Redemption of a Sex Offender

August

When he walked into the faculty lounge, everybody froze. He was obviously trouble, from the leather vest that passed for a shirt all they way down the tight button-fly 501s to the black motorcycle boots. And the long, tawny hair that drifted over his shoulders and down his back, held out of his face by a small braid to one side tipped with a leather thong covered in glass beads and feathers. Erica could almost smell the testosterone.

Helen Crawford, head of the English department, found her tongue first. “Maintenance is in the basement,” she said, although the breathy quality of her voice – normally you could cut glass with Helen’s voice – took a lot of the sting out of the insult.

His mouth twitched at the corners and he unslung the garment sleeve he’d been carrying over his shoulder. “I’ll keep that in mind. Where’s the cafeteria? I can probably find my homeroom on my own.” And without any more warning, he ripped open the vest, popping all the snaps, and shrugged it off to the accompaniment of a soft chorus of female gasps. Then he unzipped the garment sleeve and pulled out a pale blue dress shirt.

Everybody else was watching him dress, so Erica felt only a little guilt about ogling the rippling, naked torso of the strange, very male, man, who was obviously some kind of teacher. And he turned into a teacher as he shrugged on the shirt and buttoned it, knotted a conservative tie and buttoned down the collar.

He turned his back on his drooling female audience – there were men in the faculty lounge, but they weren’t drooling – to pull off the boots and unbutton the jeans far enough to tuck in the shirt-tails. When he turned back to pull a pair of shoes out of the garment sleeve, she was almost disappointed. He looked like a tall teacher with broad shoulders and an outrageous haircut . . . or lack of haircut. The women began filtering out to get ready for the first day of class.

“Excuse me,” Erica began tentatively when almost everyone was gone, “but who are you?” He looked up from tying the shoes.

“Edward Hilliard,” he said. “New history teacher. I just got into town last night, so I missed all the orientations.” He finished tying his shoes and stood to slide on a dark blue blazer. “Who might you be?” he asked, using grammar as impeccable as his chest. Erica stood, too, and suddenly realized that he was huge, six-three at least. She felt like she was standing in a hole.

“Erica Johnson,” she said faintly. “English. Are you a coach of some kind as well?” He walked over and stuck out his hand. Automatically, Erica shook it and something that felt like electricity shot up her arm. The feeling of standing in a hole intensified; she revised her height estimate up a couple of inches, which made him taller than Randy. His handshake was firm but not crushing, although she got the distinct impression of power held under firm control.

“Nice to meet you, Johnson,” he said affably. “I have coached, but they didn’t say anything about it in the interview.”

“Clark Potter was in a car accident a few days ago,” she said. “He’s been the JV football coach for eight years, and it looks like he’s going to be in the hospital for at least two more days. You might want to speak to the principal about it, if you’re interested.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, then went back to the garment sleeve and shoved the other clothing into it.

“What brings you to Idaho, Mr. Hilliard?” she asked, wanting to keep him talking.

“It’s about as far from Ohio as I could get without hitting a major population center,” he replied. He zipped the garment sleeve back up and slung it over his shoulder again.

“Why not a population center?” she questioned before she could stop herself as he turned and went back to the hallway door.

“They make me tense,” he said, leaning bonelessly against the doorframe for a couple of seconds. “I don’t like tense.” For the first time, his ice-blue gaze flicked down her body and back up, taking all of her in, then his mouth quirked in a half smile that was directed strictly inward. “See you later,” he said, and left.

Erica let out the breath she hadn’t been aware of holding and looked at her right hand. It was still tingling. She thought about the man who had walked into the room, all leather and tight denim, a rebel of some kind who knew himself thoroughly and was comfortable with what he was, and felt the skin tighten over her cheekbones.

Maybe this year would be interesting after all, especially since he’d gotten that hair past an interview. What else was he going to get away with?

October

She came around the corner at a trot and literally ran into him. Erica Johnson, who had featured prominently in a couple of fantasies that were extremely personal and as pleasurable as they were forbidden, grabbed his arm and almost wrapped her other arm around him to keep from falling over, and scared the hell out of him.

“Johnson,” he said warningly as he pulled her away from his chest. “What the hell is going on here? Why are you running down the hall?” Her body had felt really, really good pressed up against him, soft, warm, and curvy. Round, like Lila had been round, only better. Sexy, in ways that Lila had never been sexy.

Lila? Jesus. He hadn’t thought about Lila in years. Why was he thinking about her now? And what did that have to do with Erica?

“Mitchell Tanner,” she said breathlessly, yanking Eddie’s mind back from the mystery. Mitchell Tanner was a twitchy transfer from a bad part of LA County, eighteen, cocky as hell, and thought he was dangerous. Eddie had to stop himself from laughing in the kid’s face on a near-daily basis. “I think he’s following me,” she explained. “He didn’t like the grade on his last paper.”

Really. Tanner was bugging Erica, the hottest teacher in school, according to his confiscated roster from third-hour American History?

“Maybe he should try one of the pay sites next time,” Eddie heard himself sneer. “The free ones only stock crap papers.” Footsteps echoed in the hallway and Tanner rounded the corner, then stopped. Ed hitched his backpack a little higher on his shoulder.

“Coach Hilliard.” The kid sounded wary. Well, Eddie reflected, he should if he was up to what it looked like he was up to.

“Tanner. Practice was over half an hour ago. Why are you still here?” Unobtrusively, he pushed Johnson behind him. If Tanner wanted to make something out of that, so be it.

“I could ask you the same thing, coach.” Tanner looked past him at Johnson and grinned, cocky again. He’d almost gotten used to the kids calling him coach, but it irritated him coming from Tanner in every sentence.

He was a teacher, damn it, only working with the JV football team until Potter’s cast came off. Of course, it had been a bad break, cracking in a spiral up the tibia, so that would be a while, but it was still temporary.

“I had to pick up some papers that need to be graded by tomorrow, Tanner. Not that my work schedule is your business. Did you get lost on the way to your locker?” He slid a glance over his shoulder to check on Johnson. She looked a little tense. “I was just walking Ms. Johnson out to her car. You’d better get out of here, too, before you get locked in.”

“Sure, coach. I’ll come with you.” It was a direct challenge to his authority from a snot-nosed teenager. Eddie felt his lips try to spread into an amused smile in spite of being called coach again, and he suppressed it.

Tanner only lacked a couple of inches on him, but he was wiry, hadn’t yet come into the full musculature of an adult male. Hadn’t had to look himself in the mirror and come to terms with exactly how tough he was, exactly how stupid he was, and where his limits were. In short, Eddie could have taken him with one arm broken and a bad case of the flu.

Instead of smiling, he reached back for Johnson, effortlessly sliding his arm around her shoulders without ever taking his eyes off Tanner, riffling his fingers through her silky hair in the process. It was an accident, but damn if her hair didn’t feel even better than it did in the fantasies. And so did her shoulders, broad for a woman, and just the right height, a perfect fit to his body.

“Let’s go,” he said softly, casually, daring the kid to challenge him further for Johnson’s possession. Mitch looked angry, but he didn’t say anything. Eddie practically heard the kid’s teeth grind when they arrived at Johnson’s Subaru.

She used the remote to unlock the driver’s door and he stayed between her and Tanner as he handed her into the seat, then leaned in after her to murmur in her ear.

“I think you’re right about Tanner, except he’s more interested in your body than your gradebook.”

“What?” she asked almost involuntarily as she stared up at him, obviously shocked.

“Did you see the way he glared at me when I touched you?” he asked, deliberately reaching out to put his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll stop by your classroom after practice for the rest of the season. Just in case, okay?”

Her lips parted softly as she absorbed the statement and he found himself staring at her mouth, fascinated by how full and soft it looked.

“Okay,” she said quietly, barely louder than a whisper. His eyes flashed back to hers, and he noticed they looked darker than normal. Bigger. It must be the odd half-light of the sunset doing it. He locked her door and then stepped back to close it.

* * *

Erica started her car and backed out of the parking space, acutely aware of the two men watching her, the younger one hungrily, the older one protectively. She didn’t know why the Tanner kid was after her – she was almost old enough to be his mother. And Hilliard, someone who obviously didn’t want to be involved, had come to her rescue like no man had ever done before. He was an enigma wrapped in a mystery.

When she remembered the feel of his muscular arm across her shoulders, the way he’d run his fingers through her hair and pulled her closer to him, she shivered a little. He’d made her feel . . . wanted. Connected. Like she belonged with him. And he – one of the most detached people she’d ever met – was a convicted stalker, by his own admission. Weren’t stalkers supposed to be people who invented connections where none existed?

If the rumors were to be believed, he was doing incredible things with the JV football team, too, like teaching them mathematical game theory, anatomy, and kinesiology, and requiring them to write papers on how football concepts related to the real world.

The kids were getting a crash-course MBA program and, united in their dislike of the coach, winning every game, it seemed like. Clark Potter avoided Hilliard whenever possible, and even Hank Franklin, the head coach, seemed impressed. Rumor also had it Franklin had asked one of the kids for a copy of Hilliard’s playbook.

One of her AP classes had a couple of JV players in it, and Justin Ponder had asked her for a recommendation of a 19th century diary for a paper on the Westward movement for his American History class.

It seemed Hilliard was making it come alive by telling the kids to put themselves in the places of the people who had lived through it, mixing current events in with the historical ones to make it real for them. He’d made them all write essays about the day the World Trade Center was destroyed, Ponder had said, and reminded them that someday high school kids would be memorizing that particular date right along with the date of the Boston Tea Party.

November

Eddie had just finished his 200th lateral crunch when the doorbell rang. Irritated with the interruption, he made a mental note of where he’d been and got up to answer it. Erica Johnson was standing on the small landing outside the door of his third-floor apartment breathing unevenly like she’d run up the two flights of stairs.

“Can I come in?” she asked, glancing over her shoulder. He was suddenly acutely aware that he was sweaty and didn’t have a shirt on, but he stepped back anyway and let her into the space that no woman had entered since he’d moved in. She passed closer to him than she had to and he caught a whiff of something besides his own sweat. It made his skin tighten and his pulse speed up a little.

“How did you find out where I live?” he asked quietly. He would have preferred to leave the door open, but it was cold outside, so he shut and leaned against it instead. Really, there was no point in trying to heat all of Meridian.

“Information,” she said, folding her arms in an odd, protective way. “Tanner’s following me again.” She turned away from the door and surveyed the living room.

Eddie looked at it too, trying to see it through her eyes. It looked a little stark and a lot Southwest, definitely a masculine place with few soft touches to the edges. Well, that was okay, since that was how he was, now.

“Most of it’s rented,” he said. She turned back to look at him inquiringly. “The furniture. The artwork was done by . . . friends.” He moved into the kitchen. “Would you like some tea or something?”

“Actually, I could use a stiff drink,” she responded. “This is starting to get . . . weird.”

“It’s been weird for a while,” he responded. He pulled out a glass and dumped a couple of ice cubes in it, then rooted for the bottle Old Nathan Winddancer had sent him for Christmas from Albequerque, a month early. Nathan was into single malts with unpronounceable Scottish names and seemed to think Eddie should be, too, so he kept giving him bottles of the stuff.

He poured a couple of fingers of it into the small juice glass and handed it to her. “It’s nice to see you’ve finally noticed.”

“Scotch?” she asked, looking at the bottle. “Interesting. I thought you’d be into bourbon, coming from Ohio.”

“Christmas present,” he said by way of explanation. “I don’t drink much anymore. What did Mitch do this time?”

“There’s an old white Celica that keeps turning up in my rear-view mirror,” she said after she had taken a sip of the scotch. “It was parked next to my car when I came out of Albertsons last night, and if you look out the window, you’ll probably see it in the parking lot, since it turned in after me.”

He turned off the light in the living room and pulled open a gap in the miniblinds over the window. Sure enough, there was an old white Celica parked next to Johnson’s car with a good view of the window and door to his apartment. And someone tall was sitting in the driver’s seat, watching the building.

Erica had a big problem. He let the blinds fall closed and thought about what he’d done, following Lila around and watching her. Trying to get the dog destroyed. Sabotaging her house. Attacking her, slamming her up against the wall of the school, ripping her shirt off when she tried to run. Throwing the terrier-sized mutt onto a concrete sidewalk. He winced at the memories and heard Johnson move up behind him.

“Is it out there?” she asked.

“Yes, parked right next to your car,” he responded, glancing over at her in the dim light coming out of the kitchen. “And there’s somebody behind the wheel, watching the building.” She started to shiver. He pulled the glass away from her before she could drop it, and set it on the end table.

When he straightened again, she wrapped her arms around him, warm, soft, so much better than Lila. Lila again. Jesus, he had to get Lila out of his head. He focused on Erica, wholly and completely, pushing the memory of Lila out of his mind. Erica. Damn, she felt good.

Those bulky sweaters she’d been wearing since the weather had turned cold were covering up a lot of curves, soft, warm, decadently female curves. He wondered what kind of underwear Erica had on under her clothes, irrationally certain it wasn’t white cotton and pleased by the idea that her prim outfits were covering up something a little wild. That body should be wearing something a little wild. He didn’t know why he’d always wanted to see Lila in white cotton.

“I feel safe with you,” she said. Safe? He was a convicted stalker, for God’s sake. “Can I stay here for a while?” No. Not touching him like this. Not wrapped around him in the dark. It wasn’t safe.

He was starting to want something, and he wasn’t going to examine it to figure out what it was with her there. She burrowed her face into his skin, pressing closer. “Please, Hilliard,” she breathed.

“You can have anything you want,” he heard himself say. He hadn’t meant to say that. And his arms were sliding around her, cradling that warm softness against his chest, his abdomen, his suddenly throbbing groin.

Uh-oh. That meant he wanted her body, as much as he was trying to resist thinking about it. Erica Johnson’s body, warm and lush, spread under him, soft but tightening from the pleasure he was pumping into her, bucking and shuddering as she came in mindless ecstasy. Oh God, yes, that was what he wanted.

No. She was a teacher, a colleague. He wasn’t going to . . . do that . . . to a colleague, especially not one that was this vulnerable right now.

“I need to take a shower,” he muttered, dropping his arms. “Hang out as long as you like.” She held on to him harder, and he had to pull her away from him – again, just like in the hall at school. Something wrong there, he shouldn’t have to keep peeling her off of him like that, but he wasn’t going there. Never again. “Johnson, let go,” he said gruffly.

Finally, she did, sighing and looking up at him with disappointment in her eyes. Big, liquid eyes. Hurt. Don’t look at me like that. He turned to the bathroom, scooping up the t-shirt on the way, carefully locking the door behind him. He leaned his back against it and took a few deep, slow breaths.

Calm down, he told himself. She wasn’t coming on to you. She’s not that kind of woman. It was Johnson, not Trixie, the faceless hooker he normally sated his needs with. Trixie had a thousand different faces, but they were all Trixie, and they all did just fine for the human touch and physical release he needed on occasion.

He turned on the water and stripped out of his sweats, catching a faint whiff of Johnson’s scent clinging to his skin as he moved. She didn’t even smell like a Trixie. Or like Lila. And he was going to wash that smell off.

But the hot water made the intoxicating scent stronger, and that brought back the erection.

He found himself stroking the engorged organ with his eyes closed, picturing Erica’s curves under his hands, her hair fanned out on the pillow, her body sheathing him tightly, her lips trying to scream his name as he kissed her hard and pounded into her. It was a lot darker and more primal than he’d thought of her before.

His entire body jerked as he came in the shower. It only helped a little, because the fantasy was disturbing. There hadn’t been any whispered endearments in it, no cuddling in afterglow, no happily ever after – just sex, and not gentle sex, either, but hot, hard, caveman sex, bordering on sexual violence. Was that what he was really like? Shit, yes, he had the prison record to prove it.

But not anymore.

She was still there when he came out of the bathroom. He’d suspected she would be, so he was completely dressed, even if the clothes felt a little clammy from him sweating in them. He normally wandered into the bedroom nude or in just a towel to change or go to bed, but that wasn’t an option with Erica Johnson waiting on the other side of that door for him to reappear.

She was curled up on the Craftsman sofa with Junia’s handwoven throw over her lap, looking like she belonged there. Add some stucco on the walls, a kiva built into the corner with a fire going, and the glow of kerosene lanterns, and she could have been sitting in the room in the pueblo that he’d called home for a year and a half, looking like she belonged there. It was just as unnerving as the fantasy. And arousing, damn it, and he had come not ten minutes ago.