The Professor: A Standalone Novel

by Akeroyd, Serena

  The owner of Crow. Her boss.

  “When?” I rasped.

  “Two days ago.”

  The fucker should have warned me.

  Like she heard my unspoken words, she murmured, “I told him I knew you’d pulled strings for me. Although how you did that when I found the job offer on the college job’s board, I’m not sure.”

  “You passed it to get to American History.” I cleared my throat. “I waited until you walked past and saw it, then took it down.”

  “Jay said he wasn’t even hiring.”

  Was that amusement I heard in her voice? “He owed me a favor or two,” I rasped.

  “I’ll bet.” She exhaled roughly. “Then there’s the fact that I remembered you. It just took me a while. You’d been at the coffee shop most mornings I was there, and when I asked around in the VIP section a few days ago, the waitresses told me that that booth was pretty much yours. Except you hadn’t been in for like five weeks.”

  Since she’d moved in.

  When I didn’t say a word, because fuck, what could I say? She sighed, and finally pressed herself into me. The warmth of her front aligning itself to my back. It felt so good, but I tensed at her touch.

  I didn’t want her to go, didn’t want her to leave me, but God help me, if she left me now after gifting me with her warmth?

  It would be the death knell to my sanity.

  But all of this, these revelations, meant she’d known for at least two whole days, if not longer. She’d known and hadn’t left.

  Still… “How can you stand to touch me?” I murmured rawly.

  “Because you saved me.”

  “Saved you? I blackmailed you,” I scoffed, bowing my head and catching sight of Cara’s tree. I missed her then. Missed her so much that it felt as though if I didn’t get away from all the shadows in this place, I’d be swallowed up by them.

  Rosa, Cara, Gina.

  And now, Phoebe.

  Another shadow to add to my misery if she threw me away like the trash I was.

  Like I deserved to be discarded.

  “Not all knights come to their damsels squeaky clean and bright white.”

  My eyes flared wide at that. “You’re romanticizing this,” I chided her, as I’d mentally chided her during my read through of her exam essay.

  “Perhaps. But I want to write romance.” She shrugged. “Who better to romanticize the unromanticizable?”

  “Don’t joke about this,” I bit off.

  “I’m not.”

  “I’ll always support you,” I rasped out the words, and even though they weren’t intended cruelly, I knew from the way she stiffened up at my back she mistook it for being that.

  “I can support myself,” she ground out, her body arching away from mine.

  “I don’t want you to have to,” I growled. “Fuck, can’t you see that? Everything I’ve done, it’s been to keep you safe. I don’t want you struggling for anything.”

  I twisted around so I could glare at her, and before I knew what she was doing, her hand was cupping my cheek, and her thumb was tracing the wetness from tears I hadn’t known were falling.

  “I don’t deserve you,” I whispered brokenly, my face crumpling. “I’m sick and twisted. All poisoned inside. You should go. I should let you. You need better than me, you don’t need this in your life.”

  She met my gaze, looked straight at me, and declared, “Perhaps you don’t deserve me, perhaps you are poisoned inside, but maybe you have a lifetime to make up for it. Maybe, just maybe, you have a lifetime to find the cure.”

  My mouth quivered before I firmed my lips. “A lifetime?”

  “If you want it?” For the first time since she stepped on the balcony, she seemed hesitant.

  And she hadn’t been like that since the shaken smile she’d graced me with while she took the exam. But the scent of lasagna in the oven belied her nervousness. Her dress—she wore a kaftan with a vintage pattern—was relaxed for a night at home.

  She knew, but she wasn’t running.

  She knew, but she wanted to stay.

  Christ. If I wanted it? If I wanted her?

  Fuck, I wanted nothing more.

  And I’d spend the rest of my goddamn life proving it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mutual destruction.

  I should have known it would boil down to it.

  Gina was fucking stupid, too stupid for her own or my good. Still, it was done now. Her future as ADA was in rags, and mine as a professor was too.

  “Nicholas, it pains me to have to say this, but—”

  I raised a hand at the dean, who had the grace to look exactly as he said—pained. As a personal friend of the family, I’d expected no less. He couldn’t defend the indefensible, but also, I wasn’t about to regret meeting Phoebe.

  I tapped my fingers against the armrest. His desk was double wide and inlaid with a kind of nacre around the rim that made me wonder what pearls would look like against Phoebe’s creamy flesh.

  As I pondered that thought, I asked, “How did you find out?”

  I knew the answer, but wanted confirmation, of course.

  “Anonymous letters with photos, Nicholas.” James Masterson winced. “In a public park, Nicholas? Really?”

  My lips curved as zero guilt filled me. “It was quite decadent to be sure.” As he huffed, slumping into his overlarge leather desk chair, I cut a look at the picture of his wife who peered at me from the frame.

  Why did people do that?

  Have frames aimed outward instead of inward?

  My true crime here, of course, was being discovered. I knew even the Dean was banging one of the students—in his case, a history postgrad.

  His wife definitely wouldn’t appreciate knowing James had a thing for men.

  Sometimes, it was like being back a hundred years in the past.

  These dalliances occurred, everyone accepted it, so long as you weren’t caught.

  I wouldn’t say anything. Indeed, saw no need to, but the hypocrisy was alarming.

  “This won’t affect Phoebe’s graduation?”

  James shook his head. “I can rely on the integrity of your grading, can’t I?”

  I snorted—couldn’t stop myself. “If anything, I’ve been too harsh on her.”

  “Thought as much.” James hummed and his fingers slipped against the rim of his desk. “She’s magna cum laude, Nicholas. The girl deserves to graduate.”

  Pride blossomed inside me, even as relief followed it—James was right, Phoebe did deserve to graduate. All her hard work, and caring for Scottie too? She deserved a damn medal.

  “I’m glad,” was all I said however.

  “Dare I ask—”

  “I’m going to marry her,” I interrupted before he could piss me off.

  James’s eyes widened. “Does your mother know?”

  I bared my teeth at him. “Since when do you think I listen to mommy dearest, James?”

  “True.” He winced. “Dammit to hell, Nicholas. Couldn’t you have waited? I’m losing a fine professor because of this idiocy.”

  I couldn’t stop my grin. “Would you avoid Liam if you could?”

  Though James’s cheeks flushed, he caught my eye with a despairing glance that told me his predicament. Except he had the ties of a wife and children, who had no idea he was gay.

  They wouldn’t understand, of course. There was no forgiveness in the world James and I inhabited. Just as there’d be no forgiveness for me when I brought Phoebe into our society. She wasn’t cut from the right cloth, was born on the wrong side of the city, and therefore, was considered worthless.

  To me, however, she was everything, and Gina and my parents had better watch themselves if they thought they had a cat in hell’s chance of wrecking what I had with her.

  Though I’d make Gina pay for this, I felt no compunction in shaking James’s hand in farewell, heading out of his office, and subsequently leaving the faculty.

  It was rather freeing
, in fact.

  My life had changed the day Phoebe walked into it, and maybe I’d been waiting on this moment since then.

  I didn’t want to be a professor anymore.

  I didn’t need to be.

  Not now.

  Was it strange to be smiling the day that my ex-wife’s plans to ruin my life came to fruition?

  Perhaps.

  But I was going to enjoy it.

  Every fucking moment of it.

  Neither Phoebe nor Scottie were at the loft when I returned, and I headed toward my desk, collected the packet I had inside the locked drawer, and with a whistle, headed out pretty much as soon as I made it in.

  I didn’t bother grabbing my car, instead, I caught a cab to the office which pulled up outside the park where I’d fingered my woman a few weeks ago. The city was teaming, so busy it was miserable. If anything could put a damper on my day, it was that.

  I was, I realized, beyond tired of this place. As vibrant as it was, as alive and frenetic, I was ready for something different. Greener pastures, a change. I supposed I just had to convince Phoebe of that.

  As I paid the driver, I wondered if I could get Phoebe to agree to at least visiting France. I bet once she arrived there she’d love it, and knowing her past, she would never have imagined a trip there was even possible.

  Wondering how we’d go around getting a passport for Scottie, I determined we’d have to adopt him, which would mean I’d have to find her mother. It ran the risk of her worming her way back into our lives, but I was okay with that—especially since we were going to head out of the country soon after.

  Still, those thoughts were for later.

  When I turned to look up at Gina’s office, I laughed to myself before I began the approach to the gleaming glass doors with a smile. I was feeling remarkably cheerful, if anything. Sure, her ploy had worked, but the war hadn’t been won.

  If anything, I’d be the winner because her career meant everything to her, and with this proof? I’d be wrecking it, as well as dampening everything that her parents worked for.

  I should have felt guilty, instead, I felt nothing short of delight.

  For so long, I’d believed myself a monster because of Gina. It was finally time for her to face the consequences of her actions.

  Arriving on the correct floor, I couldn’t help but feel that it was delicious that the only reason I managed to see her boss was because of my father’s name, a name that meant nothing to me, but was important in the city. When he saw me, I smiled at him, handed him the documents, and murmured, “I’d like you to deal with a little problem I’m having.”

  He frowned at me. “What kind of problem?”

  “I have a stalker, and I need a restraining order. I’d like you to arrange that for me.”

  Nicholas

  Eight Months later…

  “I have a gift for you.” When she ignored me, I sighed. “Phoebe?”

  She retained her focus on the stage ahead, a boring musicale my mother had insisted on attending.

  “In fact, I have two gifts.”

  She still ignored me.

  Sulking was her favorite way of making me pay, and dammit to hell, it often worked.

  In the darkened shadows of my mother’s box at the opera, I leaned close to her and, straight in her ear, hissed, “Spread your legs.”

  I felt her immediate tension, watched as she turned her head to glower at me. “Fuck. You.”

  “Please do,” I purred. “Are they spread?”

  She gritted her teeth so hard, I feared for her jaw. And when her left eyelid began to flutter, I whispered, “Do it.”

  She fought me, God, how she tried. But she didn’t and couldn’t succeed.

  This was our code.

  One she had to obey.

  Even if she didn’t want to.

  It was my mastery over her body, the rules I’d inadvertently set in stone at the inception of our relationship, that had her spreading her legs and obeying, even though she wanted to throttle me as she complied.

  Her eyes promised death but I welcomed it, so long as it was at her side.

  I smirked at her, aware that would infuriate her all the more, but that was what I wanted.

  Her fire.

  Not her ice.

  My mother was like liquid nitrogen. Capable of freezing even a woman like Phoebe, especially when she lorded it over her, using our family’s name and wealth to scare her.

  Take tonight.

  It was the first time I’d introduced my parents to the woman who was my everything, and they’d brought us to the fucking opera.

  I loathed the opera. They knew that. You didn’t have to have blue goddamn blood to appreciate this shit, and yet they’d done it to frighten her. To make her realize what she was and where I came from.

  My family had their private box, lived in a building that cost hundreds of thousands in community charges a year alone, and the price tag on their apartment was more than most millionaires could afford.

  They’d rammed those facts home very neatly. Too neatly. I smelled Gina in the wings.

  For whatever reason, she’d always been able to get my mother on her side. Probably because my mother recognized the likeness between them.

  How Gina had explained away her own dismissal, I wasn’t sure, but I was content with her reputation being ruined on a professional front. Whether she turned my parents against Phoebe and me was something I frankly didn’t give a damn about.

  But I’d tried.

  They’d never be able to say I hadn’t.

  I’d brought her to them with the intention of a truce, and here I was, stuck with the cold shoulder from the woman who meant more to me than life itself, while I was wailed at by a fat lady in a Viking costume.

  Dear God.

  My mother couldn’t have tortured me more. Wagner? I hated him more than any of the other dreadful opera composers I’d had to endure over the years.

  “Are you wet?” I whispered into her ear, finding Phoebe far more entertaining than anything else in my vicinity, like usual.

  She gulped. “No. I’m furious.”

  I couldn’t blame her, even if I did appreciate the tight longing I heard in her voice. My darling was quite accustomed to my saving her, and save her I would.

  “Don’t you want to know what my gifts are?” I enticed.

  “No. Not unless it involves one-way tickets out of this hellhole.”

  I snorted. “Glad to know you hate the opera too,” I mumbled.

  “It’s nothing to do with that. It’s—”

  “I know exactly what it is.” I reached over and patted her thigh. It was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to slip my fingers between her legs and explore her glorious pussy, claim it for my own once more, and taste her delicious cunt like it was a meal and I was a man dying of starvation.

  Just the thought had my cock hardening, but I knew for a fact that she’d never come. No matter how hard I teased her, enticed her, and seduced her, my mother’s rudeness had done the impossible.

  Turned my woman cold.

  Fuck, I loathed the creature who’d had her belly spliced open to bring me to life, and she could be damn sure that the only way I’d ever visit was if she fucking begged me to.

  Even then, it had better be worth my while.

  “What’s my gift then?”

  “Gifts,” I corrected instantly, hearing the sigh in her voice and knowing that was the point where Phoebe’s mood turned around.

  It always worked.

  Just a reminder of who I was to her, her professor, even if I’d been cast out for my deviancy, was enough to ground her.

  And didn’t I just love her all the more for that?

  “Okay, gifts,” she whispered.

  I pulled out the four items I had in my various pockets, and as she peered down in the gloom, I saw her surprise. Hell, I couldn’t blame her. I’d felt like a walking purse.

  “What are they?”

  I passed the wat
ch to her, then grabbed the other and placed it around my wrist, securing it before I reached for hers and did the same.

  She tilted the face this way and that, and I allowed her some time to discern what she was looking at because it was damn dark in here.

  When she recognized them, her mouth dropped open, and she whispered, “You didn’t.”

  My lips curved. “Would you expect anything less from me?”

  She swallowed thickly, her throat visibly working before, with awe in her tone, she muttered, “Mrs. Linden’s?”

  I nodded, and her hand snapped out to grab mine. She squeezed my fingers so tightly that it almost hurt, but I understood. She was showing me her emotion the only way she could at that moment.

  I raised our joined hands, brought them to my lips, and kissed her knuckles.

  “Gifts number one and two,” I informed her, including the man’s vintage Rolex as a gift, one I’d wear forever for her, even though she knew I didn’t wear any jewelry.

  I would be soon, however. At least, if I had my way.

  She blinked. “Number three?”

  This one was a piece of paper, and it had been fucking hard to get too. I passed over the few sheets of A4 that signified Scottie’s change of status. Again, I watched as she tilted and turned it, trying to read every word. I knew the second she did because her nails dug into my thigh.

  “How?”

  “Money.”

  Her throat worked, the muscles playing in the meager light from the stage. “She sold him?”

  I sighed. “Don’t think of it that way. He’s ours now.”

  “Nicholas…” Her voice wavered, but I heard the tears in it, heard the emotion, and I smiled at her before leaning over and kissing her on her trembling lips.

  “You’re welcome, but I didn’t do it for a ‘thank you,’” I informed her. I did it for Scottie, and for us. We were a family in everything but the eyes of the law. Well, fuck that. Now the law was on our side, and that was the way it should be.

  I wasn’t going to allow that bitch into our lives any more than necessary. Phoebe had given her an ultimatum, a fair one, and her mother hadn’t heeded it.

  Well, I had, and I’d moved things to a formal, legal footing.