Checkmate Professor.

I stood in that corridor for a full ten seconds just staring at the closed door.

Then I started walking.

Just the steady purposeful walk of a person who had just seen something that was going to be very useful to her and needed a moment to figure out exactly how useful.

Professor Marcus Cole?

I turned the corner and almost laughed out loud.

This man. This same man who had grabbed my wrist and looked at me like I was something he had already categorized and dismissed. This same man who had sat behind that desk with his controlled voice and his empty threats and his carefully maintained professional distance and told me in no uncertain terms that nothing I could offer would ever be enough to change his mind.

And Ophelia?

I stopped at the water fountain at the end of the corridor, leaned against the wall beside it and let myself process that specific detail for a moment.

I tried to think of one genuinely compelling reason why Ophelia specifically. I was not being vain about it, I was being factual. I looked at myself in mirrors enough to know what I was working with and I looked at Ophelia in lectures enough to know what she was working with and the math was simply not adding up in any direction that made sense. I was definitely prettier than that block headed whore called Ophelia.

Which meant Professor Marcus Cole had rejected me, threatened me with expulsion, delivered that entire speech about professional standards and integrity and “the door is behind you Miss Hayes” but then turned around and did the exact same thing with someone else.

The hypocrisy of it was almost beautiful.

I pushed off the wall and kept walking and by the time I reached the stairwell I had already decided what I was going to do with this information. To keep it somewhere safe and dry where it wouldn't get damaged and wait for the right moment to use it.

His class was at four.

I walked in, took my usual seat and got out my notebook and when Professor Marcus Cole walked through the door five minutes later, I was the picture of an attentive student with her pen ready and her eyes forward.

He saw me the moment he walked in.

I saw him see me.

His step didn't falter and his expression didn't change. He set his folder on the desk and looked out at the class and began the lecture with the same measured unhurried delivery he always used and absolutely nothing about his behavior indicated that anything was different from any other Tuesday.

Except his eyes kept coming back to me.

Not in a way anyone else in the room would notice. Just every few minutes, between points, between slides, his gaze would move across the room and find me and stay for exactly half a second longer than it stayed anywhere else before moving on.

I let him look.

I took my notes and asked one question, a good one, genuinely about the topic we were discussing because I had actually been studying and it showed and I watched something flicker across his face when I asked it that I chose not to examine too closely.

The lecture ended.

Students began packing up around me and I was taking my time gathering my things when I heard him say, "Miss Hayes. A moment please."

The students around me filtered out and I finished packing my bag at my own pace and walked down to the front of the lecture hall where he was waiting beside his desk with his folder closed and his hands in his pockets.

"You wanted to see me Professor."

It wasn't a question.

He looked at me for a moment. "My office."

I followed him down the corridor and into the office. He closed the door behind us and I stood in the middle of the room and waited because I wanted to see exactly what version of this conversation he had decided to have.

He turned from the door and looked at me with the particular energy of a person trying to get ahead of a problem before the problem got ahead of them.

He crossed the room towards me slowly.

"What you saw earlier," he said, as his voice dropped into something lower and more deliberate, "I think we both know that these things are more complicated than they appear."

"Do we?” I asked.

He got behind me and this time, closer than professional distance and I held my ground because I had not moved for this man before and I was not starting now.

"You wanted this," he said quietly as his hand found my waist, pulling it to himself close enough to feel his dick. "You wanted my hands all over you." He moved his hands all over me from my waist, going up to my boobs and his voice had taken on a texture I recognized; the performance of seduction. "So let's not pretend that what you saw today bothers you for any reason other than the fact that it wasn't you."

He pulled me slightly closer.

And I felt it.. the unwanted honest response of a body that had not been touched in weeks, the warmth of his hand on my waist registering somewhere I didn't want it to register, the pull of proximity doing what proximity always did regardless of context or intention. He began kissing my neck and I let him, about to lose myself but it only took a moment to snap back into myself like a rubber band pulled too far.

I stepped back and his hands fell away and I looked at him with an expression I made sure was completely level.

"Let me be very clear about something Professor Cole," I said calmly. "I am not here for that. And I was never going to come back here for that." I tilted my head slightly. "What I saw in your office this afternoon was a tenured lecturer engaging in exactly the kind of conduct he threatened to have me expelled for suggesting." I let that sit in the air between us for exactly three seconds. "And that was a very interesting thing to have seen."

His jaw tightened.

"So here is what is going to happen," I continued, keeping my voice pleasant.  "You are going to make sure that my grade in this course reflects the work I have been putting in since our last conversation. Not a barely passing grade, I mean a good one. A genuinely good one that I can be proud of." I picked up my bag from the chair. "And in exchange for that I will continue to have absolutely no memory of anything I may or may not have witnessed in your office earlier today."

Silence.

He looked at me with something behind his eyes that was not quite anger and not quite admiration with his two hands in his pockets.

"That's settled then," I said simply.

He said nothing for a moment. Then he came closer to me again, grabbing my waist, "You know Brielle, I could still…"

The slap came from somewhere I hadn't fully planned.

Sharp and clean. The sound of it bouncing off the walls of that small office.

He stepped back as his hand went to his face. His eyes went wide in a way I had not seen from him before…genuine surprise, the kind that came from a man who had significantly miscalculated something.

I looked at him steadily.

"Don't you ever put your hands on me again," I said pointing my finger at him "Ever!”

I walked out.

The corridor outside was empty and I stood in it for a moment, exhaled slowly and then I smiled.

Not the smile I used on men in bars or in offices when I wanted something. It was a different one, smaller and entirely for myself.

I had walked into that office three times now.

The first time he had told me to leave.

The second time he had threatened me with expulsion.

And this time I had walked out with exactly what I came for and he had not gotten a single thing from me in return.

I straightened my bag on my shoulder.

That was what power actually felt like. The kind where you had something real, used it cleanly and walked away with your dignity completely intact.

I could get used to this.

I was still smiling when I pushed through the exit door and out into the early evening air.