I stood in the hallway of Kirkwood Hall, or ‘professor row’ as the other students called it. My thumb drew incessant circles in my sweaty palm as I paced small circles near the wall between two offices.
I can’t do this. I can’t do this, repeated in my head as the moment grew larger than me. Just breathe Beth…
The other college students that flocked the halls made me want to blend in with the bland beige walls and abstract prints framed between each office so that I could disappear altogether. Every woman that passed seemed more gorgeous than the next. Their outfits were more put together than mine, their tummies were more trim than mine, and their hair glistened and bounced with their every step. I adjusted my white blouse and a navy blue plaid skirt that dangled to my knees. My clothes selection was a remnant of habit after six years of private school (this despite the constant teasing I received at the hand of my suitemates and her friends).
What made it worse was when the college boys stole their lingering looks my way, but that wasn’t anything new. College guys were so immature and desperate, they’d masturbate to a bookshelf if it looked like they had breasts. I knew I wasn’t ugly, but that was part of the problem. Combing my blond hair back behind my shoulders with my fingers, I adjusted my black backpack on my shoulders. I had received more comments than I liked about my pouty lips, creamy skin, or just brutish comments about breasts, but it all drew eyes I didn’t want.
I don’t want anyone looking at me; I thought and felt a twist in my belly as if I was back in his classroom. Except his…
Shaking the thought from my head, I scrambled to take off my backpack and unzip it—drawing even more eyes. Buried in the front pocket was my inhaler. Professor Kent wasn’t like my other professors. I didn’t… look at him the same as the others. I felt the humiliation simmer inside my chest, threatening to drown me. I had always had a thing for older men. I knew it was wrong. Call it ‘daddy issues’ or the price of growing up in a broken home, but the level of lust and… infatuation I developed for certain men twice my age had always been an issue I’ve tried to conceal.
Imagine the stares I’d get if everyone knew how much of a freak I really was?
I took two quick puffs from my inhaler. That’s when I saw him. Professor Kent was an attractive man in his late thirties with thick dark golden brown hair faded on the sides with short bangs across his forehead that bounced when he walked. At six-foot-four, he towered over me standing, so when I looked up from a kneel over my backpack, he loomed over me like a giant.
His interrogative eyes studied me as he approached his office like a test question that awaited to be unpacked and undressed. Cocking his head to the side and making one lock of his bangs move to the side, he smiled with a squinted eye.
“Are you waiting for me?” Professor Kent asked.
“I, um, no—”
“Beth, right?” he asked and gestured up and to his left as if he stood in his lecture hall. “You sit in the back row on my left. Psych 101 class.”
I smiled nervously and felt my panties adjust between my thighs as I moved. He knows my name…
“Uh, yes, yes, um,” I said, quickly tucking my inhaler in my bag and zipping it up. “I, um, don’t want to bother you. Sorry,” I muttered with my eyes on the ground as I turned to leave.
“Nonsense,” he replied, putting his key in his office door. “Come in, we’ll talk. I insist.”
My stomach complete a somersault and I felt my heart beating in my ears like a war drum. It was true I had sat meekly quiet in the back left of Professor Kent’s Psychology 101 class for almost an entire semester now. My first semester at university, actually. Like my other classes, I haven’t uttered a word in a single one, but speaking wasn’t necessary for doing well in school. That was why I loved school so much. Leaving high school with a 4.0 GPA, I sat primed to receive straight As in all nineteen credit hours I took this semester with one exception.
Psych 101…
“The presentation is worth half your grade,” Professor Kent said evenly. “We went over this in the syllabus.”
My stomach twisted, and I tried to shrink under his heavy gaze but had nowhere to hide unless I tried to go under the desk. It didn’t feel right to have a presentation to be worth so much of my grade. I can, and did, receive over 100% on every single quiz and exam in the class, but will still fail if I don’t give a thirty-minute presentation to the class. Ten minutes about myself and my background, followed by twenty minutes about Behaviorism psychology and how it’s used in modern practice.
“Yes, sir,” I mumbled, barely parting my lips.
“I didn’t hear you,” my Professor’s voice said almost as if it was a demand.
I adjusted in my seat and straightened. “I’m sorry. Yes, sir,” I squeaked a bit louder. I have always suffered from crippling social anxiety. My mother’s solution was to fill my medicine cabinet full of drugs in middle school and the refilled orders are still there now that I’m in college. They take the edge off my panic attacks when I have them, but little else. Getting up in front of a class of a hundred students and Professor Kent in order to give a thirty-minute speech was torture. Coming to my professor’s office hours was difficult enough. In class, his piercing gaze felt undressing even as I hid amongst the crowd. The thought of sitting alone in an office before him was crippling. I had spent all night considering just dropping out of the class entirely, but doing so would fail me as well.
And all it would take is one failed class for me to lose my scholarship… then if I wanted to go to college, I would have to ask my father for money… I will never do that…
The panic in my chest fizzled like a freshly opened soda that had been shaken. “Is there another way? Can I, maybe, write out my speech? Or record my speech and play it?”
Professor Kent grimaced, flattening his lips as he let out a long sigh. He leaned back in his leather seat and I couldn’t help but glance at the way the gray button-up shirt he wore grabbed at the muscles of his shoulder and biceps. I inverted my knees together subconsciously. Like I was afraid he might somehow see through the large red oak desk that separated us, through the skirt that dangled over my knees and light blue panties I wore beneath it and could see the drip of drool that fell from my sex. And for a terrifying second, I thought he could. My Professor’s eyes narrowed on me and his eyebrows closed together in concentration on something briefly as he cocked his head to the side.
No, how does he know? Can he smell my pheromones?
But his inquisitive look quickly vanished and was replaced with a soft and welcoming smile that made me want to say yes to anything he said next.
“Beth,” he leaned forward, and I tried to lean further back, but my backside was always pressed against the chair. “You’re a very bright young lady. I know you know everything that you need to present, but the presentation isn’t just about knowledge. It’s about speaking, confidence, taking control.” The professor extended a firm hand toward his door as if the classroom was on the other side of it. “Dominating that classroom and selling yourself. That’s a big part of life in the real world. If I let you not do this presentation, I’d be robbing you of this skill.”
Confidence, control, dominating…
The anticipation of the impending presentation all of a sudden weighed on her like a concrete tied to her throat. Covering my face with my palms, I did my best to keep my composure with a deep breath and exhale.
Thoughtlessly, and more as a complaint to myself, I mumbled, “I don’t dominate,” and scooted forward to stand and leave. It was only when I was touching my face that I realized what my Professor had seen that caught his curiosity. It was my beet-red cheeks that now felt burning hot to the touch.
God, I’ve sat here swooning and blushing like a high school girl all this time? I’ve got to get out of here.
“I’m sorry, um, thank you. I—I should be, um, going,” I mumbled as I leaned forward to grab my backpack and my Professor stopped me with a raised palm.
“Stay,” he said, and I did. He leaned back in his chair again and scratched at the center of his chest, where his hard pecs met. “How old are you?”
My eyes widened as I was taken aback by the question. I stuttered an answer quickly before I had decided whether he asked as an insult or some other reason.
“Um, eight—eighteen.”
Parsing his lips, he nodded and looked around the room. “You could leave if you want,” he said after a minute. “You can leave whenever you want. Do you understand?”
“Yes?” I replied, unsure of what he meant.
“If you don’t do your presentation, you will fail this class, so I don’t want that to happen. I also don’t want to cheat you out of this lesson and experience as it will only hurt you in the long run—you have to be able to speak in front of others. There’s no way around it, Beth.”
Professor Kent stood and walked around his desk until he sat on the edge of his desk in front of me, so close he nearly stood on my book bag.
“I have…” he paused, scratching the side of his neck as he considered his next words, “trainings… that used to offer certain women who struggled with confidence. Tutoring that is extracurricular and not a part of the college. I haven’t taken on a pupil for these trainings for some time, but if you are interested, if you consent… I would be willing to tutor you.”
Unsure of whether it was the charged odor emanating from his person or just the proximity of the man but I blurted out a ‘yes’ before I had a chance to process what I was consenting to.
A private class? I think? Just him and me? The prospect was exciting and terrifying. I was still trying to cool my face, that had only grown redder since I realized my flushness.
He glanced at his black metal banded watch. “We could begin today—right now if you’re free for the next hour.”
“Yes, I… Yes, I’m free,” I said.
My Professor smiled at my eagerness. “I have three rules if we are to continue,” he walked behind me and went to the office door. “1) You may leave or stop the training at any time, you only have to say the word ‘red.’ But once you do, the trainings are finished and you must face the presentation on your own. 2) You must do everything that I tell you, exactly how I tell you.”
I heard the lock turn on the door and Professor Kent completed the circle, walking back in front of me again. This was the first time I realized that something sexual might be happening. The thought struck fear and excitement inside me, but mostly it froze me in my seat. It was a sort of surreal moment of disbelief like I had just entered a movie or a dream.
“3) You must never tell anyone about these trainings. Ever. Do you understand?”
My mouth went dry. I swallowed to work the saliva around. “Yes,” I croaked.
He licked his lips like an animal looking down on its dinner. Cocking his head to the side, the warmth in his smile disappeared as a powerful and stern expression cemented on his face. Suddenly, the office I sat in felt darker than it was when I entered.
“Stand,” Professor Kent ordered.
I stood and my lips were nearly touching his muscular chest, so I quickly sidestepped for comfortable distancing. He corrected this action, not with words or movement, but with a single gesture. Pointing at the spot on the floor where I once stood, my Professor looked like an owner heeling a dog. It was my turn to lick my lips as I scratched my thumbnail on my other palm and slowly shuffled back before him. My head hung low and I pouted like a puppy that knew she had done something wrong.
Just standing so close to the man was taxing. My social anxiety thrummed like a migrant in my chest as my palms grew sweaty and my head dizzy. Without provocation, Professor Kent took my chin in his hand gently between his thumb and forefinger, and I lifted my gaze to meet his. Looking up at his soft skin and penetrating eyes, I could hear myself panting with excitement from his simple touch.
The kiss he planted on my lips was a gentle one. Innocent and measured. Without meaning to, a high-pitched hum escaped my lips to his as my eyebrows went high. Like the moment I dreamed about and anticipated was too surreal to be expected. The tip of his tongue brushed past my lips and all the blood in my body went to my head. As if sensing my lightheadedness, my Professor’s hands caught my shoulders, steadying me and holding me to his chest.
The tender kiss quickly deepened and changed. He stepped forward, cupping my cheek with his rough palm, and suddenly our bodies were touching another and the older man was looming over me. His fingers hooked around the top of my neck, locking me in place so I couldn’t retreat even if I wanted to. His lips pressed on mine. I felt his tongue press into my mouth and rub against mine before lapping the roof of my mouth slowly. My eyebrows went tall and my cheeks flushed with embarrassment as I felt how wet my pussy had become.
Why do I have to be like this? We’re just kissing and I’m so wet! It’s embarrassing. Please, don’t let him find out I’m this way…
Without even realizing it, I stood on my tippy-toes for my lips to reach his. Professor Kent’s other massive hand cupped my hips, fitting around its entire side as he traced his finger along my exposed skin below my shirt but above the waistband of my skirt. Trying not to draw attention to it, I clenched my thighs together in hopes of choking my sex from growing any wetter, but I found it was having the opposite effect. In the position I stood as we made out, the nub of my clit pressed against a corner of fabric, either a moist twisted edge of my panties or something on his clothing, that teased me just right. I rocked back and forth in a daze. When my professor’s hand slid up to my breasts without warning, I very nearly came.