Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 55

Adrian’s POV

The headlines blur together on my phone screen like some nightmarish collage designed specifically to destroy what little peace I've managed to construct in my exile.

Sophie's face stares back at me from gossip sites and social media posts—sometimes smiling in what must be an old university photo, sometimes caught off-guard by the paparazzi shots that started this whole shitstorm.

Each image feels like a violation, her privacy stripped away and fed to the internet's insatiable appetite for scandal.

The comment sections are worse. Hundreds of strangers dissecting her like prey, debating whether she's victim or accomplice, whether she deserves sympathy or scorn.

They're treating her pain like entertainment, her private struggles like public property, and the helpless rage building in my chest threatens to choke me completely.

This is my fault. The thought circles endlessly, inescapable. She chose to walk with me, chose to trust me enough to be seen in public, and I've repaid that trust by making her a target.

By existing in her orbit, I've painted a bullseye on her back for every sadist with internet access to take aim at.

My hands shake with fury as I scroll through another thread analyzing her body language in the photos, as if these armchair psychologists can divine the state of her soul from a few grainy surveillance shots.

The urge to throw the phone across the room wars with the compulsive need to keep reading, to catalog every fresh humiliation being heaped on her name.

I dial Lisette's number before rational thought can intervene, my finger moving with violent precision across the screen.

"Adrian, darling," she answers on the second ring, her voice carrying that familiar mix of false sweetness and barely contained triumph. "How lovely to hear from you. Finally missing me?"

"You crossed a line," I say without preamble, my voice low and dangerous in a way that used to make grown men step back. "Leave Sophie out of this."

"Oh, Adrian." Lisette's tone shifts to mock concern, the kind of patronizing sympathy that makes my skin crawl. "You're spiraling again, aren't you? This obsession with your students isn't healthy."

The words hit exactly where she intended, activating every doubt and self-recrimination I've carefully buried. Because isn't that exactly what this looks like? Isn't that exactly what it is—another inappropriate fixation on a young woman under my influence?

"She's not—" I start, then stop, my jaw clenching so hard I can hear my teeth grinding. Even now, even knowing her tactics, Lisette manages to twist everything, making me question my own reality and motivations.

"Getting attached to them, calling to threaten me when they face consequences for their poor choices..."

Her voice takes on the clinical detachment she perfected in graduate school, analyzing me like I'm a particularly interesting case study.

"You need help, darling. Professional help."

The psychological manipulation is masterful, I have to admit. She's turned my protective instincts into evidence of pathology, my concern for Sophie into proof of my own instability.

It’s been years, and she still knows exactly which buttons to push to make me doubt everything about myself.

I hang up without another word and drive my fist into the wall beside the window, knuckles splitting against plaster with a satisfying crunch of bone against solid surface.

The pain grounds me, cuts through the fury and helplessness clawing at my chest like hungry animals.

Blood seeps from the split skin, and I stare at it with detached fascination.

When did I become the kind of man who punches walls? When did my legendary control deteriorate to the point where physical violence against inanimate objects seems like a reasonable response to emotional turmoil?

Since Sophie, the answer comes unbidden. Since a twenty-two-year-old literature student with warm brown eyes and hidden steel in her spine walked into my carefully constructed world and set it on fire simply by existing.

I dial her number before conscious thought can kick in, needing to hear her voice, to know she's surviving this media storm I've inadvertently created.

The phone rings once, twice, and my heart hammers against my ribs like it's trying to escape the cage of bone and muscle containing it.

What are you doing?

The question stops me cold, finger hovering over the screen as reality crashes back down. Checking on her, protecting her, caring about her wellbeing—these are all violations of the careful distance I maintain.

The boundaries that keep me safe, that keep them both safe from the toxic combination of my need for control and her willingness to surrender it.

I end the call, staring at her contact information like it might explode. Her name on my phone feels dangerous, loaded with implications I'm not ready to face.

Because caring about Sophie Hale, really caring, not just wanting to possess or control, means acknowledging that what we have goes beyond power exchange and sexual chemistry.

And that acknowledgment terrifies me more than any scandal or professional ruin ever could.

"Rough day?"

I turn to find Lolita in my doorway, studying my bloodied knuckles and the hole in my wall with calculating eyes. She moves through my space like she still belongs here, like the past twenty years were just a brief intermission in a play that never really ended.

"Something like that," I manage, moving to pour myself whiskey with hands that are still trembling slightly. The crystal decanter clinks against the glass, betraying the careful control I'm trying to project.

Lolita settles onto my leather couch with feline grace, crossing her legs with the kind of deliberate elegance that used to make eighteen-year-old me dizzy with want.

Now it just feels calculated, another performance in a repertoire she's perfected over decades of manipulation.

"She's gotten under your skin, hasn't she?" Her voice carries the same analytical detachment Lisette had used, but without the malicious edge. "This student of yours."

I don't answer, focusing instead on the burn of whiskey down my throat, but Lolita's knowing smile suggests my silence says everything she needs to hear.

"How fascinating," she murmurs, and there's something almost pleased in her tone, like she's discovered a particularly intriguing puzzle to solve. "I never thought I'd see the day when Adrian Lewis would lose his composure over a woman."

"I haven't lost anything," I say, but the words sound hollow even to me.

"Haven't you?"

She tilts her head, studying me with the intensity that once made me believe I was the most important person in her world.

"When was the last time you punched a wall, darling? When was the last time you called an ex-lover to threaten them over someone else's wellbeing?"

The accuracy of her observations makes me want to pour another drink, then another, until the sharp edges of this conversation blur into something more manageable.

But I have a feeling Lolita isn't finished with her analysis, and whiskey won't save me from whatever conclusions she's drawing about the man I've become.