So we’re supposed to be done with our latest novel, the smutty and satirical The Ambassador, which mostly takes place in the Philippines. But we’re not because we got distracted by a new idea geared toward BookTok readers. It has all the usual BookTok romance tropes — illicit teacher-student affair, hockey stud, and a psychopath bully. And then some unusual ones, it’s a story about math, some fun and steamy nerdy shit. We’re super excited about this novel so we’re not sure which one will get finished first. In any case, here are excerpts of what we have thus far, it’s hot!
Chapter One
Equations
We just finished our once-a-week fuck session. Only once a week because he’s a boarder at a boarding school where I’m a day student. If we were both boarding students, then we could fuck in the woods right after dinner and before dorm check in. If we were both day students, we could fuck after every sports practice before heading home. Since we have classes six days a week and sports matches Saturday afternoons, Saturday evening was the only time I could pull him from campus. It sucks, but whatever—he’s hot, has a big cock, and he’ll be heading to Princeton as a hockey recruit if he can get his math SAT score high enough to meet their standards. He better, because I don’t fuck losers.
We fucked all over the place at my home because my parents were away in New York City, meeting up with friends they’d probably be fucking at their obscene pied-a-terre. After one on my parents’ bed, I asked him to bring up a bottle of wine so I could check his phone, as usual. This time was different.
After scrolling through some nasty bro material about me and some of my classmates, I saw something disturbing:
What is the absolute value of I miss u?
He replied: “x² + (y – ∛x²)² = 1. you figure it out.”
Chapter Two
Absolute Values
“So what’s the absolute value of negative three?” asked Miss Taylor.
“Three,” said Riley.
“Negative five?”
“Five.” He tapped his pencil. “These are easy. Why are we reviewing this?”
“What’s greater, absolute value of negative three or negative five?”
He looked up, as if literally searching through his brain for the answer. “Negative three?”
She handed him a marker and pointed at the whiteboard. “Draw a number line. Label negative five through positive five.”
He sighed as he got out of his seat.
“Now plot negative three.”
A dot at -3.
“Now plot its absolute value.”
He paused before placing a dot at +3.
He did the same for negative five.
“What do you notice?” she asked.
He looked at the four dots. “They’re symmetrical?”
“Go on.”
“The negatives and positives are the same distance from zero.”
“So is the absolute value of -3 greater than, less than, or equal to the absolute value of -5?”
“Less than. Negative three is closer to zero.”
“Good. I had you draw it out so you could visualize it instead of using a shortcut to get the answer. I think that’s why you’ve been struggling – you’ve been taught that math is just a set of procedures to memorize. So we’re going to start over…”
“Miss Taylor,” he interrupted, dropping into his chair. “I have two months before my last chance at the SATs.”
“That’s plenty of time. What was it Princeton asked for, 650?”
“That’s the cut-off. More like 680 if my verbal stays at 620.”
“680 it is, then. What did you get?”
“Uh, 540.”
“You probably lost most of your points on concept questions—word problems, data interpretation, anything that isn’t a formula to plug and chug.”
He nodded.
“Don’t worry, Riley,” she said, patting his forearm. “That’s plenty of time for a rebuild. You’ll be thinking mathematically in a month. It’ll change the way you see everything, I promise.”
Chapter Three
Variables
Since when did Riley learn how to send coded messages using equations? was my first thought. Second thought was, who the fuck is she? I couldn’t imagine him hooking up with any of the math geeks, and who else would send love notes using math problems? Some townie I didn’t know about? Someone he met over summer break?
I forwarded the exchange to myself, we drank wine, and I planted a hickey just below his earlobe as I rode him, trying to figure out who he was thinking about as he blew his load inside me.
“Ow. Ow, Cierra!” he panted, digging his long fingers into my hips.
I pushed off his rounded shoulders, now streaked with nail marks. “Sorry, babe,” I purred, trailing a finger in between his pecs. “You were amazing. I got carried away.”
It was the best sex I’ve ever had.
We watched Cruel Intentions while eating Chinese takeout before I dropped him off at his dorm. You should watch it too. Goes great with chow mien and egg rolls, trust me.
“Love you, Cierra.”
“I love you too, Riley.”
We kissed as usual before he got out of the car. I almost asked about Sunday since he was done with SAT tutoring. But I didn’t.
At home, I resisted the urge to tell anyone about my discovery. No need to escalate and create drama, right? At least not yet.
So I researched the number. Finding who it belonged to was easier than expected—Annabelle Roxanne Taylor. Really, our dowdy algebra teacher?
Illicit affairs happen all the time at elite boarding schools, it’s neither surprising nor a big deal. In fact, it’s expected. After all, the classes are capped at twelve and are mostly discussion based, so they’re intimate. There are semi-formal meals with faculty six days a week, everyone is dressed up. Sports are a required part of the curriculum and we’re good at it—fit bodies fill the campus. Gothic revival backdrop in a rustic setting? You’re going to be horny as fuck after discussing Walt Whitman in English class.
So of course faculty will jerk off to their favorite students. You would too, okay? And you better believe we girls fantasize about that hot piece of ass who teaches American history and coaches boys’ lacrosse and just graduated from Duke. He’s not grooming us, we’re grooming him. Nobody was surprised when our previous algebra teacher and girls’ lacrosse coach Miss Pocock hooked up with a few of our lacrosse players after she broke up with her boyfriend. I mean, it sucks to be single on an isolated campus, right?
But Miss Taylor, who graduated from the University of Vermont and doesn’t coach anything because she never played sports at even the high school level? And with Riley, my boyfriend and our star hockey player? Who the hell would want to fuck Miss Taylor?
Chapter Four
Right Angles
“Five-eighty,” said Miss Taylor, sliding Riley’s practice test over to him.
He sighed, looking through it to see which ones he got wrong. “A hundred more points to the Stanley Cup.”
“Alright, you seem to have trouble with geometry. Specifically, right triangles” She took the test from him and flipped to where three questions in a row were marked wrong. “Nobody has taught you how to think mathematically,” she mumbled, shaking her head.
Just as she pulled out a blank piece of paper, he asked her, “Miss Taylor, who taught you math?”
She stopped for a moment and looked away. “I’m not sure, nobody has ever asked me that.” She turned to look at him but struggled to meet his eyes. “Farming and cooking, I guess?” she said with a shrug.
He leaned back to get a better look at her. “You grew up on a farm?”
“I did,” she replied, pressing her elbows against her rib cage. “A dairy farm in Vermont.”
“So you were like, milking cows before school?”
“Yes. And after,” she said, raising her hand like a kindergarten child about to count on her fingers. “And measuring feed” – index finger stuck out, the index finger from the other hand pulling it back. “Calculating acreage for hay” – middle finger sprang up, pulled back. “Figuring how long until the tank needed to be picked up” – up came the fourth finger, also pressed.
She held the pose for a moment, staring at her own fingers. Then she blinked and let her hands drop.
She looked at the pencil he was twirling and sat up straight. “So yeah, farming is basically applied math,” she continued, her voice changing. “Cooking, too. It’s like playing around with ratios, especially when, like, you’re short on sugar and you’re snowed in.” She let out a small smile. “I learned fractions from butter and geometry from fence posts, I guess.” She looked up at him and nodded.
“Fence posts?”
She smiled without looking at him, pulling the paper toward her and drawing a vertical line. “This is a fence post.” Then she drew a horizontal line from its base. “The ground.” Finally, a diagonal connecting them. “A brace. You nail it on to keep the corner post from leaning.”
She leaned back to give him a better look at the drawing. Riley leaned in. She nudged her black-rimmed glasses up.
“My dad asked me to cut the braces,” she said, running a finger over the diagonal. “But I didn’t know where to cut them, like how long they should be.” She looked over to him. “How long do you think it should be?”
He rolled his broad shoulders, looking up for a moment before dropping his head. “I have no idea.”
“Yes, you do,” she said, her eyes catching on his shoulders before she looked away.
“Long enough so the fence doesn’t fall over?” he said.
“Correct,” she said, standing up. “Now get up.”
“Why?” he said, getting up.
“You’re going to be the post.”
“Uh, okay.”
“Just stand straight.”
He straightened up like a soldier in waiting.
She looked him over. “Let’s say this post is six feet.”
He chuckled. “That’s about right.”
“And we’ll bury it two feet into the ground,” she said, tapping his head with a folder.
“Should I get on my knees?”
“No, that would look weird in a library.”
“Would it look less weird elsewhere?”
She stood back and chuckled, pushing the bridge of her glasses up her nose.
“You’re the most talkative fence post I’ve ever met.”
“You’re the weirdest math tutor I’ve ever had.”
She bit her lip, pressing her hands against his back, just below his shoulders. “That’s four feet, and the wire will run just below this spot.”
***
“Hey, whispered Molly, tapping Nathan’s forearm.
He looked up from his laptop. “What?”
“Look over there,” she said, pointing with her chin. “Miss Taylor and Riley in the conference room. And don’t stare.”
He glanced over his shoulder and turned back. “What?” The two had already sat back down.
“You missed it, you lug.” Molly continued to stare from the corner of her eyes. “They were standing up and she had her hands all over him.”
“So?” he said, hiding and then deleting a video someone sent him.
“So something’s going on.”
“Maybe he was having back spasms again and she was just helping him get a few knots out,” he said, looking at Molly with a smirk. “Can’t do math when a body part isn’t cooperating, right?”
She grabbed the mouse out of his hand. “I’m serious, Nathan. I think Miss Taylor has the hots for Riley.”
He shrugged, grabbing his mouse back. “So what?” He scrunched his face and shook his head. “He’s got Cierra, why the fuck would he even think about banging Miss Taylor?
He shut his laptop and leaned back, taking another glance at the conference room. “This isn’t going to turn into another Pocock scandal, alright?”
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