The screen showed me that the message had been delivered, but it didn’t show that she’d seen the message. Whatever she was doing, she was ignoring me, and I didn’t like it one bit.
ELLIOT: Pick up your phone before I have to punish you.
Nothing. Crickets were practically fucking chirping. Being too nosy for my good, I pulled open the app to see the locationof all my friends. It pinged her phone close to the Memorial Fountain. I could see her moving closer and closer to it.
I wondered what in the hell she was doing there. It’s not exactly the kind of place one would go at night to hang out. I thought maybe her phone could have been stolen, and if that was the case, there was a chance that we’d both be in trouble if our messages were turned over to the right person.
In a panic, I grabbed my keys and rushed toward my car in the facility lot. I climbed behind the wheel and started in her direction. Luckily, it was late enough in the evening that traffic wasn’t terrible. I managed to make the drive there by the time her dot showed her directly at the fountain.
I parked in the first spot I found and climbed out of the car. I kept the app pulled up on my phone so I could see every move her phone took as I rushed toward the fountain. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was expecting to find. Maybe she and a bunch of her friends are meeting up to make a TikTok video or something. Hell, maybe I’d find some homeless man who was getting his fill of Words with Friends from the phone he found on The L.
Instead, I saw Evelyn and Chase together. Not just together, but getting closer and closer to one another. They were sitting so close on the side of the fountain that their sides were touching. What was worse was the way they were looking at one another, like nobody else existed.
His hand twitched before moving upward, landing on her jaw. From where I was standing some distance away, I could’ve sworn that I saw her nod her head, then he leaned in and kissed her.
Every muscle in my body tightened as my feet felt like they had been melted to the ground beneath me. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t do anything but watch him touch her, kiss her. And she was kissing him back.
My hands tightened into fists at my side as my blood boiled with anger. It took every ounce of strength I had, but I managed to turn away from them to walk back to my car. My rage pushed me forward quickly, and before I knew it, I was behind the wheel and driving home for the night.
I don’t remember seeing the road or the world around me. All I remembered seeing was his mouth against hers. She didn’t push him away. She kissed him back. It was a slow, romantic kiss—the kind that built trust between two people. He liked her, and he wasn’t going to stop going after her. She wasn’t going to stop him either, even though she agreed to be mine. I wish that I’d made her suck me off, then at least I’d feel a little bit better, like he was kissing my dick. I’d kissed her, but that was it. Other than when I bent her over my desk and fucked her with my fingers, I had no fucking satisfaction from her.
I knew I’d be lucky ever to get another piece of her. She was dating that douchebag, and she’d probably feel like she was cheating on him any time she did something with me. I sure as fuck didn’t want to give her time to fall in love with that asshole. I didn’t want her to leave school so she could get away from me and be free to be with him. I needed to do something, and I needed to do it quickly. She needed to know that she was mine in every sense of the word. I needed to convince her. I didn’t want her to think of our arrangement as a deal anymore.
Fuck, what was happening to me? While I knew being mine just meant she was mine to control, I needed more than that. She needed to belong to me. All of her. That included her fucking heart.
When I got home, I grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the bar and took it with me to my room. I twisted off the cap and I chucked it aside as I took a long swig. The heat of the whiskey moved down my throat and settled in my gut. I had hoped it would take the edge off, but it wasn’t. It was only making meangrier. I considered going back to the club, finding some bitch to bury myself in for a little while, but that didn’t do shit for me last time, so I had no hope of it helping me this time either.
I needed to figure out what I was going to do to make her open her eyes, to make her understand that everything she had was because of me. If she wanted to go out with her friends, I wanted her to ask me first. If she had an assignment due and she needed time to work on it, I wanted her to ask me for permission to do it. If she needed to fucking breathe, I wanted her begging me. That fucking easy. Ask me to breathe like the nasty little bitch she’d been. I would break her before it was all said and done. I knew I would. It was my only goal. I wanted her beneath me, begging me to fuck her while promising to please me in every way imaginable. Then and only then would she truly be mine.
And then I’d fucking shred her heart completely and ruin the fuck out of her. She’d be broken. The memory of me would make her never want to date again. She’d be miserable. Gabe would see her misery. Beg her to tell him. She’d not want him to know about me, so she’d suffer in silence, which would make him suffer. A beautiful fucking cycle.
I pulled back my fist and sent it flying into the mirror on the wall. I didn’t expect it to break, but luckily for me, it didn’t shatter either. The concrete wall behind it helped to keep it strong. My fist only split it; a crack moved across the width of the full-body mirror, right across the reflection of my face. I looked into my own eyes and saw how dark they were. It had been a long time since I had seen myself consumed by the never-ending pit inside of me. It was then that I realized that punishing her wouldn’t suffice this time. I needed to punish him, too, but how could one go about doing that?
Easy.
I’d have to punish the whole fucking class.
When the classhad taken their seats, I moved across the room and shut the door. That was something I didn’t usually do. I wasn’t a fan of being shut in, and I’d had students in the past who weren’t either. I preferred to leave it open so we could get a nice flow of air in the room, but that day, I pulled it closed, and I let it slam. It echoed through the room, capturing the attention of every student and causing them to sit up a little taller, giving me their full attention. Once I knew I had everyone’s attention, I moved to the whiteboard. Grabbing a marker, I wroteobedienceon the board. I turned to address the class.
“It’s one word.Obedience. As college students, I expect you to know the word, to understand it, and yet, some of you show me again and again that perhaps you don’t understand it. Maybe some of you aren’t trying hard enough to keep your spot here. Today, I won’t be giving the lecture I had planned. Today, I want every one of you to pretend that today is possibly the last day you have on this campus. I want a thousand-word paper on obedience and its significance to you, as well as your plans for adhering to the classroom rules. To the college rules. To the rules of life. I don’t want to hear a peep from any of you. Begin writing the paper. When you finish, get out. Come back tomorrow ready for a new start, planning to do exactly what you’re told.”
I turned away from the podium and took my place behind my desk. Then I pulled out my phone and sent her a text.
ELLIOT: You better be the last one to finish this assignment.
I watched her check the message, and then she looked up at me, meeting my gaze. She parted her lips before tucking her phone away and getting to work on the assignment.
Some students only took thirty minutes or so to write their papers. Most took longer, but slowly, one by one, everyone finished. They turned in their papers and left the room, until eventually there was only her and me left. Even when I noticed that she’d finished her assignment, I kept her waiting. I wanted to see if she’d listen. I made her wait ten minutes after everyone else had left. Finally, I walked over to her after closing and locking the door.
“Stand up.”
She stood without question.
“Give me your panties.” I held out my hand.
She took a deep breath and then pushed them down her legs. She wadded them up and placed them into my hand.
“Now, lift your skirt and bend over, both hands flat on your table while you wait for your punishment.”
