"Ugh, I fucking hate you,"
Cleo whined, throwing her head back like she was auditioning for a soap opera death scene.
"You never give me any actual details about what Mystery Daddy is doing to you. I just know you got absolutely railed yesterday, but please—I am literally parched over here. Throw me a goddamn crumb!"
I laughed, but it came out nervous and tight. "I did give you details."
"You said he made you cum," Cleo said flatly. "That's not details, that's a fucking bullet point. I want to know positions. I want angles. I want to live vicariously through your sexual awakening because my dating life is a barren wasteland."
I was still laughing when a voice cut through our conversation like a scalpel.
"Mystery Daddy?"
We froze.
My heart didn't just drop—it fucking plummeted through the earth's core as we turned around to find Professor Lewis standing behind us, one eyebrow arched in that way that suggested he was mentally grading our conversation and finding it severely lacking.
"Oh—uhm." Cleo blinked rapidly, her brain clearly short-circuiting. "Just girl talk. You know. normal college stuff."
I could feel my entire existence blushing. Heat crawled up my neck so fast it made my ears ring and my vision blur slightly.
"Is that so?" Lewis said, voice cooler than arctic wind. "How... illuminating. I'll see you both in class tomorrow."
He turned and walked away without another word, leaving me standing there wishing for spontaneous combustion.
Cleo elbowed me with a shit-eating grin. "If that was just a coincidence, I'm officially converting to celibacy."
"I'll meet you in the cafeteria," I said quickly, trying to keep my voice from cracking. "I need to ask Professor Lewis something about my paper."
She sauntered off, leaving me to deal with the aftermath of my social apocalypse.
I hurried after Lewis, but when I turned the corner, I stopped short. He wasn't heading toward his office. Instead, he was disappearing into Dr. Vaughn's office like some kind of academic moth to a very dangerous flame.
Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back, right? I moved closer to the door, keeping to the side like some kind of discount spy.
It was mostly closed, but not completely. Their voices leaked into the hallway like secrets through cracked walls.
"You can't keep doing this, Lisette," Lewis said, his voice low but carrying that edge of controlled frustration. "These little ambush conversations with my students."
"Your students?"
Vaughn's voice came back, and there was something brittle in it, something that shifted between anger and something else entirely.
"Is that what we're calling them now? Because five years ago, I was your student too. And what we had... God, Adrian, what we had was something."
My breath caught in my throat.
"It was intense," Lewis agreed carefully. "But it was also finite. We both knew that going in."
"Did we?" Her voice changed again, becoming softer, almost wistful. "Because I remember nights when you'd hold me afterward, when you'd trace patterns on my skin and tell me things that made me feel different from the others. Special."
There was a pause, and when she spoke again, her tone had shifted back to something sharper, more bitter.
"But I wasn't, was I? Just another broken girl who thought surrender meant something more than convenient access."
"You weren't broken when I met you," Lewis said quietly. "You were brilliant. Driven. You had everything going for you."
"And now?" The question hung in the air like a challenge. "What am I now, Adrian?"
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Now you're someone who can't let go of something that ended years ago."
"Let go?" Her laugh was sharp, almost manic. "You think I can just let go? Do you have any idea what it's like to taste perfection and then have it ripped away without explanation?"
"Lisette…"
"No, listen to me." Her voice was building, becoming more urgent. "What we had was real. The way you commanded me, the way I responded—that was honest. Pure. More honest than anything I've had before or since. More honest than what you have."
I pressed closer to the door, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"We had an arrangement. Clear boundaries. You agreed to those terms."
"Terms." She spat the word like it tasted bitter. "You reduce what we shared to contractual obligations?"
"What would you call it?"
"Love." The word came out broken, desperate. "I loved you, Adrian. And I…" She stopped abruptly, and I could hear her breathing heavily.
"You are deceiving yourself, Lisette," Lewis said carefully. “There is no love here, you understand? There isn't and there never was.”
“Keep your commands to yourself for once.” Dr. Vaughn transformed in the blink of an eye, overcome with anger now. “Don’t tell me what I feel. You don’t know shit. Never did, never wanted to.”
The silence stretched between them, thick with tension I couldn't fully understand. I held my breath without realizing it.
"Tell me something," Lewis said finally, and his voice had dropped to that dangerous whisper I recognized. "If I commanded you right now, would you still obey?"
The question hung in the air like a loaded gun. I held my breath, waiting for her response.
But there was only silence. Profound, telling silence.
"Interesting," Lewis murmured.
"That's not… I don't—" Vaughn's voice was shaky now, uncertain.
"You do," Lewis said with quiet certainty. "Even after all this time, all this anger, all these protests about my methods—your body still recognizes who's in control."
"You're wrong." But her voice lacked conviction.
"Am I?" There was a pause, and when he spoke again, his voice carried absolute authority. "Kneel."
The word cut through the silence like a blade.
And then I heard it—the soft sound of fabric rustling, of someone sinking to the floor.
My brain completely short-circuited. I blinked hard, convinced I was hallucinating, but the evidence was undeniable.
Through the crack in the door, I could see her, Dr. Vaughn, brilliant and intimidating Dr. Vaughn, on her knees in front of Adrian's chair.
She fucking did it.
"That's what I thought," Lewis said quietly, and there was something almost sad in his voice.
I backed away from the door like it was radioactive, my mind reeling. What the absolute fuck had I just witnessed?
My heart was thundering against my ribs as I stumbled down the hallway, trying to process what I'd seen and heard.
The conversation replayed in my mind—her desperate confession of love, the way her voice kept shifting between anger and longing, the immediate obedience when he commanded her to kneel.
This wasn't just about protecting students from inappropriate relationships. This was about obsession. About a woman who couldn't distinguish between past and present, between love and possession.
And somehow, I was caught in the middle of it all.
I was so completely fucked, and not in the fun way.