Emmaline
This hard maple entrance leads me to the fortress of a mansion that my professor lives in. The teacher crush that I can’t get out of my head lives in this mansion! I can’t handle this for a second, my hand is shaking and I wish it would spontaneously start raining so I’d have an excuse to fling myself at my door.
But I decided that even if this is bad for me or not, this is what I'm going to do. I need to be able to knock on this door, and throw myself at him. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I want to give my professor my virginity.
Ethan is my teacher.
Ethan is my fantasy.
And right now?
Ethan is about to take my virginity. That’s why I came here. My best friend Delia’s right, I need to just get him out of my system. Get this insane attraction out of my mind and move past all of this.
Taking my virginity…
I thought about it as me giving it to him, but that’s just not true. Sure as my heart is thundering in my chest like it is on an endlessly climbing loop to its own doom, so is my innocence. It isn’t just some outmoded idea in the things that I study in college. No, everything about his experience is about to undo my innocence, up on the altar. Because I’m offering this experience up to my soul in hopes that I can forget him.
I knock on the door. A few seconds feel like an absolute eternity, and then he opens the door. Watching it open and reveal his gorgeous face makes the world speed up around me with no time for me to catch up. Extending his hand for me to follow him, I walk inside and breath heavy. Oh God, this is really happening. Please, God, let this be happening. I need this.
“Let’s sit, in the library,” Ethan says. His voice makes me jump out of my skin almost; I’m humming so much at being here. At being near him. We’ve already crossed over the barrier. Having me in his home is just another check mark in the list of things that mean if you throw yourself at him, he’ll have you.
I follow him down the hall. No family photos on his walls like a lot of people have in their house. The off-white walls lead up to rich cream crown molding. The walls are blank mostly save for some framed typography, which is not too surprising that he’s an English and literature professor. I want to read every lithograph and manuscript page as I pass them all ... but Ethan's hand reaches out for mine for all of three seconds before we are in the library and I can’t breathe, much less crane my neck while I walk to read what words adorn his walls.
Inside his library, we sit across from each other in some of the wingback chairs he has atop the intricate rug and ensconced along the wall-to-wall leather bounds that would normally catch my attention. Right now the only thing I can look at is Ethan. Sitting, I smooth out the end of my dress. I hope that I look sexy and sophisticated, but in this gorgeous library, in Ethan's house looking at him in his sleek trousers and crisp shirt, I look like a little tart trying to pounce the hot professor. I look young and dumb. I gulp. “I’m here because I know we’re both attracted to each other. So, one night together…I want to give myself to you once so I won’t be so obsessed, and then we can both move on,” I say, the words spilling out of me so fast I feel foolish. I dare myself to maintain eye contact with him the entire time. It makes the heat on my face from my embarrassment feel punishingly sensual.
Ethan's lips curl into a smirk that could end me if I looked at it for another second. “One night with me…that’s not going to be enough,” Ethan says with a smug grin that incinerates me. He’s so sensual, so beyond sexy that I think I might burst into flames right here.
“If that’s the case, why are you single?” I say with a laugh. He’s so sexy when he’s bragging and smug.
“Why are you single?” Ethan asks now, and it isn’t just some laughing banter like I offer. He’s serious.
I tell him the truth. “I think most guys are boring,” I say, realizing how depressing that sounds. That’s the truth though. And how could they compete when Ethan has lived this full life and they’re still worried about scoring weed and going to keggers? They can’t compete with that, and I have zero interest in any of that sort of shit guys my age do.
“What interests you about me, Emmaline?” Ethan asks, in that voice that seems to envelop me.
When he says my name I think I might faint, I get so lightheaded. Oh, God, how do I answer that question?
Ethan crosses a leg over to rest his ankle on his other leg.
A casual move that somehow manages to make me even more nervous.
“Are you more intimidated by the question itself, or by answering me?” Ethan asks.
I gulp in a breath and look him in the eyes. “Are you more excited by me answering that question or by the answer to the question?” I lick my lips. “It is more than you being attractive or caring about something other than getting high or wasted. When I read, I get to be somewhere other than my boring life…and I’ve never had that feeling of belonging like that with anything or anyone else, until that night you saved me. You made me feel so safe,” I say. I push some of my hair behind my ear. “Answering you is still the more intimidating part of that, because I’m not afraid of the truth. I’m afraid of how it makes me feel.” I meet his eyes again, and watch the way Ethan scrapes his bottom lip on his teeth. He likes that answer.
“I’m more excited by the answer,” Ethan answers. “I can be surrounded by peers, by students, by anyone, and I’m never met by anyone like you. An equal, and at once…so innocent.”
An equal? I think I stop breathing for a second. My whole body feels taut, hearing Ethan say that. And I’m titillated by the way he called me innocent.
“You are, you know? I’ve had plenty of bright students, but you do more than interact with the work, or challenge it. You defy it. You’re never bold in your life the way you are in your papers, are you, Emmaline?” Ethan is in full-on professor mode, questioning me like we’re in the lecture hall.
But we’re in his leather-bound library and I can sense my arousal in the air…
Oh God, if I can smell my pussy, is Ethan breathing in the scent of how badly I want him? The musk of my arousal seems to be so thick in the air; I can’t imagine he doesn’t smell it. Does it turn him on? Dumb guys my age, I’ve heard them talking about pussies having smells, like that’s a bad thing. But everything about Ethan is so much more mature and grown up. I remember how he liked the taste of my pussy. He told me so. I doubt he’s turned off by the scent. The fact that it probably turns him on, turns me on.
“N-no,” I stammer. I chew on my lower lip nervously, shifting in my seat because I’m aching to feel him and that’s all I can think about. The more he’s in my mind and permeating my every thought, the more I want him on my body, touching me and invading my purity. I want Ethan to demolish my innocence. “I don’t think I’ve ever had much of an opportunity. I mean, I went off on that douche, Aiden, but…well that ended up not being too smart, I suppose.” I feel stupid and I have no idea what to say to Ethan now. I feel so small, and he seems so overwhelmingly massive. The sight of his broad shoulders filling out that shirt, his firm muscles hiding behind cotton make my breathing shallow. Would I feel this small in his arms?
“You have made some not so smart decisions, perhaps, but you don’t have to lie down and take any bullshit that comes your way,” Ethan says. I see his nostrils flare for just a second. He’s angry all over again just remembering what happened.
I’m flattered honestly. It arouses me to think of him, protecting me like that. If only he could always be there when I needed saving. It’s a melancholy thought, because I’m here to get Ethan out of my system, not ache for him more. After this, that’s supposed to be it for us. That makes my stomach burn, and my eyes nearly start watering. Fuck, I can’t feel that way.
“Coming here was bold. Wanting me inside you once so you can forget me forever, it isn’t smart in some sense, but in other ways…well, I would have a difficult time saying no to that. But I want to give you one last chance…you can walk away. We don’t have to do this,” Ethan says. He’s trying to be kind, let me know that even though we both feel how this has gone too far to turn back, that we could anyway.
I see him swallow, and I’m mesmerized by the column of his throat. I look up his jawline at that stubble and ache to feel it against my skin. I want him to touch me again.
I don’t want to stop now. I want to move forward.
Ethan doesn’t believe that I can have sex with him just once, and that it won’t serve to get him out of my system.
And I’m not certain that I’m worried if he’s right. Not right now. I tell myself that I’m not going to think on it anymore. I need to be able to experience this because it has consumed my whole being. I can’t be without him. My skin will disintegrate unless he touches me.
This is more than him bragging, he’s telling the truth. I can tell Ethan is genuine. And he’s probably right.
“I want this, please,” I say, squeezing the chair as if I might rocket away otherwise.
“Emmaline,” Ethan groans. He stands and walks toward me and my heart rate thunders, and all I can hear is the blood rushing, my breathing.
I realize I'm ruining the moment in some ways, but I have to ask. “Ethan?” I breathe and look at his face, hoping against hope that I’m not asking the thing that will crush me.
“Yes?” Ethan says. His voice is low, seductive, pulling me deeper and deeper into this attraction. His hands go to my shoulders, squeezing them.
It makes me feel safe and comforted, which is what I need right now, desperately, because I know I have to ask this question. “Did you love my mother?” I ask, exhaling the words and holding my heart out for him to crush.
“I loved your mother,” Ethan says, his husky voice making me shiver. His eyes cast downward for a moment, and then return to mine. His hands don’t leave my shoulder, and their squeezing hold should make me more uncomfortable. This is all inappropriate, and I should be uncomfortable. But I can’t be. Instead, I’m something more. Aroused? Unsure? I don’t know how to describe the confusing mix of feelings swirling inside of me and confusing me. I don’t want him to stop touching me, when that’s all I should want. I should will my body away from him. This is wrong; this is strange.
“Did she love you?” I finally ask. Not at all the appropriate line of questioning for my professor. If I wanted to make myself feel like more of a child, maybe I’d be thinking, oh, he started it. But that’s not the line of thinking in my brain at all. And I don’t even know what answer I want. Is it worse if my mother loved him, or if she didn’t?
Am I his second chance? Am I his second round?
For a moment, I think I might be misreading this whole situation. Why would my professor be interested in me? The situation in which he found me, that he saved me from, that’s what put us in this strange conversation.
But I feel how his hand is on me…protector, or interest? The blaze in his eyes says so much more. More than some duty or honor, more than some past that’s lighting up old memories that he may have forgotten. Ethan's eyes are saying something to me.
And I want to hear them.
It's impossible to do anything but hear them; it's like the heated air around us is shouting.
“Emmaline, your mother always thought of me as a brother, and I was fine with that. We were friends, and that made more sense. But for a moment, when I saw you, you weren’t my student or just some woman in danger. I would certainly help either. But I saw you, and it was young Joelle and I lost all good sense I had in me. I could've killed them.” Ethan is breathing too fast, ragged attempts at capturing air. I never thought I’d see him so undone. He always has such composure, is always so calm and together. It's one of the things I’ve always found so interesting about him…yet now this state of unrest has me even more intrigued.
“So imagine my surprise when I see you again and I…I think nothing about your mother. I think about you, Emmaline, and I can’t do that either. I want you to believe me when I say that I’m not thinking about your mother anymore, and that shouldn’t even matter. I’m fucking tangled up in knots because all I can think about is your sweet body yielding beneath me.”
Dear God, how am I supposed to respond to that? I can’t think for a moment. Can’t find my way through this thicket in my mind when I should be determining the right move. I know I should be avoiding the whole situation. Right now I could shut this down. It's terrifying, seeing how unnerved he is, and I could just escape this whole dangerous situation.
But I can’t get him out of my system. I want to tell him as much. “You’re…you’re always on my mind when you shouldn’t be. I can’t begin to imagine the things a man like you could do to my body…I’ve never had more experience then what those boys…” I can’t say it. I don’t want to say it. It taints the idea of his hands on me to think about someone unbidden and filthy and trying to take me.
“You—that’s not sexual experience. That’s rape. Are you telling me that you’re a fucking virgin?” He gets into my face now, pressing his forehead to mine. “What the hell am I going to suffer by not turning around and choosing to taste you in my office?” He tucks a finger under my chin. The heat between us boils my blood and creates a new shade of need in me darker than I’ve ever known before. “Do you want me to walk away?” His voice is dark whispers, desires I don’t quite understand, all promises that I only need to answer to them.
“I want you to fuck me so well that I’ll never forget it,” I say, my voice a whimper. “Because then we’ll both have done it, and we can forget then, right? We can quit then. We don’t have to worry about it, and we can go our separate ways after this semester.”
Something passes through his eyes that I can’t understand. “You think there’s any chance of that working, once I’ve had that deep of a taste of you?” The darkness in his voice makes me shiver. Maybe he’s telling me exactly the thing I should listen to, but you know what? I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to be saved. I barely understand what’s happening when I’m with him, but I don’t want to worry about that. I don’t want to worry about anything.
Could I trust him? I don’t know, and I don’t care.
My body doesn’t care. I want to feel his on mine if it destroys me, and knowing that I could maybe forget it all should I be able to get the taste of him out of my mouth.
“Why don’t we find out?” That’s all I can say. I don’t want to worry about the truth or the consequences.
I'm consumed by him. I don’t even understand what is happening. I just want him to touch me, and for one long night I could believe it was forever.
“You can’t possibly know what you’re asking,” he says. I can tell he’s conflicted. He doesn’t want to fight against this.
“Please,” I whimper.