In My Professor's Arms

The city buzzed around me as I walked home, but it felt like I was moving in a haze. Cars honked, distant voices called out, and the occasional bark of a dog echoed down the street; you know how it is, but none of it registered. My body was still hummed with an energy I couldn’t shake, every step a reminder of the tension coiling deep inside me.Professor Victor Graham. His name alone sent a shiver through me.I climbed the stairs to my apartment, my bag slung over my shoulder and my mind spinning. The air in the hallway was thick and stale, but when I opened my door and stepped inside, it felt no different. I dropped my bag by the door and kicked off my shoes; I wasn't even the one contemplating my movement.The silence of the apartment only amplified the storm inside me.I leaned against the wall, pressing a hand to my chest as I tried to steady my breathing. My skin was still flushed, heat radiating from my cheeks down to the hollow of my throat. My blouse clung to me in all the wr

(Victor's POV)The mornings felt colder lately, though it wasn’t the weather. The chill that had settled in my life had little to do with the seasons and everything to do with Emily.Our marriage had always been built on shared goals, mutual ambition, and the sense that we were moving forward together. But somewhere along the way, we moved from that to not having a real conversation in months.And the intimacy? That had disappeared when she left for the capital. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, and it's been six months. That was how long it had been since we’d been together, in every sense of the word.I could still remember the last time. The last time we shared as a couple. The mechanical rhythm, the absence of passion, the way she had rolled over and gone straight to sleep afterward. Even before that? It was seventeen weeks. I know she's not to be fully blamed for it. As a career-inclined person, the hustle and bustle of her job is completely overwhelming.When she’d announce

(Lily's POV) The rain had finally stopped, but inside my tiny flat, a tempest of emotions had taken its place. Still wet, my clothes clung to me like a second skin, serving as a memory of the rainstorm that had brought Victor to my doorstep. His jacket, still with me, now hung over a chair, was a tangible piece of him in my space, its scent a cocktail of sandalwood and something uniquely Victor, stirring a forbidden warmth in me. I still do not know how he outrightly knew my house address, but that's even less of my worries right now. I made my way to the bathroom, showered, letting the hot water attempt to wash away the chill which I know wasn't just from the rain but from the intensity of Victor's gaze, the brief touch of his hand. Standing beneath the hot stream of water, every minute we spent together flashed through my mind. I recall his sparkling eyes, his gentle, caring hand on mine, and his breathtaking grin. I sat on the edge of my bed, wrapped in a robe, the quiet outside

(Lily's POV)The day passed by like a swiftly flowing river. Classes, lectures were nothing but echoes in my head: they were clearly not the keepers of my mind locked on the recollection of Victor, the jacket in my bag like a secret waiting to be told. I had steered clear of the early morning and had rather planned to come during late afternoons when his office hours would be less crowded so that we might snatch a moment that was truly ours.Taking a rushed lunch with an unquenched appetite, it tasted like ashes in my mouth because my thoughts were pre-occupied with what was going to happen. The hustle in the campus was quiet now as students were either leaving for the day or lost in their own worlds, oblivious to the storm inside.Every step I took resonated as a drumbeat-within him echoing my commotion. Victor's door was ajar, inviting or perhaps warning. I knocked, and my heart thudded with the noise in my chest."Come in," his voice, always the most haughty, now bore a tone of war

(Lily's POV)Answering the letters of the campus was loud as ever: shuffling feet of hurried students trying to make it to class, muffled sounds of friends gossiping and sometimes far-off shouting and cheering from a sports field. But every one of those sounds became an echo of my paranoia growing. All laughter seemed too knowing, all glances seemed a bit too long, and every whisper carried some hint of my secret-the secret kept inside me to torment me with a thousand fires.Victor.I felt my body tremble even at the thought of his name. It lay thumping within me, my heart, and it hasn't stopped since the very moment that changed almost everything. I passed through all that crowd filled with students, feeling like some spotlights were trained on me wherever I went, looking all around me for any telltale signs that someone knew. Did they notice how I looked at him? Probably even how he looked at me?By the time I'd reached the library, my nerves had gone absolutely. From the comforting