The Professor: A Standalone Novel

by Akeroyd, Serena

  My lips began trembling, making it hard to speak clearly. “He needs me.”

  Maclean gritted his teeth for a second as he stared at me with those beautiful eyes that weren’t made for such ugly glowers.

  His fingers began to drum on the polished desk in front of him. The noise seemed to sync with my heartbeat, and the faster he drummed, the harder my heart pounded until I felt winded, desperate for air, desperate for respite.

  “What am I going to do with you, Phoebe?”

  I squeaked, “I only did it the once.”

  “That’s what they all say,” he sneered, suddenly rushing forward and making me slam my back into the seat in response. “It starts with one time, until it becomes easier and easier to just steal when you ‘need’ something.”

  “You don’t know me,” I rasped, surprising myself with the balls it took to make that assertion. “You don’t know my situation or my circumstances.”

  His mouth tightened. “I think it’s time we rectified that.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, Phoebe,” he mocked, “that I hold your pathetic little life in my hands.”

  Oh, God. He did. To many, it was thirty bucks, but in this place? To my bosses? It might as well have been grand larceny instead of petty theft.

  Reputation was everything. I knew that, and it terrified me. With a few simple words, he could have my pathetic existence toppling to the ground.

  Losing the job at the café when I needed every cent wasn’t something I could afford. Hell, I barely made ends meet with the job, but without it? And now with Mrs. Linden unable to look after Scottie for only God knew how long?

  Fucked.

  That was what I was.

  Royally fucked.

  Staring at him and trying to contain the shiver of fear that quivered through me, I whispered, “What do you want?”

  That was what it boiled down to.

  He wanted something from me, but Jesus, I had nothing to give.

  “I-I can clean your house—”

  “Why would I want a thief in my home?”

  I flushed, bitterly aware that I’d left myself open to that attack. Jesus, was he right? Was I an idiot? “The circumstances—”

  “What if another ‘circumstance’ made itself known? Would you help yourself to my widescreen TV because you couldn’t feed your brother?” He cocked a brow at me, and I gritted my teeth.

  “What do you want? Because evidently, you think I have something to give.”

  His top lip curled up as he folded his arms across his chest. “So unassuming.” He tilted his head to the side. “You have no idea, do you?”

  My brow puckered. “Look, I know you think I’m stupid, but I’m really not. I was desperate.” I heard the plea in my voice and hated myself for it. There was no entreating this man to do anything.

  “You keep on using that word,” he retorted. “Desperate, but how desperate?”

  “What do you want from me?” I cried again, unable to take his tormenting for much longer.

  He patted the desk. “Sit here.”

  I reared back. “Huh?”

  “Sit here.”

  All of a sudden, it hit me. I shook my head. “I’m not going to fuck you.”

  “Good thing I don’t want to fuck you either,” he countered immediately, unoffended by my words.

  I’d been slow on the uptake here, granted, but what the hell was he talking about?

  He didn’t want to fuck me, so why did he want me to sit on his desk?

  Throat tightening, I stared at him and recognized that he looked almost bored by our conversation.

  “If I sit there, what do you want me to do?” I inquired, voice husky.

  “You’re going to spread your legs and touch your pussy until you come.”

  For a second, my eyes bugged out, and how the hell I didn’t laugh, I wasn’t sure.

  He said it so calmly, without so much as a hint of heat.

  I wasn’t a virgin, but I didn’t go around jilling off in front of people. Especially not professors.

  And certainly not professors who loathed the ground I walked on.

  “Are you for real?” I rasped, my fingers tightening to the point of pain in the busted seams of my bag.

  “Oh, most definitely.”

  ❖

  The way he crooned those words made me think this wasn’t even a sexual thing. It was about dominance.

  He wanted me to do this to humiliate me.

  To belittle me.

  I just didn’t understand why.

  What had I ever done to him to make him want to do this to me? To treat me like I was a dispensable pawn in his personal game of chess?

  My heartbeat pounded in my ears with a dull throb that had pain slicing through my nerve endings. Shuddering, I stared at him and asked, “Why?”

  His smile was cool, calculating, but his voice was like silk, and all the more dangerous for it as he threatened, “Because if you don’t want to lose everything, you’ll do as I say.”

  The words made me feel even more like a dog who was being trained.

  When I didn’t immediately leap up to do his bidding, he whispered, “Is there a reason your brother depends on you and not your mother? Is she dead?”

  Eyes flaring wide at that, I bit out, “You leave him out of this.”

  “He’s part of the problem, isn’t he?” he retorted, as cool as ever. “His fate rests in my hands as much as yours does.”

  He wasn’t wrong there.

  Damn him.

  I licked my lips. “P-Please, I’ll clean anything, you can videotape me.”

  “Because I have time for that…” He cocked a brow at me. “I have time to let a filthy thief into my home and record her while she cleans the place, just to make sure she isn’t stealing from me?”

  “But why would you want me to,” I motioned at the desk, “do that?”

  He wasn’t getting anything out of it.

  Not with the repugnant twist to his lips that told me, more than his words had, that he didn’t want to fuck me.

  “Because I told you to. It isn’t about ‘want.’ It’s about obedience. It’s about the fact that if you don’t shut your fucking mouth and do as you’re told, your shitty little world will come tumbling down around your ears.

  “I’ve seen you steal from your workplace, and you’ve barely managed to get by in my class so a word in the Dean’s ear...” He smirked at me, a hateful twist of his mouth that I wanted to slap. “Then, there’s your boss. After I explain what I saw, your boss will fire you, so what more do you think it will take for you to lose everything? And so close to finals too?”

  As he dug the knife in and twisted, my nostrils flared with rage as I clambered to my feet. When I didn’t spin around for the door, the most beautifully hateful smile curved his lips.

  At any other moment, had a man graced me with a smile like that, I knew for a fact I’d be weak in the knees.

  Instead?

  I was outraged and disgusted.

  That smile was so beatific because he knew he’d won, knew that I was about to do as he asked.

  My jaw clenched as I rounded the desk and hefted my not insubstantial weight onto it. Almost as though he read my mind, he murmured, “Are you sure you’re poor?”

  For a second, I was speechless—were the stealing, the shitty bookbag that had fallen to pieces, and the crap state of my clothes, not enough proof? “W-What do you mean?”

  “You’re hardly starving, are you?”

  I wanted to splutter, wanted to slap his face for the needlessly cruel words. It was like he wanted me to hate him. Like he was saying it, digging the knife in all the more just to get a rise out of me.

  The bastard.

  “Cheap foods are nutritionally poor,” I murmured.

  He hummed, and the tone of it was disbelieving. Like he didn’t know that cheap, ready meals contained the worst kind of nutrition.

  Like I was bullshitti
ng about that.

  “You skipped a step,” he carried on, settling back into his seat, rocking it as though he were in the middle of a lively debate.

  “I-I did?”

  “Can’t get yourself off in your jeans, can you?”

  My cheeks flushed with my misery as I jumped off the desk, because if I’d been happy about touching myself in front of him, I was less than ecstatic after his comments.

  Was he about to remark on the size of my ass?

  On the state of my panties?

  Apparently, it was open fucking season on Phoebe Whitehouse today.

  I was in the stocks and he was quite at ease throwing rotten fruit and vegetables my way.

  Mouth tightening, I unfastened the fly of my jeans then began to drag them down my hips. As I started, however, he murmured, “Turn around.”

  I closed my eyes, aware that his intention truly was to humiliate me, because he’d evidently read my mind.

  This time, no amount of tightening stopped the quiver as my mouth trembled with my embarrassment. I struggled out of the jeans, trying not to bend down and kick my way out of them instead, but they weren’t having it. They gathered around my ankles and stuck fast.

  Mortified beyond belief, I bent over and quickly loosened them before twisting around, with my face bright pink.

  The nasty sneer on his face said it all.

  I was a disappointment.

  To a man who I hadn’t intended on pleasing in the first place.

  Great.

  Cheeks burning with the scorch to my pride, I scuttled over to the desk and lifted myself back onto it once more. A fine tremor coursed along my body, making me preternaturally aware of every single fucking inch of it.

  The ass that was too big.

  The hips that were too round.

  The belly that jiggled.

  The tits that refused to stay contained by anything other than one of the ugly bras that ‘big’ girls had to wear.

  The only saving grace?

  He hadn’t asked me to take off my panties.

  Thanking God for that smallest of mercies, I reached down and began touching myself through that shield. Of course, I should have anticipated his next move.

  When he shifted in his seat, I half-expected him to pull his cock out of his pants, even though I was under no illusion about how gross I was to him, and how this was simply a power play. But when I looked up, he’d moved only to open his desk drawer.

  When he pulled out a pair of scissors, my eyes darted to his, and I felt fear at his move as I looked at him, then he passed them over to me.

  “Cut them off.”

  “Cut them?” I choked out, and he narrowed his eyes at me once more.

  “Your repeating everything I say is doing nothing more than irritating me, Phoebe. Do as I say, please.”

  My hand was trembling as I reached for the scissors and, pulling them taut at the waistband, I cut through one side with a single snip.

  When the fabric fell down, I bit my lip and moved to the other side, not stopping until they were nothing more than two flaps that were barely hiding my virtue from him.

  His chair squeaked as he shifted back, and when I looked at him, it was easy to envisage him watching a movie. His arms lay relaxed at his side as he lounged at a comfortable angle, but his hands were on his belly, bridged as he rocked back and forth to the show going on before him.

  He really was going to make me do this.

  Not one single aspect of his features displayed guilt. Nor did he look grossed out anymore.

  He looked satisfied.

  Like a cat who’d dragged in a particularly irritating bird that he was going to enjoy torturing until its death.

  I was that bird.

  And I was way too young to die.

  Closing my eyes, I sucked in a shaky breath, parted my legs, and reached down to touch my clit. The angle wasn’t right, and I felt awkward. Not only that, I was bone dry.

  This was the exact opposite of a turn on.

  “You won’t leave here until you climax.”

  I didn’t open my eyes, because if I did, I’d just want to shout at him, and damn him, he held the cards here.

  So what if it was weird what he wanted from me? He wasn’t going to tell my boss about my stealing, and things would return to normal—him glowering at me from his desk, making me feel insignificant with his grades and the notes he made on my papers.

  God, how I longed for our relationship to revert to my simply dreading his lessons every morning.

  Sucking in a breath, I settled back on one hand, spread my legs wider, even letting one fall to the side of his desk so I could part them more.

  Was I embarrassed?

  Yes.

  Did I think I could come?

  No.

  But I had no choice. I had another class soon. Crazy though it was, I had to get going.

  Licking my lips for the gazillionth time, I tried to calm my breathing, tried to imagine I was in my bed at night, playing with my clit, and gently fingering myself until I climaxed. My orgasms were never all that fulfilling, never all-encompassing, but on the rare occasions I felt the urge, they were a nice way to calm down after a busy day, a great way for me to tumble into sleep.

  Breathing deeply, I focused on anything else but him and touched myself exactly how I did on those nights. I thought about a sexy man fucking me hard and fast, maneuvering me about the bed as though I were as lithe and slender as a little doll. I imagined his rough hands on my body, his firm tenet on my sexuality.

  I thought about being pinned down and bitten, marked with his fingers and teeth, and I thought of his hand on my clit. I imagined he’d know exactly what to do with my pussy, would know how to make these tiny little poofs of an orgasm manifest tenfold.

  Since my usual fantasies worked me over, I felt myself grow into the correct rhythm. With my eyes closed, I could forget I wasn’t alone, could forget that a man who loathed me, who’d blackmailed me just to have power over me, was sitting there observing. Judging every move I made, probably critiquing me so he could fucking grade me.

  Ridiculous though it was, my eyes popped open at the thought, and I wasn’t surprised to see he hadn’t moved.

  Not by an inch.

  His eyes had narrowed to the point that he was either asleep or he was watching me through the slits he’d made with them.

  As that would be the most ultimate of humiliations, I chose to believe he watched me through his narrowed eyelids, because him falling asleep was somehow worse.

  My mouth trembled again but I bit my lips to stop it, and carried on working myself up, but I’d lost momentum. Lost it and was desperate to get it back.

  Panicked, I studied him, replaced the blank face of the man who fucked me in my dreams with his mean one, imagined that snarl of his being put to better use as he gritted his teeth while he screwed me silly to hold off his orgasm. I pictured those hands, so strong and sure, stroking over my curves, making me come alive with each brush of his fingers.

  I regained some control by using him to fulfill his demands, but it backfired spectacularly as the more I imagined him, the more power rattled through my bones like my body was a beat-up truck going down a driveway riddled with potholes. I shivered and shook, quivered and quaked, and all because I thought about those beautiful lips, lips that were capable of curving into the most gracious of smiles, curling about my clit, sucking me, slurping on the nub, and like that, I was done.

  The orgasm came out of nowhere.

  It hit me square between the eyes as I used my tormentor to get off.

  I rode my hand, used the finger I’d slipped inside my gate to mimic his thick fullness to rock higher and faster. The heel of my wrist bumped against my clit, and my head tipped back as I allowed the climax total autonomy over my body.

  It was, sickeningly, the best orgasm I’d ever had.

  I could feel the heat sliding through my veins as the languor of release diffused into my system, making
me relax when I should be tense in this man’s presence. When the tension in my body released, and my breathing began to settle, he reached into the drawer once more and pulled out a pen and a pad of paper.

  My cheeks, already red, burned hotter as he pushed the pad between my spread legs, not stopping until it was scant inches from my pussy.

  “Write down your number.”

  His command had me frowning, and the lack of inflection in his voice extinguished any heat inside me.

  He sounded like he was asking his waitress for his steak to be medium rare instead of well done.

  Was that how little I’d affected him?

  The question had me wincing.

  What was wrong with me?

  Why did I want him to be affected, period?

  The man had just forced me to…

  I gulped.

  What?

  Come?

  I shuddered because, in the end, I’d come hard and fast.

  Jesus, how pitiful and pathetic was I? This wasn’t about my pleasure, wasn’t about enjoyment. It was his power-play over me, and I’d just fallen into his trap like a mouse who’d scented that creamy piece of cheese and who thought with his belly rather than his mind.

  Not only hadn’t I affected him when I didn’t particularly want to, but my pride was also pricked and, to be quite frank, I was disturbed on a base level. Alone in my bed, the most powerful orgasm I could achieve was sparkler-level. What I’d just felt with this bastard’s eyes on me? It was more like July Fourth had gone down in my body.

  Trying to steady my hand, I reached between my legs and grabbed the pen. As I scrawled my number on the pad, I knew one thing and one thing only—this wasn’t going to be the first and last time he forced me to do his bidding.

  And, God help me, with an orgasm like that as dessert, should I complain about it?

  Chapter Three

  “Where are you going?”

  I paused at my mother’s slurred words, turned back to her and asked, “What do you care?”

  She blinked at me, and I felt my mouth curl up in disgust at the state of her. Her shirt was covered in only God knew how many stains, and her pants were just as bad but they were filthy too. Her hair made a rat’s nest look clean, and I was pretty sure she’d stink of both alcohol and urine.