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The.... business with the Teacher pushing boundaries started innocently enough. Perfectly innocently, really, it hadn't been anything to worry about the very first time Darcy felt the long, desiccated fingers plucking absently at the front of her uniform skirt. After all, she'd been in the middle of her reading for chemistry the next day, trying to concentrate while waiting for the call to the next Ritual, and she'd left the hand resting, without thought, on her thigh. She'd been absently picking at a ridged imperfection on its exposed and yellowed ulna as her eyes scanned lines of text.
She hadn't thought anything about the Teacher picking at her skirt in return. Why should she have? They were both clearly wishing for the excitement and promise of a Ritual. Fidgeting was natural.
Those aged fingers had clenched unexpectedly in the fabric, rucking it up over her thigh, right before a tingle ran down her spine—the Hidden King, reaching out and calling to his champions—but she excused that away as an early reaction to the pull to Ritual, even if it left behind an odd tingle.
It meant nothing, no more than the fidgeting had. That was, at least, what Darcy told herself at first.
Darcy never would have thought about it again, probably, if that had been the end of it. She had enough on her mind, after all, with her studies—the ones that actually mattered, those that the Teacher guided her through, not the pointless classes that she endured at school to avoid arguments with her parents—and the Rituals that drew her out and threw her into conflict with the others who saw through the pointless veneer of polite society.
What did a brief tug at her skirt matter compared to all of that? It didn't, not at all.
Or it wouldn't have, anyway, if it hadn't happened again, the next time she sat down to study, a day later, and still sore from a blow she'd taken in the Ritual the night before that had tossed her, unfortunately, into the side of a particularly unforgiving building.
She'd slumped at her desk, head leaning against the intricate wallpaper of her bedroom wall, so she could miserably flip through one page after another about acids and bases, her thumb returning to the well-worn groove in the Teacher's ulna — she'd asked a few times about the causes of that particular mark, which had a certain hatchet-like quality that implied a violent cause, and been given no answers each attempt — when the fingers plucked at her skirt again.
She failed to notice immediately. The pressure barely registered, so she had no clear idea how long the Teacher had been tugging restlessly against the fabric before it fully caught her attention.
She stopped reading in the middle of a page, the unexpected sensation snagging her attention, and sat frozen in the chair for a long moment, waiting to see if it would stop.
It didn't.
Instead, she just became terribly aware of the weight — the Teacher seemed to weigh far more than she should, for a dried out piece of an arm — of the Teacher's forearm and the heel of her hand, pressing down on the top of her thigh, and the faint rasping sounds the fingers made, plucking over and over at the fabric, jagged nails catching now and again on the seam. Something about the sound ran a tingle down her spine, leaving behind a trail of goosebumps.
She asked, looking down to watch the withered, greenish fingers — so oddly thick and gnarled, surely the teacher could not have been human when she'd been alive — tug and play with the fabric, "What're you doing?"
She heard the Teacher's voice as ever she did, echoing inside her head, low and smooth, hardly the voice she'd associate with a dead woman, Considering some gaps in your education, pet.
And before she could ask what that meant — more than a little offended, she'd been thoroughly educated — the fingers crooked and tugged the edge of her skirt a solid inch up over her thigh.
She managed to demand, "What?" with her voice rising into a squeak. It felt insufficient, embarrassing. She fought tooth and nail in Rituals; she oughtn't to sound like a little girl, and wished she could shove the word back down her throat.
Come now, the Teacher's voice purred, something amused in the tone that made Darcy's cheeks and the tops of her ears prickle with embarrassed heat. I've been your constant companion for months now, pet. I've had time to notice what you do. The fingers crooked further in to the palm, dragging fabric along. And what you don't do.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Darcy said, with the terrible sinking suspicion that she very much did. She tried to shake the flustered feeling aside and had no luck. She also had no luck when she tried to lift the Teacher off of her leg, reminded, not for the first time, that the Teacher led her, not the other way around. The piece of arm, though it should have weighed nothing and had no way to anchor itself, stayed firmly in place, radiating a chill down into her skin, even as the Teacher made an amused humming sound inside her head.
You shouldn't try to lie to me, child, the Teacher said, and used the connection she had to Darcy's mind to have Darcy pull the hand back toward her hips, the fingers curled into the fabric and dragging it along. Her heart kicked hard in her chest, beating far too fast, as the movement revealed tears and holes in her stockings, little glimpses of the pale and bruised skin of her thigh, remnants of a half-dozen Rituals that had yet to fade and that neither of her parents had deigned to notice or care about.
"Stop that," she said, trying to sound irritated and not sure she pulled the tone off at all. Her mouth felt dry and her cheeks blazing hot as her arm moved outside of her control, slowly dragging upward until the heel of the Teacher's hand hit her hip.
The Teacher tsked in her head, the sound all full of disapproval – disappointment — in a way that Darcy hated; she'd heard it too frequently when she first dug the hand from the earth, when she first started attempting spells and kept stumbling over the correct pronunciation of long-dead tongues. She'd wanted so badly, even then, to be found impressive. She'd cut out sleep, skipped classes, dropped the childish hobbies that she'd been holding onto in order to practice, to build her skills, so she stopped hearing that disappointment.
It stung, hearing it again. I thought you wanted to learn everything I had to teach you, the Teacher said, unmoving now, just resting there, heavy and chilled on her leg, and Darcy did want that. She'd given up so much to learn, already. Have you changed your mind? We could... renegotiate our agreement, if you're afraid.
"I'm not afraid." The words came out automatically, sharp and biting. She wasn't afraid of anything, she thought she'd more than proved that. She participated in Rituals with all manner of individuals who were bigger, stronger, and faster than her, who had abilities beyond what she could imagine; she was, after all, a human. Her gifts came borrowed, but that hadn't stopped her.
The Teacher's fingers uncurled, then, stretching out across her torn stockings, so cold Darcy had to swallow a little hiss of sound, and so strangely large, huge across her thigh. No? the voice purred in her head. I'm not sure I believe you.
"I'm not afraid of anything," she repeated, though the erratic beating of her heart tried to make that a lie. She wasn't afraid, of course she wasn't afraid. Only unnerved, a little. And confused, off her guard, because the Teacher had never done... such things before, and Darcy had no idea why she'd taken such actions now, that was all. She cleared her throat, trying to slow her breathing. "And of course I want to learn everything. I just don't—understand what you're trying to teach me now."
Tragic if true, the Teacher purred, sounding amused again, but easily corrected. Let me instruct you, pet. It'll be... educational. And it moved again, shifting so fingertips pressed against her thigh, palm lifting as it walked down the curve of her leg, dragging a surprised noise from her throat. She automatically moved to press her legs tight together, and the Teacher reacted, gripping hard into the meat of her thigh and yanking with that strange, otherworldly strength, prying her leg further out to the side than it had been. The Teacher tsked again and added, Such resistance to learning is unlike you, child. Come, don't you trust me?
It felt sometimes like everyone kept telling her not to trust the Teacher. Like they thought they knew better than her, like she was a child who they needed to boss around, who didn't know her own mind and her own will. The memory of all the judgmental assholes she ran into during the Rituals stung, even through the racing of her blood and the embarrassment of her current predicament, and had her snapping, "Of course I trust you," even though something deep in her gut squirmed and twisted restlessly, a jag of nerves that whispered maybe you shouldn't.
She ignored that voice, the same way she ignored Venator every time she ran into the old fart. She wasn't making a mistake by learning from the Teacher, clearly. She was absolutely in control and knew what she was doing, and she'd prove it to all of them, including herself. "Of course I trust you. Go – go ahead. Instruct me, then."
A wise choice, pet, the Teacher purred, hand squeezing around her thigh just once; she shivered at the cold press of the withered flesh, the fingers and palm had no give in them at all, they felt more like wood or metal than skin. Lean back in your chair. Spread your legs. Darcy shivered, just from the cold of the hand, of course, and swallowed. She'd agreed to learn. Clearly, she wanted to learn. She leaned back, her heart going faster and faster and, after a halting moment, slid her other leg a little out to the side, too, burningly aware of each inch of her skin, the drag of her boots across the polished wood floor, and the faint sound of her parents arguing somewhere deeper in the house.
Wider, the Teacher instructed, squeezing again, hard over bruises and scrapes, the sting of pain kicking Darcy's heart rate yet higher. And the Teacher kept asking for wider, until Darcy had to slouch down in the chair to accommodate the angle demanded of her hips, her knees wide apart, and her muscles trembling just a bit from the strain of it and the feeling of being exposed. Her stomach felt hot and tight, even as goosebumps rose on her arms and down her legs. She felt shivery for no good reason as the Teacher purred, There we go, finally. I expect you to remember the correct position for next time. You know I dislike having to repeat instructions.
“Yes, Teacher.” Darcy felt her cheeks burn hotter at the sound of her voice; thin and cracking, like she really was some scared little girl. She swallowed, trying to work moisture back into her mouth and throat, so she could try again; the Teacher moved before she could, fingertips sliding inward along her thigh, cold and tingling.
Darcy’s knees reacted automatically to the feeling and the way it made her stomach swoop, without any input from her higher functions, trying to jump closed, as though connected by an elastic band. The Teacher made an irritated sound, closing hard enough around her thigh to drag a shocked sound from Darcy’s throat before she could even think to apologize for her… lapse in control.
Your legs must stay open for this lesson to work, the Teacher said, impatience and disappointment in her smoky voice.
“I—” Darcy started, not sure what she meant to say, her thoughts felt hard to grab and scattered, the events of the last five minutes leaving her unsure in a way that put a pit in her stomach. She never had a chance to find the words, in any case.
Green fire flared around the Teacher, stinging and tingling all along her inner thighs as power surged against her skin and a chill swept through the room. She tasted a faint hint of rot on the air, familiar now, and reflexively jerked just as half-dozen hands closed around her feet and calves.
She tried to pull away from them, pure reflex – she’d never had the dead that she called on for help try to hold her, before – but they were far too strong, implacable as they obeyed the Teacher. She could feel fingers – cold and hard – through her boots, squeezing hard into the bones of her feet and ankles. Some of them gripped above her boots, digging into her calves.
She automatically jerked forward, trying to reach of the hands of the dead with her free hand, and another hand caught around her forearm, dragging her back in the seat, pulling her arm toward the ground so hard that it yanked at her shoulder, a burst of pain that she tried to flinch away from without success, because the Teacher felt like an impossible weight on her thigh, and she could not pry her fingers free of the bone, the Teacher holding onto her through the link they shared in her mind.
Her reflexive struggle did nothing but leave bruises behind as her heart beat wildly against her ribs and she gasped out, the restraints leaving her no other recourse, “What are you doing?”
You need some assistance to be a proper student tonight, the Teacher said, chiding. I’m giving it to you. You ought to thank me, pet. In fact, yes. Thank me for my forgiveness of your distraction and my willingness to help you overcome your… mistakes.
The situation felt as though it had somehow spiraled out of Darcy’s control; a tiny voice in the back of her head wondered if she’d ever had control, and she shoved it away. Of course she had. Of course she still had control, she was just-- just a little off-balance and needed a moment to catch her breath, one she could grab by following the Teacher’s directions, which were clear and straightforward.
It still took her a moment to rasp out, with her mouth gone so dry and her breath coming fast and punched out, “Thank you, ah, Teacher.”
Hm, satisfactory, the Teacher purred, sounding… amused, Darcy thought. The fingers shifted again, rubbing back and forth on her inner thigh. I deserve an apology, too. For your failure to follow my instructions.
“I’m sorry.” The words tried to catch in Darcy’s throat. The Teacher had been forced to punish her, a few times, early in her education, when she’d failed to follow instructions because she’d dared to assume she knew more than her instructor. The marks on her back still stung, sometimes, and put a dull ache in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed, hard, and went on, trying not to babble, “I’m – I’m very sorry, I’ll do better.”
Hm, the Teacher’s voice was a reverberating purr as the hand slid another inch further up her thigh, muscles flexing and tensing uselessly under fingers and palm. I suppose we’ll see how well you do with the rest of the lesson, pet.
Darcy started, “I—” and cut off when the Teacher slid her hand across the last stretch of her thigh, fingers brushing boldly right over the core of her. Darcy jerked, automatically, though she barely managed to move, heat burning all over her cheeks and down her throat as some strange, ragged sound broke from her chest.
So sensitive, the Teacher hummed, amused as Darcy fruitlessly tugged against the hands holding her in place. A finger, ancient and hard and tingling with magic, stroked a line across Darcy’s cunt over her stockings and panties, and she made a choking little sound, involuntarily.
She’d – masturbated, of course. Not frequently, and not at all recently, not after the Teacher became an ever-present fixture in her life, always there and always aware. But there had been times, before that night in the graveyard, when she’d furtively rubbed at her clit after a lab shared with Apollo, when she’d allowed herself to get caught up in fantasies that were impossible to reach in reality and—
And none of those brief and quiet sessions had felt the way it felt when the Teacher leisurely completed an upward sweep of touch, pressing briefly over the bud of Darcy’s clit, lifting, and then returning to circle the bundle of nerves.
Some part of Darcy’s head – the part not currently going off the rails – thought that the sensation had to come partially from the magic pouring out of the Teacher. But it felt impossible to concentrate on that as cold, hard fingers rubbed at her, a relentless focus on her clit that had her gasping and twitching, pressure building inside the cradle of her hips.
She felt a rising build, sounds falling from her lips, and then the Teacher shifted, dragging her fingers down, over the aching throb of Darcy’s cunt. She let out a cry, involuntary, shocked by how wet she felt and the jarring cold of the Teacher’s touch against her burning heat.
The Teacher pressed hard into her, through her stockings and panties, and Darcy’s stomach swooped. She tossed her head back against the chair, squirming again, fruitlessly.
The hands had only tightened their grips as the Teacher touched her, holding her firmly in place as the Teacher teased and stroked, returned to her clit and slipped away again, over and over until Darcy felt light-headed with it, throbbing under her skin and vaguely aware of the soft, whimpering sounds coming from her mouth.
Time for the next part of the lesson, the Teacher said, and Darcy mustered the focus to make a questioning sound. In reply, the Teacher’s fingers gripped hard at her stockings and pulled, sharply, all at once.
The sound of fabric tearing made Darcy jump, though the hands only caught her and held her tighter, pressing bruises into her legs and arm. Confusion made her look down – down at the place between her legs that she’d been very much avoiding looking at thus far, at the glowing green presence of the Teacher there, with her skirts rucked up around the Teacher’s wrist.
Looking at it – seeing it – made the heat prickling all over the inside of her skin flare hotter. She felt like her face might catch on fire, and it only got worse as she watched the Teacher move, fingers crooking and – and catching the edge of her panties. For a moment, Darcy thought the Teacher intended to tear them, too.
Instead, the Teacher just dragged them roughly to the side, fabric pulling damp and clinging over her cunt. Pay attention to this part, pet, the Teacher purred, one cold fingertip rubbing over her clit and then sliding back and down and—
Darcy cried out, loud, not that it mattered, her parents wouldn’t care if she stood in her room and screamed; she knew, she’d tried that once in a desperate attempt to get any kind of attention from them. And, besides, she couldn’t do anything to stop the sound she made as the Teacher dipped the tip of a finger inside of her body.
She’d never had anyone do that before, she’d never even tried doing that to herself.
The finger – even the tip – felt cold and hard and the magic tingled, almost burned, on the sensitive skin inside her body. So soft, the Teacher murmured in her head, and sounded smug and pleased. So wet for me, pet. I knew you’d enjoy this lesson.
Darcy gasped out another sound, loud, as the Teacher withdrew the fingertip and then – then pushed back in again, further, and she, yes, she must have been enjoying it, that made sense. She— lost track of her thoughts as the Teacher repeated the movement, going deeper, the finger strange and hard and so cold inside of her as it pumped in and out.
She dropped her head back, the strength to hold it up abruptly abandoning her as the Teacher readjusted the hand. The new position left the Teacher’s thumb rubbing against Darcy’s clit as the finger crooked inside her. The sensations felt overwhelming, like far too much, and then the Teacher made a thick, pleased sound, pulled its finger free, and pushed back in with two and—
Darcy had orgasmed before. The sensation had never felt the way it felt as she came around the Teacher’s fingers, crying out and trying to thrash away from the continued stimulation as her body clenched and trembled, pleasure and heat rushing through her in cresting waves that pushed everything else in the world away for a delirious moment.
She gulped at the air as the most extreme sensations faded, staring up at the ceiling in her bedroom and tingly all over, sweaty under her clothes and trembling. She became aware, shiveringly, that the Teacher’s fingers were still inside her, just… pressed up deep into her cunt, unmoving for the moment and so cold and hard. Her cunt clenched reflexively around them, and she tried to swallow the whimper that rose in her throat at the sensation.
I think that’s enough lessons for the day, the Teacher said, smug, dragging its fingers out of her, so slowly that she was trembling by the time they slipped free. The Teacher dragged her panties back into place, fussed with arranging them and then patted over her cunt, the gesture pressing the fabric into her slick skin, already feeling cold and uncomfortable as the hands that had held her in place withdrew back into nothingness.
She slumped against her chair, shivering with the sudden lack of restraints.
And what do you say at the end of a lesson, pet? The Teacher asked, tone sharper and expectant.
Darcy had to think for a moment, still light headed and tingling. She managed, after a beat, “Thank you, Teacher.”
The Teacher hummed, pulling itself back up to rest on her thigh, cold and heavy. I look forward to our next lesson on this subject. For now, you may resume your reading.
Darcy shivered, her mind shying away from thinking about a next lesson. For a long time, she stared up at the ceiling, unsure how she felt about… any of it. The orgasm had been intense. Incredibly pleasurable, certainly moreso than any she’d given herself. But…
But it had left her with an ache in her gut that felt almost like worry. Though that was foolishness. She was being foolish. The Teacher was her guide. A very good guide. And she had their arrangement under control, so she had no reason to worry.
She held onto that thought and slowly straightened in her chair. Her panties clung to her skin, damp and sticky. She could feel her torn tights, itchy against her skin. She carefully moved her knees closer together, cleared her throat, and reached for her book.
She took only one look down at the Teacher, resting contentedly on her thigh. Two of its fingers were slick and shiny. She swallowed, hard, and pulled the textbook closer, though the words seemed to move about on the page, resisting every attempt to concentrate.
It was a relief, deep and clear, when the call to Ritual came only a few moments later.