Redemption of a Sex Offender
Keywords: Sex, Redemption, Offender, of, a,
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August
When he walked into the faculty lounge, everybody froze. He was obviously trouble, from the leather vest that passed for a shirt all they way down the tight button-fly 501s to the black motorcycle boots. And the long, tawny hair that drifted over his shoulders and down his back, held out of his face by a small braid to one side tipped with a leather thong covered in glass beads and feathers. Erica could almost smell the testosterone.
Helen Crawford, head of the English department, found her tongue first. "Maintenance is in the basement," she said, although the breathy quality of her voice – normally you could cut glass with Helen"s voice – took a lot of the sting out of the insult.
His mouth twitched at the corners and he unslung the garment sleeve he"d been carrying over his shoulder. "I"ll keep that in mind. Where"s the cafeteria? I can probably find my homeroom on my own." And without any more warning, he ripped open the vest, popping all the snaps, and shrugged it off to the accompaniment of a soft chorus of female gasps. Then he unzipped the garment sleeve and pulled out a pale blue dress shirt.
Everybody else was watching him dress, so Erica felt only a little guilt about ogling the rippling, naked torso of the strange, very male, man, who was obviously some kind of teacher. And he turned into a teacher as he shrugged on the shirt and buttoned it, knotted a conservative tie and buttoned down the collar.
He turned his back on his drooling female audience – there were men in the faculty lounge, but they weren"t drooling – to pull off the boots and unbutton the jeans far enough to tuck in the shirt-tails. When he turned back to pull a pair of shoes out of the garment sleeve, she was almost disappointed. He looked like a tall teacher with broad shoulders and an outrageous haircut . . . or lack of haircut. The women began filtering out to get ready for the first day of class.
"Excuse me," Erica began tentatively when almost everyone was gone, "but who are you?" He looked up from tying the shoes.
"Edward Hilliard," he said. "New history teacher. I just got into town last night, so I missed all the orientations." He finished tying his shoes and stood to slide on a dark blue blazer. "Who might you be?" he asked, using grammar as impeccable as his chest. Erica stood, too, and suddenly realized that he was huge, six-three at least. She felt like she was standing in a hole.
"Erica Johnson," she said faintly. "English. Are you a coach of some kind as well?" He walked over and stuck out his hand. Automatically, Erica shook it and something that felt like electricity shot up her arm. The feeling of standing in a hole intensified; she revised her height estimate up a couple of inches, which made him taller than Randy. His handshake was firm but not crushing, although she got the distinct impression of power held under firm control.
"Nice to meet you, Johnson," he said affably. "I have coached, but they didn"t say anything about it in the interview."
"Clark Potter was in a car accident a few days ago," she said. "He"s been the JV football coach for eight years, and it looks like he"s going to be in the hospital for at least two more days. You might want to speak to the principal about it, if you"re interested."
"I"ll keep that in mind," he said, then went back to the garment sleeve and shoved the other clothing into it.
"What brings you to Idaho, Mr. Hilliard?" she asked, wanting to keep him talking.
"It"s about as far from Ohio as I could get without hitting a major population center," he replied. He zipped the garment sleeve back up and slung it over his shoulder again.
"Why not a population center?" she questioned before she could stop herself as he turned and went back to the hallway door.
"They make me tense," he said, leaning bonelessly against the doorframe for a couple of seconds. "I don"t like tense." For the first time, his ice-blue gaze flicked down her body and back up, taking all of her in, then his mouth quirked in a half smile that was directed strictly inward. "See you later," he said, and left.
Erica let out the breath she hadn"t been aware of holding and looked at her right hand. It was still tingling. She thought about the man who had walked into the room, all leather and tight denim, a rebel of some kind who knew himself thoroughly and was comfortable with what he was, and felt the skin tighten over her cheekbones.
Maybe this year would be interesting after all, especially since he"d gotten that hair past an interview. What else was he going to get away with?
October
She came around the corner at a trot and literally ran into him. Erica Johnson, who had featured prominently in a couple of fantasies that were extremely personal and as pleasurable as they were forbidden, grabbed his arm and almost wrapped her other arm around him to keep from falling over, and scared the hell out of him.
"Johnson," he said warningly as he pulled her away from his chest. "What the hell is going on here? Why are you running down the hall?" Her body had felt really, really good pressed up against him, soft, warm, and curvy. Round, like Lila had been round, only better. Sexy, in ways that Lila had never been sexy.
Lila? Jesus. He hadn"t thought about Lila in years. Why was he thinking about her now? And what did that have to do with Erica?
"Mitchell Tanner," she said breathlessly, yanking Eddie"s mind back from the mystery. Mitchell Tanner was a twitchy transfer from a bad part of LA County, eighteen, cocky as hell, and thought he was dangerous. Eddie had to stop himself from laughing in the kid"s face on a near-daily basis. "I think he"s following me," she explained. "He didn"t like the grade on his last paper."
Really. Tanner was bugging Erica, the hottest teacher in school, according to his confiscated roster from third-hour American History?
"Maybe he should try one of the pay sites next time," Eddie heard himself sneer. "The free ones only stock crap papers." Footsteps echoed in the hallway and Tanner rounded the corner, then stopped. Ed hitched his backpack a little higher on his shoulder.
"Coach Hilliard." The kid sounded wary. Well, Eddie reflected, he should if he was up to what it looked like he was up to.
"Tanner. Practice was over half an hour ago. Why are you still here?" Unobtrusively, he pushed Johnson behind him. If Tanner wanted to make something out of that, so be it.
"I could ask you the same thing, coach." Tanner looked past him at Johnson and grinned, cocky again. He"d almost gotten used to the kids calling him coach, but it irritated him coming from Tanner in every sentence.
He was a teacher, damn it, only working with the JV football team until Potter"s cast came off. Of course, it had been a bad break, cracking in a spiral up the tibia, so that would be a while, but it was still temporary.
"I had to pick up some papers that need to be graded by tomorrow, Tanner. Not that my work schedule is your business. Did you get lost on the way to your locker?" He slid a glance over his shoulder to check on Johnson. She looked a little tense. "I was just walking Ms. Johnson out to her car. You"d better get out of here, too, before you get locked in."
"Sure, coach. I"ll come with you." It was a direct challenge to his authority from a snot-nosed teenager. Eddie felt his lips try to spread into an amused smile in spite of being called coach again, and he suppressed it.
Tanner only lacked a couple of inches on him, but he was wiry, hadn"t yet come into the full musculature of an adult male. Hadn"t had to look himself in the mirror and come to terms with exactly how tough he was, exactly how stupid he was, and where his limits were. In short, Eddie could have taken him with one arm broken and a bad case of the flu.
Instead of smiling, he reached back for Johnson, effortlessly sliding his arm around her shoulders without ever taking his eyes off Tanner, riffling his fingers through her silky hair in the process. It was an accident, but damn if her hair didn"t feel even better than it did in the fantasies. And so did her shoulders, broad for a woman, and just the right height, a perfect fit to his body.
"Let"s go," he said softly, casually, daring the kid to challenge him further for Johnson"s possession. Mitch looked angry, but he didn"t say anything. Eddie practically heard the kid"s teeth grind when they arrived at Johnson"s Subaru.
She used the remote to unlock the driver"s door and he stayed between her and Tanner as he handed her into the seat, then leaned in after her to murmur in her ear.
"I think you"re right about Tanner, except he"s more interested in your body than your gradebook."
"What?" she asked almost involuntarily as she stared up at him, obviously shocked.
"Did you see the way he glared at me when I touched you?" he asked, deliberately reaching out to put his hand on her shoulder. "I"ll stop by your classroom after practice for the rest of the season. Just in case, okay?"
Her lips parted softly as she absorbed the statement and he found himself staring at her mouth, fascinated by how full and soft it looked.
"Okay," she said quietly, barely louder than a whisper. His eyes flashed back to hers, and he noticed they looked darker than normal. Bigger. It must be the odd half-light of the sunset doing it. He locked her door and then stepped back to close it.
* * *
Erica started her car and backed out of the parking space, acutely aware of the two men watching her, the younger one hungrily, the older one protectively. She didn"t know why the Tanner kid was after her – she was almost old enough to be his mother. And Hilliard, someone who obviously didn"t want to be involved, had come to her rescue like no man had ever done before. He was an enigma wrapped in a mystery.
When she remembered the feel of his muscular arm across her shoulders, the way he"d run his fingers through her hair and pulled her closer to him, she shivered a little. He"d made her feel .
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Keywords: Sex, Redemption, Offender, of, a,