Don’t scream. Don’t scream. Don’t scream. I told myself over and over again as I paced the length of my room. After throwing around a few utensils and yelling for no reason, my mom had decided to get drunk.

I had started cleaning up after her, but when she had found me doing so while been bent forward, she had noticed my cleavage.

After ripping my shirt off, she had pushed me and I had landed against the edge of the stairs. The injury hadn’t been too serious but it was still painful.

She had walked over me, quite literally so, and had disappeared into her room and I had numbly walked to mine.

I stood in front of the mirror, the humiliation biting down at me as I stared at the torn shirt hanging from my shoulders.

Don’t scream. I repeated to my reflection, almost shouting at it to get my point across.

I wanted to tell my mom that I had only opened the top button after getting to the house. I wanted to tell her that I wasn’t a slut, I was a virgin because of how scared I was of intimacy.

But she never liked it when I tried to explain myself. It never helped my case.

Don’t talk. Don’t scream.

I turned my gaze to a pillow lying on the bed. I reached for it before throwing it on the floor, then took another one, and then the blanket, but nothing helped. I wanted to hear the crash, hear something break into pieces just as I felt myself fall apart, but my family resented anger issues, and if they were to find out…

I looked back at myself in the mirror before discarding the shirt. There was a faint bruise near my ribs but apart from that, nothing new, but the rage flooded my blood, and I had to practice my breathing to try to collect myself.

But suppressing my anger had never helped. Instead of saving me, it started beating of my chest before clogging around my heart, making me clutch my chest in pain again.

My heart was beating too fast for its own good, and I had to slow it down or I would faint or something worse would happen. Biology taught me that.

I lied on the bed and posed myself in a left-lateral position. I hadn’t eaten anything but a banana in the morning, so, first, I focused on easing the heartburn to get rid of that part of chest pain.

I started focusing on my breathing, inhaling and exhaling periodically like I had read online to cope up with anxiety.

The door to my room opened and I curled myself up, bracing for a hit, but instead, something warm and smooth dropped over my shoulders. I turned my head to find Mr Grey kneeling by my bed with his blazer over my shoulders.

“Mr Grey? What are you…” I trailed off when he pressed a finger to his lips before grabbing the blanket off the floor and covering me entirely with it. Only then did I realize that I was only in a dark pink (pretty normal) bra. His eyes stayed on my face the entire time, but I could tell that it affected him.

I affected him. He turned me back to my position before saying,

“We’re going to inhale for four seconds, hold for seven, and exhale for eight. Okay?” I nodded, but I could physically feel the blood being drained from my face. “Inhale,” he commanded in a soft whisper, his fingers on my wrist, before starting the count. “Hold. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Exhale. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight…Good. Now, again,”

We continued until my heart rate lowered a little and then, he pulled out something from a pocket of his pants.

“Eat,” he ordered yet again in the tendered of a voice before handing me a hazelnut granola bar. I loved hazelnut- I usually preferred it in all my deserts except smoothies, but the granola bar had to be a coincidence.

He wouldn’t be carrying it around for me, right?

Right.

Trying my best to not look like I was dying of hunger, I took it from his hands and tried to open the plastic. Frustration clawed at me as it resisted, making me bit my lip in annoyance.

“Let me,” Mr Grey offered, before gently pulling it out of my hands and opening it in one tug and returning it to me.

It was the most delicious thing I had ever had. Well, that was an overstatement. Ferraro Rocher still topped the chart alongside doublecheese pizza by the Marshall’s (a small outlet nearby that had the BEST cheese). But, considering how hungry I was, yes: it was the most delicious thing ever.

“Thank you so much,” I mumbled, nibbling on the bar as slowly as I could as I reached the end, to make it last as long as possible.

He smiled in response before wiping the corner of my lips with his thumb, making me freeze for a second and everything crashed on me.

Holy shit, my teacher was in my bed (he was sitting on the edge and that counted) and I was half naked and he was wiping my lips (corner of it, yeah, sementics) and goddammit.

He must’ve seen it all on my face because he offered a smile with an underlying promise that this intimacy was going to repeat itself. Soon. But he made no move to retract his thumb, and instead, traced my lip to it’s bottom apex, so I let my tongue dart out and licked his thumb, letting the chocolatey taste fill my mouth once again- and it tasted even better from his thumb. It wasn’t enough for me, cause I trapped his thumb between my lips and sucked. Slowly first and then hard, before giving my tongue another swipe just to be sure.

His eyes darkened and he gently pulled out his thumb before tracing the length of my throat with it. His touch set my skin ablaze, and I felt my nipples tighten, making me whimper slightly.

His hand encircled my neck and he jerked me slightly with it, only to let the blanket fall from my chest, revealing my rather normal bra with only one issue: it wasn’t cupped.

His eyes darkened furthermore as he noticed my nipples peaking and straining against the fabric, and I had never craved a man’s touch more in my life.

He dipped his head into my neck, but his lips stayed away from my skin, maintaining dangerous distance. I let myself curve towards him, to feel his lips on my neck, and then, preferably all over my body, but he pulled himself back.

His scent filled me, consumed me, until all the thoughts of how inappropriate it was escaped my body.

“Please…” I whimpered again, as blood rushed to my core and I felt wetness between my thighs. He had barely touched me and I had been more turned on that I had ever been in the seventeen years of my existence- well, the first fifteen were as dry as a kangaroo rat’s water consumption.

He brushed a knuckles against my abdomen before letting his fingers rise to hover over my left breast. My breathing quickened as the anticipation curled in my stomach, but he didn’t touch me at all.

Finally, when I couldn’t take it anymore, I pushed myself forward and his fingers crashed against my breast and I almost died from how much my heart rate peaked at that.

He pulled back before stroking my nipple through the material of the bra before capturing it between his two fingers.

I changed my upcoming moan into a whimper before blurting, “The age of consent in the state is sixteen,”

For a moment, he went back to stroking my nipple before replying quietly. “I know,”

“I am seventeen,” I informed him, the wetness rising more.

“I know,” was his reply again.

Unsatisfied, I let my fingers reach for the hook of my bra, but before I could unhook it, his palm enclosed my arm, his fingers curling around fully, before he spoke two hard words, “Not today,”

He didn’t say ‘We can’t do this’ or ‘I am your teacher’ or ‘You’re too young’. He said ‘Not today’, which in my delusional world meant that ‘I am going to ripe your panties off real soon and ride you until you feel like heaven can’t be better than what you just felt’.

I licked my lips, and made my expression look bored before saying, “Well then, leave my room, or don’t. I don’t mind you watching as I attempt to satisfy myself,”

He clenched and unclenched his jaw as I handed him his jacket, but decided to call my bluff. “I think I would rather stay,”

I tried to control my blooming anxiety before shrugging, “Okay,”

I pushed myself on my back before letting the blanket cover me entirely so he couldn’t see me, but could see what I was doing.

I let my fingers travel to beneath my bra and pinched my nipple, imagining his fingers doing that instead. He groaned, perhaps as he saw my eyes go back or my movement, before getting up and dashing out the room.

“I’ll be waiting outside,” he muttered, and I grinned as myself in victory. Pulling my hand out, I grabbed a tee from my cupboard before pulling it over my head and walking outside.

“So, why are you here?” I asked him as soon I spotted him standing near my room’s entrance. He eyed my body thoroughly at first, as if to make sure that I was fully dressed, before replying,

“I know what happened that day,”

“That’s precise. Care to be more specific?”

He bit his lip, as if contemplating whether to actually clear it up, before going forward with it anyway, “That day when Daniel found you bleeding in your house. I know what happened,”

***

The man should’ve gotten five stars for building up the suspense and being ominous. He forced me to drive outside with him, denying to offer any answers until we were sitting down someplace quiet.

He stopped at a diner, and escorted me inside. Like the whole opening the door and taking my hand and all that.

“Just get it over it!” I snapped finally but he only gave me a wary glare in response. He wordlessly passed me the menu and my anger from earlier, that was directed at my mom, came crashing back.

I breathed in once, twice, and pushed the rage to the back of my mind before pushing the menu back towards him and muttering, “Salad,”

I had gained a pound, and my father would kill me if he were to notice that or find out about it.

Mr Grey raised his brows but didn’t argue and asked the waiter to bring two burgers and a salad before launching into the story, and by the time he was done telling me everything, I was ready to tear out Rhys’s throat.

He had lied to my face. He had lied to me and the police and everyone and had let us all believe that he was innocent when he most certainly wasn’t.

“Say something, January,” came Mr Grey’s soft voice when he found me submerged deep inside my head.

“I am gonna kill him,”