I needed this interaction to be over.
“Yes, sir.”
Professor Quinn choked on a cough and slammed a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound. Red flushed his cheeks as he gasped for air and turned away from me. His shoulders shook with the effort to steady himself, but it was the opportunity I needed to escape.
With rapid, awkward steps that nearly faltered, I rushed for the door, praying that gravity would have mercy on me.
A hint of pale moonlight peeked from behind wispy clouds. The rain slowed to a drizzle on my drive home before ending abruptly on the cusp of dusk. An oppressive darkness sighed to life, obscuring the tree line through the windows. Only the yellow eyes of an owl hooting in the distance reflected back—watching me from the impenetrable darkness.
My bones shivered under my skin. After hours, my clothes felt too tight, borderline constricting. I stumbled down the hall, stripping as I went. Boots thumped on the hardwood, socks and my underthings left a trail behind me, and I shoved into the bathroom where I tugged my restricting bra off. When hot water poured on my head, I scrubbed the grime of the day off every inch of me.
Wrapped in a fuzzy bathrobe after my tension curbed, I pivoted to the kitchen. I rummaged around for leftover buttered noodles, then checked the messages on my phone. Mom had left a voicemail, but with my cell always on silent, I’d missed the call. Not that I’d answer during classes, anyway.
She sounded… carefree. Something she hadn’t been in a long time, and I knew that freedom would do wonders for her. It didn’t make me feel less alone as I slurped up the last of the noodles in a vacant, dimly lit kitchen.
Alone. So terribly alone.
I didn’t want to think about it. Couldn’t, for the sake of my sanity.
Instead, I tossed my robe at the foot of the bed and tucked myself under a layer of blankets. Eyes cinched shut, the sounds of the world intensified. A distant hooting in the woods,the groaning of the house’s bones settling, the wind whistling against the windows. With the curtains drawn, light struggled to breach the room.
I stewed in the darkness, tossing and turning as sleep denied me access to the land of dreams.
An elastic band running through me pulled taut, straining since my encounter with Professor Quinn. A coiled, compulsive arousal that refused to abate. Such a brief meeting, a handful of sentences exchanged, and yet the memories of my day spiraled around him. A deep baritone, smooth as whisky voice. His ocean eyes, watching the world with a storm in their depths.
My hand inched lower on its own, following an unconscious path of desire. I thought of his body heat seeping into me and chasing away the chill of the unseasonably cold weather. And the way his hard, steady frame had cradled me, saving me from falling and embarrassing myself.
No, the embarrassment came later.
My mind circled back to the memory of his mouth caressing the word ‘punishment’, and my overactive imagination ran away with it. Before I knew it, my hand slipped under my night shorts, following the thought of made-up scenarios involving me bent over a strong thigh and a large palm smacking my ass red, then soothing the ache away with tender touches before eventually seeking the wet warmth between my legs. Pure erotic need drove me deeper into the dream while my fingers landed on my swollen, throbbing clit. A whine vented through my parted lips, and my head arched deeper into the pillow as I started on the small, rapid circles I preferred.
A barrier of shame rose up, slowing my ministrations as I considered how wrong it was to lust after my professor—an obviously older man. He might have a wife, a family, or someone at home warming his bed while my fingers stroked my clit to thoughts of him.
It made me feel dirty, but I bowed under the weight of my arousal as something sparked deep, deep in my core.
It was his fingers I imagined, strumming my clit and tweaking my nipple. When had my other hand snuck into my shirt? God, it hardly mattered. I was working myself into a breathless frenzy, canting my hips onto my own fingers and swirling around my nipples.
There wasn’t anything inherently wrong with feeling desire for my professor. Logically, it was a simple fact of biology reacting to visually appealing stimuli. He was a handsome man, and my body responded accordingly. I could resist acting on my lust, but this—this warmth fulminating inside me—I willingly embraced.
I came with a breathy whimper, full body quivering from the rippling aftershocks driving me into a mindless catharsis. The aftershocks seemed to last forever, proving that I had been wound tight and simply needed a physical release and explosion of feel-good hormones. My professor was only the catalyst for something I needed before meeting him. Nothing more.
Outside in the silken dark of a frigid night, an owl hooted a haunting melody. I didn’t hear it. I had already fallen into a dreamless sleep.
7
“Yes, sir.”
Ophelia Ashcroft was going to be the death of me.
The strength of my reaction to her threw me off. It was vastly disproportionate to the extent of my restraint. Helping a clumsy, stunning girl from slipping on the wet floor was one thing. But ruminating on her, the feel of her, the sound of her voice, the perfume on her skin, during the lecture and for endless hours after she left was nothing short of madness. The passage of time from the moment she walked out the door had slowed to an agonizingly languid pace as if the very aspect of time decided to torment me.
My tendency to lean toward logic had been overcome by what I could only describe as obsessive thoughts. As if my mind had been dealt one decisively torturous blow in the form of warm eyes and a sweet mouth. And worst of all, a bratty attitude.
Darkness permeated every inch of the town, and the starlight fought to penetrate the bulbous clouds drifting across the dome overhead. Impatience seeped into me in the form of restlessness. I paced my office, mind reeling with the revelation that there was an Ashcroft back in Kilbride, attending this godforsaken school, and traipsing about as oblivious as a mouse in a cage.
I’d been a fool not to investigate it sooner. My hunt for the cult members had become a large portion of my time, and I could admit my failings in not double-checking.
Hunter would have had my head for such a lapse of judgement. And I owed it to him to do better, be better. That included protecting his family, especially his granddaughter.
