The Professor. Charlotte Stein

      The sound of his laughter is startling, like a roll of thunder inside a tiny room. It cracks off the old stone walls, bold as brass and completely inappropriate for someone like him. He should have a strained, half-dying thing. A sound that has to fight to get past his teeth, or else no sound at all.

      And I think he knows it.

      The rain hasn’t stopped, but he still clears his throat and claims it has. ‘We should go about our business while we can,’ he says, and I am forced to agree. If I say no he might think I want to stay here talking to him all day, when I would swear on a stack of Bibles I don’t. I even prove it a second later when I go to walk in the opposite direction and he calls out to me.

      ‘Where on earth are you going, Miss Hayridge?’ he asks.

      And I swear my stomach drops. My heart lurches against my ribcage.

      He means business, as in more talking to him.

      More saying of the things that made me masturbate in a public bathroom.

      In fact, he confirms it a second later.

      ‘My office is this way,’ he says.

      Then I simply have to follow him, to meet my doom.

       Chapter Five

      The first thing he does when we get to his office is light a little gas stove – both for the heat and for the kettle he sits atop it. No electric for him, of course, and instead of teabags he has tea leaves and strainers and other items I’ve only ever read about. I watch him go about the business of making it with the same fascination heroines probably experience over wizards doing magic. Wide-eyed and unable to move from the corner I’ve chosen, half-wondering what mystical thing will happen next.

      The jacket was weird enough.

      The conversation was worse.

      The tea makes my teeth chatter. And then there is the seat I notice – not the same thing from before but a real soft-backed and inviting-looking chair. He went out and got something better for me, I think, then immediately try to dismiss the idea. He probably just realised it was inadequate for any student. Perhaps he gives Earl Grey to everyone. Most likely he uses his handkerchief to dry everyone’s hair for them.

      It just doesn’t feel that way, when he does it.

      It feels like the air grows thick and close, the moment he tells me to turn around. He barely has to do anything for me to sense him – the crackle between us reveals everything. It sizzles as he reaches for the rope of my hair, and louder when he lifts it.

      The way he squeezes the water out of it is best though.

      Tightly, so tightly my scalp will be tender later. It will remember his hands on me, long after this moment has dwindled down to nothing. It might be the only contact I ever get, after all. Just this one hint of how strong he really is and how big his hands are, followed by the strongest wave yet of his deep, heavy scent. Oh, God, that deep, heavy scent. I suppose the rain has made it more pronounced. Or it could be the lack of jacket. Without it he seems almost bare, despite the waistcoat he keeps on.

      I can still see so much more, regardless. I can see how oddly narrow his waist is, how broad his chest. It strains against the material whenever he moves, and he moves a lot. He stretches up to dry his own hair, and fusses with his cuffs, and bends to buff his shoes, all the time twisting and turning and bending in a way that seems far too flexible for someone like him. It feels too flexible for someone like me.

      Though I promise I do my best not to look. At the very least I try to look in a manner that doesn’t convey outright hunger. I keep my mouth tightly closed and my eyes a normal size, hands clenched tightly inside the sleeves of his jacket. And when I manage to breathe, I do it in a slow and steady and normal sort of fashion.

      Even though smell is now devouring what little air there is in here.

      And the way he looks at me after, as though he knows what I’m thinking. He knows how he looks, and what it does to me. He must – nothing else could explain his expression. If he could set me on fire with his eyes I think he would. Contempt is probably on the tip of his tongue right now, to the point where I cringe when he goes to speak.

      But that only makes it more shocking when he tells me this:

      ‘You should take off the T-shirt you have on, before you catch your death.’

      He makes it sound like advice. Like he’s talking about a word I misspelled or a concept I didn’t grasp. My brain even tries to turn it into that at first. I feel sure I must have misheard or misunderstood, and consider asking him to explain.

      Not that it helps when he does.

      ‘Fasten the jacket up and remove your wet clothes,’ he says, and all I can think is that now I will have to sit in his office with nothing on under this overflowing tweed. More than that: I will have to do it while he sits across from me in a state that seems even more naked than that. Every second that goes by brings new details: he wears those bands around his arms to keep his shirt in place, shiny and constrictive-seeming. He has no belt, and no belt loops, and there is something in his pocket – something that makes a strange heavy outline in trousers that now seem too tight.

      Though I doubt I will ever know what it is. I have more pressing matters to deal with – like taking off my T-shirt while he watches. Because he does, without a single hint of evasion or interest. Almost like he’s proving something to himself, or proving something to me. I don’t care if you strip, his flat gaze seems to say. It doesn’t matter to me if your breasts are bare beneath that jacket.

      The slight parting of his lips is probably just a coincidence.

      As is the heaviness of his eyelids, and the sound of his voice when I finally slide the wet material out from underneath the jacket. ‘Hang it on the door,’ he says, so faint I have to strain to hear him. Hoarse, too, though that could be my imagination. Most of this seems like my imagination anyway. The real Professor Halstrom would never ask me to do this. He would never give me his jacket in the first place.

      In a second, I will wake up.

      And I want to, because otherwise I have to cope with the way his face changes when I start on my jeans. He tries, I think, to behave as though that doesn’t matter either. But I just don’t think he expects it to happen. He thought I would stop at the shirt, and when I don’t everything goes slack, like someone cut the strings that hold up his features. He goes to say something, only his mouth no longer works.

      He can’t even raise his hand to stop me – but even if he did it would be too late now. I’m committed. If I go back on it the whole thing will only seem more suggestive. And really, what does it matter? The jacket hangs almost to my knees. I have underwear on, underneath. It doesn’t have to be any worse than the top.

      But it feels like it might be once we’re sitting down.

      He can see so much of my bare legs, pale and plump and smooth. They damn near gleam in the low light, in a way even I can hardly take my eyes off of. I keep glancing down and being surprised by them, by how small they look compared to his, by how vulnerable they seem suddenly. If I part them even a little it will seem like the rudest thing in the world – like I want him between them.

      I even imagine it. Behind my eyes, I see him lifting me on to his desk, spreading my naked thighs with one hand. My knickers are just these little flimsy cotton things – he could yank them down with very little effort. Shove the jacket up so he could get at my pussy, then do all the things he wants me to describe in my stories. Lick my aching clit, taste my wet pussy.

      More than just plain wet, really. I can actually feel it, every time I move. I can feel it even when I try to stay still. Some arousing thing happens – like the insides of this jacket slithering over something sensitive – and everything seems to swell between my legs