by Katie LaRoux
I notice the time. “Actually, I’d better get going.”
“Of course,” Jane replies. “You don’t want to me late – you don’t want to miss a minute of what Dr. Dardennes has in store for you!”
A blush and let out a half-fake laugh. Of course, she’s joking – but of course, what she’s joking about is my deepest fantasy. I can’t pretend I haven’t fantasized these last couple hours about exactly what she’s implying. And deep down, in my rational brain, I know that this is just going to be a professional meeting, and I won’t be able to help but leave a little disappointed.
Of course … right?
I bid Jane goodbye and pick up my bookbag and purse and head out the door. The cool, gentle breeze that wafts over me as I walk back to Anderson Hall makes me realize that I’m sweating just a bit. Not a surprise, considering the nervousness and anticipation I’m wracked with.
Ugh, how much of a nightmare would it be if I arrived at Dr. Dardennes’ office all sweaty and stinky!?
Luckily, that’s just the worry wart in me lashing out. It’s like a tiny bit of nervous perspiration, nothing to worry about. I arrive at Anderson Hall, walk through the nice, big wooden doors and make my way to Dr. Dardennes’ office down the hallway.
His office door is open, and I can see him at his desk. He has his jacket off and his shirt sleeves rolled up. He’s resting his head on one of his hands – and his rolled-up shirt sleeve is exposing his thick, muscled forearm with bulging veins. I inadvertently lick my lips at the sight of it. He has his head facing toward his desk, over an open book, of course.
I approach the doorway and knock gently on the door. He looks up, and when he notices it’s me his gaze softens, and a gentle smile lights up his face.
“Oh, hello Miss Simmons,” he says to him, his French accent peaking through more than usual.
“Hello, professor,” I say back. I take a step into the room. I grab the doorknob and turn to him and ask, “should I leave the door open?”
For an instant after I ask that question, it seems like his gaze becomes more serious and intense. It might just be in my imagination though, for it seems that as soon as I notice it, it’s disappeared.
“You can close it,” he says.
CHAPTER FOUR: Dr. Dardennes
I hear a tapping on my door and look up from the book I’m reading – there she is, Allison Simmons.
I smile widely and greet her, “Oh, hello Miss Simmons.”
She’s looking just as good as this morning. It seems that seeing her standing up as I’m sitting down offers an even more stunning view of her luscious curves. Her ample bosom is gently swelling up and down, her breathing slightly heavier due to her walk across campus – and maybe due to nervousness?
“Hello, professor,” she replies, with a smile on her face. She walks through the doorway and asks, “Should I leave the door open?”
At that, my blood started to pump quicker and harder. A thrill of desire shoots through my body and I can feel a tightness in my pants, my cock growing and stiffening.
Briefly, my lips purse together with lusty intention and my gaze turns somewhat steely upon her. I’m no fool – I know I could have her. The way she looks at me – the way she’s looking at me now. The way her eyes and smile light up when I talk to her. At the same time, I know I shouldn’t. It’s unethical, possibly immoral.
But here, now alone with her in the intimate, closed space of my office, with her asking if she should close the door, and with my cock swelling powerfully inside my pants, the possibility seems more vivid and viscerally real than ever.
“You can close it,” I say – a pronouncement that feels to me given with tremendous import.
She stands there a moment, in all her curvy glory, perhaps sensing the same import of her closing the door as I do. But then her face resumes her warm smile, and she closes the door before walking over to my desk, removing her bookbag, pulling out the chair in front of it and sitting down. She places her small, blue purse on top of the side of my desk.
When my gaze falls upon the purse laid on the desk, a sudden thought seizes my mind: violently pushing that purse and everything else – my papers, my books, my laptop – off the desk and onto the floor with one swift and powerful fling of my arm, clearing the flat space of my desktop to lay Allison down on top of and ravish her body like an animal. My nostrils flair involuntarily and I take a deep, long breath at the exhilarating thought.
“Dr. Dardennes?” I hear her gently ask, jolting me out of my runaway fantasy. My eyes dart back up to her in a sort of surprise.
“Oh, excuse me,” I say. “Yes, we’re here to talk about your paper, of course.”
She smiles more widely and nods her head.
I open the drawer on the side of my desk and take out her paper, already set aside and ready. A truly excellent study on the linguistic innovations of a certain group of fourteenth century poets in southern France. Beautifully written, with a style more fitting to a poetic novel than an undergraduate research paper. And demonstrating a marvelously creative mind, a sort of brilliance you would be surprised to discover even among the finest and most renowned scholars.
“I was really struck by the quality. I must admit, I read it over and over again – it’s not often that an undergraduate student’s paper actually teaches me something!” I tell her, and it’s true.
She blushes a deep red. Her always-rosy cheeks turn a deep crimson, her bright flush bringing more lusty thoughts to my mind. My cock is growing even more, yearning to burst out of my pants, but I keep my composure to continue having simply a professional conversation with a promising student.
“Wow, professor,” she tells me, her face still a warm red. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m not a flatterer, Allison. It really is that good.” I realize that I’ve inadvertently called her by her first name. Not an unusual thing for a professor to do here in America, but a norm I’ve always found somewhat undignified. Therefore, I’ve always addressed my students more formally, by their last names – more proper behavior in an academic setting, at least as far as we think back home in France.
Here in this intimate setting with her, however, I feel I’ve left formality at the door. Judging by the extra sparkle I’m certain I detected in her eye when I use her first name, I’m sure she noticed the lapse of formality as well, which seems to have set her blushing deeply once again.
“In fact, I didn’t just ask to speak to you to shower you with praise. I think your paper is good enough to be published in a top journal. I wanted to discuss with you the process to do so. It would really jump start your career if you planned to go to graduate school.”
I spend a couple minutes giving her advice on how to polish her paper up just a little bit more, which journals to send it to – and letting her know I’d be more than happy to grease the wheels a little bit by e-mailing some of the publishers I know, encouraging they take an extra special look at her work, bringing up the odds of publication, of course. She thanks me profusely for all of my help, and the reason for our meeting is drawing to a close.
“Well,” I say, finally. “Thank you for meeting me here. It was a pleasure reading your work and I’m glad to hear that my advice has been helpful to you.”
She smiles and nods, then stands up and picks up her purse and bookbag.
“Here,” I venture to say. “I’ll get the door for you.”
I stand up from my chair and walk past her, walking toward the door and resting my hand on the doorknob as she turns around to leave. She walks toward me as I turn the doorknob and crack the door open. She walks closer to me, so close that we’re only about a foot apart. Here in this enclosed space with her, I get a whiff of her intoxicating scent. She takes one more step toward the door, bringing her close to me also – so close we’re almost brushing together.
So close that I can feel the warmth radiating from her luscious body. Feeling so close to her, my desires take over me. I push the door shut agai
n and take a decisive step towards her, so that our bodies are now gently pressed up against each other.
My lust has fully taken over my mind and body, as I bring my hand up to caress her cheek. Her face is so smooth and warm, and feels heavenly against my fingers.
She looks up at me with wide, shocked eyes. But as I look down into them, I know there lies in them the same desire that is raging throughout my body right now. Her lips are trembling, and she manages to meekly squeak out, “Dr. Dardennes … what …”
I bring my index finger up to hold it against her lips, bidding her to remain silent. I stare deeply into her eyes for one more moment, seeing them invite my advances. I draw my hand away from her mouth and place it firmly on the back of her neck, feeling the fullness of her gorgeous head of hair and the warm from her soft, milky white neck.
I know what a risky situation I’m in – but I don’t care. Just dating an undergraduate student would be enough to get me into hot water with the university, but here I am, during office hours, pressed against this curvy beauty, a junior in my literature class. My office hours are still open, even – another student, or faculty member, could easily walk right through my door and see what’s going on.
But I don’t care. Now that I’m pressed up against her full, lusty curves, feeling her warmth and inhaling her fragrance, there’s nothing in the world that will be able to stop me. My eyes fixate on her full, moist lips. I ark my head down and press me lips against hers. I gently but firmly kiss her, caressing her moist, smooth lips, devouring her mouth with a ravenous sexual hunger.
I take one more powerful step forward, forcing her back against the wall and pressing my body against her with more force. My muscular body feels blissfully enveloped in her warm, inviting curves. My cock is rock hard imagining our naked bodies entwined, an otherworldly pleasure beyond even what I’m experiencing now.
I pull my lips back from hers and look down at her. Her eyes are still closed, her lips still open and inviting. I draw my hand back from around her neck and run it down the length of her body, gently and lightly feeling her contours of her curves and her luscious breasts as I bring my hand all the way down to rest at my side. She opens her eyes and we stand there, gazing at each other with a mix of tenderness and intensity.
“Should we …” she hesitantly begins to say. “Should we go back to … your place?”
I’m bursting with desire for her, but now that we’ve broken our kiss, my rational senses have resumed some hold on me. It’s still broad daylight outside. It’s not clear to me that the idea of us leaving here, her coming to my apartment, her leaving from my apartment to go back to her own … and with three weeks still left in the semester … it’s overwhelmingly likely that I’d be found out.
“Allison,” I begin to say. “This was …”
I know what I need to say, but I still struggle with it, every feeling of my mind, soul and body revolting against the rational choice that I know is the right one to make.
“This was … a mistake.”
The color disappears from her face and the lively spark in her eyes subsides. I can read how crestfallen she is on her face, the sides of the gorgeous mouth turning downward into a frown of bitter disappointment.
“Dr. Dardennes … but, I’m crazy about you,” she says, with deep sincerity. “I’m sure you’ve had plenty of students with crushes on you, but … this isn’t just a crush. I’ve been thinking about nothing but you since I started to take your class.”
“Allison,” I say back to her gently. “I’m wild about you, too. You’re so beautiful … and not just your body, but your mind. Forget about having a student who writes like you, I’ve never had a colleague with your brilliance, but …”
I struggle to say what we both know to be the truth. “This isn’t right. It’s not right ethically. And the schools in America are very serious about this kind of stuff. I don’t care about myself so much in saying this, but more about your future. If we’re found out, and the university makes an official HR log of it, which they’d have to, word would get out. You’d be blacklisted yourself; you’d never be able to get into a good graduate program; you’d never be able to get a job at a university.”
She gazes back at me with her wide, glistening eyes. “But what would any of that matter, if we had each other?”
Her question is an arrow to my heart. The romantic in me knows she’s right – but she’s twenty-one years old, and it’s only the romantic in her that is speaking. As an adult who knows the realities of the world, I can’t lead her down a road of ruin.
“Trust me on this,” I say to her gently. “Eventually, you’ll understand I’m right. We just need to try to forget about what happened here.”
I place my hand on her shoulder in an assuring gesture. I try to be strong for her. I force myself to smile, and say, “Passion gets the better of us sometimes … I hope to see you in class on Friday.”
And I open the door for her, still looking at her gently and protectively, trying to soften the blow with my soft gaze. She takes a minute to collect herself and takes a deep, long breath. She nods her head slowly and returns my smile with an obviously forced one of her own.
She walks out of my office without looking back. I stand in the doorway, watching her walk away down the long, empty hallway. When she turns and exits through the main door of the building, I close my own door and walk back over behind my desk. I drop myself down on my chair and let out a long, morose sigh.
CHAPTER FIVE: Allison
I feel as though I’ve been violently cast out of heaven and plunged down to the darkest, most barren land of earth, landing shattered and discarded.
Just a moment ago our lips were joined in a passionate kiss, the culmination of all my dreams and desired. And now, as if all the passionate had evaporated from his heart, he’s telling me it was a mistake.
“Passion gets the better of us sometimes,” he tells me, speaking so dryly, with obviously false words. “I hope to see you in class on Friday.”
I stand there gazing at him, a sour disappointment clasping my heart tighter and tighter. I’ve already pleaded with him to listen to his heart and his passion, but he rebuffed me, forsaking what I now know to be his true feelings to what he shallowly says is the “right” thing to do. All I can do is nod and force myself to return his smile and leave through the door he’s opened for me.
Walking down the long, empty hallway toward the main doors I try to keep my composure and strain myself not to look back.
When I arrive at the entrance of Anderson Hall I turn and exit. Once out of the building I find it harder to restrain my emotions, working hard to suppress my sobs as I walk quickly back to my apartment. I’m wiping my watery eyes, hoping no one notices, or heaven forbid asks me what’s wrong.
I finally reach my apartment and open the door. Jane is sitting on the couch. I see her smile at me, obviously excited to ask me what happened and to indulge in her usual jokes and banter. But I just drop my bookbag and purse to the floor and hurry to my room, slamming the door behind me and unleashing my emotions.
I fling myself on top of my bed and cry into my pillow, sobbing and weeping in disappointment and loss. If my meeting with Dr. Dardennes had just gone how I thought I “knew” it would, sure, I would be disappointed right now in spite of my better judgment, if it had been just a dry, professional conversation that ended with a formal farewell.
But to be brought so close to my deepest desires; to feel his body, rock-hard even underneath his clothes; to feel his full lips caressing my own; to abandon myself to the bliss of being possessed by him and believing in that moment even more was soon to come – and then to have it snatched away, it was too much to bear.
Jane knocks gently on my door and asks with great concern, “Allison, what’s wrong? Please, can I come in.”
I let out the last of my sobs and weeping. Letting it all out has lessened the pain somewhat, but a deep sadness still permeates my mind, body and soul.
&nbs
p; I take a deep breath and answer Jane, “Okay.”
She opens the door and looks down at me with a worried look. She approaches my bed and sits down on the side of it. “What happened, Allison?”
I tell her everything, seeing her eyes widen in surprise each step of the way and hearing her gasp at my revelations. When I finally finish telling her everything he huffs in indignation. “What a jerk!”
“No,” I tell her, knowing in my heart that Dr. Dardennes in anything but that, despite the despair he’s made me feel. “He’s right, I guess. Or … I don’t know. Of course he’s not right!”
I say it with firm conviction. He’s “right,” according to the stale and generic conventions of society, of HR guidelines, of career advice, of so-called propriety. But he’s not right, according to the one thing – the only thing – that matters above anything else: the true feelings in our hearts.