I raised my hand and knocked. Once. Then again, a little firmer.
“Come in,” he said. His voice was deep and calm, the kind that settled into your bones.
“Good evening,” I said, and my voice came out softer than I meant.
He looked up. His eyes were sharp but not unkind. “Good evening. Do you need something?”
I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. My fingers tightened around the notebook. “Yes. I wanted to ask about my paper. I am not sure I understood your notes.”
He gestured to the chair across from him. “Sit. Let us look together.”
I sat and placed my notebook on the desk. I tried not to notice the scent of his cologne, warm and clean. My knees brushed the desk, and I had to remind myself to breathe.
He opened my notebook and read for a while, quiet and focused. “You did well,” he said at last. “But there are places you can go deeper. Your analysis is too safe.”
Safe. The word struck something. He did not mean it this way, but safe was exactly how I behaved around him. Careful smiles. Respectful nods. Pretending my stomach did not tighten whenever he leaned close in class.
I leaned forward, pretending to follow his notes. My eyes kept slipping to his mouth, the faint shadow along his jaw, the calm in his face that made me feel both steady and unsteady at once.
“I see,” I whispered, though I had not taken in half of what he had said.
He looked up and held my gaze. A long second. Two. The room became very quiet around the sound of our breathing.
“Thank you, professor,” I said. “I wanted to make sure I understood.”
But we both knew that was not the whole reason I had come.
The office felt like it was listening. Books towered on every side. The sun thinned into evening and left the corners darker. My notebook lay open between us, a barrier that felt flimsy and useless.
He leaned back in his chair and studied me. It was not a cold look. It was a patient one. The silence between us was not empty. It carried weight and the slow pull of a tide. My skin prickled. I crossed my legs and tried to look at the page while my body hummed with heat that did not have a place to go.
He stood. Slowly. No rush. He came around the desk, the air shifting as he moved. He stopped behind me. I heard a small click as he slid the lock on the door. The sound settled in my chest and stole a breath from me.
“Here,” he said, his voice low. “This part. Look again.”
I turned my head. His sleeve brushed my shoulder. Warm. My eyes flicked to the page, but the words swam. He leaned over me, close enough that I caught the faint clean scent of him, and my focus snapped into my body instead of the text.
He lowered the notebook to the desk and pointed to a line. His hand came near mine. Too near. My fingers shifted and the back of my hand touched his.
Small. Barely anything. It was enough.
I went still. He did not pull away at once. His skin was warm. The quiet in the room deepened until I could hear the soft tick of a clock and the rush of blood in my ears.
I lifted my eyes to his face. I expected him to step back and make space. He did not. Something moved between us, slow and certain. Not a mistake. A choice.
“Professor,” I whispered. I did not know if I was asking him to stop or to keep going.
He waited one more heartbeat. Then another. His voice came soft and rough at once. “If we do this, we do not pretend it never happened.”
The words opened a door. I knew what it meant to walk through it. No turning back. No pretending.
I could not make my mouth shape an answer. Instead I held his gaze with everything I had been holding back. Want. Nerves. The ache that had been there all semester and would not leave me alone.
That was enough.
He bent and brushed his lips over mine. A ghost of a kiss. He paused, waiting for me to pull away. I did not. I tilted my face up and kissed him back.
We kissed like we had been starving. His mouth trailed down my neck. The first bite was soft. The second made my knees bend. I curled my fingers in his hair and drew him back to my mouth. I could taste the heat in him. I could feel the control he was trying to keep.
He turned me and walked me to the desk. Papers slid aside. A pen rolled to the floor. He lifted me and set me on the polished wood. The contrast of it made me shiver. Hard desk under me. Warm hands on me.
“Stay still,” he said, voice rough. “Good girls listen.”
The words went straight through me. I nodded before I thought. My body knew how to obey him.
He stepped between my knees and smoothed his hands up my thighs. Slow. Firm. My skirt slid higher and higher. He paused right where I needed him most. My hips moved on their own. He smiled against my skin and kissed the inside of my knee. Then higher. Then higher again.
“Do you want this?” he asked. His mouth was near my ear. His breath was warm. “Say it.”
“Yes,” I said. My voice shook. “I want this. I want you.”
“Good,” he murmured. “Then we will take our time.”
He kissed a path back up my body. The soft hollow at my hip. The edge of lace. The line of my stomach where breath trembles. He cupped me through my panties with his palm and held steady pressure until my head dropped back and a sound slipped from me that I did not plan. He watched my face like he was learning the map of me. What made me gasp. What made my thighs tense. What made my hips rise to meet his hand.
“Please,” I said. The word came out small and broken. “Please do not stop.”
“I will not stop,” he said, and he did not. He kept the pressure, steady and sure, until my body took over. Heat rose and rose. It was not gentle. It was not sweet. It was a rush that grabbed me and shook me. I came around his fingers with my mouth open and my eyes wet and his name half formed on my lips.
He watched all of it. He slowed only when I could not breathe and then kissed me so softly it hurt.
“Good girl,” he whispered. “You are perfect when you let go.”
I reached for him. I wanted more. I wanted all of him. I pushed at his shirt until it was off his shoulders. I traced the lines of his chest and the slope of his stomach. He was warm and hard under my palms. I pushed at his belt and he made a low sound in his throat that I felt between my legs.
“Your turn,” I said, and the courage in my voice surprised me.
He laughed softly, not unkind. “You have claws,” he said. “Show me.”
I slid down from the desk to the floor. I knelt on the rug. I looked up at him and held his gaze while I opened his belt and freed him. He was already hard. Heavy in my hand. I stroked him and watched his control shift. His fingers threaded through my hair, not to push, only to anchor himself in the feeling.
“Slow,” he said. “Let me feel all of you.”
I took him into my mouth and set a pace that matched his breath. My lips slid down, my tongue pressed, my hand worked the base while I swallowed him deeper. His head tipped back. A soft curse fell from his mouth. He tried to hold still and failed. His hips moved in small, helpless thrusts that made me feel powerful and tender at once.
“Enough,” he said after a moment. His voice had gone rougher. He pulled me to my feet with hands that shook. “I want to be inside you when I lose it.”
He turned me and bent me over the desk. He kissed the back of my neck, then my shoulder, then the place where my spine meets my hips. He dragged my panties down and pushed my skirt higher. He took a breath like he needed to steady himself. Then he sank into me in one long, slow push that made both of us groan.
We stayed still for a heartbeat. Then two. Then he began to move. Not frantic. Not careless. He set a rhythm that felt like a decision. Each thrust deeper than the last. Each one landing in the place that made my voice break. My hands gripped the edge of the desk until my knuckles ached. Papers whispered under my elbows. The room smelled like paper and ink and skin.
“Tell me how it feels,” he said, breath hot at my ear.
“Full,” I said. “So full. So good. Please harder.”
He gave me harder. The desk creaked. My name was a low growl in his mouth. His fingers found my clit again and worked me while he drove into me and there was nothing left to do but feel. My body met his. My hips pushed back to take more. The heat grew fast again, but this time it felt bigger, wider, like the whole room was inside the pulse of it.
“You are mine right now,” he said. “Only mine.”
“Yes,” I said, and the word cracked on my tongue. “Yes. Please. I am yours.”
The second wave took me in a rush that made my knees give. He held me in place with one arm and kept moving, chasing his own edge. I heard the change in his breath. The ragged pull. The sharp sound he made when he was seconds away. He pressed me hard to the desk and thrust deep and deep again and then he broke with a long sound that filled the quiet. His body shook against mine. He stayed inside me and held me until both of us could breathe.
Time stretched thin. We stayed joined like that while the room cooled and the last light left the windows. My cheek rested on my arms. His chest pressed to my back. Our breathing slowly matched the same slow pace.
He pulled out at last and turned me gently. He sat me on the desk and knelt to kiss the inside of my knees as if to say thank you. Then he stood and cupped my face and kissed me so soft it felt like an apology and a promise in one.
We dressed in the hush that follows a storm. Buttons. Zippers. Papers gathered with hands that were steadier than our hearts. He fixed a crooked stack and smoothed it twice like he needed a task that had clean edges.
“This stays between us,” he said at last. His tone was calm again, but his eyes were not. There was a heat in them that made my stomach flip. “No one can know. We are both adults and we chose this, but the world does not care about that.”
“I understand,” I said. And I did. I was not a child. I knew about rules and reputations and all the ways people judge. “I will not tell anyone.”
He touched a strand of hair that had fallen across my cheek and tucked it back behind my ear. The gesture was gentle and almost domestic. It made my chest ache. “You are bright,” he said. “You are brave. And you are very, very distracting.”
I smiled, breathless. “You are not exactly easy to ignore.”
Something relaxed in his face at that. He leaned in and kissed my forehead. It felt almost more intimate than everything else we had done.
“Go now,” he said. “Before someone knocks.”
I picked up my notebook. My legs still felt unsteady. At the door I looked back. He had put his glasses on again, but he was not reading. He was watching me. That quiet pull moved between us again, stronger than before because now we knew exactly what it was.
We both knew this was not the end.
The hallway was empty. I walked slow at first and then faster, like my body could not decide if it wanted to flee or float. My lips were swollen. My skin still carried the feel of his hands. I could smell him on me. Every step echoed with the memory of his voice saying mine.
Outside, the evening air touched my face and cooled it. I sat on the top step and pressed my notebook to my lap. I should have felt guilty. I should have been afraid. Instead I felt clear, like something that had been humming inside me for months had finally found a note and held it.
My phone buzzed. A simple message.
Did you get the clarity you came for?
I looked at the words and let a slow smile spread.
Yes, professor, I wrote back. I understand perfectly now.
There was a pause, then his reply.
Good. We can review further. Same time tomorrow.
I stared at the screen until the letters blurred. The answer rose in me without effort.
I will be there.
I put my phone away and stood. The sky had gone violet. The windows of the building glowed softly. I walked home with the taste of him still on my tongue and the ache of him deep in my body. The world looked the same, but I did not feel the same. I felt claimed and seen and awake.
I knew what we had done would live between us like a secret flame. I also knew that when it called me back, I would say yes.
About the Author
