HIS PRIZE PUPIL Read online

  HIS PRIZE PUPIL

  Jessa Kane

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Epilogue

  1

  Alana

  I belt my silk robe tighter and pace the small changing area.

  Breathing exercises aren’t stopping the tiny acrobats from twirling and flipping in my belly. My nerves have been in a state of chaos since I interviewed for this job.

  A very unique job indeed.

  A week ago, I didn’t even know establishments like this existed so close to home. When one thinks of a brothel, places like Las Vegas or Amsterdam came to mind. Not my suburban mountain town of Julian. Privacy doesn’t exist in a place where neighbors know your business, your mama’s name and your coffee order.

  I wouldn’t be here unless I was desperate—and I am. So when my friend Ripley barged into my makeshift darkroom last week claiming she had a way for me to make my college tuition payment, I was all ears.

  My virginity goes bye bye tonight.

  To a man I don’t know. A man who is apparently willing to pay a whole heap of cash for it, too. He’s probably a slobbering old man with bad breath and balls down to his knees. But all the hours I’m going to log in therapy will be worth walking into Photography 101 next week.

  Won’t it?

  All I’ve ever wanted is to take pictures. Ever since my mother bought me an old Nikon at a jumble sale, I’ve been photographing anything that interests me. The way a puppy’s ear sometimes gets stuck on top of its head. Or the way kids stare at strangers in restaurants and look like they’re really pissed, but actually they just rarely see anyone but their parents, so they’re fascinated. Moments like that. Funny, everyday things are my jam. Can I make an entire career out of silly pictures? Probably not. But how else am I going to find out what I’m capable of unless I go to college?

  One night. Probably more like five minutes. And then I’m in the clear for the first year. By then I’ll have gotten a job and saved up enough for the next one. I’ve got this.

  I take a deep breath and blow it up at the ceiling, just as the door opens and—as she is wont to do—my friend Ripley careens through the entrance like a redheaded hurricane. She’s dressed in a navy blue robe, identical to my white one, her eyes made up in her signature cat eye. Ripley is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in real life and she has been getting me into trouble since the fourth grade. I’d take a bullet for her and she’d do the same for me.

  “Holy shit.” Ripley bounces in front of me. “We’re doing this.”

  I motion for her to breathe, like me. “Are we? I mean…” I pivot in a nervous circle. “Who profits off their virginity? That’s crazy, right?”

  “Is it? Ask any woman, she’ll tell you her first time having sex was horrible. This way, we’re guaranteed to get something out of it.”

  Last week, after Ripley somehow found out about this hidden series of luxurious rooms in the basement of what I’ve always believed was a respectable bed and breakfast, we hopped into her purple Volkswagen Bug and showed up here for a face-to-face interview. The madam of this fine establishment is a seventy-year-old widow named Estelle. When her husband died in the nineties and she couldn’t make ends meet, apparently she entered the sex-for-cash game and that is what brings us here today, ladies and gentlemen.

  “Oh my, yes. Virgins are in high demand,” she’d murmured, making notes in a very tasteful Vera Bradley planner. “I’ll let my regulars know to put out the word and we’ll see who is willing to pay the highest price.” She’d smiled broadly. “I take a thirty percent cut.”

  I’m still a little salty about Estelle’s finder’s fee, if I’m being honest.

  Hello. I’m giving up one hundred percent of my hymen, aren’t I?

  I’m distracted from my brooding when Ripley takes a mask out of her pocket and ties it behind her head, so the top half of her face is hidden.

  “Why do you have a mask? I didn’t get a mask.”

  Ripley squares her shoulders. Uh oh. Here comes something batshit crazy. “I have to tell you something. I’m invoking the no judgment clause.”

  “I solemnly swear not to laugh, gasp or lecture you.”

  “Don’t even change your facial expression.”

  “I won’t! Tell me.” I glance at the clock on the wall. “We only have, like, five minutes until we can officially start complaining about our first times.”

  Ripley makes a non-committal sound. “Here’s the thing. I don’t know if I’m going to be complaining.” She gulps. “I know who my customer is.”

  “What? How? Estelle didn’t tell us.” I gape at her. “Who is it?”

  “This is where the no judgment part is critical.” She presses her lips together and takes a long inhale, blowing it out slowly. “It’s my step-uncle Mase.”

  Never has the no judgment clause undergone such a test.

  Oh, I know Ripley’s uncle Mase very well. He’s been at every one of her raucous family gatherings since we became besties—which was right after Ripley’s father remarried. Uncle Mase a motorcycle-driving, cigar-smoking, tattooed, badass motherfucker who I’m pretty sure spent nine years in San Quentin on a murder charge.

  My facial expression is frozen in place, but I’m positive I’m the color of a ripe tomato.

  “How do you know that?” I ask, sounding casual. But also like I’m being strangled.

  Ripley takes over my pacing duties. “He was over at my house last week for dinner and I might have snuck a peek at his iPhone contacts. I, um…might have been looking for women’s number to delete. Weirdly, there weren’t any. But anyway. I found the number to this place, but there was no name. Mysterious. So I called it and…” She stops and turns on a heel, smacking her palms together. “Bam. I find the brothel that has been operating under our small-town noses this whole time.”

  “Okay,” I say slowly. “Please don’t tell me you’re wearing that mask because…”

  “I don’t want him to know it’s me.” She shoots a glance at the clock. “It’s a long story. I’ve been in love with him for years and…look, we’ll talk about it after.”

  “After you bugger your uncle!?”

  Ripley’s mouth drops open. “That sounds like judgment. And he’s my step-uncle.”

  I retreat into myself, employing the meditation technique I’ve been doing every morning to center myself. There is no way I am letting Ripley walk out of here without answering for the fact that she kept this longstanding crush from her best friend, but before I can start interrogating, Estelle enters the room. Jesus, she looks like she’s headed to a bake sale. No wonder this place has stayed so well hidden.

  Estelle pats Ripley on the arm. “Room five, dear. He’s ready.”

  With one last nervous glance in my direction, Ripley sails out of the room in a blur of blue silk and red locks. I start to go after her, but Estelle blocks my path, moving in a manner that is way too spry for seventy. I’m starting to wonder if she’s a ninja in a granny costume.

  “Your gentleman is here, too, dear. And I’m glad we’re alone, because I need to speak with you first.” She taps her chin. “This man is not one of my regulars, so I was unaware until now that his tastes run…a certain way.”

  A tsunami warning wails in my head. “What do you mean by ‘tastes’?”

  Estelle chooses her words carefully. “The forbidden, dear. Tonight you are a forbidden virgin.” She laughs. “Frankly, it’s not untrue. This is an illegal establishment, after all.”

  I laugh awkwardly to fill the silence she leaves behind. “So…I’m just being myself?”


  “That depends. Are you the type to call a man Daddy?”

  The sound I make lands somewhere between a cough and a bomb exploding. “Uh. No. I mean, I have a dad. I suppose I called him that when I was younger.”

  “Excellent. Draw from that experience.”

  Am I having one of those weird nightmares I only get after eating Taco Bell? “Seriously?”

  Estelle sighs, casting a harried look at the wall clock. I’m now two minutes late for saggy balls. “Look, dear. I don’t have time for a long psychology lesson, so here is the condensed version. A father is an accountant in a sweater vest who yawns through your dance recitals. A Daddy pulls your hair, fucks you on your hands and knees, then buys you a pretty necklace. There’s a difference. You’re allowed to enjoy it.” She gives me an approving once-over. “And he certainly will.”

  “Thanks?”

  After a single nod, she hustles me toward the door. “Room three. It’s show time.”

  2

  Gavin

  Christ, I can’t believe I’m doing this.

  As instructed by the shockingly spry Estelle, I’ve made myself comfortable and removed my shoes and shirt. Now I’m sitting on the corner of the king-sized bed—hands clasped loosely between my thighs. My gaze is continually drawn to a stray piece of carpet that is far longer than the others, my fingers itching for my camera. Anomalies are often my subjects. Little oddities overlooked by most people. Asymmetrical windows in an old house when the foundation has been damaged by a flood, causing one side to sag. One white flower in a bouquet of red. A Dalmatian with only one spot.

  Imagine what my photography students at the university would think if they knew I was at a brothel, finally indulging the fantasy I’ve been harboring in secret for years. This time next week, I’ll be standing in front of a lecture hall, preaching shadow and light to a new crop of students. How will I look a single one of them in the eye after tonight?

  Last week, my childhood friend Mase drove his Harley up the coast to visit me. We draw a lot of attention when the two of us get together. Not because we’re so incredibly handsome, although I’m not half bad, but because Mase is my complete opposite. He is an ex-convict, for one, and I’m a respected professor at a prestigious art school. I wear suits, he wears leather and denim. He has a prison yard vocabulary and I was once a three-day Jeopardy champion. Yet somehow he’s the top friend in my favorites.

  I never told him about my hunger, however.

  That’s what I call it inside my own head.

  My hunger.

  But last week in that loud dive bar, when he told me about this brothel in Julian near his brother’s home—and that he was planning on visiting to rid himself of an infatuation with an unnamed redhead—I was tempted for the first time in my life. To let myself indulge the hunger for a fantasy I should be ashamed of. As a man and a Jeopardy champion.

  Here I am, though.

  One time to get it out of my system and I can go back to my life of gradients and apertures and chemicals. It’ll be my own anomaly. One I can’t capture on film, but still. For the next hour, I’m not the strict bastard who sends photography students running from his office with their tails between their legs. I’m just some faceless girl’s Daddy.

  Perhaps the first order of business should be punishing her for being late.

  I reach down and massage my cock through my pleated black dress pants, feeling it thicken in my hand, the forbidden trappings of my hunger fusing my mind. Pink, swollen lips that pout at me. An inexcusably short plaid skirt. The sound of a gasp that is both confused and excited and perfectly fucking whiny. Daddy, why does it feel so good when you touch me there?

  I rip my hand away from my throbbing dick and start to pace.

  Sick. These thoughts in my head are so sick and I can’t help them. They are a part of me I can’t seem to eliminate. I gave up on women years ago, because sex was unfulfilling and I couldn’t bring myself to tell them why I lost interest. I’m going to allow myself this one indulgence.

  One night and that is all.

  Julian is far enough from home that no proof of this night should follow me.

  And thank God for that.

  After ten years of being a professor at the university, I’m being considered for a position on the board of directors. Members are required to be above reproach. Too many times in the past, I’ve witnessed professors or even deans fall from grace because they got caught in an affair or doing something they shouldn’t be doing. The vote to induct me onto the board takes place during the first week of the semester—seven days from now—and I need to have this out of my system by then. I’ll accept the honor with a clear conscience or not at all.

  When the door opens slowly and I see who I’ll be spending the next hour with, however, my conscience ceases to exist. It turns from a boulder to a speck of dust. My cock pulses painfully at the sight of her. Good God. Where did they find this girl?

  I’ve never pictured actual facial features, not once during all of my fantasizing, but I know for certain that I will picture this girl’s baby face every time I beat off for the rest of my life.

  She’s impossible to believe. Her blonde hair is simple, parted down the middle, though her eyebrows are dark. Winged in graceful arches that mimic her cheekbones. Her nose is kind of stubborn, and Jesus, why do I like that so much? I like her lithe thighs even more. They’re beautifully bare under the hem of her short white robe, the belt cinched so tight around her waist, I think of wrapping it around her neck like a leash, so I can tug her forward, back, forward, back while she sucks my cock.

  I can’t get my mouth around all of it, Daddy.

  “Close the door,” I growl, my voice in a tone I don’t recognize.

  I’m not required to be polite tonight. I’m here to fuck the way I want to fuck and I’ve waited decades to fulfill this raging appetite. Waiting a second longer is unacceptable. I’ve kept a tight lid on my needs for so long and now that relief is close, in the form of this gorgeous little princess, all impediments have been ripped away, allowing my innermost secrets to finally see the light of day.

  “Sorry,” she breathes, snicking the door shut quickly and leaning back against it, her posture timid, chest expanding, drawing my attention to her ripe, apple-sized tits. “I just…I think I’m in the wrong place.”

  “You’re not.” Get naked and spread your legs, little girl.

  “But you’re…”

  “I’m what?” I snap, the way I might if a student was texting during a lecture.

  “Your balls probably aren’t even saggy,” she blurts, turning a very interesting shade of fuchsia. “What I meant is…you’re young. I didn’t expect young. Or like, the serious Tom Hiddleston vibe you’re giving off. Kudos on that.”

  I start. Who the fuck is Tom Hiddleston?

  There is something about the husky notes in her voice that I can only compare to hearing a masterpiece symphony for the first time. Revelatory. And how have I gone from aroused beyond belief to…curious as hell about this young girl? She’s not the collection of blurred body parts from my imaginings, she’s a flesh and bone female. Delicate physically, but there’s cleverness in her eyes, in the way she scrutinizes me, as if she’s drawing conclusions.

  In all my impatience, I’ve failed to stop and notice how perfect she is in her shyness.

  How sweet her blush is, coupled with those white teeth that gnaw on her bottom lip.

  The silk of her robe shifts, catching the lamplight with every shallow breath she takes.

  My rudeness has kept her from coming more than a few inches into the room. I don’t want her fear, do I? I want her trust. I want her to give herself over to me without any question that I know what’s best while we’re in this room. If that’s going to happen, I need to put a leash on the animal inside me for a while longer until she’s ready to do that.

  “I apologize for being abrupt. You didn’t expect me to be young and I didn’t expect you to be so beautiful,” I say hones
tly, though the strain of arousal still thickens my voice. “Would you care to peel yourself off the door?”

  After a second, she nods and advances toward me, the ties of her robe twined around her fingers. A drum beat begins inside of me and with every step she takes in my direction, it grows louder, deeper. I’ve never had this sense before of being on the verge of something life changing, but I have it now. My abdomen is tied in a tightening knot—and when the lamplight reveals her eyes, it yanks taut.

  One blue, one brown.

  An anomaly.

  Eager to study them closely, my hand is reaching out to tip up her chin before I can stop it. She sucks in a breath and backs away, dropping her head forward so blonde hair falls like a curtain on either side of her face. Hiding. “Are my weirdo eyes going to be a deal breaker?”

  “What? No.” Christ, I’m making a mess of this. “There is nothing weird about them. Nothing whatsoever. They’re extraordinary.”

  She lifts her head again, revealing that some of the shyness has faded from her expression. “They’re kind of my worst enemy.”

  “Why?”

  She licks her lips and lowers her voice, as if she’s getting ready to share a secret with me, and I hold my breath, not wanting to miss a single syllable. “When I lie, the brown one turns to kind of a mossy green. It earned me a lot of timeouts when I was younger.”

  “What about when you got older?”

  “I learned to wear sunglasses.”

  A laugh tumbles out of me, unexpected and authentic, and her smile grows. Only moments ago, my cock ruled my life. But while I’m still hard as nails and desperate for relief from this girl, there’s also an odd fullness in my chest. I can’t seem to stop staring at her. Or wanting to hear what she’s going to say next. “What is your name?”

  A brief hesitation. “I shouldn’t tell you that.”