Master Class: An Alpha Billionaire Romance (+ Bonus Book 'Silent Daughter 1') Read online

  Seeing all those other students stay behind and swarm around him, discouraged me and I was almost ready to give up and leave. But he saw me standing there, lingering, waiting. If I had run away at that point, I would have looked stupid. Like a coward.

  Now, I kind of wish I would have done just that, because as soon as I was alone with him, I was back to being my snooty self, trying to lecture him about his job. I couldn’t help myself. He agitates me. His entire being challenges my ideals. My beliefs in education, degrees, proper scholarship and success.

  I was born into a family of scholars. Both my parents are professors and highly regarded in their respective fields. They did everything in their power to make sure that my older sister and I were not only able to follow their example, but even go beyond their achievements. We were already born by the time my father finally got tenure at a renowned University, and my mother got hers two years later, not at the same University, but in the same city. Even as a young child, I was inspired by them. They love what they’re doing, they live for it. Not once have I heard them complain about Mondays the way other people do. Not only that, they also received a lot of respect. I saw it in the way my teachers and other parents talked to them. Having a doctoral degree and working as a professor not only appeared to be the most fun job in the world, it also comes with a lot of esteem.

  I wanted to be like them when I grew up, no question about it. I wanted to become a scholar like them - or so I thought. So far, I have to find the joy in what I’m doing. I chose the same major as my mother, Sociology, but the only satisfaction I get from it are good grades. Straight ‘A’s fill me with pride, but the work I have to do to get them doesn’t make me happy. Not in the way it does for my mother.

  I used to have something I enjoyed doing, and it is still there at the back of my mind: Coding. When I took my first computer class in junior high school, I was intrigued by it from the start. While that was years ago, long before smartphones and apps became commonplace, I’m still intrigued with the technology behind it all. It fascinates me that rows of inscrutable words and lines can lead to a functioning program that can do pretty much anything. Coding languages can turn a simple idea into something real, something that helps to improve people’s lives. I’ve yet to be convinced that writing papers and books that are so out of touch with the mundane everyday ways of reality can do the same thing.

  My mother thinks it does, and so do my father and my sister. They dwell in theories and intellectual games without touching the world and people they write about. To me, that’s just odd.

  Yet, I’m about to embark on the same route.

  I sigh and look down at my ring again turning it around my finger, as I always do when I’m lost deep in thought.

  In his introductory lecture, Mr. Portland loved to focus on everything that went wrong in his life. Failure. I’m not familiar with it. I’ve always been good at what I do. But I have this ring to remind me that I lack the passion for it.

  I never failed, because I never tried.

  His words hit a spot. It’s more than just the fact that I don’t respect him as a teacher that his speech agitated me. With just a few words and that piercing look, he opened a door I thought I had closed years ago. I’ve had this ring since junior high school and I’ve worn it almost every single day since then, but my thoughts hardly every traveled back to its original meaning anymore.

  Until now. Thanks to him.

  I’m not superstitious, but the way he looked at me was unsettling on so many levels. It was as if he stripped me naked with just his eyes - not even in a sexual sense. The intimacy is there, but it’s not lust.

  Not just lust.

  I feel my cheeks and ears burning up again.

  Fuck, he’s getting to me.

  I want to know more about him. I want to know who he is, I want to understand him. I want to understand why he unravels me the way he does. Why is he making me so fucking angry - and so confused.

  He’ll continue to talk about himself throughout the semester, but I feel like whatever he is going to tell us won’t be enough for me.

  I pull my legs up, hugging my knees as I pull them close to my chest, as if I could calm my racing heart down by doing so. I feel feverish, dizzy.

  “Idiot,” I hiss to myself.

  I’m one of them. Blushing and swooning as my thoughts can’t seem to let go of this man. This arrogant bastard. Why did he have to look at me like that? Is that what he does with challenges like me? He said he liked me, “students like me”. What does that even mean?

  I let out a groan of frustration and roll over to the side, curling up on my bed while my thoughts continue to linger around Mr. Portland.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JACKSON

  The faculty lounge is not my favorite place to be, but Professor Clark asked me to show up at least once a week for the informal staff meeting. He’s the person who asked me to hold this lecture in the first place, and he’s also the one who made sure that I’d be admitted with as much as freedom as possible when it comes to the content of my class.

  His request came as a surprise for me, and after I got over my initial irritation at this unexpected request, I actually found myself flattered.

  A school that never wanted me as a student now wants me as a teacher. Oh, the irony of it.

  “I’m not an educator,” I told him. “I have no idea how to teach, let alone what to teach a bunch of spoiled little brats such as the kids I’d find at your school.”

  To my surprise, he wasn’t offended at these words, but laughed.

  “That is exactly why I think you’d be a refreshing change in our noble halls,” he said. “Our students could need a little insight into the real world, something coming from a man of action like you are.”

  It worked. His complimentary words made me realize that this would be a good platform for me to see whether it really was that simple. If the division between academics and the real world was really as sharp as I always felt it was. I want to see how these students react to my teaching, how they’d take in the idea of doing something different. For most of them, their path has been laid out early on, I’m sure. Maybe even before they started school altogether. You don’t end up as a graduate student at an Ivy League school without a long term plan.

  But what happens if someone shows up and messes with your head? Could there be a possibility for me to change something? A student’s life, maybe. A career or even an entire idea about life and education.

  I have little hope, but at least they’d be forced to listen to me for an entire semester.

  If she doesn’t decide to drop out of my class after our first encounter this week, little Miss Harlington will be one of them.

  I can’t let her get to my head too much, but it’s hard to keep her out of it. She poses a challenge, a dilemma and attends to a desire deep within me. It’s been a while since I had the pleasure to act on it.

  I know it’d been on the back of my mind when I took this class, despite the taboo nature of an intimate relationship with a student.

  I didn’t expect to meet someone like her, but I knew there was a chance I could. And I knew it would cause trouble.

  I open the door to the faculty lounge, my eyebrows furled deep in thought. It’s still early and the meeting won’t start for another twenty minutes, but the room is inhabited by a handful of teaching staff nonetheless.

  I lift my chin and greet the room, met by the eyes of about half the present teachers. Most of them are perpetuating a stereotype, drinking coffee by the gallon while chain-smoking and lamenting their profession.

  I sit down in the far back of the room with some distance between me and a group of three, two younger female lecturers and a Professor whose name I’ve forgotten.

  “So the rumors are true?” I hear one of the two younger staff members ask, while I get out my tablet to answer a few e-mails for work. Being a guest lecturer for one semester doesn’t mean that I can completely ignore my business for the ti
me being.

  “As nasty as it sounds, yes,” the other woman says.

  “I’m having trouble believing this,” the Professor interjects.

  He leans forward, and so do the two women, making the whole group look like three little rodents sharing a carrot.

  “No man in his right mind would risk his career for something like this,” he whispers, but not soft enough to escape my ears.

  The women huff and shake their heads.

  “Oh, men would,” one of them says. She has blond hair with a disproportionately big head on top of a skinny body, making her look like a lolly pop.

  “A cute little student swooning all over them-isn’t that every Professor’s dream?” she asks. The other woman nods enthusiastically, while the older Professor is now the one who’s huffing with disgust.

  “A man in his right mind, I said,” he repeats. “I’m not talking about the idiots who lose track of what matters just because they’re chasing some skirt. I always thought of Professor Miller to be one of the former.”

  “Well, clearly he’s not,” the blonde argues.

  She looks over her shoulder, and our eyes meet before I can turn away and act as if I wasn’t listening to their conversation. Her eyes widen with fear and she looks as if I just caught her with her hand in the cookie jar.

  “Mr. Portland,” she says, blushing and nodding toward me. She knows my name, but I have no idea who she or who the other two might be.

  They all turn around to me, the other woman with a similar expression on her face as the first, while the Professor displays the same absentminded gaze that most of his kind wear on a daily basis.

  “I’m sorry if we were disturbing you,” the blonde says.

  “Not a problem at all,” I say, waving her off. “I wasn’t aware that the teaching staff at such a renowned school is just as prone to gossip as people are at any other workplace.”

  All three of them lower their eyes for a moment, and the Professor is the first to recover from this short moment of shame.

  “Gossiping is only human,” he states. “And after all, we’re all humans.”

  Humanities. I guess that’s where they teach you, that even disrespectful behavior is nothing to be ashamed of. We’re all human, after all.

  “Besides,” the blonde adds. “This concerns issues on a meta level.”

  “How so?” I want to know.

  “Well, um,” she stutters, fixing her blouse with nervous motions. “I’m sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. Lilia Esquin, Sociology.”

  The others straighten in their seats and nod. Yes, time for pleasantries.

  “Robert Warwick, Sociology as well,” the old guy says.

  Not surprisingly, the last of the bunch, Mindy, also outs herself as a lecturer in Sociology.

  “Portland,” I introduce myself. “But you already seem to know that.”

  The blonde lets out a girlish giggle and nods. “Well, it’s not like your face and name is unknown to the world.”

  I nod, but don’t say anything to that. The distance between them and me is a little too big to hold a proper conversation, but instead of letting it go after our little round of introduction, they decide in unison to move over to my area and place themselves in the armchairs that gather around the small coffee table in front of me. They sit in a circle around me as if I had invited them to listen to my tale, when in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth.

  “The thing is,” Lilia Esquin continues, leaning forward to include me in their little gossip circle. “We were talking about a colleague in another department. I’m not going to say who, but-”

  “You already mentioned his name,” I point out, looking at Professor Warwick. “Professor Miller, wasn’t it?”

  He snorts. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “He’s not working at the University anymore,” Mindy interjects, as if I showed any sign of interest in finding out who this guy was.

  “They let him go, because he…,” Lilia whispers, leaning in even closer, too close for comfort. “He slept with one of his students.”

  Her eyes are wide, and she’s nodding, inviting me to join her indignation.

  “Was it consensual?” I ask, unimpressed.

  Her face changes, giving way to a quizzical confusion. “What do you mean?”

  “Was it consensual?” I repeat. “Did the student want it - or did he rape her?”

  The three of them exchange looks as if they were silently asking each other what I was talking about.

  “I’m assuming it was a her?” I clarify, if only to mess with their heads a little more.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Lilia retorts. “But what do you mean, consensual? Why would that matter?”

  Now I’m the one who widens his eyes with shock.

  “It doesn’t to you?” I ask. “It doesn’t matter to you whether we’re talking about rape or sex between consenting adults?”

  “It was a student!” Professor Warwick throws in. “It’s just wrong. Period.”

  I scan the little circle of tattletales, narrowing my eyes. It’s unsettling how little these people are able to think outside their strictly rule-designed box.

  “It even says so in our contracts,” Lilia adds, as if she wants to prove me right. “Intimate relationships with students are forbidden.”

  Forbidden. I like that word.

  I lean back, completely unimpressed by their demeanor. “I don’t have a contract that states anything like that.”

  Professor Warwick clears his throat, while the women exchange a telling look. Neither of them even come close to being my type, but I’m not an idiot. Lilia is sitting closest to me, her skinny knees pointing in my direction and her eyes have that nervous flutter every time she looks at me. If she wasn’t the sealed and withdrawn person I believe her to be, I’m sure I’d see the same infatuation on her face that I’ve seen in my classroom on so many faces a few days ago.

  “Still, it’s just not done,” Professor Warwick comments. “Contract or not, relations like that are nothing but trouble.”

  He glares at me, wrinkling his nose and narrowing his eyes as if he’s trying to warn me. That jealous bastard. His receding hairline, the wrinkles around his used up face and the giant beer belly don’t speak of the dignified, strong man he could be, had he taken care of himself in the past few decades. Even if there was no such regulation in his contract, there’s hardly a student who’d willingly share a bed with him. Except if they wanted to fuck for grades. I’m sure this happens a lot more than these people would like to admit. Fancy elite school or not, people still enjoy taking advantage of their respective position. It’s only human.

  Return service or not - Professor Warwick knows I could have them all, if I wanted to.

  Thing is, I only want one.

  CHAPTER SIX

  JACKSON

  She is sitting in the exact same seat she sat in during my first lecture. Third row, slightly to the left from where I’m standing. Miss Harlington looks at me with narrow and expectant eyes. No smile, no smitten beam on her face as it is on most others. She has her brown hair tied up in a lose bun, with little strands falling out at the sides, framing her delicate face. Her hands are placed on top of each other on the table in front of her, and she’s wearing a white blouse that matches her fair complexion. A perfectly good girl.

  Irresistible.

  The auditorium is filled to the brim. Approximately two hundred students have their eyes locked on me, waiting for me to start class. Unlike last time, I brought a dark leather satchel today. I place it in front of me on the table in a wide gesture before I face the auditorium again.

  Today, I don’t have a big introductory speech prepared. I have something in mind that is loosely based on what I talked about last time, mixed with a few questions that’ll lead the discussion further. Or so I hope. I have never taught before and I have no experience in working with students whatsoever.

  I didn’t give them any homework, so there�
�s nothing I could ask of them or discuss at this point. But there’s something I need to mention before I start.

  “Good morning,” I say, letting my gaze scan through the auditorium. I avoid looking to my left for longer than necessary, fearing that my gaze could get locked on Miss Harlington for too long.

  “There are a few things that still need to be settled in regard to how I intend to conduct this class,” I resume. “First of all, I will not grade you and there will be no final exam.”

  Murmurs of relief scatter through the crowd.

  “However, you will pass – or fail - this class based on standard attendance,” I add, narrowing my eyes as I catch the eyes of individual students here and there. “And as Miss Harlington was nice enough to point out, I failed to take attendance last time.”

  I quickly nod in her direction, capturing her horrified look for just a second before I turn back to the crowd. Displeased whispers are hushing through the rows left and right, mixed with glances in her direction.

  I don’t want to single her out, especially there’s reason to suspect that she’s not very popular to begin with, but her attitude from last time cannot go unpunished.

  “So from now, every time we meet I will let this attendance list pass around, so you can sign your name and prove that you’ve sat through my class and listened to my wise words from beginning to end,” I say, producing a stapled stack of paper from my bag and holding it up in the air.

  “Another thing that came up during my conversation with Miss Harlington is the fact that some of you might be interested in being graded for this class,” I continue as I walk to the front row to hand off the attendance list. “As I’ve said before, there’s not going to be a final exam, but if you’re interested in writing an essay for a grade, you can turn it in to my research assistant.”

  I turn back to the front of the auditorium and return to my place in the spotlight. The murmur that fills the hall speaks volumes of the students’ discontent with my proposition.