Professor's Office Hours With His Graduate Student

I sat across from Professor Elias Voss in his dimly lit office, the only sounds the scratch of red pens on final papers and the low hum of the campus heating system. At twenty-two, I was supposed to be focused on my master’s thesis, but every Thursday night for the past four months I had been here instead—his teaching assistant, his late-night grader, and secretly, the girl whose panties grew damp the second his deep, cultured voice said my name.

Elias was fifty-two, silver-haired, broad-shouldered, and unfairly handsome in that ruthless, patrician way older men sometimes perfect. His steel-gray eyes missed nothing. The fine lines at their corners only made him more attractive, like every year of his life had been spent learning exactly how to ruin a girl with a single look. Tonight he wore a charcoal vest over a white shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, exposing thick, veined forearms that made my stomach flutter every time he reached for another paper.

We’d been working in silence for two hours. The tension had grown so thick I could barely breathe. Every time our fingers brushed passing a stack of essays, electricity crackled up my arm. I kept stealing glances at the sharp cut of his jaw, the way his silver hair caught the lamplight, the authoritative set of his mouth. Twice my age. My professor. Completely, deliciously off-limits.

“Lena.”

His voice wrapped around my name like velvet and gravel. I looked up. He had set his pen down. Those intense gray eyes pinned me to the chair.

“I can’t pretend anymore,” he said quietly. “Not tonight.”

My heart slammed against my ribs. “Professor Voss?”

“Elias,” he corrected, voice dropping an octave. “When we’re alone like this, you call me Elias.”

He rose slowly, all six-foot-three of him, and came around the massive oak desk. I couldn’t move. He stopped in front of me, close enough that I caught the scent of his cologne—sandalwood, leather, something expensive and masculine. One large, veined hand lifted and cupped my cheek with shocking gentleness.

“I’ve wanted you since the first day you walked into my lecture hall,” he confessed, thumb stroking my lower lip. “That little plaid skirt. Those wide, curious eyes. Every time you called me Professor in that sweet voice, my cock throbbed so hard I had to grade papers with it trapped under my desk. I’ve fought it for months. You’re twenty-two. My student. My TA. But I’m done fighting, Lena. I need to know if you want this too.”