RIGOROUS EDUCATION

BY CHRIS CAMBEL

Spunk Books

Word Count: 37,000

Release Date: 15 March 2016

BLURB

Young student Paul Amir is on the train to school when he has a run in with his new head teacher, Niall Carrick. A disastrous second meeting a few days later in Professor Carrick’s classroom sees Paul excluded from the class, and as punishment, he must continue his history lessons with Professor Carrick in private.

Professor Niall Carrick doesn’t know what it is about Paul Amir that gets him so worked up. He’s the most infuriating, stuck up, antagonistic teen Niall has ever met. He’s also utterly gorgeous and Niall knows his clashes with the lad are driven as much by lust as aggression.

As Niall and Paul slowly get to know each other during their private study sessions, it’s not long before they both find that their time together is much less of a punishment and far more pleasurable than either of them could ever have imagined.

As soon as Niall was outside, he was fidgeting with his cigarettes. He smoked the entire walk back to his house, and didn’t give a damn if every parent of a Whitchurch child could see him. He was furious. Furious and confused. No, scratch that, he wasn’t confused at all. He wished he was confused. He knew himself too damned well—he was developing a mad crush on Paul Amir.

He made himself two hasty sandwiches in the kitchen and grabbed two bottles of Guinness. On his porch, he devoured and drank and couldn’t help but ruminate the entire time on the interaction he’d just had.

The boy’s pretty, petulant face, his sneer, the way his big green eyes rolled when Niall spoke. His attractiveness made him enchanting and his attitude made him infuriating. The combination, however, seemed only to make him even more intoxicating.

Niall stamped one foot on the porch and slammed the remainder of his stout. What the hell was wrong with him? This kid was seventeen, first of all, and second of all he was obviously a complete piece of shit. Dead father or not, he was the most stuck-up, antagonistic, spoiled little wanker Niall had ever encountered.

Why did it make Niall’s sexual attraction all the more powerful?

His keen psychoanalytic mind was now his worst enemy. Within moments, he was all too aware of what was going on. He saw Paul as a desirable, attractive mate—keen-witted, youthful, beautiful—but beyond that, his macho, adolescent attitude was a challenge. Fight me. Dominate me, if you can. Go ahead and try.

And Niall wanted nothing more than to put him in his place. To intimidate and overpower him and strip him of all his cocky young arrogance. To make him totally subservient, apologetic, begging forgiveness. Niall wanted to subjugate him, to feel Paul’s sweaty young body pressed beneath his own. To make the boy whimper with pleasure…

He paused, realizing he had an erection, the tip of his cock hardening against the buckle of his belt. He adjusted himself and lit another cigarette before he’d even finished his lunch.

“God!” he shouted, trying to disrupt the fantasy. “It’s too fucking perverse!”

The boy was far too young for Niall to even fantasize about him, much less pursue. However, he knew that repression didn’t work—it only made feelings stronger. But neither could he indulge these kind of thoughts. He needed, distraction, sublimation.

In the kitchen he did a few dozen pushups and pullups then drank a hot cup of tea and brushed his teeth. A few minutes later, he was back in his office plotting out the debate team’s Fall schedule without a single thought of Paul Amir.

For about ten minutes at least.

Then Fiona came in, slamming the door behind her. “Niall!” she hissed. “What the hell is this about kicking Paul Amir out of your class?”

Niall put his hand to his brow and dragged it back through his hair.

“He’s been disrespectful in the most callous ways possible. He sat there and interrupted me repeatedly, grilled me about my qualifications for ten minutes and mouthed off the entire time. He topped it off by calling me an ivory tower wanker. He’s a prick and I won’t have him in my classroom.”

“Well… you’ll take him back, right? He’s really sorry. He swore up and down to me that he’d never be disrespectful again.”

“The irony that he apologized to you, and not me, should be something that gives you pause. I held a boundary with him. My word is my bond. If I go back on it, it sets a precedent. He started a power struggle with me, and it’s my obligation to end it. You know how teenage boys are! You let them push one boundary, they’ll walk all over you forever.”

Fiona shook her head. “I agree, but you have to figure a way out of this. You can’t prevent him from graduating because he’s a little prick.”

“See! He spun everything of course. I never told him this would jeopardize his graduation. I told him he’d have to do an independent study with another teacher.”

“That’s not even something the school does, Niall! You just made that up. No wonder he was confused. Who’s going to do that for him? You’re just going to foist him off on some faculty who already has a full schedule?”

“I’ll figure it out, alright? It might be good for him, anyway, to have one faculty member who actually gives a damn about him and talks to him three times a week. He’s clearly struggling.”

“And you’re not helping,” Fiona scolded. “I thought you were so empathetic, Niall. This isn’t like you. What’s going on?”

Niall took a deep breath and let it out all at once in a huff. “I don’t know, Fi. I’m not happy to be here, okay? I had no idea I’d have to be the debate coach, I was told I’d only be teaching the best and brightest, and I don’t need some big-man-on-campus asswipe turning my classroom into a sketch comedy. I don’t want him.”

“Well I can’t take him either,” Fiona said. “This is your mess to figure out.”

Fiona went out shaking her head.

Niall sat there blindly glossing over evaluation forms from the prior year, all the while mentally grinding away at the situation he now had with Paul. Then he realized he had felt relieved when he kicked Paul out. Unconsciously, he’d done it to protect himself. To keep himself from feeling that impossible attraction to the boy. This way, he’d only encounter Paul incidentally on campus, and there’d be no awkward torment of sexual frustration when the boy was around.

However, Niall had less than twenty-four hours to figure an independent study for the lad. He’d have to find a teacher and arrange things very quickly so that a curriculum could be set up for the semester—a rigorous one that would cover the same exhaustive scope and depth of Niall’s class. In short, an impossible favor to ask of anyone, much less teachers at Whitchurch that Niall barely knew.

Before long, the workday was done. Niall walked home, staring at the grass. He changed out of his suit and into shorts and a T-shirt, hopped on his bike, and took off for the nearby village which had the closest pub. Christ, he wished he had a good friend, somebody he could vent to. But as he rode through the thick foliage and pastures of the suburbs, he knew how ridiculous that idea was. As if there was anybody he would trust enough with his woes.

“Yes,” Niall said under his breath, imagining the scenario as he began climbing a hill. He stood on the pedals to work his way upward, and continued. “I’ve unintentionally got myself into a soap operatic power struggle with a teenage boy.”

Niall crested the hill and began floating down through puddles, the cool air coursing over his body. He went on, grumbling, “He just lost his father in a freak accident, but he’s gorgeous as a young Adonis, and our conflict only gives me a hard-on. Jesus Christ.”

 

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