I didn’t wait for her acknowledgment. The sentence wasn’t an invitation. It was a boundary disguised as instruction.
The scraping of chairs began almost instantly after I dismissed them, the predictable scramble toward freedom. I didn’t move. I watched the exodus unfold, students gathering papers, forcing laughter, escaping thought as quickly as possible. I had seen it a thousand times, that desperate noise of those afraid of stillness.
She hadn’t left her seat. Of course she hadn’t. She was finishing something in her notebook, or pretending to, hermovements methodical in that way people adopt when they need to disguise uncertainty. She thrived on order, and that made her transparent to someone who understood control.
Her friend lingered beside her desk, Aster, the one with sharp intuition and eyes that always seemed to notice what others pretended not to. She looked at me once, assessing, then leaned toward Edwina to whisper something. Edwina responded with a nod that was too brief to read, too calm to be entirely honest. Aster hesitated, her gaze flicking toward me again, carrying the faint trace of warning before she turned to leave.
Good. Let her sense it.
When the door closed behind her, the air changed. The kind of silence that followed the exit of witnesses always felt heavier, intimate in a way that didn’t belong in an academic space. I could see her hands move to pack her bag, the tension evident in the precision of her gestures. She didn’t look at me, and that restraint was its own form of defiance.
I stayed where I was, one hand braced against the desk, my posture deliberately relaxed, my focus unbroken. I could feel her awareness drawing closer even before she stood. The room had emptied entirely, yet it still hummed with the ghost of the lecture, the faint trace of my voice in the air.
I’d learned to wield silence the way others wield touch. It pressed closer, forced surrender without permission. Most people tried to fill it. She didn’t. She sat back down, careful, composed, her face a portrait of stillness, but I could see the pulse at her throat betray her.
This wasn’t about an assistant position. It wasn’t about professional merit or departmental necessity. It was about proximity, about collapsing the distance between us inch by inch until she no longer remembered what it meant to breathe freely.
She didn’t yet understand what I wanted from her. But she would.
Chapter Six
Edwina
ThedoorclosedbehindAster with a soft, final sound, less an exit than a lock sliding into place. I remained motionless, suspended somewhere between composure and retreat, my hand resting on the worn strap of my bag as if the leather might anchor me to the ground. Across the room, Professor Stone hadn’t moved. He stood with the unnerving stillness of a man who found authority in silence, one hand braced against the desk, the other tucked into his pocket in the casual manner of someone who understood the effect of restraint. His gaze held poised, and charged with a quiet severity that reached further than words ever could.
“Miss Carter,” he said, and even that formality carried the weight of something sharper than civility, a blade sheathed in silk, meant to draw blood without leaving a mark.
I forced myself forward, placing the desk between us, as if its polished surface could offer protection from whatever current pulsed in the space he occupied. The problem was, he looked as though he belonged to another century, one carved from darker marble and harsher laws. His hair was dark and slightly disheveled, but the kind of disarray that felt intentional, cultivated to appear effortless. His jawline was too defined, his expression carved into focus, and his eyes, those impossibly calm, unyielding eyes, didn’t waver when they should have. Everything about him carried a certain austere elegance, refined to the point of danger. He was the kind of man who didn’t need to raise his voice to command a room. His presence was enough. And beneath the faint scent of paper and old books, there lingered something deeper, sandalwood and vetiver touched with cold air and iron, a scent that clung, quiet and dangerous, the memory of dusk pressed against skin.
It was deeply unfair, the contradiction of him, a man who could look like sin and speak like scripture. A man who could make restraint feel carnal.
“You said you wanted to speak with me,” I said at last, my voice even, my tone clipped into the shape of indifference.
He inclined his head slightly, a gesture more command than acknowledgment. “I did.”
“I assume this is about the assistant position,” I said, lifting an eyebrow in an effort to disguise irritation as poise, even as the weight of his attention pressed against my composure.
“You assume correctly.”
The pause that followed thickened, slow and unforgiving, a silence that pressed against the room until every breath felt exposed.
“And why me?” I asked.
He studied me for a moment too long. When he finally spoke, his tone was even, each word weighted with controlled intent,honed to wound without raising its voice. “You’re competent,” he said. “Observant. Quiet.”
That word again.
“Quiet,” I repeated, a faint smile tugging at my lips. “Is that a prerequisite for the job? Somewhere between data entry and the ability to vanish on command?”
He didn’t smile, not properly, but something shifted in the corner of his mouth, a restrained acknowledgment that made my pulse tighten.
“I find unnecessary noise counterproductive,” he said.
“Do you?” I tilted my head, letting my gaze meet his. “And yet you teach.”
He blinked once, unhurried, as though filing the remark away for later use. “Literature is the exception,” he said finally. “It demands noise, at least when it’s taught properly.”
“Then I assume you’re not expecting me to whisper through the symposium,” I said.
