Chapter 28:

"Forbidden Gravity"

The Student:

She watched me again.

I wasn't imagining it.

The way her gaze hooked under my collar,

then dipped behind my ear,

like her stare had fingers.

Like she was already touching me.

She asked me to stay after class.

Just me.

No reason, no assignment.

Just:

"Close the door."

I swear I didn't breathe for thirty seconds.

She leaned on the edge of her desk like it belonged to her spine,

one knee over the other

delicate, powerful, waiting.

I wanted to scream and kneel and kiss and run

all at once.

Her voice was lower than usual.

Velvet laced with threadbare control.

She asked questions I didn't know how to answer.

About Plato. About desire.

About how people hide truth under metaphors.

She didn't touch me.

But her words did.

They crawled over my thighs like something alive.

"You understand longing, don't you?"

I nodded.

I think I nodded.

My knees weren't knees anymore.

They were paper.

She moved closer.

Too close.

Her perfume wasn't perfume it was a trap,

and I begged it to close around me.

The Teacher:

She bites her bottom lip when I lean in.

She's too young to hide her reactions.

Too raw to lie with her face.

Good.

I don't want innocence,

I want honest hunger.

She's the kind that would fall apart under my hand

shiver just from the threat of my breath.

But I haven't touched her.

Yet.

Temptation tastes better when it starves.

I circled her like an idea,

a dangerous hypothesis I want to prove.

Asked about temptation in literature.

Her eyes betrayed her mouth.

She stared at my lips

while pretending to answer.

So I stepped in.

And when our knees touched,

when her hand accidentally brushed mine,

I saw it:

her chest heaved once

and her lips parted like petals soaked in rain.

I could've waited longer.

Played the long game.

But I was done pretending.

So I said it, right there:

"Do you want me to kiss you?"

Her silence was louder than yes.

Both:

The air cracked.

Not with thunder,

but with want.

And when our mouths met

it wasn't gentle.

It was teeth.

Tongue.

A stolen gasp.

A hand gripping the back of a chair hers.

A thigh pressing into heat mine.

Our kiss wasn't a beginning.

It was a confession.

Of every stolen glance.

Every delayed goodbye.

Every time we imagined

what the other tasted like

when she moaned.

And when we broke apart,

barely,

foreheads touching,

her lips red,

mine trembling

she said,

"Now what?"

And I whispered,

"Now I ruin you."