I can feel Clara’s eyes on me during the next classroom lecture. Like always, I try and pretend like she’s just another student, but this time…

It feels particularly hard. I don’t know what it is.

Probably the memory of her nice, tight ass wrapped around my cock. Or maybe her moans, or maybe the way she got down on her knees and let me blindfold her so willingly.

She blinks and smiles. I let my eyes linger for a moment, whatever I was saying lost completely to the wind.

I clear my throat. “Anyway, as I was saying…”

I really need to avoid her gaze. Even the slightest hesitation could give us away.

Class goes fine after that. The normal rush of students wanting to ask questions takes up most of my time at the end, and as I’m finally leaving the classroom, I find Clara waiting for me in the hallway.

I hesitate a second. “Miss Nelson,” I say.

“Professor.” She smiles this bright little teasing smile. I can practically hear the word Daddy on her lips. “I was hoping I could ask you something?”

“Of course. Walk with me.”

We head down the hallway, students bustling all around us. There’s nothing odd about a professor walking with a student and having a conversation, but I still can’t help but wonder and worry.

The only people that know about our relationship are all very rich men now. As I suspected, all of them were very willing to stay quiet after I offered them a stupid amount of money.

You have to love academics. They give up their lives for their pursuits, which typically don’t pay all that much money. So when you need something, all it takes is a checkbook to suddenly make them look the other way.

If this were the business world, I’d have to give up much more than just cash.

But fortunately, they were very amenable, and now they’re very wealthy men.

Which means there’s nobody else around that has any idea what I’ve been doing with Clara Nelson.

“I was wondering if you’d like to see where I live,” she says softly to me.

I glance at her, frowning a little. “Were you?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Don’t you have a roommate?”

She shrugs. “Mac is okay.”

I hesitate a second. “I don’t know. It’s dangerous.”

“It’s very dangerous,” she agrees. “Are you afraid?”

I laugh softly. “Don’t try and goad me into something.”

“Why not? You can just bribe whoever catches us.”

I laugh again despite myself. “I thought you were against that.”

“I am. But I might as well embrace it.”

“Good. You’re learning.”

“Being with a billionaire has perks, I guess.”

I grin at her as we step out of the building. The flow of students is heading in one direction, but I turn down a side path, away from the crowds. Clara follows closely, maybe a little too closely.

We step around some bushes and I suddenly step toward her, pushing her back into a little alcove. It’s a service entry for the dining hall, and nobody comes back here.

We’re covered by bushes on one side and a large dumpster on the other. She looks up at me, surprised, eyes wide.

“You think I’m worried about a little danger?” I ask her softly. “I told you, risk is what makes this worth it.”

She bites her lip. “I recall someone saying something like that.”

I kiss her softly. She gives herself to me, the way she always does when we kiss. It drives me wild, how she leans closer, body pressing nearer, lips parted, tongue against my tongue. It’s like she kisses with her whole body.

“If you want me to see your place, I’ll see it,” I say softly. “Tonight?”

“Tonight,” she agrees. “I’ll text you the address.”

“Good.” I kiss her again. “What do you think would happen if a bunch of people caught us right now?”

“You’d shower them in cash and our problem would disappear.”

I laugh, shaking my head. “I think you overestimate me.”

“I don’t think so. You’d find a way.” She kisses me and slips past. “See you later, Professor Daddy.”

I grin as she walks away, lingering in that little private space. I can still feel her tongue against mine, her lips against mine. Buzzing runs down my spine.

She has no clue what she does to me, and I’m almost afraid what she’ll do if she ever realizes just how much I feel for her.

I park my car a few houses away from Clara’s and walk the rest of the way. She lives in a typical part of the area, right next to campus and full of other students.

I think of it as the student housing ghetto in my mind, although I know I’m not supposed to. That’s basically what it is, though. It’s a bunch of houses that have been bought out by enterprising individuals, basically slumlords, and turned into apartments.

Some are nicer than others but they’re pretty much all dumps. The students don’t take care of them and the landlords don’t want to fix anything. The places are slowly falling apart, and nothing’s getting fixed.

Clara’s place is in the bottom floor of a duplex house. I knock on the front door and she answers after a moment, wearing a dress with wool leggings and a big smile.

“Hi, Professor,” she says.

“Clara,” I say. “Nice to see you.”

I step closer, kiss her on the cheek.

“Mac’s here,” she whispers in my ear.

I stand still. “What?”

“I’m sorry. She already knows.”

I blink. “Already… knows?”

She smiles at me, ushers me inside. I drift after her, feeling like the floor just dropped out from under me.

The apartment is surprisingly nice. Well, it’s crumbling as much as any of the others are, but it’s clean and well decorated. Clearly, Clara takes care of her space.

Her roommate, Mac, is a pretty blonde girl who stands and smiles when I enter the room.

“Jason,” I say, introducing myself.

“Mac. I’ve heard a lot about you.” She tosses a look at Clara, who clears her throat. “I mean, it’s nice to meet you.”

I glance between the two girls for a second. “She knows?” I ask Clara, just to confirm.

“Yep,” she says.

I sigh. “We don’t have to pretend,” I say to Mac.

“Oh, god,” she says, sighing with relief. “That was really, really hard.”

Grin at her. “Imagine how I feel.”

“I bet.” She looks at me, crossing her arms. “So do you, like, give Clara good grades for sleeping with you, or what?”

I laugh at the brazenness of the question and Clara groans.

“Mac!” she says.

“I give her money,” I cut in. “Cash, usually.”

“Oh, good. She’s a proper whore.”

“Might as well,” I say, shrugging. “Better than grades. I give her investment advice, too.”

“Practical,” Mac muses. “I appreciate that.”

“Thanks. I take care of my girls.”

Clara rolls her eyes. “Okay, this joke is super offensive. Moving on.” She grabs my hand, tugs me along behind her.

I grin to myself as she shows me the kitchen, pours two glasses of cheap wine, and leads me back to her bedroom.

“And that’s the tour,” she says. “Pretty standard stuff.”

I nod, looking around her room. “I have to admit, I didn’t know what to expect.”

“Beer bongs and empty bottles?” she asks.

“Basically.”

“We are in college, after all.”

Being in her room is strangely intimate. It hits me all at once as I look at the pictures of her family, at her books, at the decorations she has on her walls.

So far, we’ve only seen each other in more or less neutral spaces, except for when she came to my place. Being in here though, it reminds me just how much Clara is… herself.

That’s a strange way of putting it. Clara has a way of putting on a mask in public, of being a certain kind of person. But in private, she’s very much herself.

And this room is an example of that.

I pick up a yearbook. “High school?” I ask.

She snatches it away. “You’re not ready for that.”

“Probably right.” I sit on the edge of her bed. “Is it strange having me in here?”

“Actually, yes,” she says.

“Why?” I ask.

She hesitates a second. “It’s the age difference,” she says finally.

“Explain.”

She sighs and sits next to me. “So far, we’ve basically existed in your world, you know what I mean? Your house, the lab, public places, stuff like that. But this is my world, and my world is…”

“Different from mine,” I finish for her. “Younger.”

“Much younger.” She looks around. “I guess I wanted to have you here just to see if it would… fit.”

I nod, understanding all at once coming over me. “I get it,” I say softly. “And does it fit?”

“I don’t know.”

I lean closer to her. “All this stuff is just stuff, you know.”

“Is it? I feel like it’s my life.”

I wave my hand. “These are walls, just wood and sheetrock. It’s temporary. Your things, their context, it changes. You’ll see.”

“Still, it’s strange. You’re here and you just don’t fit in with everything else.”

I laugh softly and lean closer. “Do you really want me to fit in with this?”

She doesn’t answer because I don’t give her time. I kiss her slow and deep, letting her think about it for a moment.

When I break away, she takes a breath. “That’s a good point. I wouldn’t want you to fit in with this.”

“Maybe that’s what you like about me. I’m far from anything you’ve known before.”

“Partly,” she admits.

“And maybe you’re ready to leave all this behind.”

“Maybe,” she says again.

I kiss her neck, take her hair. “I’m not rushing you, Clara. I would never do that.”

“I know,” she says, kissing my lips. “There’s still time for all this, right?”

“For being young? Absolutely.”

I kiss her, pushing her back onto her bed. We kiss for a while like that, and I don’t try to push anything else. I just like being with her, kissing her, my body tight against hers.

She’s right that I don’t fit in here. It’s a young room, the room of a young woman, and I’m much older than all this. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find a middle space, somewhere that we both fit.

That’s what I want. I don’t need things my way. I just want her.

After a few more minutes, we break off. “Come on, let’s hang out with Mac,” she says.

“Okay,” I say, standing. “But just so you know, you’re going to have to be punished for that.”

Her eyes go wide. “Punished?”

“You told someone about us without asking me.”

She frowns, looking at the floor. “I know. I’m sorry.”

I step closer, lift her chin up toward me. “It’s okay. I think you’ll enjoy your punishment.”

There’s a little smile on her lips as I kiss her and lead her out of the room, back toward the living room.

We drink more wine, we laugh with Mac, who’s surprisingly funny. After a few hours, I kiss Clara goodnight, and I leave, sneaking out into the night.

As I drive back to my house, I keep thinking one thing, over and over again.

We can be normal. We can have that.

Eventually, we can get past all the things holding us apart, holding us back, and we can be normal.

Semesters end. Teaching jobs end.

We can move forward and have lives together.

If Mac can find out and not lose it, the world can deal with this. And when I’m not her professor anymore, it’ll become much less scandalous.

And anyway, I don’t plan on being a professor forever. Sooner or later, I’ll give it up and move forward with my VR company.

Hopefully I’ll have Clara by my side.