All Chapters of Unprofessional - I shouldn't want my own student: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The storm didn’t ease.If anything, the wind howled harder, rattling the windowpanes like something desperate. The lights flickered once, twice, before settling into a dim, golden glow that made the shadows in his office stretch long across the floor.Eden sat in his chair, towel wrapped around her shoulders like a makeshift blanket, damp hair falling in soft waves around her face. She looked small and warm and impossibly present in his space—his sanctuary, the place he went to escape exactly this kind of temptation.And she was everywhere in it.Her scent—rain-wet skin and faint jasmine.Her breath—soft and steady.Her gaze—warm, curious, relentless.Adrian paced behind his desk, hands clasped tightly behind his back, because if he didn’t keep them there, he didn’t trust what they might reach for.She shifted in the chair, rubbing at her arms again. A shiver trembled through her body, curling her shoulders inward.“You’re still cold,” he said, voice too low.“A little,” she admitted.

By the time Adrian pulled into his building’s parking garage, he had convinced himself of exactly one thing:He wasn’t going to touch himself tonight.Not again.Not after everything that happened in his office.Not after the way she’d looked at him.Not after the wet curve of her shoulder slipping free of that towel, the tremor in her breath when she whispered his name.He leaned back against the seat, exhaling hard.Control.He needed it.Needed to reassert it.Needed to feel like he wasn’t coming undone at the hands of a twenty-two-year-old student who had no idea how deeply she’d rooted herself beneath his skin.He closed his eyes for a moment, letting the hum of the engine fade, letting the air cool his heated pulse.“Not tonight,” he murmured to himself. “You’re not doing this again.”But even as he said it, his body reacted to the memory of her—heat curling deep, low, inevitable.He climbed out of the car with a quiet curse.The ten-minute walk through the garage, into the ele

Adrian barely slept.He drifted for maybe an hour at a time, each shallow doze breaking under flashes of Eden —her damp shirt, her parted lips, the way she’d whispered his name like it meant something.Every time he woke, he felt the shameful echo of release still humming through his body, and worse, he felt the wanting still alive beneath it.He’d hoped morning would dull it.Flatten it.Calm the edges of last night’s desperation.But stepping into campus felt like walking back into the epicenter of a storm he hadn’t truly escaped.His body remembered.His mind remembered.His skin remembered.And the worst part?He knew he would see her today.His breath faltered as he reached the lecture hall, fingers tightening around the strap of his bag until the leather creaked. He arrived fifteen minutes early on purpose, needing the room empty, needing silence to steady himself.He set his notes down, adjusted the lights, the blinds, his tie — pointless actions, all of them, but he needed so

Adrian told himself he had the entire situation under control.He told himself this as he shaved that morning, as he buttoned his shirt, as he walked across campus with his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, trying to quiet the storm roiling in his gut.He’d convinced himself of it, too — right up until the moment he reached his office door.Because she was already there.Eden.Leaning against the wall across from his office, notebook in her hands, one foot resting lightly against the painted brick. She looked up the second he approached, and the expression on her face… God.Soft.Warm.Curious.And entirely too aware of him.Every lie he’d told himself evaporated.“Professor Hale,” she said, as though the name held a secret meaning now.He fumbled with his keys. “Miss Marlowe.”She pushed off the wall and came toward him — not aggressively, not boldly… just close enough that the hall felt too small, the air too warm, his pulse too loud.“Am I early?”He swallowed. “A bit.”“I did

Adrian slept in fragments.Shallow, fractured pieces of rest that never settled long enough to give him relief. Every time he slipped into sleep, Eden followed him — not in dreams, but in impressions.The warmth of her body.The whisper of his name.The breath they almost shared.He woke before dawn, heart racing, sheets twisted around him like restraints, his body aching in ways he couldn’t pretend were anything but desire.He lay still for a moment, staring up at the ceiling, chest rising and falling too fast.Last night had taken something from him — or revealed something.He wasn’t sure which.But he knew this:He wasn’t the same man he’d been that morning.He scrubbed a hand over his face, swallowing the tightness in his throat. His body responded to the memory of her instantly — hot, sharp, involuntary.“Stop,” he whispered to himself.But he didn’t stop remembering.He remembered how her breath brushed his lips.He remembered the tremor in her voice.He remembered the way she l