He sat forward, folding his hands on his desk. “I’m all ears.”
She flicked her beady gaze towards him, examining him as if she wasn’t sure he was taking the matter seriously enough. He wasn’t. He’d graduated from Roosevelt Prep twenty-five years ago, and he was certain little had changed, especially Evelyn Abernathy, who still looked down her nose at him like he was the same working, poor scholarship kid he was all those years ago.
“Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m assuming you know who Bryson Whyte is?” she asked in her usual clipped tone.
