I need to draw.
I push the book aside and pull my sketchbook toward me. I flip to a fresh, blank page. The pristine white feels like a declaration.
My charcoal is black, sharp in my hand. I don’t start with his eyes or the curve of his mouth, the way I usually do. I start with the line of his hand, the way it held my jaw, the tension in his fingers. The calculated, deliberate pressure that was meant to feel like passion but was, in fact, an act of control.
This time, I’m not drawing a fantasy. I’m not drawing a man I’m chasing.
I’m drawing a subject.
My subject.
And on Friday, when I walk back into his office, he’s going to see exactly what I’ve learned.
Chapter Seven
Julian
* * *
The two days that follow the kiss are an exercise in exquisite torment.
My life is built on the foundation of control, on the predictable rhythm of lectures, research, and solitude. That foundation now has a hairline fracture, and her name is River Dawson. I find myself returning to the memory of her in my office, replaying it not with guilt, but with the analytical precision of a scholar reviewing a critical text.
The stimulus: my mouth on hers.
The response: a shocked stillness followed by a complete, boneless surrender. The whimper she tried to swallow. The way her small hands fisted in my jacket, clinging to the very thing that was overpowering her.
It was a perfect articulation of the theory I’ve spent my life studying. The collapse of restraint. The beautiful, silent shattering. I tasted her submission, and it was more intoxicating than any whiskey.
On Thursday, her chair in the third row is empty.
A lesser man might feel a pang of regret, I feel a surge of possessive triumph. Of course, she isn’t here. The specimen is reacting to the catalyst. She is hiding, she is processing, she is overwhelmed. She is, in her dorm room right now, thinking of nothing but me. The empty chair is not an absence; it is a testament to my presence in her mind. It is a monument to my control.
That night, in the sterile quiet of my penthouse, I stand before the floor-to-ceiling windows, a glass of Macallan in hand. The city sprawls below, a glittering tapestry of insignificant lights. My thoughts are not on my research or my portfolio. They are on the architecture of her.
I want to see her unmade.
It is a clinical, academic desire, I tell myself. I want to study the deconstruction of a subject. To see what happens when her own compulsions, the sketching, the counting, the obsessive focus are stripped away and replaced with a singular, more potent obsession: me. I will not be her sanctuary. I will be her new religion.
I imagine her, kneeling on the cold marble floor of this penthouse. I want to see the fight in her dark eyes finally give way to a placid, trusting obedience. I want to be the one to draw tears from them, not of sorrow, but of pure, overwhelmed release. I want to taste the salt of them on my tongue. I will push her past every limit she has ever set for herself, to break her down to her most essential elements, and then rebuild her with me at the core of her new world.
It is not cruelty, it is liberation. I will be freeing her from the chaos of her own mind by giving her a new, perfect center.
By Friday afternoon I am seated behind my desk, the cage of my office once again a stage. The stack of books is neatly aligned on the corner, the bait for our next lesson. My pulse is a low, steady drum. I am in complete control.
I have already written the script for this meeting. She will be timid. Her eyes will be downcast, her posture apologetic. She will be a bundle of nerves, terrified of my disapproval, desperate for my praise. She will be ashamed of what happened, and even more ashamed of how much she wanted it.
I will be magnanimous, of course. I will ignore the kiss entirely, treating it as a non-event. I will speak only of the texts, offering her a sliver of academic approval that she will drink like a woman dying of thirst. I will re-establish the dynamic; I am the professor, she is the student. And she will be so grateful for the return to a semblance of normalcy that she will be even more pliable the next time I decide to shatter it.
The clock strikes four.
My gaze is fixed on the door. I am a predator waiting for the faintest rustle in the undergrowth. I am a god waiting for his supplicant.
Then, it comes.
A knock.
Not the hesitant, reverent tap from before.
