Chapter 6
Professor Luther Quinn was, to my dismay, profoundly magnetic.
It was dim in the cavernous lecture hall with the wide room lit only by the ambient silver glow of the projector.
He commanded the room without breaking a sweat.
As he went about the rest of the class, I spent the time making mental notes of what I observed.
He must have been in his early forties and wore his age well.
And I couldn’t stop picturing him as a mountain and myself as a rather enthusiastic climber as the minutes ticked past.
By the end, the surrounding seats emptied rapidly, all students eager to flee after their last class of the first day.
An aura of renewed vigor swept through them, flooding into the hall and leaving me in their wake.
The excitement of escape evaded my reach when the man behind the podium pointedly looked at me for the first time since the start of class, and anxiety wrenched through me like a physical force.
I blamed my predicament on my big mouth and unstoppable thoughts.
There had been times as a child where I struggled with impulse control and reining in invasive thoughts, and it seemed those habits weren’t as dormant as I’d hoped.
My differences served as a barrier between me and potential friends.
It made me cling to the ones I made all the harder, because one slip and I’d lose them again.
There were occasional lapses in understanding social cues, and difficulty with eye contact. And the literal interpretation of others’ speech, which might… I don’t know… make me call out a professor who only meant to challenge his students.
Those traits kept me apart from my peers—from being normal—and often landed me in trouble when I wasn’t actively camouflaging my behavior to fit into what society expected. I wanted to submerge myself in my favorite subject, not start on the wrong foot with the man teaching it.
This wasn’t a class I could drop. Or wanted to.
When the door clicked shut for the last time, I gave in and dragged myself from my desk. Everything within me quivered with an odd mix of trepidation and anticipation. I’d never been above lavishing in a favorite teacher’s attention, but this was decidedly not that.
And Professor Quinn was more attractive than any professor had any right to be. The full brunt of his gaze watching my every move unmoored something inside me, something that longed to float out to sea.
I scuttled closer, hoping that he might end my misery and ignore me. With no sympathy for my nerves, his bewitching ocean eyes only lulled me nearer, step by agonizing step. All the while I gazed at the back of his hands gripping the podium, white-knuckled and veins on show.
What might it feel like to drag my tongue over those veins?
No, Ophelia, cut it out!
“Miss Ashcroft—”
“Professor, I’m sorry, truly. Sometimes I get ahead of myself, and I speak without thinking. I didn’t mean to insinuate—”
“Miss Ashcroft.”
“—your class was well led, and the syllabus is fantastic. And I need this class, Professor. I can’t drop out. I didn’t mean to—”
“Miss Ashcroft! Please!” His voice went low and stern. A baritone rumble from deep in the chest that vibrated through the air and into my bones like the welcome purr of an engine. The sort of tone that made the praise-seeking type squeeze their thighs together.
I gulped, forgetting all the swirling apologies in my brain.
Professor Quinn crossed his arms, briefly pulling my eyes to his broad chest and his suit jacket straining under his flexing biceps. I tried not to think about him working out.
And failed.
“Any other student,” he began, words exhaled out of him and his shoulders loosened their tension. “If it had been any other student disrupting my class, I would have made them walk out that door and never come back.”
“Please, no!”
He lifted a hand.
A trembling sigh breached me, but I locked my lips.
“Any other student,” he repeated, seemingly to himself as he rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. The stones in my stomach lifted, rising with his blue-gray stare latching onto my face. “But I knew your grandfather. Very well, in fact.”
I barely withheld my gasp.
“You were a student of his?”
“Indeed, and it’s only because I worked with him that I’ll grant you this leniency.
I wouldn’t excuse that sort of outburst from anyone else.
In fact, I don’t think I ever have.” His voice registered low, balancing between threatening and reassuring.
He braced a hand on the side of the podium and placed the other on his hip while staring down at me.
An imposing and distinguished figure I couldn’t get enough of, even if he was towering over me.
“But I must still make an example of you.”
Images flashed through my mind of a firm hand putting me over his knee and lifting my skirt for a swift, ruthless spanking. A punishment that I wanted more than I could admit. Looking at his hands only made me rub my knees together.
“I understand, Professor. I really am sorry.”
He tipped his head. “Then, as stated earlier, you can make it up to me by becoming my personal assistant. While the role is usually reserved for graduate students, I’m willing to make an exception. In exchange for grading papers and guiding coursework, I’ll offer credit hours.”
“I don’t need extra credit,” I snapped. Then immediately bit my tongue when his thick, discerning brows lifted imperiously. “My grades are perfect is what I meant to say.”
The corner of his lips twitched with something that could have been frustration or amusement.
His stony expression was difficult to read, but the full weight of his scrutiny was both unsettling and captivating.
He pushed off the podium, tucked both hands in his pockets, and stepped closer.
Close enough to feel the drugging heat rippling off him.
“Miss Ashcroft, I won’t force you to do anything, but you must realize how it looks for me if I permit a student to disrespect me at the start of my class.
If you don’t obey, there might be other punishments we can explore…
” his voice trailed off, and I shivered as the vivid image of a hand slapping my behind cracked through my mind.
“We wouldn’t want the Dean to hear that the granddaughter of old Hunter Ashcroft was causing problems, would we? ”
“No! No, sir, please,” I begged.
His ocean-fraught stare glinted into something glacially sharp. He inhaled through his nose, chest heaving. We stared at one another, frozen in the heavy tension warping the hall. All the air lodged in my lungs, and I forgot how to breathe.
The professor inclined his head as I clutched my satchel.
He stood before me mesmerizing and reserved, like an antique lockbox I desperately wanted to find the key for.
An undeniably attractive man, and we were sharing the same air.
But I couldn’t help thinking that his stoic allure was a mask standing between us.
As handsome as a statue, but unmoving, unfeeling stone all the same.
“Hmm,” he hummed, regarding me with keen, dark eyes.
I twitched from nervousness.
His hands flexed in his pockets, still staring at me as if he couldn’t look away.
“Well?” I meant to sound confident, defiant, but the word escaped in a weak croak.
My face flamed, and I cleared my throat.
“I’ll be a good student.” The words made him swallow hard, finally tearing his gaze from me to blink at the floor.
“Anything you want, professor. I’ll be your assistant, please.
I just can’t lose this class, and I don’t want to ruin my grandfather’s reputation here. ”
Kilbride wasn’t the school I wanted to attend, but it held importance to my family. I wouldn’t tarnish my name as my father had. Only I stood in the way of redemption.
“Right.” He swiped a hand over his face, turning away from me to shuffle a sheaf of papers on the podium. “Email me your availability and we’ll work out a sufficient schedule going forward.”
Everything in me protested the loss of my time, or what little of it remained. I had a full course load to trudge through if I wanted to reach the end, and something in me raged at the prospect of dedicating time to helping this man teach a class.
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.