I attempted to defuse the tension by praising each of them on their journal entries. Tabitha had gotten a perfect score, like usual; Taylor had actually managed an A herself, though that was only because I'd had her re-write them during our after school sessions when her pre-Serenex effort had yielded two off-topic paragraphs and ended with "this is stupid and I don't care." Her re-try had been better, and if it was objectively unfair that their scores were a mere three points apart, Tabitha was used to it by now. My praise did less than nothing to mollify either of them, and the three of us climbed into my bed, one naked, flawless girl curled up on either side of me, and went to sleep without another word. "That's the vinegar, mama. I told you we were out of your usual dressing last week, remember, but you said you didn't wanna go grocery shopping until we made space in the fridge," Candy explained over lunch. Isa made a face but kept eating in her place kneeling beneath my desk. I

Too late to walk it back now. "I know some of your friends, Abbie. If you keep this up, someonewill notice, and then your only option is going to be to use it on them. I can attest firsthand that it can and will spiral beyond your ability to control it. And that's best case scenario. It's not hard to envision others that end a lot worse." Little by little, I could see my words sinking in. Good. So she had some imagination after all. "You're saying you wouldn't go all Liam Neeson and use your particular skills to bail my ass out if I got tooken?" "I'm sorry, 'tooken?'" She merely nodded. "If you keep abusing my language like that, I'm going to root for the tookers." Abbie sighed. "OK fine. You can have the rest back. Wasn't enough to do anything too cool with anyway. I'll drop it off." She caught my skeptical expression. "I will! What, you think I'm gonna go on a rampage in the next twenty minutes of the school day? Short-ass rampage. Almost nothing left anyway." "And again, did yo

I am not a pussy, but I wasn't superhuman either, nor did I cleave to that tired but persistent belief that crying is a sign of weakness. I owed Isa big time, though. The fact that I was trying and mostly failing to stop sobbing with self-pity in the seclusion of my own home instead of festering in a jail cell was entirely her doing. Maybe a small nod to me for having the foresight to enslave her in the first place. (Yes, enslave. No sense pussyfooting around the term now. Not when the whole city - the whole country, maybe, if this thing got traction - was going to be using it to describe me soon enough.Acclimate, Canon.) Still, no matter Isa's insistence that they couldn't arrest me for something the girls had done, their exposure (pun intended) had done more than enough damage. I didn't know how much Principal Horen had overheard of their damning greeting, but she'd certainlyseen plenty. The girls had been dragged to the office by Horen in anticipation of contacting their parents.

Tuesday morning I contacted my union rep to appeal my dismissal and for legal counsel. They rushed somebody out before noon, a tired-looking fellow named Capaldi with wire-frame glasses and only a few lonely hairs left on his head. I explained my situation using the lies I'd settled on with Isa. We were still talking over what to expect when I got the call from someone at the police department asking me to come in for questioning as soon as possible. The appointment was set for that afternoon. I'd driven past the place a thousand times without a second glance, an old brick building next to the courthouse. It was on my route to the high school. Nonetheless, it was a daunting thing, walking into that police department with all that guilt weighing me down. I couldn't escape the feeling that I would never leave, like they would ask the perfect question and I'd be left with no choice but to confess all my sins and throw myself at their absent mercy. Capaldi and I were led to a sparsely d

"If I spank you any more, it's going to bruise. It may have already," I told her some hours later. She looked back at me, sulking. "So? So when I sit down tomorrow, I'll remember how much Mr. Canon approves of my ass. It'll feel good. Go on. Bruise me." I patted the bed. "Come on, give it a rest for a bit. I can only take so much." Tabitha stood, frowning, and gestured to my admittedly fully erect shaft upthrust from my prone position. "Really? Because it looks like you could take more." "I meant my hand, actually. But if you're so intent on brushing up, climb aboard. You're almost as bad as Taylor about getting me off-topic from my lesson plan." Not that I'd had a plan. And no one was as bad as Taylor. It was a little strange, in a way. If I had told Taylor to mount my cock, she'd have grinned that self-satisfied smirk of hers. Abbie, too. Cassie would have practically leapt on it. No, not practically, definitely. Isa would pout, Candy too, but they'd have that angrily horny fac