Bait: Winchester Academy, Book 1 Read online

  Bait

  Winchester Academy, Book 1

  Madison Faye

  Contents

  Bait

  Author’s Note:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek - Brat

  Also by Madison Faye

  Mailing List

  About the Author

  Copyright Notice

  Copyright © 2019 Madison Faye

  Cover: Coverlüv Book Design

  Photography: Sara Eirew

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  Bait

  There’s bad, and inappropriate, and scandalous, and wrong.

  And then there’s giving your virginity to your gorgeous and dominant high school government Professor, on his desk, five minutes after you turn eighteen.

  Oh I’ve been a bad, bad girl…

  Winchester Academy is home to a lot of things – the spoiled rich kids of the world’s elite, ivy-covered walls, typical high school drama and angst, and him – Professor Oliver Bard. Dominant, alpha, and completely freaking gorgeous.

  I know he looks at me, even if he sees me as forbidden fruit—tempting and off-limits. But I’ve been obsessed with him for way, way too long, which is why I purposefully got myself thrown into his infamous “midnight detention” on the eve of my eighteenth birthday.

  Just the two of us, alone, watching the clock tick down.

  Yesterday, this would be illegal. Today, it’s just plain wrong. Wrong, sick, morally reprehensible, and achingly hot.

  This could ruin him, and put a scarlet letter on my back for the rest of high school. But once I feel those big hands on me, and once I get a taste of his perfect, forbidden mouth, and once he shows me things I’ve only ever dreamed about, imagining him, I know there’s no going back.

  I know I should say no, but that’s a little hard to do when his mouth and hands and…well, other things are only making me scream “yes, professor”…

  * * *

  Each of the Winchester Academy books are completely standalone stories, with no cliffhangers.

  Hot, wild, and insta-love galore, with an utterly obsessed alpha hero and an untouched, very, very off-limits heroine. If you love over-the-top, slightly unrealistic, and wildly dirty stories, this one’s for you! As with all my books, this steamy novella is safe, with no cheating, and a HEA guaranteed.

  Author’s Note:

  Dear reader,

  As a fair and clear heads-up, this book is going to push some boundaries for some people. I need you to believe me on that. It’s safe, and it’s not dark by any means, but the subject matter is pretty scandalous, and that’s very much on purpose.

  All characters are over the age of eighteen, but it’s right on the border of what may and may not be okay for some readers. Some people may find the age gap between the two main characters a little squicky, and that’s okay. If right on the bleeding edge of legal age of consent is not your thing, this book probably won’t be for you. But, I have many other books you’ll be completely fine with.

  If you are the sort of dirty bird, though, who wants to read about a newly eighteen (by like, five minutes) year old school girl and her growly, obsessed, super alpha high school Professor, buckle up, because you’re in for some fun ;).

  ALSO…due to content guidelines on some retailers, Bait is available in two versions. A slightly edited, censored version (nothing about the story, just some language used) is available on Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. The original, uncensored version is available on Eden Books and Payhip.

  You are about to read the censored version, but please know that there is nothing inherently different about it story-wise, I’ve just had to edit the language used a touch to comply with guidelines.

  Thanks for reading!

  * * *

  xoxo,

  Madison

  1

  Anastasia

  Tick. Tock.

  The classroom is silent except for the nearly invisible ticking of the big black and white clock up above the blackboard.

  Tick. Tock.

  It’s almost midnight, which means it’s almost time. Besides being near-silent, the classroom where by day we’re taught U.S. Government and Policy is also basically empty. I mean, of course it is—it’s nearly midnight, on a school night at that. And even with as prestigious and driven a place as Winchester Academy, midnight is still kind of pushing it to be in a high school classroom.

  But then, I’m not here to learn. I’m here for detention.

  He’s only been here this one semester, but already, Professor Bard’s made a name for himself as, well, maybe a bit of a hard-ass. He’s not an asshole, and nothing he does or says is over the line at all. He just doesn’t take any bullshit in his classroom, and at place like Winchester Academy, full of quite possibly some of the most affluent, connected, spoiled, and arrogant private high school students in the country, that’s no easy feat.

  But even if they give other teachers a hard time, the students of Winchester are models of respect and attention when they enter Oliver Bard’s classroom. Maybe it’s those piercing, gorgeous blue eyes of him—like mountain ice or blue fire. Maybe it’s the firm, chiseled jaw, and the perfect cheekbones. Or it’s possible that in this place of old money wealth and traditions, with the strictly enforced dress code, and no visible piercings, and skirts being no more than two inches above the knee—they check—and staunchly formal and conservative teachers, Professor Bard breaks the mold in a major way.

  …I mean, there aren’t any other professors I know of at Winchester who have two full sleeves of tattoos.

  And beyond all of that, if you still want to act like a clown in Professor Bard’s classroom, there’s this, where I am now: his legendary “midnight detention.” And it’s exactly what it sounds like. As seniors, we can be out of the dorms later than underclassmen, provided we’re working on a school-related activity, and that we stay on Winchester’s sprawling, ivy-covered campus. And Professor Bard has exploited that to the fullest with his midnight detentions. You show up at ten, and you don’t leave until one in the fucking morning. No ifs, ands, or buts.

  Talk back in class? That’s a midnight detention. Disrupt his lesson? Midnight detention. Stand up in the middle of class, sigh loudly, ask why the lesson is “so freaking boring” and then flip him off when he tells you to sit your ass down? Oh, you better believe that’s a midnight detention. I know first-hand on that last one.

  …Of course, leaving a pair of my panties in his desk drawer, right on top of his pens and his favorite red marker for grading papers, where I knew he’d find it last week?

  Yeah, that may have something to do with it too.

  Tick. Tock.

  I glance at the clock, and my pulse skips a little bit.

  So close. It’s almost time. I swallow thickly, my skin tingling
as my hands drop to my lap. I smooth my plaid skirt down nervously, or maybe excitedly. Probably both. My toes curl in my flats, my sock-covered knees rubbing together as I glance at the clock again, and then around the empty classroom, and then up to the front, to him.

  Oliver Bard is sitting at his desk—back straight, his jaw tight, and his eyes moving over the papers he’s grading. His jacket is off—even professors have a dress code at Winchester—but he’s got his sleeves rolled up to just under the elbow. I bite my lip as my eyes dart over the ink covering his muscled forearms, watching them ripple as he writes. His raises one hand, sliding his fingers through his thick dark hair, his perfect lips murmuring to himself as he reads.

  Tick. Tock.

  Just a few minutes to go, and my pulse skips again, the anticipation shivering through me like wildfire in my veins. Nervousness. Excitement. Eagerness.

  …We both know why I’m here.

  We both know what’s going to happen tonight, as soon as the time clicks over to midnight, and into tomorrow. We’ve never spoken the words out loud. We haven’t written them down. But we both know.

  It’s obvious. It’s so thick in the air you could cut it with a knife. It’s barely contained in the ways his eyes have lingered on me for the last half hour.

  …Or, the last four months before it. Back before, when even looking was forbidden, and touching would be a crime.

  At midnight, it won’t be a crime.

  At midnight, I’ll be legal.

  Of course, in my opinion, it’s not a crime if I’m willing—if I’ve practically been begging for it. If I’ve all but walked up to him, taken my clothes off, grabbed his bulge, and slid into his lap. But it would have been. Legally speaking, I guess. Morally? Well, that depends where your compass is. Most would call it wrong—deplorable, maybe. Fucked up. Perverted. Utterly reprehensible. If we’d acted on what we’ve barely kept hidden behind our eyes, and if it’d been discovered, he’d be in a lot of trouble. Jobless, for sure, and maybe jail. I’d have gotten some of the mess on me, but we all know it wouldn’t have stuck. For him? It’d have followed him the rest of his life. They’d look at him as a predator, and me, the victim.

  …Except, it’s the opposite.

  He’s not the hunter here. I am. It’s the role I slid into the first day I decided that I’d be losing my virginity to him. It’s the role I played in sitting front and center, batting my eyes at him, letting the tip of my pen slide over my wet, pink, glossed-over lips while he taught the lesson of the day.

  But no, no one would see it that way. No one would want to. The narrative is far more juicy and far more in-line with what everyone wants to think if they look at it the other way. That an older—a much older—man, in a position of power, nonetheless, seduced and took advantage of a young, innocent, good girl. They’d say that he used his position of authority. That I was naïve. That I wasn’t experienced enough to be wary of his charms.

  …No one wants to even suggest the utterly shocking idea that a young girl like me might just want a man like Oliver Bard. Badly. Desperately. Feverishly. No one wants to admit that a girl my age has desires. That I have fantasies—dirty, filthy, vivid ones. No one wants to go there in their heads, because the idea of him being the monster in this scenario is just, well, easier.

  I know this could blow up in my face, but I’m willing to chance it. Because I know in my heart that I’ll regret not going after this tonight for the rest of my life if I don’t. I’ll always wonder, and if he gets away, what’ve I been saving it all for? Who have I been saving it for? Like I said, I knew the second I saw Oliver Bard that I wanted it to be him. I saw a powerful, dominant, older man, and every fucking cell in my body said, “Him. It’s going to be him.”

  Him, and no one else.

  This is wrong, I know that. But I don’t care. Because I’ve made up my mind, and I know what I want. And what I want is him, no matter what.

  Even if this is borderline illegal. Even if it’s morally reprehensible. Even if I’m a high school senior, and he’s my professor. Even if he’s thirty years old, and I’m only sevente—

  Tick. Tock.

  My eyes swivel to the clock, and suddenly, I freeze as a warm shiver teases through my core.

  Eighteen. I’m eighteen, as of five seconds ago.

  And now, it’s time.

  2

  Oliver

  The thudding of my pulse hammers through my ears, deafening me to anything else but the sound of it.

  …Well, almost anything else. Because beyond that, there, lurking in the background and echoing my pulse, is the other sound I hear.

  The clock.

  Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. My eyes scan the pages of the essay assignment in front of me, but I’m hardly reading it. At all, actually. My mind is anywhere else but the history of the legislative branch, fucking trust me on that. Because tonight, my mind, like it always is when she’s around, is lost.

  All of me is lost around her. The walls shatter. Morality crumbles. Thoughts I’d never in a hundred years imagined I’d have come roaring like forbidden fire into my every thought, consuming me from the inside out. Around her, I’m weak—lost, adrift.

  Around her, I’m hungry.

  No, I haven’t acted on any of the illicit, filthy, and before tonight, downright illegal fantasies that’ve played through my head since the second I laid eyes on Anastasia Penworth. Of course, I haven’t acted on them. Obsessed, yes. But not career suicidal. Morally suspect, but not bankrupt.

  …Not entirely at least. Not yet.

  Tick. Tock.

  The clock continues its march towards what comes next, and my hand clenches into a fist on the desk, the other in danger of snapping the red marker in my hand. It’s almost midnight.

  It’s almost her birthday.

  No words have been spoken between us—at least, hardly any that don’t pertain to class, or school. But I know damn well that it’s not just me who’s been waiting and wanting. And I fully grasp how that sounds exactly like the words a predator would use to legitimize his illicit thoughts. I understand that “she wanted it too” is practically a soundbite-ready quote for the ten o’clock news right before they show the creep being shoved into the back of a squad car.

  Believe me, amongst the myriad of filthy, extremely wrong, and incredibly illicit dreams I’ve had involving Anastasia, there’ve been one or thirty others involving my ass being thrown into prison. But in a few minutes time, that’s not going to matter. In a few minutes time, Anastasia Penworth is turning eighteen.

  …In a few minutes time, she’s legal.

  And soundbite or not, I know damn well that we’ve both been thinking it. Dancing around it. Letting our eyes linger longer than they should. We both know why we’re here tonight—why she pulled her ridiculous little stunt of getting up in the middle of class to mouth off to me. Anastasia might have a bratty streak in her, but she’s not a bad student or a troublemaker.

  …She is a bad girl, though.

  Despite the good grades, and being here, at Winchester, amongst the children of senators, CEOs, and other elite, and being on the varsity cheer squad, and the impeccable record?

  Besides all of that, deep down, hidden away, and clawing to get out, Anastasia Penworth is a bad, bad girl. I’d never have thought it, or know it, if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m drawn to her like a moth to flame. Or maybe it’s more like a moth to a nuclear fucking bomb. And then, I supposed the oh-so-subtle hint of leaving her fucking panties in my desk drawer. How did I know they were hers? How’d I know that the tiny white thong with the little pink lip-stick hearts on them belonged to her?

  Because the day before I they showed up in my desk, they are on her. And when she paused on her way out of my classroom—the last one out the door, as usual—and bent over to pick up her dropped pencil, that little plaid uniform skirt pulled up high over her ass, and there it was, pulled tight between the smooth, flawless globes of her ass.

  Straight-A student, varsity
cheerleader, pigtailed little innocent school girl… and a naughty little brat underneath it all.

  For months now, it’s been a burning, boiling, un-ignorable little hissing in my ear. A car alarm going off in the distance, and growing louder, and louder. One of those bombs dropped from an airplane in a World War II movie, whistling closer and closer and closer.

  And tonight, it’s going to explode. Tonight, there’s no more holding back. Tonight, we both know why we’re here.

  …Tonight, she’s mine.

  I am not a good man, and I’ve made peace with that. For her. Because of her. Everything for her. And tonight, she will get everything she wants.

  Tick. Tock.

  My cock thickens in my slacks, my hands tremble into fists, my jaw grinds.

  Tick. Tock.

  My eyes swivel up to clock at the back of the room, above her, which mirrors the one above me. I’m aware of her eyes towards the front, above me, watching her clock as I watch mine, and the fire begins to roar inside of me, knowing she’s counting down the seconds too.

  Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

  Tick.

  The second hand clicks, the minute hand slides past twelve, and suddenly, the whole world blurs away.

  It’s time. And finally, she’s mine.

  Happy birthday, baby girl.

  3

  Anstasia

  “Ms. Penworth.”

  A shiver teases down my spine as his deep, commanding voice teases across the classroom. The lights are low during the detention—the classroom lit by his desk lamp and two sconces on the walls rather than the florescent overheads as during class time. I look up, swallowing thickly, and when my eyes lock with his piercing blue ones across the room and the few empty desks between us, I tremble.