The Professor: A Standalone Novel

by Akeroyd, Serena

  He hadn’t shifted out of the booth, and he was still sitting where he’d been.

  Was that the green light?

  Did I need one?

  My nails dug into his crisply ironed dress pants. The man wore clothes that some might wear on a night out, and this was just to visit a crappy coffee shop in my neighborhood.

  Part of me wondered what he’d look like on a date night, and another part of me didn’t give a fuck because all I really wanted was to see him naked. No clothes, no barriers, nothing between us.

  Christ, I wanted that as much as I wanted his dick.

  When my hands smoothed over his pants, his tension transmitted itself to me again, but I ignored it. I had to. I needed this more than he did.

  As I reached his belly, I found his belt buckle and began to unwrap it. When I rubbed a hand over his shaft, feeling the thick bulge that was proof he wanted me, a sob of relief escaped me. I pressed my face to his leg, so fucking happy that this exquisite need wasn’t only felt by me.

  He felt it too, but he was fighting it, and that was what I didn’t understand.

  Maybe would never understand.

  I shuddered as I started on the buckle once more, and just as I reached for the zipper, just as the tines began to part and the scent of him in these close confines overwhelmed me, the bell on the door sounded.

  This time, my eyes did grow moist with tears, and I scurried out from under the table, terrified I’d be caught, but even more terrified at what I’d see in his eyes.

  The craving for him was so powerful that my body ached with it, and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, he was going to punish me today.

  As I served the four customers who came in as a group, I wasn’t surprised when my phone buzzed in my pocket.

  Maclean: Insert the vibrator.

  It was in my bag as it always was. Charged and ready to go.

  When I could, I headed to the bathroom and released a moan as my fingers slid through my slickness. I filled myself up with the silicone dick and thought of the heavy weight of his. How it would feel in my hand, skin to skin, how it would taste against my tongue.

  I imagined his body atop mine, thrusting, rutting against me like a beast from what I made him feel.

  My fingers slid against my clit, and just as I was seconds away from orgasm, the vibe started.

  A startled gasp escaped me.

  How did he know me so well?

  It was like he was attuned to me. Like he knew my body better than I did.

  I cried as I orgasmed then. Cried because it was either that or scream as the pleasure raked down my nerve endings.

  It wasn’t enough. Wouldn’t be until he was there, inside me, not this fucking piece of plastic, but it took the edge off, and I was surprised, truth be told, because he wasn’t a kind man, and what surprised me all the more was the fact that I didn’t want him to be.

  I liked him just as he was.

  Weird and all.

  ❖

  A few days into my new job, I had to admit a few things.

  One, I felt guilty. Not only had I left Lorenzo and Maria in the lurch, even though it was with their blessing when I explained my situation, but Cheryl had looked like she was going to cry when I told her about the change of plans. That she needed the money as badly as I did was a given, but though my hands were tied, it didn’t stop me from feeling bad about it.

  Two, I missed seeing the professor at the coffee shop in the morning. Without him to start my day, I felt like I was going into withdrawals. Like he was a drug I was addicted to, and didn’t know how to buy.

  Three, I was loving the change in Scottie.

  Working from home meant I could sit with him, and let him roam around my bedroom and his as he was refusing, more and more, to stay in his crib. I often sat on the floor, my laptop on my lap as I watched him. He seemed to be flourishing with how much time I could give him now, and considering he was missing Mrs. Linden as badly as I was, it made me feel like I was doing something right at the moment.

  He had to stay in the crib while I was at school, and on the nights when I was at the bar, Mom was home. She wasn’t a responsible adult, and she spent half that time drunk off her ass, but he was asleep and she promised me she wouldn’t leave him.

  I should have known she couldn’t even keep that simple promise.

  A few nights after she’d repeated that promise to me over another payment of a six-pack of beer, I returned to find Scottie sobbing his heart out. He sounded like he was in agony, those tears were soul-deep, wounded, and they pained me. Physically. After a quick scan that showed me my mother had left him because she was nowhere to be found and hell, the apartment was tiny so hiding was out, I went into the bedroom, smelled crap, and saw his arm was torn up and bandaged badly. And for the first time in my life, I was at a loss.

  I stared at him as he stared back at me, his cheeks bright red from the fury he’d worked himself into, his tiny hands curved into fists that were white from the strain.

  Then, he broke my heart.

  Literally burned it to ash.

  “Ma-ma.”

  His first word.

  Was he calling me that or was he saying that Mom had done this to him?

  Okay, that was allotting a lot of brainpower to an eleven-month-old, but he called me mama?

  Oh, God.

  And I’d left him.

  I’d left him with that bitch who’d birthed us both.

  My mouth quivered as I shot forward and hauled his stinky butt into my arms. Sure, he smelled of poop, but beneath it all, he smelled like mine.

  And, for all intents and purposes, he was.

  I was the one who’d rocked him to sleep, who’d fed him and burped him, who’d changed his diapers and cleaned up his puke. I’d been the one to fret over his vaccinations, who’d worried about daycare…

  Me.

  I was his mother, and I needed to start acting like one.

  Staying here was a no-no. I saw that now. I’d been running on hope and a prayer as I had for the past twenty-one years of my life where my mother was concerned, and I knew that the time had come for me to break ties with her.

  This was it.

  She’d really fucking done it now.

  Maybe I should have reached this point before, maybe I should never have left it until this moment, but I’d been thinking like a sister. Reacting instead of acting. I’d had no money, no prospects without my degree, and I was young. Those were my excuses, but no more.

  It was time to woman up.

  I soothed him until he calmed down, and the second he didn’t fret as much, I got him cleaned up as much as I could and tossed his dirty diaper into the trash.

  Leaving him for a second to roam around his bedroom floor, I closed the door to run into the bathroom and set up the baby bath. When it was ready, I headed into the kitchen to grab a quick drink of water and saw the broken glass on the carpet again, along with some droplets of blood.

  How many fucking times did I have to tell her?

  How many times would it take for her to learn not to break shit? And why the hell had she let Scottie crawl in here in the first place?

  I’d put him down for the night before I left for work, goddammit.

  Not wanting to leave Scottie for too long, I left the kitchenette that stank of old beer, ignored the crappy living room that smelled of cheap liquor that had soaked into the carpet, and returned to Scottie’s room.

  Hauling him into my arms, he giggled as I blew a raspberry onto his cheek. When he settled on my hip, the rightness of everything just sank into my bones.

  I could do this.

  We could do this.

  I needed to get away from my mother, needed to stop her toxicity from seeping into Scottie’s life.

  Resolved, I washed him up, looked at his arm and was relieved to see the cut was tiny but the blood had made it look worse than it was, especially since my drunk mother hadn’t bandaged it properly.

  It would scab o
ver quickly, but the rift between my mother and her children never would.

  Enough was enough.

  I’d reached my limit.

  Or so I thought.

  After an hour of sitting with Scottie and comforting him until he could sleep, I was dead on my feet when I finally made it into bed.

  Professor Maclean hadn’t texted me as was his usual way, and I found that disconcerting enough to keep me staring up at the dark ceiling longer than I should. Tomorrow, I didn’t have to get up for anything except for Scottie. My shift at the bar started at nine, so I had the day to work on the transcriptions and try and figure out my next move.

  I’d need to start relying on Cheryl again, but at night this time, and the next thing was figuring out somewhere to live that was close to the bar.

  Because my brain was whirring with thoughts, I was awake longer than my tired body wanted. Still, if I’d been asleep, I probably wouldn’t have heard the giggles coming from the living room, or the masculine grunts a few moments later.

  Mom had given up her bedroom for Scottie when he’d been born, so the living room was literally where she ate, drank, and slept.

  Now, she was apparently fucking in there too.

  I didn’t say anything.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d heard her having sex with some random. Christ, I’d probably been ‘there’ for Scottie’s conception too. But damn if it wasn’t going to be the last time I had to endure this.

  As I heard her crying out to God as she faked an orgasm—because no one came that fast, not even me with the professor watching and stoking my embers—my phone buzzed.

  I reached over and something inside me settled when I saw it was him.

  Was it weird that I wanted to ask him why he was late tormenting me tonight?

  Probably, but what wasn’t strange about my life?

  The fact that my baby brother thought I was his mom, or that our mother was currently moaning like a porn star in the living room as she fucked a stranger, undoubtedly for cash?

  I stared at his text for a long time.

  Maclean: What are you doing tomorrow?

  Why did he want to know?

  Any other man, I’d have thought he maybe wanted to hang out with me. But this was the professor. He didn’t want that from me.

  I wasted about twenty minutes before I replied, and even then, my heartbeat sped up because I was keeping him waiting. The tiny ticks had turned blue so I knew he knew I’d read the messages.

  Because I wasn’t in the habit of lying, I texted: I’m moving out. My brother and I can’t live with my mom anymore. She’s dangerous for his safety.

  Maclean: What happened?

  His reply was astonishingly quick, and it made me wonder what he was doing. Made me question if he was lying in bed, in the dark, his body bared beneath the sheets as he spoke with me.

  Even as riled up as I was, as angry and unsettled over my intentions for tomorrow, everything female inside me stirred at the thought.

  I’d never seen him so much as discomposed, yet he’d seen me in so many various states of discombobulated it was ridiculous.

  As I stared at his question, I wondered how much I should tell him.

  He’d threatened me.

  Had said, “I hold the worlds of you and your brother in the palm of my hand.”

  But this was the man who’d appeared at my side at Enid’s funeral.

  Who’d tended to my arm when I’d scalded it.

  Who’d suggested the transcribing in the first place.

  Would he really do anything to separate me from Scottie?

  I gnawed on my cheek as I deliberated how I should reply. Though I barely knew him, I knew enough to know he wouldn’t be happy with a non-answer, and silence would only piss him off all the more.

  Like he’d read my mind, my phone buzzed, and I snorted out a laugh when I read his next message.

  Maclean: Waiting.

  God, he was such an asshole.

  His nose was bump-free, which led to the question of how the fuck had he reached this point in his life without someone breaking it for him?

  Despite myself, I was amused by his arrogance, and it prompted me to answer with the truth.

  Me: I came home and he was all alone in the apartment.

  Maclean: She’d left him?

  My jaw clenched.

  Me: Yeah. And he was bleeding from a small cut and was a mess.

  Just thinking about that mess made rage swirl inside me. As well as terror.

  Tonight could have ended so differently. Could have derailed in so many different ways that my heart sped up as I contemplated the numerous and varied incidents in which Scottie could have hurt himself tonight.

  Maclean: What’s your intention?

  Me: I don’t know. Not really. I don’t have anywhere to go, but I know I can’t stay here.

  There was a long pause, and I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. It was late, late enough that the fucking in the living room had turned to grunts and snores.

  I settled my phone back on the nightstand, not expecting a reply tonight, hell, not expecting a reply at all.

  What was there to say?

  But I wasn’t ready for sleep. Not when I was thinking about the next steps I was going to take.

  I had to get Scottie out of here, that was for damn sure. He couldn’t stay around the poison that was our mother.

  When my phone lit up my bedroom, I jolted out of the daze my sleepy brain had fallen into, and when I read his message, I just gaped at it for a solid minute.

  Maclean: You can come stay with me until you get back on your feet.

  Was he for real?

  I couldn’t stop myself from typing: I thought I was a filthy thief.

  Maclean: You were. Now you’re not.

  It was such a typical response from the asshole that I had to shake my head.

  Me: I couldn’t impose.

  Maclean: Wouldn’t have made the suggestion if it was an imposition.

  As I stared at the screen, wondering if he’d lost his mind, I subsequently wondered if I’d lost my mind because instead of refusing, I replied: If you’re sure.

  Maclean: I’m sure.

  And that was how, the following day, I climbed into a taxi with the minuscule amount of possessions I owned, my brother in his car seat, and headed for Williamsburg—one of the best neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

  Chapter Eight

  I’d never considered myself an idiot. If anything, I’d considered myself as being relatively smart.

  As a Rhodes Scholar, I’d read Literature at Oxford, and now was one of the youngest to have tenure in my department. It wasn’t my dream job, but I enjoyed it.

  For the most part.

  At least, I had.

  Until Phoebe Whitehouse had walked through the doors of my lecture hall and had changed everything, then had compounded my misery by electing to sit in my class.

  Did every love story begin with stalking?

  I hoped for the heroine’s sake that wasn’t the case, but Phoebe wasn’t a heroine and I sure as fuck wasn’t a hero.

  As I stared at the picture of her slick pussy, I imagined her fingers fucking herself, thought about her moans when she came in my office, and remembered the scent of her when she climaxed.

  My cock instantly hardened but I ignored it, as I always did. Even when my heartbeat throbbed inside the shaft, even when I felt like I’d fucking explode, I ignored it.

  I had to.

  It was a sweet, delicious agony, but the trouble was, I’d just invited my sin in the flesh to come and stay with me.

  That was what made me a fucking idiot.

  But what the hell was I supposed to do? See her on the streets?

  The reason I followed her around most of the goddamn time was to make sure she was safe, so her wandering around homeless went totally against that. Plus, I might be able to sleep more than two hours if she was here, under my roof, protected.

  That thought al
one created a welter of emotions inside me. Want and need curled around the persistent desire for her, as well as my body’s craving for REM sleep. The four combined into a cluster that had me leaning back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling.

  I’d intended on watching her come tonight. Had intended on making her video herself, but when I’d arrived home late from a faculty meeting and had found Gina bawling on my front step, things had gone awry.

  Suddenly, the need to torment Phoebe as she tormented me hadn’t been there, it had been replaced with the simple desire for her company.

  She was, in her own way, a bizarre combination of complex and simple. I knew she didn’t realize her own power, and that was the only thing that made this situation bearable.

  I’d seen a lot of bitches walk through my classroom doors—fuck, I’d married one. So I knew the type who believed they walked on fucking water. They had more men panting after them than a pet store full of dogs, and they knew it and milked it for everything they could get.

  Phoebe, in another life, might have been that girl, but this life had knocked her around, and while a part of me wanted to lift her up, force her to see what she was for herself, another part was selfish.

  If I kept her as was, she’d stay the same.

  She wouldn’t change.

  And I hated change.

  God, I fucking loathed it.

  Someone hollering in the distance had my head twisting to the side as I looked out the window. I couldn’t see much, thanks to a large tree that was outside it—not that I was about to complain. I loved that tree.

  I’d buried Cara underneath it, and watching it grow from a sapling to a strong and hardy tree always filled me with satisfaction.

  Death didn’t always have to mean the end.

  I rubbed my belly where the start of my own particular ‘ending’ had been, the scars were thick ridges that had me gritting my teeth. Forcing my thoughts away from those memories, instead, I focused on the idea of Phoebe and her brother living in this sterile place I called home which, before they arrived, I’d have to clean as well as set up somewhere safe to store my gun.