I was the Pope of the Liberation Church, after all. And from the frantic, desperate thoughts leaking from her mind—the years-long drought, the lonely nights, the way she'd touch herself thinking of men she'd never have—I knew Mrs. Henderson hadn't had a proper orgasm in a very, very long time.

What a shame. What a solvable, solvable problem.

"Mr. Carter. Miss Torres." Her voice was a valiant attempt at control, a professional tenor that couldn't quite hide the slight tremor underneath. She swallowed before she spoke, a nervous tell. "How wonderful of you to grace us with your presence."

"Mrs. Henderson," I said, smiling. Not my usual smile, but something warmer, knowing. The kind of smile that said I could see right through her.

She let out a breath, a helpless, almost inaudible sigh. Her lips parted, her tongue darting out to wet them before she caught herself. This hungry cougar. She couldn't help herself.

"We had a family emergency," Madison began, her voice perfectly apologetic. She was playing her part: the contrite student seeking forgiveness.

But Henderson's gaze was locked on me, tracking my every move as I sat in the chair opposite her desk. I leaned back, casual and confident, and I felt her attention stick to the way my polo stretched across my chest.

{—wants to climb on top of him right here—}

{—imagine those hands pinning my wrists—}

{—would he be rough would he make me beg—}

"Both of you?" Henderson managed, finally tearing her eyes away to look at Madison. "The same emergency? At the same time?"

Her composure was impressive. Two decades of teaching had forged iron self-control. But I could see the cracks forming. The way her fingers tightened on the red pen. The faint flush creeping up her neck. The way her legs remained pressed together under the desk, a futile dam against the arousal she couldn't name.

"How remarkably convenient," she continued, and there it was again—another unconscious lip-lick, hungry and swift.

I smiled wider this time.

She sighed. A full, actual sigh. It was quiet, but I heard it. Her shoulders dropped in a tiny, helpless surrender to a force she didn't understand but couldn't fight.

"Six days," Henderson said, rising and moving around her desk with measured, professional steps. "Six consecutive days of unexcused absences. Do you understand what that does to your academic standing?"

She was lecturing, doing her job, playing the stern teacher. But her body told a different story. She stood just a little too close. Her eyes kept drifting to my face, my shoulders, my hands. Her breathing was just a little too fast.

{—could pull him into the supply closet—}

{—nobody would know—]

{—just once just to feel wanted again—}

"To your GPA? To your college applications?"

"We understand," I said, meeting her eyes directly. "And we apologize."

The eye contact was a mistake. For her.

Her breath hitched, audible this time. Her hand flew up to adjust her glasses, a nervous tic to break the spell.

"This morning's... display." Her voice dropped, quieter, more intimate despite the anger lacing it. "Three vehicles engaging in reckless driving on school property. A spectacle that turned our educational institution into a viral social media circus."

She leaned forward, planting her hands on her desk, and the space between us vanished. I could smell her perfume, something floral and professional, warring with the sharper scent of her arousal.

"Mr. Carter," she tried, straining for authority, "I've taught at this school for twenty years. I've seen troublemakers, show-offs, and entitled rich kids who think rules don't apply."

{I want him to break every rule with me}

"But you were supposed to be different. Smart. Focused. Someone who understood that intelligence means responsibility."

I held her gaze. I didn't look away, didn't drop my eyes. I just let the Lust Presence and Taboo Aura wash over her, letting them do their work.

Another sigh, shakier this time. Her tongue darted out again, slower this time, more deliberate. A surrender.

This woman was wound so tight, so starved for touch, that my mere presence was unraveling her, thread by thread. And she had no idea why. She just knew that Peter Carter, the once-invisible student, had become the single most compelling thing in her universe.

"I apologize," I said, quiet and sincere. "The absences were unavoidable. The cars were an error in judgment."

"Poor judgment," she repeated, and I heard the double meaning layered in the words. A hunger not for academic discipline, but for other kinds of poor judgment. The kind that involved locked doors, frantic coupling, and finally—finally—feeling something again.

Madison answered something. I didn't track it.

My entire focus was on Mrs. Henderson, on the microscopic tells of her crumbling composure. I decided to test the waters. It wasn't enough to simply let the fields radiate passively; I pushed. I gathered the Pheromones, the Lust Presence, the Taboo Aura, and I wrapped her in them, a thin, sexual blanket of pure desire.

The air in the office grew heavy, thick with an unseen sultry heat. Henderson's professional lecture faltered, her breath catching as the pheromones I'd woven around her sank into her skin. I watched her knuckles turn white as she gripped the edge of her desk, the only thing holding her upright.

"You're both on academic probation," she said finally, the words strained. She straightened up, trying to create distance, to reestablish the professional boundaries my power was actively dissolving. "One more unexcused absence, one more disruption, and you'll be removed from the AP track entirely. Am I clear?"

"Crystal," I said, and smiled one more time, a slow, knowing curve of my lips.

She swallowed hard, her throat working. "Good. Now get to class."

We stood. Madison headed for the door first, a sensible escape.

I followed slowly. Deliberately. As I passed her desk, I let the pheromonal presence thicken, a final, teasing pulse. Her eyes tracked me like a predator and prey, or maybe prey locking on a predator. It was getting hard to tell which of us was which in this moment.

"Mr. Carter."

I stopped. Turned.

She'd sat back down, but the composure she'd fought for was gone, shattered at the edges.

Her breathing was too quick, her eyes too dark and dilated. Mrs. Henderson. I'd known her since I was a kid. She'd known my history, every ugly detail of my family. Including my birth mother's scandal. The escort. The way she'd ruined Mr. Morrison so completely his wife still hated me for existing.

Henderson knew all of it.

And now she was sitting there, thighs pressed tightly together, soaking in the aura of the son of that woman, wanting to fuck the kid she'd known since he was eight. The shame of it was a palpable wave, mixed with the lust.

{—I knew his mother—}

{—Even she was this hot—}

{—god if Peter fucks like I think he does—}

{—I'd be ruined for any man after him—}

{—no man could satisfy me just like Morrison was ruined for any woman—}

I laughed.

Couldn't help it. The thought was too perfect, too ironic. She'd compared me to my birth mother and decided we were both sexual apocalypses for anyone who touched us.

Henderson's eyes snapped to mine, panic flashing across her face. "Is something funny, Mr. Carter?"

I composed myself instantly, wiping the smile from my face. "Sorry. Just remembered something from my trip. My apologies, Mrs. Henderson."

"Right." She swallowed hard, mortified that I'd laughed during her serious lecture. "As I was saying... don't waste your potential on spectacle."

The words meant one thing. Her thoughts screamed another.

{—don't waste it when you could use it on me—}

"I'll try to remember that," I said, still fighting the smirk.

I left the classroom, closing the door behind me and severing the connection.

Madison was waiting in the hallway, one eyebrow arched. "You were fucking with her."

"Was I?"

"You have a specific smile for that," she said, shaking her head, a flicker of amusement in her eyes. "The 'I'm currently inside your head and rearranging the furniture' smile. Poor woman. She had no idea what hit her."

No. She didn't.

We walked toward the science wing, but my mind kept circling back to Henderson's thought—the comparison to my birth mother. Most people in Lincoln Heights had never seen my mother's face but some did. They knew the tale, the sexual devastation she'd left in her wake, but not the source. Not even me.

My adoptive mom, Linda, had once whispered to Sarah that my birth mother was the most beautiful woman she'd ever seen. "How could a woman like that choose that life?" Sarah'd wondered. It never made sense to her.

Henderson thought I'd inherited that same devastating, otherworldly attractiveness. That I was just as dangerous.

She was right.

The irony was beautiful.

'Mom,' I thought, a silent message to a woman I'd never met. 'Wherever you are—I'm the most handsome man alive now. And I'm about to embark on that same journey. An escort in name, maybe. The Liberation Church's High Pope in true form.'

The apple didn't fall far from the tree.

It just landed in better soil.

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