Page 21 of The New Girl

I turned Lysander. “Is that true?”

“I had no idea he was there. The camera was installed to spy on Belinda. He knows everything that takes place at Club meetings because he has an informant in the membership. Heknew you would be coming to my place that night. I’m playing the game the same way you are, Jane. We are both caught in the same trap.”

“Why were you there?” I asked Westfield. “Lysander has had lots of girls--what was it about me that you find so singular?”

My greatest fear was that I was malleable, like clay. Men like Westfield knew they could mold me into anything they wanted.

He smiled sadly. “I can’t answer that. You were new to the college and to this life, on a bursary in a program that I spearheaded. It wouldn’t take much for the board to decide the program was a failure and cut the funding. I had to make sure that didn’t happen. Then I saw you with my stepson. You were uninhibited and beautiful. I forgot what I came for.”

I turned to Lysander. “I’m sorry. I don’t believe your stepfather would hurt anyone much less his own daughter. I don’t think you would either. There’s got to be another explanation for why Belinda did what she did. I wish you two could work it out. I hope you do. I can’t do this anymore.”

I drew my coat on over my shoulders. It was cold and dark. Autumn had finally arrived, expelling the last vestiges of summer. As I made my way down the narrow stairwell to the concourse, I thought over the hour I spent with the Chancellor making love and I waited to feel a pang of shame or remorse.

There was none. Not even the loss of Lysander was enough to make me regret having sex with a much older man.

It was incredible. He was incredible. Mind-blowing sex that I would never forget.

However, in the end, it was just sex. When the night air fully wrapped around me on the walk home, it was Lysander’s face I saw in the mist. It was his voice I heard in the library when I returned to work and it was his kiss that I ached to feel again.

Westfield’s decree was absolute. There had been no reconciliation after I left them that night. Lysander Starkwithdrew from St. Swithins under a cloud of mystery. No one knew where he had gone.

I quit the Adventurers Club and never breathed a word about its activities. They had spies everywhere to catch me if I failed to honor my oath.

???

It was mid-winter, approaching Christmas break when I was summoned to Chancellor Westfield’s office. My thighs quivered and my panties were damp even before I opened his door. He was sitting behind his desk when I came in. When he stood up, I could see from the bulge in his pants that he felt the same way.

“Jane. Come in and lock the door behind you. I’ve waited long enough. I can’t take it any longer.”

I knew what he wanted. It was the same thing I wanted. We were sick.

But the sex was too good to give up. Even if I knew it was wrong and he did too. Even if we knew it could cost him his job, his position in society, his reputation--everything.

We couldn’t stop.

And the reason why worried me.