“You’re walking a fine line,” I said quietly, though the warning came out closer to a confession.
She turned then, fully, her expression unreadable but her eyes burning with something I couldn’t name. “So are you.”
The door closed behind her with a muted thud that landed somewhere inside my chest. Final. Contained. I didn’t move. I only stared at the space she had just left, the faint trace of her scent still suspended in the air, sharp and familiar enough to haunt.
The department meeting would begin within the hour. She would be there again, poised, unflinching, her voice smooth and articulate while every word between us simmered unspoken beneath the surface.
And I would sit across from her, pretending to listen, pretending not to remember the way her mouth had shaped the wordfearas though it were a challenge meant only for me.
The conference room smelled the same as it always fucking did, burnt coffee, paper that’d been handled too many times, and Dr. Hanes’ perfume choking the air as if she was trying to hide the stench of decay with flowers. I took my seat at the end of the table, the one by the window where the cold light cut through everything soft. I needed that light. I needed edges.
The others were already muttering about schedules and logistics, the kind of bureaucratic noise that passed for purpose in this department. I let them talk. Their voices droned through the room, static under my skin, until the door opened and silence cut through it like a blade.
She walked in.
My undoing.
Head high, coat fitted close, mouth pressed into that delicate half-line that always looked a little too controlled, a little too goddamn tempting. Her eyes didn’t meet mine, but that didn’t matter. Every detail of her hit me anyway, the exhaustion shadowing her face, the way she carried herself, the quiet defiance in the set of her shoulders. I knew she hadn’t slept. Neither had I.
She took her seat across the table, diagonal to me, far enough to be safe but close enough to ruin me all over again. Her presence wasn’t loud, but it crawled beneath my skin, filled the space until I could feel her even without touching her.
Dr. Baylor’s voice snapped through the stillness. “We’ll begin with symposium logistics. Professor Stone, any updates on your keynote and your assistant?”
Assistant. The second it left Baylor’s mouth, the room vanished. All I could see was the way Edwina’s fingers tightened around her pen, that small, involuntary flinch when she heard the wordassistant.She straightened her spine, lifted her chin, but the effort showed. She felt the eyes on her. Felt mine most of all.
I’d done that to her. I’d made her mine in ways none of these idiots would ever understand. My assistant. My keynote partner. My fucking obsession. And every time that title was spoken aloud, I watched her hold her breath, the same way I did when she looked at me.
She didn’t even have to move for me to lose focus. The way her pen moved across the page, the way her throat worked when she swallowed, the way her legs crossed under the table, every goddamn thing about her was noise in my blood. She was sitting there, and all I could think about was how easily I could wreck that composure, how fast she’d fall apart if I stopped pretending to be civilized.
Good girl.
But I didn’t want her good. I wanted her trembling, half-wild, gripping my shirt while I made her forget every rule she ever followed.
I didn’t look at her when I answered. “Miss Carter submitted her updated abstract this morning. I’ve reviewed it. It’s sufficient.”
I heard the breath she tried to hide. That tiny hitch in her chest. She fucking hated that word.Sufficient.It burned her, and that made me smile.
Dr. Baylor didn’t notice. She nodded, droning something about deadlines and revisions, but I wasn’t listening anymore.
Edwina’s jaw tightened. Her lips parted slightly, then pressed together again, as if she’d almost said something she shouldn’t. My entire body reacted to that almost. To the way she wanted to push back. To the restraint she held with her teeth.
I wanted to break it. To bend her over that fucking table and make her drop every bit of that fake calm. I wanted to hear her beg for something she couldn’t even name.
And the worst part? I couldn’t stop imagining it. The sound she’d make when I whispered her name against her throat. The way she’d tremble when I told her not to look away. The way her voice would falter when she tried to sayProfessorwhile I was buried deep inside her.
Every second sitting across from her was an act of violence against my own restraint. Every time she looked down, every shift of her fingers, every fucking breath she took turned into a dare.
The others kept talking. The words blurred. I didn’t hear any of it. I just watched her. The edge of her collarbone. The faint pulse beneath her jaw. The way she pretended not to notice me.
She wasn’t some student on a committee list. She wasn’t a subordinate. She was the slow undoing of every rule I’d built to survive.
But I’d chosen her. And now I was fucking obsessed with the choice I couldn’t take back.
The chair beside me scraped, a colleague said something about final panel timings, and I nodded on instinct, offering some meaningless agreement while my mind drifted back to her. It always did. My gaze found her hands again. Fingers curledaround a pen, pressing into the paper with quiet purpose. Those hands looked soft. Controlled. Too fucking elegant for the kind of thoughts running through my head.
What would they feel like twisted in my hair?
What would they look like around my cock, trembling, desperate to keep pace with the rhythm I’d set?
