Forbidden Office Visit

Valentina heard the knock and set her pen down on the stack of essays she had already finished grading. At twenty-eight she knew the late hush of her campus office too well: the radiator’s thin tick, paper dust in the lamplight, the corridor outside gone quiet after the last seminar. She touched her bangs, smoothing the reddish-brown fall of her hair, and felt the secret under her clothes answer the small movement. A modest overcoat was buttoned to her throat. Beneath it, red lingerie lay against her skin like a decision she had made that morning and then refused to examine. Her wedding band flashed when she opened the door.

Emmett stood there, twenty-two, broader through the shoulders than the boy who had sat in her modern poetry seminar, though he had not been a boy then either. He had been twenty-one his senior year, old enough to look at her too long and old enough to keep his hands to himself while she was still the one marking his papers. The wanting had lived in the room with them all term. Neither of them had named it.

“Professor,” he said.

The word struck something low in her. “Valentina,” she answered, before sense could catch up. “You’re not my student anymore.”

His smile was slow and unhidden. She stepped back and let him in. The door shut. The office seemed suddenly too small for the coat, the lamp, the two of them, and the marriage that sat between them like a third chair no one offered him. He said he was in town for a friend’s reading and had walked past her door on purpose. She should have smiled the way a married woman smiles at a former student and sent him back into the hall. Instead she asked him to sit, and the air went bright and dangerous at once.

They spoke of ordinary things and heard the other thing under every sentence. His apartment in the city. Her winter syllabus. The husband who would be home later, cooking nothing special, trusting the day she had described to him that morning. Emmett’s eyes kept returning to her mouth, then to the high button at her throat. She felt her pulse in her wrists and did not look away. The old attraction had not faded in the year since he graduated. It had only learned how to wait.

“You look the same,” he said. “Better.”

“You’re not supposed to say that.”

“I spent a whole senior year not saying it.” His voice dropped. “I’m done with that.”

Her breath caught. The taboo of it was not abstract. She was married. He had once been hers to teach. Both facts made the heat worse, not better, and she let him see that she knew it.

He leaned forward, and the overcoat shifted at her collar. A thin edge of red lace showed against her skin. Emmett went still, then his gaze came back up, dark and plain.

“That’s not department dress code,” he said. “Red. Lace. Right there.”

Heat climbed her throat. She should have closed the coat. She didn’t. Her pulse kicked hard enough that she felt it in her teeth, a forbidden drum she had been pretending not to hear since the moment he said her name instead of her title. The wanting was mutual; it always had been. Saying so out loud in this office felt like stepping off a ledge she had paced for a year.

“Emmett.”

“Tell me to leave,” he said. “If you want me to, I will. Right now.”

She looked at his hands, broad and still, resting on his knees. No grab. No pressure. Only the offer, clean and adult, waiting on her answer. Her mouth was dry. Between her legs the red lingerie was already damp, and the honesty of that made her almost laugh.

“Not here,” she said. “There’s a bar two blocks off campus. One drink. If we still want this when the glasses are empty, we decide then. If either of us doesn’t, we stop.”

“I want it now,” he said. “But I’ll take the drink.”

They left separately and met again under the dim bulbs of a narrow bar where the bartender, a gray-haired man well into his fifties, barely looked up. Valentina chose a back booth. She ordered a whiskey and let it sit. Emmett did the same. Neither of them was chasing a blur. They wanted their heads clear for whatever came next.

Across the scarred table his knee found hers, a light touch, easy to refuse. She didn’t move away. The contact traveled up her thigh and settled, hot and insistent, under the lace. His eyes held hers with the same focus he used to give a difficult line of verse, except now the line was her, and he was done pretending scholarship.

“I used to watch you write on the board,” he said, low enough that the words belonged only to them. “Your hair. Your mouth. I’d go back to my apartment and think about bending you over that desk, and then I’d hate myself for it, and then I’d think about it again. You were married. I was your student. I never touched you.”

“I knew,” she whispered. “I felt it every time you stayed after class with a question you didn’t need. I went home and let my husband fuck me and closed my eyes and it was still your hands I wanted. I never acted on it. Not while you were in my class. Not while I had any power over your grades.”

His fingers slid along the inside of her wrist, a question. She turned her hand and laced them with his. The simple contact felt filthy in the low light, more intimate than it had any right to be. Her wedding band pressed between their palms. Neither of them looked at it for long.

“And now?” he asked.

“Now you’re twenty-two and gone from my roster, and I’m sitting here in red lingerie under this coat because some reckless part of me hoped the day might ask something of me.” She leaned in until her breath touched his mouth. “I still want you. Badly. If you want a cheap room and a locked door, say so. If you’ve changed your mind, we finish these drinks and I go home.”

“I haven’t changed my mind.” His thumb stroked the soft inside of her wrist. “I want you on your knees. I want you loud. I want to hear you say you chose this.”

“I choose it,” she said, and the words steadied her even as they undid her. “One hour. No one else. We stop the second either of us says stop.”

“Agreed.”

They left the barely touched glasses and the bar’s dim safety. Two blocks farther, a buzzing neon sign advertised rooms by the hour. The lobby smelled of old carpet and citrus cleaner. Emmett paid cash. The key was attached to a plastic tag worn smooth by other people’s secrets. In the elevator neither of them spoke. Valentina’s hand found his belt and held, not yanking, just claiming, and his answering grip on her hip was firm enough to make her shiver.

The room was small and honest about what it was: a dresser with a cloudy mirror, a bed with a thin spread, a lamp that threw everything the color of weak tea. Emmett locked the door and turned to her.

“Still yes?” he asked.

“Still yes.”

She unbuttoned the overcoat and let it fall.

Red lingerie. A bra that barely held her, panties cut high on the hips, garter straps she had fastened that morning with shaking hands and no witness. Her reddish-brown hair spilled over her shoulders, bangs slightly mussed. Emmett swore under his breath, reverent and filthy at once.

“Look at you,” he said. “My professor. Married. Dressed like you came here to be ruined.”

“Then ruin me,” she said, and dropped to her knees on the rough carpet.

She opened his belt with eager fingers and freed his cock, already thick and flushed, the head shining. The sight of it made her mouth water. She had imagined this in guilty flashes and never let the fantasy finish. Now she wrapped her hand around the shaft, felt the heat and the weight, and looked up so he could see her choose it again.

“I want this,” she said, and took him in.

She sucked him with sloppy, hungry devotion, saliva slicking her lips and his cock, the wet sounds obscene in the cheap room. She hollowed her cheeks, dragged her tongue along the underside, then sank down until her eyes watered and she had to pull back, gasping, strings of spit connecting her mouth to him. She didn’t wipe them away. She wanted the mess. She wanted him to see his married former professor on her knees, bangs falling in her face, red lace framing a body she was offering without apology. Her hand worked what her mouth left, twisting, pumping, while she licked the head and moaned around it like the taste alone could get her off.

“Fuck, Valentina.” His hand hovered, then settled in her hair when she nodded her permission. “Just like that. God, your mouth.”

She took him deeper, sloppier, letting spit run down her chin onto the red bra. Her pussy throbbed, empty and soaked, the panties clinging. When she pulled off, her lips were swollen, her voice wrecked.

“I need you inside me,” she said. “Now. Hard.”

He hauled her up and kissed her, tasting himself, then turned her to the dresser. The mirror showed them both: her flushed face, his body behind hers, the red straps bright against her skin. He dragged the panties aside, not even off, and slid two fingers through her slick folds.

“So wet,” he said. “You walked around campus like this.”

“For you,” she admitted, and pushed back. “Fuck me.”

He lined up and drove in with one thick stroke. The stretch punched a cry out of her. She braced on the dresser, palms flat, and watched her own mouth fall open in the glass as he started to thrust. Hard. Deep. The cheap furniture knocked the wall in a rhythm anyone in the next room would understand. She didn’t care. Each snap of his hips jolted her breasts in the red bra and sent a bright shock through her clit. He gripped her hips, then her hair, tugging just enough to arch her, and she met him, fucking back onto his cock with greedy little rolls of her ass.

“Yes,” she gasped. “Don’t be gentle. I didn’t come here for gentle.”

“You came here to get used,” he said against her ear, and the words made her clench around him. He fucked her through it, relentless, the wet slap of their bodies filling the room. Her wedding ring clicked against the dresser every time she rocked forward. The sound should have shamed her. It only made her wetter.

When her thighs started to shake he pulled out, spun her, and walked her to the bed. She climbed on and turned, settling over him in reverse, her back to his chest, her ass presented as she reached down and guided his cock back inside. The angle was devastating. She sank until she was full, then began to ride, bouncing in short, filthy strokes that made her ass clap against his hips. Red straps framed the motion. Her hair stuck to her neck. She braced her hands on his thighs and worked herself on him, chasing the thick drag against her front wall, moaning without trying to be quiet.

“That’s it,” he growled. His palm cracked across her ass, a bright sting that bloomed into heat. She cried out and rode harder. He smacked her again, then again, each slap a claim she arched into. “Look at you. Riding my cock like you can’t get enough. My dirty married professor slut.”

The words hit exactly where she wanted them. “Yes,” she moaned, filthy encouragement spilling out of her as she ground down. “Say it again. I’m your slut. Your married slut. Fuck, Emmett, smack me, use me, I want it, I want all of it.”

He gripped her hips and thrust up to meet her, the bedframe complaining, his hand printing heat across her ass until the skin sang. She reached between her legs and rubbed her clit in tight circles, sobbing at the combination, so close she could taste it. He felt her tightening and sat up enough to mouth her shoulder.

“Not yet,” he said. “I want to see your face when you come.”

He lifted her off, and she went willingly onto her back, hair fanned on the thin pillow, bangs damp against her forehead. He stripped the panties down her legs and unhooked the bra, leaving her in nothing but flushed skin and the red garter belt he didn’t bother removing. Then he covered her, pinned her wrists above her head with one strong hand, and pushed back in.

Missionary stole her breath. His weight, his eyes, the way he held her open and watched every expression. He pounded her in deep, measured strokes that quickly turned savage, hips snapping, cock driving to the hilt while her wrists stayed caught in his grip. She could have pulled free. She didn’t. She locked her ankles behind him and took every thrust, chanting yes, yes, harder, don’t stop.

“You feel so good,” he rasped. “So fucking tight. This pussy’s been waiting for me.”

“It has,” she sobbed. “God, Emmett, right there, don’t you dare slow down.”

He didn’t. He fucked her like the year of restraint had finally broken, pinning her, filling her, the wet sounds and her rising cries bouncing off the thin walls. Pleasure coiled hard and bright at the base of her spine. She met his eyes and let him see it happen: the professor, the wife, the woman in red who had walked into this room on purpose. The orgasm tore through her in a screaming rush, her whole body clamping down, thighs shaking, voice breaking on his name as she came and came around his cock.

He fucked her through it, groaning, and pulled out at the last second to spill across her stomach in hot pulses, painting her skin while she shuddered under him. For a moment there was only breath and the tick of the cheap lamp.

She wasn’t finished.

Still trembling, she rose and swung a leg over his shoulders, straddling his face with her soaked pussy hovering at his mouth. “One more,” she said, voice raw. “I want your tongue. Make me come again.”

He dragged her down and lapped at her with greedy, open-mouthed hunger, licking her own slick and the mess of their fucking, sucking her clit until she grabbed the headboard and rode his mouth without shame. The second orgasm was sharper, meaner, a white-hot clench that left her gasping his name into the stale air while he held her hips and drank every pulse.

Afterward they lay tangled and sweat-slicked, hearts knocking, the room smelling of sex and cheap soap. No one spoke for a long minute. Then they dressed slowly, piece by piece, as if speed would make it less real. He watched her step back into the red lingerie, watched her button the modest overcoat over the evidence. At the door she turned, and he kissed her once, deep and unhurried, a last taste they both let last.

“This stays ours,” she said.

“It does.”

She touched his cheek, then stepped into the hall, coat closed, hair smoothed, wedding band warm on her finger, and walked back toward the life that expected her home for dinner.

She would sit across from her husband tonight and feel Emmett’s come drying on skin no one else would see.