William

My morning routine proceeds. I get up, I shower, I dress. I stand at the counter in the kitchen where I pour myself a bowl of bran flakes and unflavored almond milk, eat it, wash it and a multivitamin down with a glass of tap water, and scan the news headlines on my phone without reading any of the articles.

I stand in front of a mirror and adjust my necktie, then put on my vest. Call me old fashioned, but I don't wear a shirt and tie without one between October and the end of the school year. I slip into my suit jacket, grab my case, and walk down to my car.

Ethan parked it perfectly fine, but I have to move the seat back to fit behind the wheel. He pushed it up so he could reach the pedals, being a good six inches shorter than I am. For a moment I sit in the car and look at the wheel and the moonscape of a sun-damaged dashboard and drum my fingers on old braided vinyl.

Then I step out. Looking up at the sky I see nothing but blue and blue through turning leaves and decide it's not going to rain today, and that I am not going to drive. I walk instead.

After a handful of blocks, I am surrounded by students. They pour out of off-campus rentals where they live in clumps of four and six in old townhouses, some so run down their front porch roofs are held up by naked 4x8 posts, and those leaning drunkenly.

They give me a wide berth. I'm surprised I don't see them bend their fingers into warding signs against the evil eye when I happen to look their way. There's a certain sporting aspect to being a tough professor. It's a role I play, a suit of armor that keeps me from growing overly attached to my students. I'm not here to be friends.

At eight thirty, after the halls are clear with the first courses of the day in session, I take the stairs to my office, unlock the door, and step inside. I move to close it when a pale hand stops the swing.

Ethan pushes inside, dressed as usual in a faded, skin-tight band shirt and deliberately ripped jeans. As someone who buys my jeans cheap in the irregular section of the outlet store, it baffles me that these kids pay more for torn clothes. Ethan starts to swing the door shut.

“No,” I say.

He purses his lips and gives me a withering look with eyes that melt me from the inside out. Quickly, I turn away before I find that I can't turn away at all. Ethan pushes the door, while I pull. I'm stronger than he is, but the effort makes my fingers go white from pressing into the wood.

“I'm going to let you close it,” I say finally, in a deadly soft voice. “I'm going to let you close it and we're going to talk. I don't want it to slam. Stop pushing.”

Ethan relents, but eyes me as if he expects me to yank it all the way open. Instead, I let go. He presses it into the frame and twists the lock.

I'm already sitting behind my desk when he folds his arms across his body and looks down at me, the fringe of soft black hair over his eyes still wet from the shower. When I take a deep breath, I can taste him. Somehow his scent is stronger when he's wet.

The beaded moisture on his hair makes me think of sweat and sweat makes me think of him writhing, nude, sitting in my lap with my cock buried in him to the root, throbbing, the way he moans as I press my teeth to his nipple and dig my fingers into the plump but tight muscles of his ass, push the cheeks together to squeeze him around my shaft…

The desk is good camouflage. I shift forward, hiding the erection tenting my suit pants and rest my forearms on my desk, fingers together.

“Sit,” I say.

The note of command makes him flinch, as if it requires a deliberate, concerted effort not to immediately obey me. That turns me on as much as thinking about him naked and writhing and full of me.

“We need to talk,” he says.

“You said.”

His lips quiver and one corner pulls up. He probably thought this through; I would be disappointed if he didn't. The will is there, but something in him quails when I look him right in the eye. He probably figured when I sat that he'd stand, try to take a position of authority. Authority doesn't suit him. At least, not authority over me.

“I—”

I cut him off. “This is what is going to happen. You're going to go talk to the department head and tell her you're having difficulties with me and with coordinating your class load, working as my assistant, working as an RA, and working at your off-campus job. She will understand and accommodate. If she doesn't, you'll tell her to talk to me.”

Ethan frowns.

“When she does, I'll explain that you're more than capable, and you practically begged to stay on as my assistant, but I don't need you grading papers for me more than you need to have time to sleep and work on your assignments. I'll tell her a letter of recommendation is forthcoming, and it will likely carry some weight, since I rarely write them for students.”

Ethan starts to talk, shifting his arms from crossing his body to putting his fists on his hips.

I continue, overriding him.

“You will do these things, and I will do my part, and we will move past this quickly, quietly, and before it does my career or your future prospects any damage.”

“You're not getting rid of me that easily,” he says, almost immediately.

I jerk back from my desk as he walks around it, cursing myself for letting him direct what happens next. The back of my chair thumps against the wall. It has no arms. He straddles me easily, wrapping his arms around my neck.

With his chest pressed to mine, his eyes inches from my own, my cock would be up his ass if it weren't for the both of us wearing clothes. As it is, I can feel his erection throbbing against mine, the heat and pulse between us as he forcefully kisses me. The way he does it is strange; more enveloping than penetrating, inviting rather than seeking. His submission has a needy, begging quality that is a confidence all its own.

I can't help myself, I roam my hands over his body and feel his warmth, just out of reach a layer of cloth away. I want to tear his clothes off right now. He starts to slide against me like he plans to go down to his knees. For a halting second, I grow hard as polished steel at the thought of him sucking me off in my office, nestled between my legs to worship. He belongs there.

I stop him. Not by shoving him off, but by pulling him closer so he can't get on the floor and get his mouth on me. He responds to my tighter grip by moving and shifting against my body, his breath coming in random pulses as he grinds his cock against mine.

“I want you,” he says, his voice low and thrumming with potential, “I've always wanted you. I wanted you to hate-fuck me.” His voice is so soft I have to strain to hear it, even if he murmurs it into my lips, like a prayer he wants me to swallow.

“I don't hate you,” I tell him, truly. “I never did. I believed in you.”

He wriggles against me and breathes hard, his tongue is hot and wet on my throat.

“I used to imagine you stopping me after class. Keeping me. Being afraid of some punishment, only for you to push me down and take me. Use my throat. Bend me over the table next to the lectern and use me raw until I beg for mercy.”

“Don't give me ideas,” I growl without meaning to.

Ethan kisses me again.

That's enough. I push him to his feet, standing at the same time. I no longer cede the advantage of looking down on him. He backs away, perhaps a little intimidated. I can still taste him, and the taste leaves me craving more, craving all of him. I want to grab him and eat him all up like a monster in a fairy tale. Who cares that I have classes to teach when I'd rather learn his body?

Ethan looks up at me reverently, like I walked out of a storybook to save him.

“I don't want to stop,” he says.

“I don't either,” I say, “but we have to. It's for the best. You'll find somebody else. You can do better.”

I put a hand on his shoulder, reassuring.

“You have a long and interesting path ahead of you. Ethan, trust me, it's for the best. Go talk to your advisor. I'll back you up. It hasn't been that long. We'll treat it like a dropped class—nothing on your record. I'm sure you'll find an assistantship somewhere else when you start grad school.”

He looks down.

“Don't focus so much on achieving. If you keep looking at the future, you'll miss everything around you.”

Ethan's head snaps up.

“Speaking from experience?”

“Speaking from failure,” I say. “I have a course to teach at ten, and I need to prepare. I think you have a class of your own then, do you not?”

He nods.

“Alright. Come back and let me know what happens during my office hours.”

He looks at me longingly, turning twice before he steps out and pulls the door shut behind him. I move quickly to twist the lock and keep him, and the world, out.

Sitting down to my desk, I start working on my lecture—as I should have done last night. As my pen sweeps across the legal pad, I wonder why I even bother with this. I have World History II today, and I could deliver every lecture of the course from memory if I needed to. Especially this one; it's a different day, different schedule, and I'm again meeting students for the first time.

I throw my pen down, frowning as it bounces hard, rolls across the desk, and clatters to the floor.

Leaning back in my chair, I wince as it creaks. I had one break on me once and dump me on the floor, almost fractured my skull on one of the shelves. I really should spring for a new one. This one is half duct tape, it seems. Maybe I'm frugal, maybe it's an affection for the inertia of old things.

Ethan will not leave my mind. I wonder how much he really knows about me. Now that I'm alone in my dinky little office, his absence is the unwanted light of day, dragging me out of a pleasant and desirable dream. Back to harsh reality.

He's too young for this, and he doesn't know who I really am. No one does, even if I walk around with it incised into my skin. Even Victoria barely knew; she accepted what I told her, received the letters, and went on with the lie. For me, it was better than truth. The truth was hard and cold.

Pacing around the desk to grab the pen, I sit on the corner instead of returning to my sad little chair. Twirling the pen in my fingers, I go over and over what I just did. I'm sure Ethan will do as I instructed, and this will be over. I'll finish my work, go home, unpack, assemble, start living my new life. Maybe I'll…what?

Before I realize I did it, the pen is stuck in the cork board across the room, quivering from the impact. I threw it.

Shaking my hand out, I suppress a flash memory of a knife doing the same thing, stuck in a block of wood we'd set up as a target, rents and chunks in the paint from half a dozen of us throwing them like a game of darts to pass the time.

My fingers flex as I stare at them and I'm not sure if I'm doing it or not.

Deep breath. I am a history professor. Those times are behind me. I close my eyes, open them, and wonder how I'll manage alone. Victoria was an anchor, our life, a container. I disappeared into my mask so completely I could ignore what lay beneath it.

First, I lose that—deservedly, I think—and then Ethan comes along to rip open old wounds and remind me of who I've really been underneath. A decade of denial throbs in my head, impulses like dreams I can barely remember but can't forget.

Startled by the alarm on my watch, I grab my briefcase and lecture notes and head off to the hall. My students—mostly freshmen, a few sophomores and maybe a senior or two who never fulfilled a requirement and are cleaning up their transcripts for their graduation petitions—are treated to an unusual sight. Professor McDonough is late to class.

Only by a minute. I make no excuses. I deliver the same speech; it's easy to pick out the sophomores and seniors. Their reactions betray them for having heard all this before or having heard it by reputation and rumor.

It's easy to lose myself in routine. The notes are almost ritual at this point. I lose myself in my introductory lecture, only hanging up once.

I have the same student in both sections of Freshman American History. Odd, but not unheard of. What catches me is that it's the girl Ethan says has a crush on me.

I give them their money's worth, not ending my lecture even as they squirm and check their watches. They have enough time to run laps around campus between classes, so I don't want to hear it.

I finally dismiss them and gather my things, not acknowledging any of them. I posted my office hours, they can see me there. A few wave, a few scowl, no one attempts to talk to me. The girl stops and stares, clutching her books to her chest as she works up the courage, or tries to. I leave quickly, storming through the students, back to my office.