Page 29 of Sinful Desires
While we waited for her to return, we immersed ourselves in pointless chitchat. At least it gave me something to do. I was wondering how in the hell I was supposed to refrain from getting bored here.
Once she returned, we watched a horror movie and ate popcorn from the vending machine that Gia had brought back with her, and then started getting ready for dinner.
I’d only been here for a few days, but it was beginning to feel like home already. Raven and Gia were a huge part of that, and while I knew better than to get my hopes up about anything, there was no denying the friendship that was beginning to bloom between the three of us. Things were bound to blow up in my face at some point, because that’s just what happened to me. But I intended on enjoying it while it lasted.
Chapter 10
Monroe
I ran a frustrated hand down the front of my face as the incessant nagging of my wife crawled through my ears. It was always the same bullshit, and no matter how many times I told her why we were in this mess in the first place, or that her nagging about it wasn’t going to accomplish a damn thing—she still kept on about it.
“Caroline,” I said with a heavy sigh. “You know I can’t back out of this. There’s no one else to fill in for me.”
Her gray eyes seared through me like snakes as she glared and scoffed at what I’d said. It didn’t seem to matter that we’d had this conversation over a hundred times already. She tucked a brown strand of hair behind her ear, revealing the diamond earrings her dad got her on her birthday three months ago. Screw the fact that I’d gotten her a diamond bracelet on Christmas that she only wore once until she was given the next best thing.
“Then that’s their problem, isn’t it?”
“It’s not that simple,” I groaned, frustration and sex depravation altering my mood for a variety of different reasons.
“But it is,” she seethed. “You have the upper hand in this, Aiden. Don’t you see?” My eyebrows bunched together in confusion. She thought that I had the upper hand against the fucking government? At this point, I was ready to just throw the towel in on the argument and just walk the hell out of here. “You could blackmail them.”
My dark green eyes snapped to hers in astonishment. “You’re not serious.” I searched her features for any sign that she could be joking but didn’t find one. “You want me to blackmail a school that is privately funded by our goddamn government? Do you know what the hell they could do to me? What they’re capable of?”
She lifted a shoulder in an innocent shrug like it was the least of her concerns. Maybe it was. She took a seat on the couch, crossing one delicate leg over the other. “What can they do if you have proof of their illegal activity?”
A humorless laugh left me and I just shook my head. This conversation was stupid. “You do realize who runs this country, don’t you?”
Her thin lips tugged downwards into a frown as she thought about that. I couldn’t fault her for being so ignorant. She’d been homeschooled and got waited on hand and foot like some kind of princess. She was raised thinking that money was a number one priority and that if you didn’t have a lot of it, then you were somehow unimportant.
“I’m just bored all of the time, honeybun.” Her frown deepened as she peered at me with those big doe eyes of hers. “You know how long it’s been since my lip injections, or my Botox?” she pushed. “Look!” She brought her index finger to her forehead and raised her brows so that two long wrinkles formed across the skin. “I’ve got wrinkles now!”
I was young and dumb when we married. Looking back now, I wanted to curse my parents for getting me into this arrangement in the first place. She’d been beautiful, so when it was suggested that we marry, I jumped at the chance to have a girl like her on my arm. Unfortunately, that thrill was short-lived when I started to go bankrupt and needed a better job.
I sighed and shook my head. “I can’t be late. We’ll talk about this tonight.” I moved forward, pressing a kiss to the top of her head before turning on my feet and exiting the house.
It didn’t take long for me to arrive at my classroom, but as I moved to open the door, I realized it was already unlocked, which was strange since I remembered locking it yesterday.
With caution, I pushed the door the rest of the way open and flicked on the light. My eyes widened when they landed on the purple-haired girl seated behind my desk.
“Took you long enough,” she muttered with an eyeroll. But I was rooted to the spot, unable to move as my mind raced to catch up with the events that were happening. Did she really break into my classroom?
“How did you get in here?” I barked.
She shrugged, twirling something between her fingers. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a bobby-pin. “I broke in. Obviously. We need to talk.”
I huffed out a breath of disbelief. “Get the hell out of my seat.” Making sure I left the door open, I strolled toward my desk, annoyance flooding through me. First, I had to deal with Caroline and her bullshit, and now this? When she made no move to leave, I leveled her with a pointed look. “Or am I going to have to remove you myself?”
Her lips curved into an amused smirk. “The latter sounds good to me.” She leaned back in her—my—seat and kicked her legs up on the desk.
So help me Lord.
When I took this job, I knew what I was getting into. I was only in my twenties and Principal Hawthorne had even warned me upon taking this job. The students here didn’t care about things that normal kids did. They had raging hormones, traumatic pasts, and some of them were just riding out the tide until they were dumped on their ass in some backstreet alley.
“Get out from behind my desk, Palmer, before I put your ass in detention.”
She rolled her eyes again before dropping her feet to the ground and rising. She threw herself into the chair adjacent to mine, so I took the liberty of slipping into my own seat—that just so happened to be warm now.
“Now, what do you want?” I asked bitterly, annoyed that a portion of my only free time was being soiled.