The Professor (4 page)

I think of a dozen ways to tell him why I didn’t return to his office. None of them seems adequate. The only real option is never going back to his office at all, but even that poses problems. He will stop me the next time I try to leave his class, I know he will. He might stop me before. Discuss it loudly and clearly in front of everyone, until I collapse under the weight of my own mortification. 

Explain now why you spent seventeen hours in the toilets
, I imagine him saying.

I can even see that little flourish he often does with his hand. The one that looks like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat, only the rabbit is your dignity and the hat is him slowly strangling it to death in front of you. Certainly it feels as if some part of me is being suffocated, when I next see him.

Though that might be because I don’t expect it. I’m still struggling to come up with a good excuse. I think I have time to get around the fact that I masturbated in the ladies while thinking of him. Time to arrange my face into an innocent shape, to lie without looking away and blushing – then I run across the quad to the old soot-streaked archway between the science labs, searching for shelter from a sudden downpour.

And there he is.

He had the same idea as me, it seems. He wanted to see if he could wait it out in the shade of those great black bricks – though he was faster to it than I was. By the time I get there my hair is plastered to my head, clothes heavy and dark with the deluge, every inch of me bedraggled. But he looks like he just stepped out of the pages of a catalogue from the 1930s. His dark hair is dry and swept neatly across that amazing brow. The cuffs of his shirt are a crisp one inch from his jacket, and his shoes are buffed to a high mahogany sheen. He even has a cigarette lit, and as I watch he kisses it to his lips with the ease and deftness of long habit, then lets the smoke curl out in slow, lazy waves.

I think it might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It stops me dead about a foot from shelter, too blindsided by it to go any further. Which is unfortunate, because he thinks I have other reasons. He sees me frozen in the rain, and the hand holding the cigarette drops to his side. His expression shifts – from the usual still surface of a lake to something else. Something
struggling
, I want to say.

But I dare not. His words are enough on their own to make me breathless.

‘If you had no wish to continue you needed only to say. I realise my manner is off-putting to many.’

‘It wasn’t that, it wasn’t that at all, your manner is…’

‘My manner is what?’

‘Good.’

‘You’re the most awful liar.’

‘That wasn’t a lie.’

‘Of course it was. You blink about a thousand times whenever you fib, and attempt to look at almost anything except my face.’

‘Maybe I do that because your face is really fearsome.’

Or like staring at the sun too long,
I think.

Then have to glance away before it burns my eyes out.

‘Maybe you do, but my point still stands.’

‘About your manner?’

‘About you lying. You were going to say another word entirely.’

‘What word would you guess, if you had to?’

‘“Cold,” perhaps. “Aloof,” almost certainly.’

‘It was neither of those.’

‘That, at least, was the truth.’

‘I told you the truth before. I just made it a less silly sounding word.’

‘Perhaps I should be the judge of what is silly.’

‘All right. I was going to say lovely.’

He whips a look at me at that, as though to catch the telltale signs of lying before I squirrel them away. It doesn’t seem to reassure him when he finds none, however. His eyebrows lift too high in the middle, giving his gaze this oddly raw look. Like I ripped a strip off him by using that word. Now he would do anything to get it back, including this big bunch of sudden bluster:

‘Yes, you were correct. It is very silly indeed – almost as silly as being out in a thunderstorm with barely a stitch on. Where is your jacket, for goodness sake? You could at least have worn a cardigan. Your arms are turning blue,’ he says, so many words spoken in so oddly tender a fashion that I lose count of them. I fall headfirst into them. The way his tone goes up on the first syllable of ‘jacket’, the steeper tilt of his eyebrows, now verging on querulous, the softness of that ‘blue’ on the end…I can hardly stand it.

Though the worst part about it is not the words, spoken too quickly and too sharply and too everything. No, the worst part is that, when he’s done with them, he traps his cigarette between his teeth, and starts taking off his jacket. Roughly, jerkily, like it hurts to do it.

God knows, it burns a hole through me.

‘Oh, no, Professor, that – no no –’

‘Please be quiet. I am in the middle of behaving decently. It so rarely happens it deserves at least some respectful silence and gracious acceptance,’ he says.

But I can’t give him even that much. My acceptance isn’t gracious. My silence isn’t respectful. Instead it seethes with a brutal awareness of every tiny thing he does, from the sparking sensation of his thumb running around the inside of the jacket collar, to the shock of the sheer size of the thing when he snaps it closed around me. You could fit two of me inside its warm confines.

Warm, I think, with his body heat.

And oh, God – heady with his scent.

Honestly, it’s a wonder I understand the language he uses when he next speaks. His hands are still almost on me when he does it. My own hands are lost inside his sleeves.

How am I meant to concentrate?

‘Are you going to tell me the real reason you neglected to return?’

‘I would really rather not, if I can get away with it.’

‘You can.’ He leans down, sudden and shocking. More so, when I realise why: to take me into his confidence. To be conspiratorial with me, as though we’re intimates. ‘But don’t tell anyone. I don’t want it getting out that Professor Halstrom is going soft in his dotage. Next thing you know I’ll have students spending years in bathrooms left, right and centre.’

‘I think “dotage” might be a little bit strong.’

‘That’s only because you haven’t seen me with my trousers down. I have an arse like a dying question mark,’ he says, followed by me waiting for my desire to wither away.

It should wither, after that. It should make it easy to sneer.

But it doesn’t. I have to fight with my last breath to get the next words out.

‘I take back what I said about your manner being lovely.’

‘I thought you might eventually,’ he says, a laugh somewhere in the back of his throat.

I wish I did not love that laugh. I wish I hated him. I do hate him. I will hate him.

‘Your manner is completely gross. And absolutely seething with bullshit. I already know that you’re thirty-one.’

‘Thirty-one? Wherever did you hear that? I’m nine hundred and twelve.’

‘I knew you were a werewolf. All the signs were there and now the final proof.’

‘Werewolves don’t live to be nine hundred and twelve.’

‘Spoken like someone with inside knowledge.’

‘Inside knowledge of what?’

I try to stop myself answering. Things are going too far. Our conversations are too fast, like a death-defying ride at a ruinous fairground that might at any moment fling me off.

But the words just keep coming.

My hands keep gripping the bar that barely holds me in.

‘Werewolf society.’

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.

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 and grow slicker. At one point the silky material brushes over one stiff nipple, and the heated wash of wetness is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

I start to fear I’ll soak through my underwear and make a mess of the tweed.

Yet somehow that only intensifies things. It heats my cheeks to an unbearable level. By the time he talks again I am melting. My skin feels sunburned – like I could peel it off my body with very little effort.

And what he says doesn’t help me at all.

‘I want you to try some free writing.’

‘You want me to try what?’

‘Free writing. It is a simple exercise where you put pen to paper and allow whatever might be in your mind to come out. You are given a set amount of time, and during that time you may not stop writing, even if you have to scribble nonsense until the thread returns.’

‘I don’t think I can do that, Professor.’

‘Of course you can. A woman of your talent.’

‘No, but my talent takes a lot of work. I sometimes spend days on one sentence.’

‘Then let’s see what happens when you relax a little. Come, indulge me.’

I wish he hadn’t said ‘come’ there.

Or said it the way he does – so brusque, and insistent.

‘At least give me a prompt then.’

‘You really need one? Your mind seems to seethe with ideas.’

‘You’ve only read one story of mine. Well, one and a bit of bread.’

‘I hardly need a story when you talk the way you do.’

‘And how do I talk, exactly?’

‘Like someone who can hardly contain their wildly inventive thoughts.’

‘I wouldn’t call the things I say inventive.’

‘That’s because you’re not constantly trying to keep up with everything you say. Believe me, it is the most mental exercise I’ve had in years. I scarcely know what you might confess next – a feat made all the more memorable by your dull, forgettable behaviour prior to our first meeting.’

I go to say something in response, then stop. It seems best to. All his compliments are rushing to my head – God knows what giddy thing might come out.
You inspire me to greater heights
is one possibility.
You provoke me into this insanity
is another.

‘Now, put pen to paper and see what you can come up with. You have ten minutes,’ he says, and he means it. He takes out his pocket watch and sets it on the desk at his side, eyes on that instead of on me. Not that it helps that his attention is elsewhere – if anything it only makes it harder. It gives me even more freedom, and freedom is the thing that scares me here. I don’t want to be able to write whatever I like. I don’t want to turn my mind loose and see where it goes.

It’s already gone too far.

How far will it go when I have to do this?

‘Pen to paper, Miss Hayridge.’

His tone brooks no refusal, yet for a second I still try to resist. I waste time rolling up these enormous sleeves, and writing my name at the top of the paper. Then when he starts tapping his finger on the desk – close to me, far too close to me – I craft a first sentence. A bland one, that somehow takes ten times the effort anything interesting might have done. I have to force it out, while filthy and profane things batter at the bars inside me.
Write that you want to suck his cock,
my mind yells.

But I turn it into something about the weather.

‘The rain was particularly heavy that evening,’ I put, as that tapping gets more insistent. He only looks like he’s not watching what I write, you see. Really he’s studying every word – and he proves it a second later.

‘It was a dark and stormy night.’

‘What? What do you –’

‘That is what you have written, Miss Hayridge, and quite frankly I am appalled. Not to mention extremely dubious that this was the first thing that popped into your head.’

‘Well, we were both just soaked to the skin.’

‘Indeed we were. Yet you think the most interesting thing about that was the weather pattern that began it all? If your main character was inserting a sandwich into their bottom would your first instinct be to discuss which bakery they bought it from?’

‘Are you suggesting that what we’ve done since is the equivalent of inserting a sandwich into your bottom? Because I have to tell you, Professor –’

‘You’re stalling, Miss Hayridge.’

‘I absolutely was not.’

‘You just did it again. Now begin. From the top.’

‘You want me to –’

‘From the top.’

I do as he tells me to, then. The tone of his voice makes me. I hear that last word like knuckles rapping on wood and my pen just skitters over the page, words stumbling out of me in what feels like a rush. It feels like this is the product of my mind, set free. But I barely get to the bottom of the first paragraph before he pulls me up, as sharp as an electric shock.

‘Still not letting go. Again.’

‘But I –’

‘Again.’

I go to protest a second time – to tell him that he really doesn’t want to see how far I can go. But his expression stops me. He looks so sure of himself, so certain that I will never be equal to his task. It makes me grind my teeth together. I’m gripping the pen too tightly, and I grip it even tighter when he leans forward and whispers to me.
‘What are you, afraid?’
he asks, so close I feel his breath on my cheek. I see that faint scar that splits his upper lip, beautiful and brightly tempting.

And then I write.

I write without looking, gaze locked with his. Heart beating so hard I feel it in my temples, only half-knowing what words are coming out of the end of the pen. They emerge too quick for me to properly keep track of them, hot with arousal and attraction and something else, something that rages in me to get out. He wants more, I will give it to him. He wants to test me, I will be equal to it.

I don’t even flinch when he tells me to read it to him.

I just let it blaze out of me, tongue curling around every ‘cock’ and ‘cunt’, so eager to emphasise the sheer filthiness of it that I barely worry about the tiny telling details. ‘She spread herself over the great solid curve of his back,’ I tell him, without wondering how closely the description matches him. It only matters that I make her cunt kiss the firm line of his thick thigh, so slick it leaves a stripe. Or that he comes in her mouth, heavy and copious – rather than the fact that her hand makes a fist in the tweedy material of his trousers.

I don’t hear that part until I’m almost done, the sudden shame of it strong and stinging. My face burns as I say the last words, sure that when I look up that amusement will be all over his face.
Really
, he will say.
Did you have to be so obvious Esther? I expected something far less crude from you.
And he will be right. I should be better than this.

Or at least I think so, until I see his face.

I dare to glance up, and there is only a ruin where his features used to be. His eyes are haunted – though God knows by what – and if his eyebrows met any more steeply in the middle they’d kiss his hairline. Worse still: he isn’t breathing. If this goes on for much longer I feel like I might have to thump him on the back, get him sucking in air, get his lungs working.

And I know why, too.

This wasn’t a test of me at all.

It was a test of
him
.

Oh, good God, it was a test of him. Everything, all of this, was a test of his resolve, not mine. He wanted to see if he could do it. If he could sit here with me half-dressed and hear me speak and still be as impervious as ever – I can tell he did. It’s in the way he makes a fist suddenly, hard enough to turn the knuckles white. The way he glances away, as though he can’t stand to look at me a second longer.