Chapter Eleven
Hayden
I didn’t go to campus. Not because I was sick.
Not because there was anything that required my attention more.
I stayed away because if I saw her, if I caught the curve of her mouth, the tilt of her head, the soft exposure of her throat when she turned, I wouldn’t have trusted myself to stay in that fucking chair.
I’d fucked women apart before. Learned every tremor, every breath that broke between my hands, the kind of mastery earned through repetition and control.
Years of knowing how to make them come undone without ever losing command of myself.
But Edwina Carter wasn’t a body I could map and forget.
She wasn’t something to consume and discard.
She was the kind of danger that slipped beneath the skin and refused to leave.
A quiet infection. A pulse I couldn’t stop checking.
So I stayed home. Locked myself in, surrounded by the stillness of my apartment, pacing the length of the studio until the walls began to feel smaller than my thoughts.
My fists stayed tight most of the day. My mind, filthy, relentless, dragged me through every memory of her.
I told myself it was restraint, that this distance was a choice born of logic.
It wasn’t. It was survival. Because if I saw her again, if she met my eyes with that calm detachment she wore as armor, I knew I’d cross the line I’d been circling for weeks.
The truth was ugly. I wanted to pull her into my office, shut the door, and bury myself so deep inside her the walls would forget their purpose.
I thought of her mouth. The small, broken breath she gave when I touched her outside that club.
The pulse that trembled beneath her voice when she called me Professor.
Just the memory of it made my cock throb, and I hated myself for it.
I knew exactly what this was, how reckless, how dangerous.
Knowledge didn’t stop the hunger. It only carved it sharper, made it cut deeper.
Tomorrow was Wednesday. The symposium meeting.
She would be there, sitting in that glass lounge, legs crossed, eyes distant, pretending nothing existed between us.
Pretending my stare hadn’t stripped her bare.
She’d speak in that careful tone she used when she wanted to sound composed, unaware that I could hear the tremor beneath it. I always heard it.
And I’d have to sit across from her, act indifferent, pretend I didn’t remember the weight of her name on my tongue. Pretend I didn’t want to destroy every illusion of distance just to see if she’d still meet my eyes with that same impossible defiance.
No. I needed distance. Because if she walked in and looked at me like I hadn’t already taken up space in her body, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stay seated. I wasn’t sure I’d stop myself from leaning forward, closing the breath between us, and claiming what was already mine in every way but name.
But was choosing her even a choice anymore? Or had something in me already broken open, something I’d buried under lectures, ink, and glass walls I told myself would never shatter?
What the hell was I doing? She was a student.
My fucking student. And I wanted her with the hunger of a man who hadn’t tasted anything real in years.
Everything else had turned to ash. She was the only thing that still felt alive.
Playing with fire doesn’t touch it. This wasn’t fire. This was destruction.
She sat in my classroom, unaware, or pretending not to be, of what she was doing to me.
Her voice didn’t echo through me, it crawled under my skin.
Every time she lifted her head to answer a question, every time her teeth caught the corner of her pen, my restraint split a little more.
It wasn’t fascination anymore. It was corrosion.
And I was already burning from the inside out.
She had no idea. And the worst part was that I wasn’t simply drawn to her, I was starving.
I wanted to bend her over my desk, to push my hand beneath her panties and curl my fingers inside her until her restraint broke apart in my name.
I wanted to feel her tremble, hear the breath rip through her throat when control slipped away and she came undone beneath my touch, her composure collapsing into those desperate, shattered sounds I’d been imagining for nights.
I wanted to drag her back against me, my grip hard on her hips, thrust into her until the desk groaned beneath the rhythm of it, until every rule she’d ever known ceased to exist and all that remained was the wreckage we made together.
I wanted her spent and trembling, her voice raw, my name staining the air between us.
But I couldn’t. Not because of rules. I stopped giving a damn about those years ago.
I couldn’t because she mattered. Because she was brilliant, still unaware of how close she stood to something vast and dangerous, something that could break both of us if I let it.
And still—God help me—I wanted to bend her over that desk after hours, make her forget every lecture, every line she’d ever rehearsed about right and wrong.
I wanted to strip her down to sound and motion, to the soft, unguarded rhythm of surrender.
I wanted to ruin her in a way she’d remember every time she walked into that room.
But I didn’t want to be the man who turned her brilliance into collateral damage. I didn’t want to be the ruin hidden in the margins of her success.
And yet there I was, standing in my kitchen, gripping the counter as if it could anchor me, the veins in my wrist tight as wire while my thoughts dragged me under, her mouth on my skin, her thighs parting, her hands clutching my shirt, whispering please with that breaking edge that made every rational part of me disintegrate.
I was becoming something feral, irrational, unhinged, addicted. Every breath felt wrong without her in it.
How the hell was I supposed to sit across from her tomorrow, act civilized, pretend I didn’t want her sprawled across the conference table while the department droned on about symposium logistics?
How was I supposed to resemble a man when all I wanted was to taste her, to fuck her until reason stopped existing altogether?
My hand dragged through my hair. The breath that left me felt torn out, not released. I didn’t need a drink. I needed an exorcism.
But instead, I stood there and let her name scrape through my skull, carving itself deeper each time I breathed it.
Edwina.
There was no saving myself from this. I was already lost, and some brutal part of me didn’t want to be found.
Morning came too soon. Gray light filtered through the blinds in fractured bands that cut across the floor, turning the silence into something accusatory.
Sleep hadn’t touched me. My body might have stilled, but my mind hadn’t stopped pacing, circling the thought of her, the sound of her name, the memory of her voice spilling into the dark.
I trimmed the edge of my stubble in silence, the razor gliding over skin I hadn’t truly felt in days.
The mirror offered a stranger, too polished, too contained, a man pretending control wasn’t slipping from his grasp.
The reflection stared back with a kind of false composure, the mask of someone who didn’t flinch every time her image flared behind his eyes.
The shirt clung too neatly across my shoulders, the collar pressed against my throat, its tightness a quiet punishment.
Dark gray, neutral enough to hide the chaos underneath.
The cuffs hugged my wrists, not comfort but restraint.
I adjusted my glasses, feeling the frame settle against the bridge of my nose, the weight of them grounding me in a way that only reminded me how much I’d already come apart.
None of it fucking helped. Not the blade scraping order into chaos, not the shirt buttoned to the throat, not the pretense that control was still mine to hold.
Because she’d be there.
The drive to campus blurred past, cold air clawing through the seams of my coat.
The lot was half-empty, but my chest felt crowded, every heartbeat hitting harder than it should.
The walk to the department lounge stretched on, every step a reminder of what waited ahead.
Her voice fucked with my head, and her scent—God, that scent—stayed on my hands long after she was gone.
I told myself I’d keep it clean. Professional.
The word hit my tongue and turned to ash.
How the hell was I supposed to be professional when the last time I saw her she was in that black dress, the fabric molded to her body with the precision of a promise I had no right to keep?
When her mouth parted with the quiet need of a woman holding back a confession she didn’t want to make, and her eyes told me to stay away while every inch of her told me to do the opposite?
I stepped into the lounge. The room murmured around me, colleagues talking, the shuffle of papers, the dull scrape of chairs, the faint hiss of the coffee machine in the corner. The meeting hadn’t started yet.
But she was there. Of course she was.
Seated near the window, her hair loose, a dark cascade that caught the morning light and fell around her shoulders in soft, careless waves. It wasn’t fair, the way it framed her throat, the way it reminded me of how close I’d come to losing control.
She hadn’t noticed me yet. Good. I needed the distance of a heartbeat to pull the leash tighter around my composure, to remind myself I still had a line to hold.
Because I couldn’t look at her and not feel the echo of that night, the way she’d tilted her head, the curve of her lips when she’d said, What are you doing here, on your birthday?
The words had landed against my skin with the softness of a plea and the sting of regret, and I hadn’t stopped thinking about them since.