Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 49

Adrian’s POV

We walk in silence through the tree-lined streets, the normalcy of it utterly unsettling. No commands, no power games, no carefully orchestrated seduction—just two people putting one foot in front of the other like ordinary humans do every day.

I find myself stealing glances at Sophie, noting how her hair catches the afternoon light in shades of auburn I'd forgotten existed, how she's unconsciously matching my longer stride without complaint.

This simple walk together feels more dangerous than anything we've ever done in private.

She's different today. There's something in her posture, a new confidence that wasn't there before. The way she carries herself speaks of recent satisfaction, of being thoroughly claimed and appreciated.

It shouldn't bother me, I have no right to feel possessive over her choices, but the knowledge that Cassian's hands were on her last night, that he gave her something I couldn't, sits in my chest like broken glass.

"She knew exactly what she was doing back there," Sophie says finally, breaking the silence that's stretched for three full blocks. "Lolita. The way she touched him, made those comments about accessibility."

"She always does." The words slip out before I can stop them, before I can filter them through my usual careful control. "Lolita doesn't do anything accidentally."

Sophie turns her head to look at me, and I can see the questions forming behind her warm brown eyes. There's something searching in her expression, like she's trying to solve a puzzle she's been working on for months.

"Is that why you left the café? Because you couldn't handle seeing her with someone else?"

The assumption stings more than it should.

As if I'm still that lovesick eighteen-year-old who built futures around a woman who saw me as a project to complete. As if twenty years of emotional evolution mean nothing when faced with the architect of my destruction.

"I left because I had to," I say, the words coming out rougher than intended. "Because watching her perform always makes me feel like I'm eighteen again, and that's not a person I particularly want to be."

Sophie stops walking abruptly, her sneakers scuffing against the sidewalk as she turns to face me.

Her expression shifts, hardening into something I recognize—the same look she'd worn the night she tried our safe word, and I'd pushed her past her limits anyway. Accusation mixed with hurt, disappointment wrapped in defiance.

"Like you had to leave Vaughn in the hospital?" she asks, and the words hit like a physical blow.

I feel my chest tighten, the carefully constructed walls I've built around that particular memory beginning to crack and crumble. The autumn air suddenly feels too thin, too cold, and I have to force myself to keep breathing normally.

"What did you say?"

"She told me." Sophie continues, her composure unraveling with each word. “About that night.“

Her voice rises slightly, drawing curious glances from passing pedestrians.

"About how you hurt her during breath play, how she ended up unconscious with broken ribs. How you never even visited her in the hospital, never checked if she was okay."

The accusation lands like a knife between my ribs, precise and devastating. For a moment, I can't breathe, can't speak, can't do anything but stare at this woman who thinks I'm capable of that kind of violence.

The woman whose trust I've been trying so desperately to earn, whose opinion of me matters more than it should.

"That's not what happened." My voice is steady, controlled, but I can feel my hands shaking at my sides. "That's not what fucking happened."

"Then tell me what did," Sophie challenges, taking a step closer. Her brown eyes are blazing with emotion—anger, hurt, confusion all swirled together. "Because right now, all I have is her version, and it makes you sound like a monster."

The word hits something raw and unprotected inside me, something I've spent five years trying to bury. Monster. Is that really what she thinks I am? Someone capable of hurting a woman badly enough to hospitalize her?

I close my eyes, dragging in a breath that tastes like ash and old regrets. When I open them again, Sophie is still standing there, waiting for an answer I'm not sure I can give without completely falling apart.

"You want to know what happened?" I ask quietly. "You really want to know?"

She nods, her jaw set with determination.

Five years ago

I stood in my apartment facing Lisette across a space that suddenly felt too small to contain both of us and her growing obsession.

She'd been pushing boundaries for weeks—showing up unannounced at my office, questioning me about other women in my classes, talking about futures I'd never promised and commitments I'd never made.

The relationship had started as a simple arrangement. Lisette was brilliant, ambitious, and interested in exploring the same dynamics that had shaped me. But somewhere along the way, clinical fascination had morphed into something darker, more desperate.

"I'm ending this, Lisette." I kept my voice calm, professional, the same tone I'd use to dismiss a particularly persistent student. "You're developing feelings that go beyond our arrangement."

"No." She backed away from me, eyes wild with something that looked dangerously close to panic. "You don't get to decide this is over. Not after everything we've shared."

"This was always temporary," I reminded her, fighting to maintain the emotional distance she was systematically destroying. "We discussed boundaries from the beginning. We agreed this would end when you defended your dissertation."

"Fuck your boundaries!"

The wine glass she'd been holding shattered against the wall, red liquid and crystal fragments painting my white walls like abstract art.

"You think you can just use me and throw me away? Like I'm nothing? Like what we have means nothing?"

I'd seen obsession before, had dealt with students who confused intellectual intensity with romantic attraction, but this was different. This was dangerous in a way that made my skin crawl.

When reasoning failed, when gentle firmness turned to increasingly desperate attempts to make her understand, when she refused to leave my apartment despite increasingly firm requests, Lisette did something I never could have predicted.

She grabbed a shard of the broken wine glass, her fingers already bleeding from the sharp edges.

“Lisette… Put it down. Now.”

"If you won't be mine," she whispered, her voice carrying a calm certainty that chilled me to the bone, "then you'll be no one's."

I lunged forward, trying to stop her, but she was beyond rational thought, beyond any kind of intervention. The glass dragged across her own ribs in one deliberate, brutal motion, tearing through skin and muscle with surgical precision.

"Jesus Christ, Lisette!" I pressed my hands against the wound, trying to stem the bleeding while she smiled at me with something that looked like satisfaction.

"Now you'll have to stay," she gasped, her blood soaking through my shirt, warm and sticky. "Now you'll have to take care of me."

By the time the ambulance I called arrived, she'd lost enough blood to fade in and out of consciousness, her story already prepared, already perfected. She told them I'd done it during rough sex, that I'd pushed too hard and hurt her.

And why wouldn't they believe her? A vulnerable graduate student, a male professor with a reputation for intensity—the narrative wrote itself.