The Professor by Charlotte Stein Read Free Book Online Page B

means it. He takes out his pocket watch and sets it on the desk at his side, eyes on that instead of on me. Not that it helps that his attention is elsewhere – if anything it only makes it harder. It gives me even more freedom, and freedom is the thing that scares me here. I don’t want to be able to write whatever I like. I don’t want to turn my mind loose and see where it goes.
    It’s already gone too far.
    How far will it go when I have to do this?
    ‘Pen to paper, Miss Hayridge.’
    His tone brooks no refusal, yet for a second I still try to resist. I waste time rolling up these enormous sleeves, and writing my name at the top of the paper. Then when he starts tapping his finger on the desk – close to me, far too close to me – I craft a first sentence. A bland one, that somehow takes ten times the effort anything interesting might have done. I have to force it out, while filthy and profane things batter at the bars inside me.
Write that you want to suck his cock,
my mind yells.
    But I turn it into something about the weather.
    ‘The rain was particularly heavy that evening,’ I put, as that tapping gets more insistent. He only looks like he’s not watching what I write, you see. Really he’s studying every word – and he proves it a second later.
    ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’
    ‘What? What do you –’
    ‘That is what you have written, Miss Hayridge, and quite frankly I am appalled. Not to mention extremely dubious that this was the first thing that popped into your head.’
    ‘Well, we were both just soaked to the skin.’
    ‘Indeed we were. Yet you think the most interesting thing about that was the weather pattern that began it all? If your main character was inserting a sandwich into their bottom would your first instinct be to discuss which bakery they bought it from?’
    ‘Are you suggesting that what we’ve done since is the equivalent of inserting a sandwich into your bottom? Because I have to tell you, Professor –’
    ‘You’re stalling, Miss Hayridge.’
    ‘I absolutely was not.’
    ‘You just did it again. Now begin. From the top.’
    ‘You want me to –’
    ‘From the top.’
    I do as he tells me to, then. The tone of his voice makes me. I hear that last word like knuckles rapping on wood and my pen just skitters over the page, words stumbling out of me in what feels like a rush. It feels like this is the product of my mind, set free. But I barely get to the bottom of the first paragraph before he pulls me up, as sharp as an electric shock.
    ‘Still not letting go. Again.’
    ‘But I –’
    ‘Again.’
    I go to protest a second time – to tell him that he really doesn’t want to see how far I can go. But his expression stops me. He looks so sure of himself, so certain that I will never be equal to his task. It makes me grind my teeth together. I’m gripping the pen too tightly, and I grip it even tighter when he leans forward and whispers to me.
‘What are you, afraid?’
he asks, so close I feel his breath on my cheek. I see that faint scar that splits his upper lip, beautiful and brightly tempting.
    And then I write.
    I write without looking, gaze locked with his. Heart beating so hard I feel it in my temples, only half-knowing what words are coming out of the end of the pen. They emerge too quick for me to properly keep track of them, hot with arousal and attraction and something else, something that rages in me to get out. He wants more, I will give it to him. He wants to test me, I will be equal to it.
    I don’t even flinch when he tells me to read it to him.
    I just let it blaze out of me, tongue curling around every ‘cock’ and ‘cunt’, so eager to emphasise the sheer filthiness of it that I barely worry about the tiny telling details. ‘She spread herself over the great solid curve of his back,’ I tell him, without wondering how closely the description matches him. It only matters that I make her cunt kiss the firm line of his thick