She's staring at him. Well, of course she should. She should be paying close attention and hanging on to his every word just as she is now because that's what she's supposed to be doing as a student. But something about the look in her eyes seems unusual.
No one else is this focused. None of the other students is as fixated on his lips as Jane is. He finds it a little unsettling.
"Now, I will ask all of you to take down at least three things that you will remember from today's lesson," he says to his students. "You have five minutes."
"Shit is he going to check?" One student whispers to another. Jane blinks out of her reverie and looks around to see everyone else scribbling something down in their notebooks. And just as the headmaster suspects, she has no idea what is going on.
In a few minutes, he begins to stroll around the class, looking down at each student's notes and nodding silently.
When he stops near Jane's desk, her page is blank and she's nibbling at the bottom of her pen.
The teacher leans over her desk, getting closer so that no one else can hear what he says to her.
"Just as I thought," he says. He straightens, shaking his head in disapproval. "See me after class."
After a lap around the class, he returns to his desk just in time for the bell to go off.
"That concludes today's lesson. You're free to go."
The students file out in an orderly fashion, knowing their headmaster does not condone any form of rowdiness, while Jane stays put in her seat.
Once the classroom is empty, she stands and makes her way to the teacher's desk.
They stand facing each other with the desk between them. Jane keeps her eyes down, wanting nothing more than to sink into the ground now.
"Can you tell me what was on your mind during today's lesson?" He says, planting his fists over the desk to lean on his strong, muscular arms.
She tears her eyes away from his arms, but now she must look at his chest. His broad chest only inches away from her nose, hidden by his smooth dressshirt.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that got her here in the first place. She shakes her head. "Nothing, Sir. I just… I-"
He hums, drawing back the chair and sitting. "Little girls like you shouldn't have much to think about," he says.
"Tell me," he cocks his head to the side, "Are your parents religious?"
Her eyes widen and then she frowns. "Yes." How does he know that?
He looks her over. The skirt she wears always stops right below her knees, and she has never exposed so much as her collarbone as far as he can remember. Her hair is always let down to cover her neck and she wears a pair of silver stud earrings without any bracelets or hairclips like the other girls do. She doesn't smile or talk much either. She has to be the most mundane girl in the school.
"Do you have a boyfriend, Jane?"
She finally looks into his eyes, hers stretched even wider now in disbelief. Her lips part and she searches his face to see if he's joking.
Of course, he isn't. He's probably never uttered a joke in his life.
Still, she wonders if she should answer. Is he even allowed to ask that?
He raises a questioning eyebrow at her and that's all it takes for her to blurt out a "no!"
A moment passes between them. "I mean," she winces, "No, Sir."
"Right. Of course not," he says. He stands, moving around the desk and stopping beside her. "You know what the punishment for not paying attention in class is, don't you?"
She nods.
"I will pay attention to the headmaster."
She turns to him. "Sir?"
"Say it," he commands.
"I will pay attention to the headmaster."
"Good," he praises, handing her a marker and motioning towards the white board. "Now write that down for me until I say you can stop."
She takes it, dropping her school bag on the floor and stepping towards the board.
He sits on one of the front row mini desks and folds his arms, watching her as she takes the cap off and sighs.
She stands on the tips of her toes and stretches her arm as far as it will go. And then she begins to write.
The hem of her skirt rises, exposing her knees and only an inch of the back of her lower thigh. He catches himself looking away, as if her legs are the most scandalous thing he has ever seen.
He decided to take a break and go back to his office, get a nice cup of coffee and relax. She'll be done by the time he's back, he assumes.
She turns around when she hears him leave, and then lets out a sigh of relief once he's out the door. The tension leaves the classroom with him and she begins to write down the words faster, determined to be done by the time he gets back so that she doesn't have to spend even more time with him today.
It's not like she wasn't paying attention. Just not to his words. 'To him'.
Meanwhile, that cup of coffee is not as relaxing as the headmaster had hoped.
He has a few involuntary meetings with two of his staff while the remaining half of his coffee chills out on top of his desk. And once he's alone again, he thinks about those bright, curious eyes, telling him she will obey. Saying she will pay attention to her teacher and writing it down now as many times as he wants. He shouldn't be so thrilled, but he is. Even more so than yesterday when she spent the entirety of her detention eye-raping him.
'What is wrong with her? What is wrong with me?'
As expected, she has filled the whiteboard with the words by the time he returns and is seated on top of his desk, swinging her legs absentmindedly.
She freezes when he returns silently, watching him with wide eyes because she knows she probably shouldn't be sitting on his desk.
She leaps off, tucking her hands in front of her and keeping her head down.
"Did I say you could stop?" He says. He doesn't expect her to do anything other than wait just as she is now, but something about her makes him want to be an asshole.
"Oh. I'm sorry, Sir, I didn't know you wanted me to start over," she replies, a hint of sarcasm in her tone. This makes him chuckle.
"You could be less of a push-over if you wanted to," he states.
She looks up at him, briefly enough to ask, "Am I *not* supposed to do as you say?"
He wonders if she is being sarcastic again but i'ts hard to tell since she's so naive and a little too innocent for her own good.
"You should always do as I say," he answers.
Her head drops again and she focuses on playing with her fingers, but they don't distract her enough from his hard gaze burning a hole into her head.
"Go on. Get out. And don't get in trouble with me again," he warns.
She grabs her bag and begins to scramble away but stops after she opens the door. She turns around, her eyes meeting his for the first time.
"Do *you* have a girlfriend, Mr Quinn?"
He's shocked enough for his lips to part slightly and the iciness in his eyes to disappear, a reaction no other student has gotten out of him, ever.
His palms twitch and his breath hitches in his throat. She frowns as if she doesn't understand why he doesn't answer the question immediately. Well, neither did she.
"What makes you so curious about me?" He says. She looks him over once more as if even she does not know the answer to that.
"I'm not."
And with that, she jogs away, leaving him stunned, confused, and a little intrigued.
***
'Okay, so, the girl is not as predictable as I imagined. But so what?'
He sighs, feeling ridiculous for thinking about work while in the privacy and comfort of his private quarters.
"A girlfriend?"
He can't believe how bold she was earlier today. It may have seemed like an innocent question, shot back at him for asking her about her own private affairs in the first place. But he saw something he had never seen before.
A glint of mischief. Fleeting, but enough for him to wonder if the girl has a hidden side.