Chapter 5
PRIVATE TUTORING IS SO F*CKING NAUGHTY
LIAM
My house is an apology for my childhood.
Glass and steel and pale, flawless wood, stripped of clutter, the exact opposite of the rental apartments I grew up in—every corner tidy, every object curated for maximum meaning.
Most of the rooms remain unused because in general, I live in the library: floor-to-ceiling shelves groaning with books, sunlight knifing through the tall windows, laying stripes over leather spines and the battered refectory table I use for a desk.
Even the air smells expensive, the ozone sting of polish layered with dust, coffee, and whatever else the previous night left behind.
I pour coffee and tell myself it’s just caffeine that has my pulse in the red. It isn’t. I’ve spent the last hour stalking my own perimeter, opening and closing drawers, arranging pens on the tabletop like a man waiting for a parole officer instead of a gorgeous twenty-year-old co-ed.
There’s a line I am not supposed to cross. Every part of me rehearses stepping over it.
This is how it goes: Simone arrives, nervous but sweet, in a skirt and a top calculated to short-circuit every vestige of academic discipline.
She sits, legs crossed high, hair swinging, the smell of her—something floral and compelling—spilling through the room before her voice can.
She thanks me for meeting outside campus, calls the house “cool,” and tries not to stare at my diplomas or the view or the certificates on the wall.
She’s terrified and arrogant and terminally alive. It’s all I can do to stay seated.
I look out the window, wait for the glint of her car in the driveway.
I shouldn’t have invited her here. I know the optics, the risk.
The university would hand me my own balls if they knew I was meeting alone with the beautiful undergrad, and at my house, no less.
But the university library is always loud, and coffee shops reek of burned beans and desperation, and what I really wanted was to see what Simone would do with a private stage, what she would show if no one else could see.
I sip the coffee, taste nothing.
The doorbell rings.
It’s exactly two o’clock.
I move fast, a little too eager. I catch my own reflection in the foyer mirror—blue button-down, dark hair combed but refusing to be tamed, harsh cheekbones and piercing blue eyes.
I remind myself to soften my gaze, not to come off as the wolf everyone already suspects me to be. Of course, they wouldn’t be wrong.
When I open the door, Simone is standing there with a tray of cookies balanced on one hand, her other clutching the strap of a canvas backpack tight enough to leave a mark.
Her hair is up in a ponytail, which gives her pretty features an air of innocence.
The skirt is blue and very short; the white top highlights her big bust, telegraphing the twin shapes of her breasts so openly it feels like a negotiation.
She’s trembling slightly, but covers it with a smile that could pass for innocent if you didn’t know her.
“Hi, Professor Thomas,” she murmurs. “Thanks for inviting me. I brought snacks.”
I step aside. “You didn’t have to do that, Simone.”
She shrugs. “My roomie went crazy, and she said to share the cookies. They taste like magic.”
She follows me inside, pausing to slip off her shoes. Bare feet, toes painted mint green. I can’t help but stare for a microsecond—her feet are perfect, slender, with an arch that makes the tendons in my forearms go tight.
She glances around the main room. “Your house is really cool,” she says, then turns a circle, mouth parted.
“Come in,” I say, beckoning to the right. “My office is here.”
The golden girl steps through the doorway and stops with surprise, blue eyes wide.
“You have, like, a million books. Have you read all of them?”
“No,” I say. “Some are for show.”
She sets the cookies on a side table and moves to the nearest bookshelf. Her fingers run over the leather bindings, stopping at a massive, gilt-edged edition of Ulysses. “Wow. This is, like, a first edition or something?”
I nod. “One of my vices.”
She lifts it, grunting at the weight. The skirt flares, and I have to bite my own tongue not to say anything. She glances at me, as if aware of exactly how much she’s showing.
“Expensive hobby,” she says, putting it back.
“So is college,” I reply. “So have a seat, Simone. Let’s get started.”
I gesture to the desk, then sit at the long side. This is good. We’re on track. We’re actually going to do some serious work, and I’ve already laid out her paper and a couple of pens, legal pads, sticky notes—the full teacher cosplay.
She perches on the edge of the seat, legs crossed, the skirt riding high.
She’s close enough that I can see the flecks of cinnamon in her hair, the way it catches the light, almost backlit.
Her skin is flawless, milk-pale except for the flush rising on her cheeks.
Her lips are glossy, and I can’t stop thinking about what she did with them in class. I’m half-erect already.
I take a deep breath to maintain my cool and ask, “Did you have a chance to write a rough draft since our last meeting?”
She slides a spiral-bound notebook from her backpack, places it on the desk, and flips to a marked page. Her handwriting is large, bubbly, full of hearts dotting the i’s.
“I still work by hand although I know most people type these days. But I like the act of writing, so I hope you don’t mind.”
She offers it, and our fingers brush. Her skin is warm, dry. She lingers, just a second too long.
I take the notebook, try to focus on the words.
Her thesis is, as expected, a twist on my own lecture notes: “Obsession is the only freedom left to the doomed.” The supporting paragraphs are riddled with digressions and fragments, but the voice is alive, wild.
She uses metaphors the way some girls use selfies—flagrant, self-conscious, a little desperate for approval.
“This is actually not bad,” I say, flipping pages. “You’ve got the argument. You just need to focus it. You leap from Ahab to Ishmael and then to yourself.”
She shrugs, as if this is news to her. “I kind of see myself as Ishmael, I guess? Like, the observer. Not the main character. I just watch everything happen to me from a distance.”
Her eyes lock on mine, blue and too wide.
I nod slowly. “You can’t be a writer if you don’t want to be the main character, Simone.”
She smiles, a real one this time. “That’s what my roommate says. Andie thinks I’m too passive.”
“You’re not passive,” I say, and my voice is lower than intended. “You’re just playing a long game.”
Her breath catches. For a moment, I think she’s going to kiss me.
Instead, she leans back, stretching, arms over her head. The shirt rides up, exposing a sliver of bare stomach. The movement is languid, calculated, and like a cat. I feel my cock jump, and pray it doesn’t show.
She drops her arms, then smooths the skirt over her thighs. “Do you want to go over it line by line, or just, like, big picture?”
“Let’s start big picture,” I say, then circle a passage. “This metaphor—‘the whale as a blankness that eats everything’—that’s good. You should push that more.”
She scoots her chair closer, so we’re almost touching. She leans in, her hair brushing my forearm, her scent flooding my lungs.
“What if I make it about sex?” she whispers. “Like, Ahab’s obsession is sexual, and that’s why it destroys him.”
My brain short-circuits. “It’s certainly a valid reading,” I say in an even tone. “That’s come up in various pieces of literary criticism before.”
She grins. “Is it too much?”
“No,” I say. “Not for this class.”
We go through the essay, point by point, but every interaction is a minefield.
Simone’s knee nudges mine under the table.
Her hand hovers near my wrist. She laughs too loud at my jokes, then bites her lip as if she regrets it.
I try to play the role, but I’m sweating through my shirt, every muscle tensed for something that isn’t supposed to happen.
At one point, we both reach for the same pen and our fingers tangle. I freeze. So does she.
Neither of us pulls away.
She looks up at me, eyes wet and bottomless. “You smell good, Professor Thomas,” she says, barely audible.
I want to say, You do too. I want to say, I dream about your mouth and your thighs and the way your voice drops when you say my name.
Instead, I let go of the pen. “You should revise this section,” I say. My voice is shredded. “It’s the best part.”
She nods, then sits back. The air between us snaps taut.
We work in silence for another fifteen minutes, but every movement is a prelude, every brush of skin an invitation.
By the time we finish, the sun is down and the room is gold with reflected light. I stand to open a window, and she follows, stepping close behind me.
She sets her hand on my arm. “Thank you, Professor Thomas.”
Her nails are short and painted pink. I stare at her hand, then at her face.
She’s not afraid. She’s daring me to take what we both want.
I can feel the decision rising up my spine, cold and absolute.
This is how it starts.
And how it ends.
We hover at the edge of something unspeakable, both of us aware, neither daring to breach the boundary. Her hand is still on my arm, so light it’s almost imaginary, but when I turn she holds it there, pins me to my own body.
I have to say something. I have to walk it back.
“We should finish the edits,” I say, but my voice is shot. “You need a strong conclusion, Simone. It’s where the reader—”
She shakes her head, slow, then bites her lip. Her lashes flutter. “I don’t care about the paper.”
She’s a co-ed. I’m thirty-five year old divorced dude, and her professor to boot. I am the world’s biggest cliché. But her pupils are blown wide, her cheeks stained with that telltale flush, and I know I’ve lost.