Professor Stone hadn’t shown up. Maybe that should have been a relief. Maybe I should have been grateful for the distance. But I wasn’t. Gratitude didn’t touch whatever this was.
I pulled the manila folder from my bag and laid it on the table, the same folder he had pushed toward me with those infuriatingly composed hands that always seemed to knowwhere to rest. Inside were symposium briefs, reading lists, annotated excerpts, a schedule marked in tight, disciplined handwriting I knew too well.
Even his notes carried tension. Each line purposeful, every underline weighted with intent. It was a language of control, one he spoke fluently, and I could feel it pressing against the paper.
I sat down and started to read. At first, I tried to focus on logistics, the deadlines, the assignments, the framework of the work itself. My pen moved, my hands performed the motions of order, my mind pretending compliance. But it didn’t last. My eyes drifted to the section where he had written my name.
Request updated abstract from Edwina Carter by Wednesday.
The sight of it pulled something taut in me. My name, caught in his handwriting, curved in the ink that still felt too personal, too knowing. He hadn’t signed the page, no full name, just an initial, that single letter drawn with care: H.
I pushed the folder aside and stood, the movement too abrupt, my pulse still uneven. The thoughts refused to align. They never did when he was involved. So, I walked to the bathroom and turned on the shower. The water hit the tiles hard, steam rising until it filled the air, wrapping around me in a way that almost felt protective.
I stepped beneath it and let the heat run down my shoulders, my forehead pressed against the wall, my breath slow and deliberate. I told myself it was just work. Just an opportunity. Just responsibility. That he’d chosen me because I was capable, reliable, the logical choice.
But the memory of his voice slid in through the cracks of that reasoning, smooth and merciless.
That won’t work.
By the time I stepped out, the mirror was fogged, and my thoughts were worse. I pulled on a sweatshirt and towel-driedmy hair, the silence broken only by the soft vibration of my phone against the counter.
Symposium Prep Meeting — Wednesday, 10 a.m. — Department Lounge.
Tomorrow.
I stared at the screen, every part of me tightening in quiet anticipation. Tomorrow meant I would see him again. His voice. His presence. That impossible calm that carried the promise of something I couldn’t name and shouldn’t want. The thought of it slid down my spine, sharp and electric, curling low in my stomach until the ache felt almost alive.
I wasn’t ready for tomorrow. But I didn’t want to wait for it either.
Chapter Eleven
Hayden
Ididn’tgotocampus. Not because I was sick. Not because there was anything that required my attention more. I stayed away because if I saw her, if I caught the curve of her mouth, the tilt of her head, the soft exposure of her throat when she turned, I wouldn’t have trusted myself to stay in that fucking chair.
I’d fucked women apart before. Learned every tremor, every breath that broke between my hands, the kind of mastery earned through repetition and control. Years of knowing how to make them come undone without ever losing command of myself. But Edwina Carter wasn’t a body I could map and forget. She wasn’t something to consume and discard. She was the kind of danger that slipped beneath the skin and refused to leave. A quiet infection. A pulse I couldn’t stop checking.
So I stayed home. Locked myself in, surrounded by the stillness of my apartment, pacing the length of the studio until the walls began to feel smaller than my thoughts. My fists stayed tight most of the day. My mind, filthy, relentless, dragged me through every memory of her. I told myself it was restraint, that this distance was a choice born of logic. It wasn’t. It was survival. Because if I saw her again, if she met my eyes with that calm detachment she wore as armor, I knew I’d cross the line I’d been circling for weeks.
The truth was ugly. I wanted to pull her into my office, shut the door, and bury myself so deep inside her the walls would forget their purpose. I thought of her mouth. The small, broken breath she gave when I touched her outside that club. The pulse that trembled beneath her voice when she called meProfessor.Just the memory of it made my cock throb, and I hated myself for it.
I knew exactly what this was, how reckless, how dangerous. Knowledge didn’t stop the hunger. It only carved it sharper, made it cut deeper. Tomorrow was Wednesday. The symposium meeting. She would be there, sitting in that glass lounge, legs crossed, eyes distant, pretending nothing existed between us. Pretending my stare hadn’t stripped her bare. She’d speak in that careful tone she used when she wanted to sound composed, unaware that I could hear the tremor beneath it. I always heard it.
And I’d have to sit across from her, act indifferent, pretend I didn’t remember the weight of her name on my tongue. Pretend I didn’t want to destroy every illusion of distance just to see if she’d still meet my eyes with that same impossible defiance.
No. I needed distance. Because if she walked in and looked at me like I hadn’t already taken up space in her body, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stay seated. I wasn’t sure I’d stop myself from leaning forward, closing the breath between us, and claiming what was already mine in every way but name.
But was choosing her even a choice anymore? Or had something in me already broken open, something I’d buried under lectures, ink, and glass walls I told myself would never shatter?
What the hell was I doing? She was a student. My fucking student. And I wanted her with the hunger of a man who hadn’t tasted anything real in years. Everything else had turned to ash. She was the only thing that still felt alive. Playing with fire doesn’t touch it. This wasn’t fire. This was destruction.
She sat in my classroom, unaware, or pretending not to be, of what she was doing to me. Her voice didn’t echo through me, it crawled under my skin. Every time she lifted her head to answer a question, every time her teeth caught the corner of her pen, my restraint split a little more. It wasn’t fascination anymore. It was corrosion. And I was already burning from the inside out.
She had no idea. And the worst part was that I wasn’t simply drawn to her, I was starving. I wanted to bend her over my desk, to push my hand beneath her panties and curl my fingers inside her until her restraint broke apart in my name. I wanted to feel her tremble, hear the breath rip through her throat when control slipped away and she came undone beneath my touch, her composure collapsing into those desperate, shattered sounds I’d been imagining for nights. I wanted to drag her back against me, my grip hard on her hips, thrust into her until the desk groaned beneath the rhythm of it, until every rule she’d ever known ceased to exist and all that remained was the wreckage we made together. I wanted her spent and trembling, her voice raw, my name staining the air between us.
But I couldn’t. Not because of rules. I stopped giving a damn about those years ago.
I couldn’t because she mattered. Because she was brilliant, still unaware of how close she stood to something vast and dangerous, something that could break both of us if I let it.
