Miss Lillys Spring Surprise

CONTENT WARNING:

The following story contains strong Non-Consent / Reluctance content and depictions of male dominance, blackmail, humiliation and various generally nasty and reprehensible acts. The depiction of these acts should not be construed as condoning them; no real person should ever be subjected to these kind of acts in the real world. Be warned before you read on, and if you enjoy it... well then, shame on you.

☻

* * *

It was eight thirty on Wednesday morning, and quite possibly the sexiest young schoolteacher the halls of Barrymore Collegiate High had ever seen was arriving to start the day.

She turned heads in the parking lot, as she did every morning, when she climbed out of her little cherry-red Camry. Miss Lana Lilly was five feet and nine inches of lithe, long-legged and firmly-toned beauty under her conservative pencil skirt and nylons, with full C-cups filling out the front of her white blouse. Her blonde hair was caught back from her heart-shaped face in a neat bun, and her understated but still fashionable square-rimmed spectacles did nothing to obscure her pale, aquiline, delicately-sculpted beauty, enhanced even more when her hazel eyes shone and her cheeks dimpled ever-so-slightly as she smiled at a passing student.

Slinging her purse over one shoulder and her jacket over an arm, the young teacher was the picture of sunny confidence and good cheer as her demure black pumps clicked along the pavement toward the school's main entrance. All around her, knots of boys and girls parted and reformed and eyes followed her. Some played with ill-disguised yearning over her body and lingered on the luscious rump that could just be discerned waggling back and forth under her skirt with every step. Others watched with a vague sense of frustration, or resentment, or jealousy, or (worse) envy-masquerading-as-disdain; that complicated cocktail of emotions that always roils in the wake of the prettiest girl in a crowd.

The effect she had on people wasn't lost on Lana, but this morning she ignored it all with long practise; nearly on autopilot, if the truth be told, as she bestowed a "Morning, Bobby!" here and a "Hi there, Lisa, hope you've been studying!" there as she made her way toward Barrymore Collegiate's hallowed halls. No, she had other things to think about than teenaged hormones. Worrisome thoughts that chased one another ceaselessly behind her bright facade.

There was of course the upcoming performance review with Principal Steele and his Veep, Jim Long, where she would find out if her work three months into her fledgling career as a teacher would be judged worthy of renewing her temporary contract in the fall. She was confident about that -- she knew her work was good and was pretty sure it would get a fair shake -- but a little anxiety was inevitable, nonetheless. That could be worked off with a good, brisk walking pace. Into the school, under the gold-and-green banners shouting

GO BEARS!

Nodding at the prune-faced Mr. Prentice (Chemistry) on her way into the staff room with its nacreous flourescent lighting, scuffed linoleum flooring and pea-green wallpaper.

Step, step, step by step, set your purse down, hang your jacket, pour yourself a coffee, easy as pie.

And then there was the day. First of April, April Fool's Day, which her fellow teachers had warned her could be the source of endless, tiresome pranks from the youngsters, some of whom didn't seem to know that the window for pranks was supposed to close at noon.

"My first April Fool's Day here was the longest teaching day of my life,"

the portly English teacher Mrs. Reudebaker had confided in her just last week, with one of those matronly smiles of hers that revealed tobacco-yellowed teeth and never quite seemed to reach her eyes.

"Never did get those peanut sauce stains out of my favourite blouse. You want my advice, dress nice and plain."

No problem. Lana had followed that advice and steeled herself for the most trying of days from her students, taking some comfort in knowing that Barrymore Collegiate had a strict

no-pranks-among-the-staff

policy to take harassment from her colleagues off her mind. Now it was just a matter of pouring the coffee (using her Taylor Swift-inspired

"Shake It Off"

mug from Etsy), finding the creamers, stirring two of them in, adding two spoons out of the sugarbowl. Routine actions to settle the nerves.

But then, as she turned and smiled pleasantly at the somewhat rodent-faced French teacher whose name she could never remember -- DuBois? — then there were the

other things

. And as she took a seat in one of the ratty oatmeal-coloured armchairs the room sported as furniture around its down-at-heel coffee table, it was the

other things

that chased through her mind most of all, round and round and round.

Other things.

The lonely sound of the phone ringing again and again as she called her father, her strictly Catholic father who'd disowned her six months ago when he discovered that she'd lost her virginity at college... and lost it to a boy who wasn't white. Hours worth, days' worth of futile ringing, of trying not to cry when a curt recorded voice finally cut in and said

"You know what to do." BEEP.

Other things.

Like the even lonelier sound of the automated message saying

the number you are calling has been changed,

which had left her sobbing in her living room five days ago, the full reality of her isolation from her family finally hitting her.

Other things.

The stacks of unopened, unpaid bills on her kitchen counter.

URGENT. PAST DUE. THIRD NOTICE.

The hard-voiced messages on her answering machine leaving lengthy account numbers and demanding that she call right away. The fridge that held a scattering of condiments and a lonely carton of soy milk.

Other things.

The depressingly tiny paycheques that had forced her to spend February deciding which bill she could pay down while letting the others wait. The desperate search through the online classifieds. The one item that had finally stood out, for a website called MeetEasy.com:

Party Partner / Brand Management Associate.

Other things.

The face of the dazzling brunette who'd interviewed her: bland, put-together, beautiful and inscrutable, with a pair of classic California silicone deposits pushing up her bust-line under her power suit.

"Feel free to research us, we're the most professional firm of our kind in the Inland Empire region. I can promise you that you'll be completely secure and comfortable with us."

The firm feeling of the handshake that had welcomed her aboard, and into a double life.

There were

other things

yet: like the subtly applied make-up around Lana's eyes that hid circles of fatigue. The way the hand holding her coffee shook slightly, and the way she was paler than she was used to being -- though most of her colleagues didn't notice it. But then she looked up and noticed more and more of the staff filing in, exchanged pleasantries with a few of them --

"How about that game last night?"

with bluff, red-faced Coach Heenan -- and for a merciful moment the

other things

receded, submerging into a black hole of determinedly suppressed memory as Lana's cheery disposition turned up to maximum brightness.

Routine actions to settle the nerves, Lana... that's all you need.

And so she sipped at her coffee steadily as she relaxed in her armchair, trading jokes with the wiry little Drama teacher Mrs. Henderson, comparing fashion tips with the middle-aged and determinedly thin Mrs. Thurston, laughing along with one of Coach Heenan's boorish stories about beer, pizza and nights out with his buddies. Lana was well-liked in the staff room, or at any rate was pretty sure she was; possibly a side-effect of the retiree she'd been brought in to replace having been a notorious misanthrope without a tenth of Miss Lilly's youthful, photogenic charms. Half an hour passed in a flurry as the staff finished their donuts and danishes and perfunctory early-morning bickering before they headed "off to the salt mines," as Mrs. Henderson put it every morning. And just as with every morning, Lana smiled at the joke and gave her a little cheers with her mug.

Finally the mug was empty. The room was empty. A chime in the halls outside marked nine o'clock, the beginning of First Period. It was time. Lana got up, popped into the little staff ladies' room to check her hair and make-up and drink a sip of water from a paper cup, straightened her blouse and took a deep breath. The

other things

were thoroughly at bay, her most winning face thoroughly in place.

You've got this, Lana,

she told herself silently in the mirror, took another breath and abruptly walked out, heading for the main office. It was time for her performance review, and she was ready to knock them dead.

* * *

"Got your lines down, Dick?" Principal Charleston Steele was grinning good-naturedly, his smile a jovial white slash across his craggy mahogany-toned features, as he joshed with the school Constable.

The beefy man with the impeccably-pressed uniform, jarhead haircut and salt-and-pepper mustache grinned back across the Principal's big oaken desk at him, looking unperturbed; Constable Richard Rodney hated being called "Dick," but he liked to think of himself as a man with a sense of humour and knew making a fuss over it was futile. "Don't worry about me, Old Man," he joked back instead. "Just hope your Alzheimer's doesn't kick in before we're through."

Steele threw his head back and gave a full throated baritone laugh. He was barely three years older than Rodney... but he was one of those guys who, according to people around him, seemed to almost have come out of the womb looking roughly fifty-ish and would likely leave the world the same way. Nevertheless he was muscled like a man half his age, the pipes under his sober dark suit jacket easily rivalling the bulging pecs and biceps of "Dick" Rodney. Every inch of the man radiated an easy confidence. "I'll try to remember that. How 'bout you, Jim?"

There was a brief pause as Steele and Rodney turned to look at office's third occupant, Vice Principal Jim Long, who echoed the laughter somewhat nervously. Short, portly, sweaty, and balding, his eyes obscured behind thick Coke-bottle lenses, he had always felt keenly the gap in charisma between himself and his athletic, hail-fellow-well-met Principal... much less the bull-necked Constable. He'd never been a high school basketball star in his youth like Steele, nor was he the former football monster and gung-ho ex-marine that Rodney kept reminding people he was. Jim had always been a science nerd, shy until his work had forced him not to be, mainly interested in

Star Patrol

and model spaceships. In the presence of guys like this, his belly felt fatter, his tan suit felt ill-fitting, his sweating seemed to get worse, everything about him felt put together just a little bit wrong.

But still, he was determined he'd hold up his end. "No problems here, gents," he said in his slightly squeaky, nasal voice. "If us nerds are good for anything, it's memorization. You know that."

"He's got us there," Dick laughed in a way that made the Vice Principal's weak smile falter... almost as if he were laughing more

at

than

with.

Steele seemed not to notice it, though. "No doubt," he said with a chuckle, shaking his head. "Okay then, gentlemen, we'd better get our game faces on. She'll be here any minute now."

"Okay, then," Jim said... then paused and wet his lips. "Uhhh..."

"What's up, Jim." There was always something up with Jim. A flat note of impatience crept into Steele's voice.

"Well, it's just... do you suppose we should really, uhhh, go through with this?" Jim said, his voice growing uncertain and halting under the look of withering scorn the Constable turned on him. "It's just that... uhhh... well I did tell her that, that we had... ahhh... a no-pranks policy among... the staff..."

As the sentence wilted away under the glare of Dick Rodney's contempt, Steele came to the rescue with his best disarming smile. "Come on, Jim, you worry too much, man. It's harmless! And hell, we're giving her some darned good news on the other side of it, right? She's a good kid, got a solid head on her shoulders, she won't bat an eyelash, you'll see."

"Right." Jim pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, mopped his brow, licked his lips. Tucked it away again and repeated: "Uh... right. Of course you're right, Charlie."

"That's my job, man," Steele said easily with a wave of his hand. "Now come on, positions, guys. Let's have fun with this."

Charleston "Charlie" Steele loved nothing more than a good joke; he'd been something of a class clown in high school before he'd grown to his full six foot seven and his muscles had filled in, and the satisfaction of a prank well played had never left him ever since the day he and a couple of buddies had moved their coach's car around the corner on April Fool's Day and managed to convince him that the cops had towed it.

The poor guy actually went down to the impound lot,

he remembered with a warm glow of inner hilarity as he composed his face into its sternest expression. The stunt had earned him a month of Saturday detention, but good God had it been worth it.

He didn't have the heart to do anything that mean to Miss Lilly, of course, but he was sure the morning's prank would test her nerves a little. What was on the dance card for today was a "fake drug test" routine, an idea he'd gotten from chatting with Dick about an end-of-tour trick the Master Sergeant at Rodney's battalion HQ in Afghanistan had played on his unit. Their Top had told them that under new rules, all personnel had to pass a drug test to be admissible to return to the States, freaking a group of them out -- Rodney included -- who'd just had a meal earlier that day of naan-bread filled with poppy seeds and were dead sure they were going to test positive for heroin. In fact, the way Dick told the story they'd played the joke to the hilt, actually going through a whole morning's routine of administering the fake rapid-screening tests, bringing back the "positives" and regretfully informing the distraught marines they would have to wait for lab confirmation as the flight home left without them.

A couple of the men were actually weeping (though they'd never admit it!) by the time the Top had finally come into the tent, had a bugler belt out the Looney Tunes theme and shouted

"April Fools, ladies!"

at the top of his lungs. Dick and Charlie for their part were crying with laughter by the time the ex-jarhead cop got to the end of the story.

Charlie's version of the joke would be gentler, of course. And after their stern review and fake "drug test" -- supposedly just ordered by the governor's office -- they were all set to give Miss Lilly the good news that due to her excellent performance (and the departed Mr. Chisolm's worsening heart condition), the local Board was prepared to upgrade her fall contract from temporary to probationary status. It was the kind of news he loved giving new teachers and rarely had the opportunity to do; financially, Barrymore Collegiate had seen better days, and Lana Lilly was their most promising new hire in years.

He wanted to make her full initiation into the Barrymore Collegiate family a memorable one, a day they'd all look back on fondly. He wanted to see her sunny smile dawn a hundred watts brighter when he said the words "April Fools," was looking forward to the little hug she'd give him as they laughed together.

And would her being so beautiful she takes your breath away have anything to do with that, you dirty old man?

his subconscious lectured him. And yes, he'd have to admit it would.

But Charlie knew to a certainty that was a line he'd never step over; twenty-three years of happy marriage, still going strong, had made him a master of looking without the temptation to touch. About the most that would happen is that she'd give him a flash of that coy, dimpled smile and he'd go home and make love to his wife with redoubled ferocity that night... which of late had happened almost every other day. His better half had more reason to be glad that Lana Lilly had come to Barrymore than any woman on earth and didn't even know it.

His musings were cut short by the buzzing of the intercom on his desk: his secretary Mrs. Salinas.

"Miss Lilly, she is here, Mr. Steele."

He hit the intercom button, shared a last grin with his partners in crime, then composed his face again and said: "Alright, Mrs. Salinas. Send her in, please."

* * *

The butterflies in her stomach had started up again during the few minutes of waiting for admittance to Mr. Steele's office. Lana had calmed them by chatting with the secretary Mrs. Salinas -- a forty-ish, elegant Latina beauty whose skin didn't look a day over twenty-eight, and who sported a well-kept body, proud breasts, long shiny tresses and a saucy smile -- who told stories of her home in Ecuador and learning to cook from her mother that were... a little hard to follow with her accent, and hard to pay full attention to, but certainly seemed heartfelt.

By the time Mrs. Salinas rang her through, Lana's smile and her confidence were fully in place. She knew both Jim Long and Charlie Steele as well as she knew anyone at the school, knew just what to say and how to act with them. She was holding all the cards.

Then Mrs. Salinas opened the door for her and she walked through into the warm-toned space of Steele's office... and as the door shut behind her, she suddenly realized that

three

figures were standing to greet her around the Principal's desk, not two.

And one of them was the School Constable, Richard Rodney.

Lana froze in mid-step, her smile vanishing as the

other things

came boiling back up unbidden.

The

other things

like nights spent partying with various sorts of businessmen visiting the city, one of a dozen constantly-rotating beauties in the MeetEasy.com stable of "Party Partners" and "Brand Management Associates" hobnobbing with potential investors in Riverside. The whirl of faces and restaurants and clubs. The one drink that became a couple, the couple of drinks that became a half a dozen, the half dozen drinks that led to a quick toke in the bathroom, that became in its turn a half-dozen tokes, or a quick line of white powder... or two, or three, or five.

The bleary attempts to keep her fatigue from showing the next day as the parties gradually became after-parties, the beautiful people lounging around and listening to music and dancing until sunrise tickled the edge of the sky... the heels coming off, the tight dresses coming down, the laughter getting louder, one girl or another vanishing into a bedroom with a promising client for reasons nobody present would acknowledge openly. The requests for her time under her pseudonym

"Lucy Loveless"

coming in thicker and faster as the website's patrons took a shine to Lana's tight, lithe form, her perfect face, her sweet smile and goofy sense of humour... and to the way her perfect ass looked when she shook and shimmied it to a hip-hop beat in her raciest thong underwear.

And then the

other thing

to end them all. The after-party two nights gone that had become... something else again. The vivid nightmare whirl of images that blitzed through her brain as she stared at Rodney and her racing thoughts finally resolved into the words:

Why is he here?

And then into the even more terrifying words:

Do they know?

Her blood roared in her ears as the three men stood staring at her in polite confusion. Finally she realized that Principal Steele had invited her to sit down three times already. She shook herself, forced a wan smile back onto her face and crossed her arms in an unconsciously vulnerable gesture across her midsection, embarking across a suddenly endless-seeming expanse of burgundy carpet toward the straight-backed wooden chair they were offering her. She felt so shaken, so unexpectedly exposed all of a sudden that it was an effort of will to keep her hand from trembling as she shook each of theirs as briefly as she could before sinking into the chair, fighting to keep her eyes away from Constable Rodney's burly form, to keep her breathing regular.