Lessons in Sin

If I had my phone, I could watch porn on max volume during one of my classes.

If I had my phone, I would call Keaton. He would listen to me and say all the right things. He would understand. But since I didn’t have access to my brother, I read the rules in the handbook while thinking up ways to break them.

I would have to be deliberately disobedient. Disorderly. Creative. Brave. Bolder than ever. I would have to do things I would’ve never dared to do in Bishop’s Landing.

Being bad wasn’t in my nature. I couldn’t fathom breaking things or stealing from someone. Hell, I’d never even smoked a cigarette.

But I was getting better at speaking my mind and sneaking around with boys. Since those were the very reasons I’d ended up here, maybe that was exactly how I would get thrown out.

Except the handbook had an entire chapter dedicated to the strict policies on male–female interactions. Electric fences surrounded each campus for fuck’s sake.

Maybe there was a way around the walls.

I needed to befriend the troublemakers, the girls who had been here long enough to know the lay of the land and all its weak points. Sion Academy may be strait-laced and prissy, but there was a bad crowd in every school. It wouldn’t be hard to find them.

Just before dawn, a flurry of footsteps pattered down the hall. It sounded like more than one person. Like a stampede. Only they were tiptoeing and making shushing sounds, trying to keep quiet as they rushed past my room.

I flipped over and glanced at the clock. And groaned. I’d only been asleep for twenty minutes, and the girls didn’t need to be downstairs for another two hours.

What on earth were they doing up so early?

Curiosity pulled me from the bed. I opened the door, catching a glimpse of someone’s backside as she raced to catch up. She vanished around the corner to the stairs, wearing a tiny tank top and thong underwear.

Son of a bitch. No thongs, my ass.

I clenched my hands and took off at a sprint, slipping past the closed door of the big sister’s room.

At the stairwell’s landing, I could go up or down. Muffled noise came from above, so I followed it, my pulse racing with nervous energy.

In any other situation, I would’ve felt under-dressed in a T-shirt and bikini underwear. But it was six in the morning, and I was chasing a girl wearing butt floss.

The stairs opened to the top level with an empty corridor identical to my floor, rooms on either side, and the air deafeningly quiet. I crept along the hallway, passing open doors and vacant dorms. Personal belongings filled each one, but every bed lay empty, the sheets in disarray.

Where was everyone?

Excited whispers drifted from the end of the corridor. I hurried toward the voices and stopped in the doorway of the last dorm.

A dozen girls plastered themselves to the two windows. With their backs to me, they elbowed and pushed, fighting to look outside. Some stood on the bed to see over the others.

There was more than one pair of thongs in the crowd. A lot of cheeky panties and bra-covered boobs. Big boobs. Curvy, womanly bodies.

Must be nice.

With my skinny bird legs and flat chest, I looked like a teenage boy compared to most of them. It was intimidating. But I was used to that feeling. I owned it.

The sun crested the mountains, illuminating the sky in pale pastels. I lingered on the threshold to the room, dying to know what could be so damn engrossing at the ass-crack of dawn.

“Look at him.” A pretty redhead sighed. “It’s not fair.”

“He’s actual, literal sex,” another girl whispered. “Even his sweat is gorge.”

“Those arms, though.”

“Arms?” A brunette with endless curves pressed her brow to the glass. “Girrrrl, look at dat ass.”

I sucked on my bottom lip, biting down on a smile.

The boys at St. John de Brebeuf must’ve been exercising in the athletic field. It was football season, and evidently, these girls had a favorite player. But how much could they see from this distance?

I inched closer, approaching their backs. Not one head turned toward me as I squeezed in on the end and peered around the edge of the window.

Oh.

My.

God.

That was no boy.

I clapped a hand over my mouth, muffling my gasp as I drank in the glory that was a half-naked Father Magnus.

Dressed in nothing but gray sweatpants, he stood beneath the window and stretched his arms overhead. The thin sweatpants hung low on his narrow hips, molding to the thick shape of his bulge and clinging precariously to the firm, round muscles of his backside.

That ass was no joke. I silently willed the waistband to give up its hold and fall already.

He clasped his hands behind his head and turned toward the sunrise, tilting his face heavenward as if soaking in the rays. His stance highlighted the definition along his spine, the dips and grooves of his carved torso, and the power in his legs.