STEAMY DESIRES: wet collections

Chapter 1

I should have left hours ago, the lecture hall was empty except for the soft buzz of the overhead lights and the frantic scratch of my pen. Everyone else had gone home or to the library or to whatever normal final-year students did on a Thursday night.

I stayed, hunched over the same paper I had already ruined, trying to make the stolen paragraphs look like they belonged to me. My scholarship depended on this grade, my entire degree also did. One more failing mark and the quiet, careful future I had built would collapse.

I didn’t hear him come in, when I finally looked up, Professor Elias Grant was standing in the doorway, the fluorescent light behind him turning his broad shoulders into a dark silhouette. In one hand he held the paper I had submitted three days earlier—the one with the passages I had lifted almost word for word.

He didn’t speak at first. He simply watched me with those cold, unreadable eyes that had terrified half the department for years. My stomach dropped so hard I felt sick. He stepped inside and let the door swing shut behind him. The sound echoed. “My office,” he said quietly. “Now.”

I followed him down the empty corridor with unsteady legs. His stride was long and controlled; mine felt small and guilty. Inside his office the air was warmer, scented with old books and the faint trace of his cologne something dark and expensive.

He closed the door and the lock clicked with soft finality. He dropped the paper on the desk between us. The red marks he had already made looked like wounds.

“I should report you,” he said, voice low and even. He leaned against the edge of the desk, arms crossed over his chest. The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled to the elbows, exposing forearms corded with lean muscle.

“Academic misconduct and you would lose the scholarship, the degree and everything you’ve worked for.”

My hands were shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs so he wouldn’t see.

“Please,” I whispered. “I—I know it was stupid and desperate. Please don’t—”

He pushed off the desk and came closer with deliberate steps. When he stopped, only a foot of space remained between us.

I had to tip my head back to meet his eyes up close he was even more imposingly tall, broad, the sharp lines of his face softened by nothing. The scent of his cologne wrapped around me.

“There is another way,” he said.

My pulse hammered in my throat.

“Private lessons, every evening. In this office, and you will do everything I say.” His voice dropped even lower. “No one else will know, your record stays clean. In exchange, you belong to these sessions until I decide you’ve learned your lesson.”

The words hung between us, heavy and dangerous. I understood exactly what he was offering and what he wasn’t saying. My mind screamed that I should refuse, that I should take the failing grade and whatever punishment came with it but my mouth shaped a different answer.

I nodded. Something dark and satisfied flickered in his eyes. He lifted one hand and caught my chin between two fingers, tilting my face up so I couldn’t look away. His thumb brushed the edge of my lower lip for the briefest second. The touch burned.

“Good girl,” he murmured. The praise slid down my spine like warm oil. “Class starts tomorrow night at seven o’clock don’t be late.”

He released me and stepped back, already turning toward the papers on his desk as if the conversation had been nothing more than a routine academic matter. I stood there for another second, legs unsteady, the ghost of his fingers still on my skin.

Then I left. I barely remembered the walk back to my apartment. Every time I closed my eyes I saw the way he had looked at me when I agreed like he had already begun undressing something far more intimate than my clothes. Sleep was impossible. I lay awake replaying the click of the lock, the weight of his stare, the quiet authority in the words good girl.

By the time morning came I was already counting the hours until seven.

I had sold myself for a clean record and a passing grade and the most terrifying part was how eagerly some secret part of me was already waiting for the first lesson to begin.