Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 58

I wake to the unfamiliar sensation of Adrian's arm draped across my waist, his breath warm and steady against the back of my neck. For a moment, I'm disoriented—the room is wrong, the light is wrong, everything feels different from what I expected.

Sunlight streams through tall windows I don't recognize, casting geometric patterns across walls painted in deep charcoal gray.

The furniture around me is expensive but impersonal—sleek black nightstands, a dresser that looks like it belongs in a luxury hotel suite, abstract art that says nothing about the person who chose it.

I realize with a start that I'm in Adrian's actual bedroom, not the red room where we usually end up.

His personal space, where he sleeps and dreams and exists when he's not performing the role of dominant professor. The thought should feel intimate, but instead the room feels strangely hollow, like a beautiful shell with nothing living inside it.

Carefully extracting myself from his embrace, I slip on his discarded dress shirt from last night. The fabric falls to mid-thigh, still carrying his scent—expensive cologne mixed with something distinctly him.

My bare feet are silent against the hardwood floors as I pad through the house, curiosity driving me to explore the spaces I've never seen.

Every room I pass through reinforces the same impression: curated but sterile, beautiful but empty. The living room could be a showroom display, all leather and dark wood and carefully arranged books that might never have been opened.

No photographs on the mantle, no personal mementos scattered on side tables, nothing that reveals the man who lives here.

It's like Adrian himself—stunning on the surface, but guarded beneath in ways that feel almost impenetrable.

In the kitchen, I'm surprised to find his refrigerator well-stocked with actual food rather than the bachelor staples I'd expected. Fresh eggs, good bread, vegetables that haven't wilted with neglect.

Either he cooks more than I would have guessed, or he has someone who shops for him with very specific instructions.

I decide to make eggs and toast—simple comfort food that feels appropriately domestic for this strange morning after. The act of cooking in his kitchen, using his plates and utensils, feels more intimate somehow than anything we'd shared in the red room.

There's something profound about performing these mundane acts of care in his personal space.

"What are you doing?"

Adrian's voice makes me jump, the spatula nearly slipping from my fingers. I turn to find him standing in the doorway, hair disheveled from sleep, watching me with that intense focus that makes my skin prickle with nervous energy.

He's pulled on pajama pants but nothing else, and the sight of his bare chest in the morning light does things to my pulse that I'm trying to ignore.

"Making breakfast," I say, turning back to the eggs before I get distracted by the way his muscles shift when he moves. "I hope you don't mind me raiding your fridge?"

"No," he says slowly, settling onto one of the bar stools to continue watching me.

The scrutiny makes me fidget with the spatula in a way his dominance never had. This feels more exposing somehow—being observed while doing something so normal, so decidedly unexotic.

"I didn't know what you liked, so I made what I know how to make," I say, trying to lighten the atmosphere that's growing heavier with each passing second. "What do you usually have for breakfast?"

"Cunnilingus," Adrian replies without missing a beat, his expression perfectly serious.

My jaw drops, the spatula clattering to the marble counter as heat floods my cheeks. "Oh. Okay. Um..." I stammer, my brain completely short-circuiting at the casual way he delivered that piece of information.

Then Adrian throws his head back and laughs—genuine, unguarded laughter that transforms his entire face.

The sound is rich and warm and completely unexpected, erasing years from his features and revealing the man he might be when no one's watching.

"Coffee, Sophie," he says between chuckles, his storm-gray eyes bright with mischief. "I usually have coffee for breakfast."

The relief that floods through me is immediately followed by indignation. Without thinking, I grab the dish towel from the counter and hurl it at his smirking face.

"You ass!" I shout, but I'm laughing too, the tension breaking like a dam burst. "I thought you were serious!"

He dodges the towel with surprising grace, grinning in a way I've never seen from him. "Your face," he says, still chuckling. "You looked absolutely terrified."

"I was not terrified," I protest, reaching for another projectile. "I was just... processing."

"Processing what, exactly?" He slides off the bar stool, moving toward me with predatory grace that's somehow playful rather than threatening.

"How to respond to that level of honesty at eight in the morning," I say, backing away from him around the kitchen island.

"You could always offer," he suggests, eyes twinkling with a humor I didn't know he possessed.

I grab a banana from the fruit bowl and brandish it like a weapon. "Don't you dare come any closer, or I'll... I'll make you eat healthy breakfast food!"

"The horror," he deadpans, but he's still grinning as he feints left, then lunges right.

I shriek with laughter, darting away from his reaching hands and running toward the living room.

Behind me, I can hear his footsteps and low chuckles as he gives chase. The domestic normalcy of it, running through someone's house like children, laughing until my sides ache, feels surreal after months of carefully negotiated power dynamics.

He catches me around the waist just as I reach the hallway, hauling me against his chest while I'm still giggling breathlessly.

"Got you," he murmurs against my ear, but there's nothing possessive or commanding in his tone. Just satisfaction and lingering amusement.

"This is not how I pictured this morning going," I admit, leaning back against his warmth.

"No? What did you picture?"

"Awkward small talk. Maybe some regrettable morning-after behavior. The usual disaster."

His arms tighten around me slightly. "Disappointed?"

Before I can answer, he's suddenly lifting me off my feet and carrying me toward what I assume is a bathroom.

But instead of stopping at the threshold, he steps directly into an enormous walk-in shower with multiple heads and enough space for a small party—with me still fully clothed in his borrowed dress shirt.

"Adrian, what are you—"

The water hits us both with shocking suddenness as he turns on multiple shower heads at once. I squeal and laugh, the borrowed shirt immediately soaking through and clinging to my skin while water streams down my face and into my mouth.

"You're completely insane!" I gasp, pushing wet hair out of my eyes, but I'm still laughing as warm water cascades over us both.

"Probably," he agrees, his own hair darkened and dripping, pajama pants plastered to his legs.

We're both breathless from laughter and the surprise of it, but then something shifts.

The laughter fades as our eyes meet through the steam and spray, and suddenly the air between us feels electric in an entirely different way. Water droplets cling to his lashes, making his storm-gray eyes seem even more intense as they search my face.

Time seems to slow, the sound of the shower becoming background noise to the thundering of my pulse. His hand comes up to cup my cheek, thumb brushing away the water streaming down my face with infinite gentleness.

"Sophie," he whispers, my name barely audible over the cascade of water.

When he kisses me, it's nothing like the commanding, possessive kisses I've come to expect from him. This is soft, tentative, like he's asking permission with every brush of his lips against mine.

The water streams between us, warm and constant, but all I can focus on is the way he holds me—like I'm something precious rather than something to be conquered.

His other hand finds the small of my back, pulling me closer but not demanding, just inviting. When I part my lips under his, he sighs into my mouth like he's been holding his breath for months.

The kiss deepens slowly, a gradual exploration rather than an invasion, his tongue dancing with mine in a rhythm that feels like discovery.

Steam rises around us, cocooning us in warmth and intimacy that has nothing to do with power or control. This is just us, learning each other's mouths like we're doing it for the first time.

When we finally break apart, both breathing hard, he rests his forehead against mine.

For the first time since I've known him, we're not Professor Lewis and his student, not dominant and submissive, not two people locked in complicated power games.

We're simply Sophie and Adrian, standing in a shower on a Sunday morning, discovering what it might feel like to be normal together.