Learning the Ropes Ch. 05: Discovery

Dahlia

***

Thank goodness for the benefits of modern teaching. Computers, projectors, sound system, all of it controllable from my desk. Why, a teacher hardly needs to stand... or, they can just go without standing at all during the day.

Which is useful, considering Kara had restricted my legs early before classes started with something called a 'binder'. Thick straps combined panels of leather together into something almost resembling the skirt of a dress, except this extended from my ankles up my calves and past my knees. I was kept sitting perfectly still, unable to separate my legs or move around much at all, let alone stand up - unless I wanted to reveal to my students that I wasn't the shining beacon of virtues that they thought I was.

"So you see," I said as I wound down my final lecture of the day, "there would have been reasons for non-heterosexual pairings to exist. It's easy to assume that - for the sake of survival - you would only see straight relationships historically, but we have evidence of same-sex couples or other non-traditional partnerships as far back as we have records from these people.

"For your homework for the weekend, I want you to examine some benefits these peoples would have provided to their communities. Feel free to write about any time period, whatever speaks to you." I smiled at my class. "Class is dismissed."

The students poured out of the room, eager to escape for the weekend. Save for the odd student majoring in history, this was just a boring requirement for them to get to the more interesting classes of their degrees. Sure, the unit on sexual history held their interest more than some of the others, but it was still a stretch to say any of them enjoyed it.

I glanced around the room. Kara stepped out part way through the lecture with her phone in her hand, and I was getting worried something had happened. I supposed I didn't need her to untie my legs, but it felt wrong to undo the bonds she had set up. It didn't necessarily matter though, at least until all the students left.

Finally, the last stragglers filtered out, carrying their bags and books... save for one particular student. It was the girl from a few days ago, and I wracked my brain to remember her name. I discreetly grabbed the sign-in chart that had been passed around the room to track attendance and found her name based on where she was sitting. Felicity Ledger, that was it!

I gave her a warm smile, and gestured to the otherwise empty room. "Felicity, right? Class is over, you can head on out." She shrugged, a glint in her eyes as she watched me. For a moment, I felt cornered, unable to flee from this predator thanks to the binder on my legs. I had to remind myself she was just a student, and that I was overreacting. "Is everything alright?"

Felicity looked down at her laptop, then back at me. "I think I need your help with something Ms. Waverly, can you come take a look at this?"

It was phrased so innocently, but it felt like a trap. She couldn't know that I was bound, tied up, right? I squirmed as much as I could in my seat. "I'm sorry, I'm not feeling the greatest. Could you come here and show me instead?"

With a soft sigh - though the smirk never left her lips - Felicity got up from her desk and came over by me. Immediately as she stood by my shoulder, my sense of smell was overcome by her perfume. It smelled like chocolate, and my brain immediately went to sinful thoughts. She placed her hand on my shoulder and I jumped, uncertain why I was so nervous.

A finely manicured hand pointed at the laptop that was set down in front of me. "I record all my classes, Ms. Waverly, using my phone. That's why I absolutely had to get it back on Wednesday after class. Well, that and it's my cell phone, after all." I realized what I was looking at on the computer: an audio file sat open on the screen, ready to be played. "There was something odd at the end of the lecture, I was hoping you could tell me what it was about?"

Then, Felicity clicked the play button. Through the laptop's tinny speakers, I could hear my voice and Kara's voice come through. Horrified, I sat through a replay of our last encounter in this very room.

~ "I'm sorry, mistress."

~ "I didn't quite hear you, flower. Again. Louder."

~ "I'm sorry, mistress."

A brief pause in the recording, before it continued. The conversation made it painfully clear what was going on between us, and to make matters worse I called Kara by her name while she called me Ms. Waverly at one point. I sank in my seat, burying my face in my hands. I felt devastated, destroyed. My professional career was over and ruined, and likely my star pupil's too, before it ever started.

The speakers stopped their recollection of the event right when Felicity would have walked in to get her phone. Her hand squeezed my shoulder, before she stroked her hair back behind her ear.

"You see, Ms. Waverly... flower, I guess you like to be called." I cringed at her saying that. There was no care behind it, no compassion. It was just a word, and right now it was being used to manipulate me. "I've thought a lot about this file over the last couple days. I thought about just getting rid of it, and pretending I didn't know any of this. I thought about sharing it with the dean, and letting him sort it all out."

Felicity pondered for a moment, though I could tell it was an act. She already had this planned out to a tee, there was no doubt about that. "But I decided a different course of action was needed. You see... I'd been hoping to find someone to be... close with. Like you and Kara." I sat there stunned for a moment, giving Felicity the opportunity to pull out my chair.

"N-no!" I cried out, trying to scooch back under the desk, but it was too late. She saw the black-dyed leather and how I could barely move in it. I hung my head low. "Please... just close the door..." I said, defeated.

I hardly consciously recognized when she did as I asked, though I was certainly shocked when she sat down on my thighs. I regretted wearing a short skirt today, since it was so short that Felicity was sitting on bare skin for the most part. She smiled at me, and while her predatory smirk was still present, I saw something else in her eyes.

Lust.

This girl... this freshman, barely 19 year old girl, was looking at me like she wanted to devour me in more ways than one. I shuddered, unable to handle looking at her. I felt her hand wrap around my throat, pointed nails digging in slowly into my soft skin. I looked into her eyes in shock, only to find her amused expression give way: her eyelids fluttered shut, her lips puckered, and then she was against me. Our breasts met moments before our lips did, and I couldn't help but to kiss back.

The second woman in a week I was kissing! How was this right? How was this ok? I could feel my ex-husband's disapproving glare from wherever he was. 'Of course you're making out with your students, and they're girls. Why wouldn't that be the case?' While he never said those words to me, I could still hear them in my head as clear as if he was watching us now. In fact, everything was becoming hazy as we made out, like a fog was settling over my thoughts. My last distinct thought was the taste of vanilla filling my mouth from the girl's lip gloss.

Belatedly, my hands jumped up to my throat to find Felicity had both of her own hands there, wrapped around and squeezing my veins. Panic rushed through my blood like ice water, chilling me. I was suffocating, I realized. This girl was going to kill me. After longer than I would have liked, I felt her grip soften and then finally release.

I held my head for a moment before looking up at Felicity, taking deep breaths as if to reassure myself that I was fine. Felicity merely smirked, slipping a finger down between my legs. "Oh my," she cooed. "Someone enjoyed that..."

I blushed, shaking my head. "N-..." I couldn't bring myself to lie though. "That's not fair... you shouldn't do that... I didn't want that..." I feebly fumbled for an excuse, though none of them sounded very convincing to me especially now that I did want that, and more of it.

As if reading my mind, Felicity went to kiss me again. I let her, kissing back hungrily like I had with Kara. For a moment my mind felt guilty, as though I was cheating on her, but I realized Kara and I didn't have a defined relationship. We were just teacher and student, and she'd been teaching me stuff about my sexuality. Why couldn't this be the same with another student?

The thought felt sinful, but that'd been most of my thoughts for the last week, so it was hard to tell if that means anything. I was turned on by it, which is hard to ignore. Felicity's hands plucked at the buttons of my shirt, exposing my cleavage while I was thinking.

"So, I think it's safe to say that you don't want me to share my audio recording with anyone, right?" I nodded, unable to speak thanks to the long talon she suddenly slipped between my lips. I can taste her lotion; it's strawberry. "Good. Now, I don't want you telling anyone about what you and I do. In fact, I don't want you even telling Kara." My eyes must've betrayed how I felt about that, because she continued. "It's for her own good as well as yours, you know that. Now, I'll see you tomorrow at your office hours. I expect you to be 'prepared' for our fun, understood?"

I nodded, weakly, and she finally hopped off of me. She gathered up her laptop and threw it in her bag. "This is going to be good for us, just you wait and see!" She sounded giddy as she said it, and she let herself out of the room.

"Fuck..." I groaned, throwing my head back on my seat. The silent room answered me, though I imagined the subtle electronic hiss of recording devices filling the air. I was becoming paranoid, thought given the blackmailing I was under it made sense. I bent over to untie my leg binders, catching the aroma of our arousal. I'm sure she left a wet spot on my legs, though given my own mess I was making, it was hard to tell whose was whose.

"Well, I'm certainly into women, I guess," I mumbled with a chuckle.

"What was that?" A familiar voice called out from the hallway. I yelped and shoved the leg binders under the desk as I stood up, only for it to be Kara. "Sorry I had to leave. Vincent was having an emergency and I had to talk him off the ledge, so to speak."

I smiled at her, walking over and giving her a tight hug. After a full day of being immobilized, my steps were awkward and I was left mostly hanging off the grad student's shoulders, but it didn't seem like she minded. I held onto her for longer than was appropriate, and she noticed.

"Did something happen, flower? Are you ok?"

I wanted to tell her everything. The recording, the blackmail, that another girl was playing with me and turning me on all of a sudden. I wanted to come clean. Instead, I broke one of our few rules.

"No, nothing happened. I'm ok, I just missed you."

I lied.

My heart sank to the bottom of my chest, and I tried to hide the pain from reaching my face. Kara examined me for a moment, before turning away. "Well, alright then. I missed you too!" She gathered up the leg binders into my bag, before handing me my stuff. "Mind if I visit you in your office tomorrow?"

I panicked, looking at her with concern. I only saw genuine interest on her face, and it crushed me further to turn her down. "I already have an appointment with a student tomorrow," I said, managing to tell the truth this time. "But, how does Sunday sound? I'll come by your place again?"

Kara perked up, nodding. "Yeah, that'd be great. I'll see you then, flower!"

"See you then, mistress." I said to her back as she left the classroom. I had to figure this out, this wasn't right. But still, the threat of blackmail was too strong. If not for the sake of my future, then for Kara's I had to sort this out, even if it meant hurting her in the process.