FORBIDDEN ACADEMIA: Riding My Professor

I had been staring at the red ink stamped at the top of my paper for ten solid minutes, the single grade burning straight through the heavy cotton sheet.

C-minus.

Beneath it, in that sharp, unyielding cursive I had spent the last four months watching him scribe across whiteboards, was a single handwritten line: “See me during office hours today. We need to address your direction.”

Professor Julian Vance was thirty-four, possessed a bone structure that felt entirely too sharp for a university campus, and had a habit of rolling his button-down sleeves up to his elbows just enough to show off his thick, vein-lined forearms. He was articulate, distant, and completely unapproachable. Every girl in the three-hundred-seat lecture hall competed for a seat in the first three rows just to hear the low, rumbling timbre of his voice. He was the kind of man who commanded absolute control over every room he walked into.

It was 4:30 PM on a rainy Thursday. The third floor of the humanities building was completely dead, the quiet rustle of rain against the high arched windows filling the hallway. I stood outside door 312 for a long, shaking breath, my fingers tightening around the edge of my paper.

My heart was beating a heavy, erratic rhythm against my ribs. I knocked twice on the heavy oak.

“Come in,” his deep, smooth voice called out from inside.

I pushed the door open and stepped through. The office smelled rich—a mixture of old paper, polished mahogany, leather, and the subtle, intoxicating scent of cedar and amber cologne that was distinctly him. Bookshelves stretched floor-to-ceiling, packed with dense leather-bound volumes.

Julian was sitting behind his massive wooden desk, bathed in the amber glow of a single brass desk lamp. His dark hair was slightly messy, his tie loosened just an inch at the collar. He didn't look up immediately, his eyes focused on a stack of midterms he was marking with a fountain pen.

“Close the door, Zara,” he said quietly.

I turned and pushed the heavy oak door until the brass latch clicked firmly into place. The sudden isolation was instant. The muffled sounds of the corridor vanished, leaving only the sound of the rain outside and the quiet scratch of his pen.

“Take a seat,” he murmured, gesturing loosely toward the leather armchair opposite his desk.

Instead of sitting, I walked right up to the front edge of his desk, letting the paper drop onto the smooth wood between us.

“I don’t understand the grade, Professor Vance,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. “I spent two full weeks in the library on that analysis.”

Julian finally set his pen down. Slowly, he leaned back in his high-backed leather chair, steepling his long fingers together beneath his chin. His dark grey eyes swept over me—taking in my wet hair, my fitted dark sweater, and the short pleated skirt that stopped high on my thighs.

The silence stretched long enough to make my skin prickle.

“You rushed it,” he said softly. The tone wasn't angry; it was heavy, deliberate. “You’re one of the sharpest minds in that room, Zara. But your focus has been completely fractured for the last month. You’re distracted.”

“I’m not distracted,” I lied, stepping half an inch closer to the desk, leaning forward on my hands. The movement made the collar of my sweater dip, exposing the curve of my collarbone.

Julian’s eyes flicked down to my throat, tracking the hard pulse fluttering there, before dropping to my mouth. A subtle shift went through him. The distant, untouchable professor facade cracked, replaced by an intense, simmering dark heat.

“Don't lie to me,” he murmured, his voice dropping an octave into a low, gravelly rasp. “You sit in the third row every Tuesday and Thursday, chew on the end of your pen cap, trace your fingers over your desk, and you track every single move I make. You’re not paying attention to the syllabus, Zara. You’re paying attention to me.”

My breath hitched. The air in the room grew thick, heavy with the raw truth of what we’d both been ignoring all semester. My heart slammed hard against my chest, but I refused to back away.

“And if I am?” I challenged softly, tilting my chin up. “Are you going to penalize me for that too, Professor?”

Julian went dead still. His eyes went almost black in the low lamplight. Slowly, he unclasped his hands and stood up.

He was broad-shouldered and tall, instantly towering over the desk and blocking out the light behind him. He walked around the heavy wooden edge with slow, deliberate strides until he was standing right in front of me—so close I could feel the radiant heat of his chest and catch the sharp, clean scent of his skin.

“You have no idea what kind of fire you’re playing with,” he whispered, his gaze locked onto mine.

“Then stop talking,” I whispered back, my voice trembling with nerves. “And show me.”

And that was when whatever restraint he’d been clinging to snapped like dry wood.

Julian grabbed my waist with both hands, his large palms gripping my hips hard enough to bruise, and lifted me completely off my feet. He shoved me back and set me down hard on top of his desk, sending papers, folders, and pens sliding across the smooth wood.

Before I could even catch my breath, his hand fisted into the back of my hair, pulling my head back, and his mouth slammed down onto mine.

It wasn't a gentle kiss. It was months of filthy, forbidden frustration breaking loose all at once. His mouth was hot, rough, and demanding, his tongue sliding deep into my mouth to claim me while I let out a muffled whimper against his lips.

His free hand slid up the side of my thigh, his long fingers bunching up the fabric of my skirt, pushing it all the way to my waist until the cool office air hit my bare legs. He crowded between my knees, leaning his weight into me until I felt the thick, rock-hard outline of his cock pressing right against my aching core through his trousers.

“Fuck,” he growled into my mouth, breaking the kiss for a fraction of a second to track hot, heavy bites down my jawline to the sensitive skin of my neck. “You’ve been driving me fucking insane.”

I wrapped my legs around his waist, pulling him as close as physically possible, my fingers tangling in his thick hair as his hand slid between my thighs, cupping me right over the thin, drenched strip of my panties.