Professor Off-Limits

Do You Really Want to Know

ALEENA'S POV

Mira was already asleep by the time I finally set my phone down, and her breathing was slow and even across the room, completely unaware of the two messages I had received a while back.

I lay there in the dark for a very long moment, staring at the ceiling, and Vivienne and Lorcan’s text kept replaying in my head every time I tried to close my eyes to think of something.

Then I remembered I was supposed to be at the Velvet room in two hours, and I was not even ready yet.

But I couldn’t go—not now. I couldn’t stand behind a bar, smiling at strangers with my mind spinning this hard—with real trouble apparently in motion and no idea of what it could

possibly be.

I pulled my phone and texted Rosie before I could talk myself out of it.

“Hi Rosie, could you please cover for me tonight?”

Then a few minutes later, her text came in.

“Sure Aleena… but what’s the problem?”

I read her text and replied, “it’s a long story, but I owe you a big one.”

She responded in less than a minute. “Say less. Hope you’re good?”

“Yeah, working on it.”

Then I opened my notes app shortly after I replied to her text and went to the page I had been tracking the appeal fund since the night I had first filled out that application. I already had four thousand dollars against seven thousand dollars—at least, I had already gone halfway for the fee. Missing a shift tonight just widened the gap of me getting there, but I had to deal with this issue first because if Vivienne really did something, then all I had been working for would be in vain.

Tonight I had to sleep and rest, because I didn’t know what was awaiting me the next day.

—

The next day, I woke up groggy—already feeling the weight of what was waiting for me pressing down hard on my chest.

I took my bath and got dressed on autopilot, my mind still foggy and I headed out without waking Mira because I didn’t have an answer to her unanswered question from the previous day.

When I got to the lecture hall, it was already half full, and my eyes scanned the crowd for any trace of Vivvenne, maybe I could perhaps ask her what she meant by that text, but unfortunately for me, I didn’t see her—and that unsettled me more than seeing her would have.

I was sliding into my seat when a fragment of conversation drifted over from two rows back—not practically directed at me, but something that came at me for my benefit.

“Did you hear what Vivienne did yesterday?” A girl’s voice, low and delighted in a way people get by someone’s scandal. “She marched straight into the board room during a meeting.”

“Wait, like seriously?” Her friend's voice sounded genuinely stunned now, not just amazed. “You don’t just walk into a board session. People get expelled for less than interrupting one of those.”

"I know. My roommate's on the student conduct committee, she said Vivienne didn't even wait to be announced. Just walked in mid-meeting like she owned the room."

"That's insane. Even seniors with actual complaints have to file three weeks in advance to get five minutes with them."

"That's the thing though—rules don't really apply to Vivienne. She doesn't knock for anyone. Her family basically funds half this campus. She could set the building on fire and they'd thank her for the renovation."

The first girl lowered her voice further, and I had to strain to catch the rest. "Nobody actually knows what she said in there. But apparently she was in there almost twenty minutes."

My stomach turned coldly. Did she actually hand it over? Did she say something to a real person with real authority over my scholarship? Or was it something else entirely? Some other kind of damage I hadn’t even imagined yet?

The lecture commenced shortly after, but I was far too gone to even hear any single word that followed. I just spent the whole hour staring at my notebook, my pen unmoving, and the whisper I’d just heard looping in my head on repeat.

—

After the lecture, I picked my bag and headed straight to Lorcan’s office. I didn’t text ahead—I just went there to find out something before I lost my mind over assumptions.

When I got there, the door wasn’t locked, and I didn’t even bother to knock—I just pushed it open, some reckless part of me still rattled about what was going on.

"Lorcan, I need to—" I was already halfway through his name before my brain caught up with what my eyes were seeing.

He was at his desk, his shirt open, and his head tipped back in a way that I didn’t want to think further, and he was not very much alone in the way I needed him to be for the sentence I was about to say.

A woman was there also—dark and familiar in a way that took a horrifying second to place as Sylvie. She was on her knees in front of him, and the sound that filled the room when I opened the door made my cheeks flush.

I froze at the doorway, and my face kept switching up—from hot to cold, probably the horrible cocktail of humiliation and something else I refuse to examine further.

"You could knock, Aleena." Lorcan's voice came out low and rough, entirely composed for a man seconds from finishing before I interrupted him, and somehow that composure was far worse than if he had been flustered.

His eyes found mine over Sylvie’s head, dark and unbothered , almost amused by my horror.

I swallowed the huge lump in my throat and forced myself to look away. "I—I'm so sorry, I'll—" I turned around and fumbled with the door handle behind me, my whole body burning.

"Stay." He said and I heard the shuffling of clothes behind me, but I dare not look.

He said something low to Sylvie—I didn’t catch it because I didn’t want to, walking in on them was a first class embarrassment as it is, and I can’t dare try to hear what they were saying.

Sylvie passed me on her way out, straightening her blouse and walking with the unbothered grace of someone who this had happened to a lot previously. She spared me one unreadable glance, and then the door clicked shut behind her.

I finally forced myself to turn around, and I kept my eyes fixed somewhere over his shoulder, at the bookshelf, at the window, at anything that wasn’t Lorcan’s face because I genuinely couldn’t look him in the eyes right now with my whole body humming with the heat I had no right to be feeling.

“So, what do you actually want?” He said, unbothered, buttoning his shirt slowly, his gaze fixed entirely on my face and I had to force the heat not to rise up this time. “Or did you just come here to watch?”

I swallowed the dryness in my throat. "I didn't—" My voice came out strangled, and I had to force myself to breathe and to hold onto the reason I actually came here instead of dissolving into the mortification currently eating me alive. “I needed to know what you meant,” I said, my gaze still moving everywhere but him. “About the text,” I straightened up, pushing those absurd thoughts aside and forcing my voice to remain steady. “What do I actually owe you?”

He finished with the last button and stood up, his gaze still fixed on me, and even after what I just walked in on, there was always something about the way he did it, like the rest of the room had ceased to exist the moment his attention landed on me.

He came around the desk slowly, and I didn’t step back this time, even though my instinct was screaming at me to do so.

He tilted his head, and something sharpened in his expression—not anger, but it was something that was closer to hunger, low and controlled and he was entirely aware of the effect it had on me after what I had just witnessed.

Then a slow, dangerous smile spread across his face, and he leaned down just slightly, his voice dropping low enough that it felt like it was meant for no one but me. "Do you really want to know what you owe me, Aleena?" He said, the smile not leaving his lips.

I didn’t answer because I didn’t trust myself to answer—my heart was hammering too hard, my skin was becoming too hot, and the memory of what I had just walked in on still burning behind my eyes even as every part of me leaned helplessly towards him instead of away, and I had to press my thighs together to stop the throbbing in my p***y.

He waited, watching my bodily movements, and that same dangerous smile never once slipping.