Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 20

I burst into the restroom like I was fleeing a fucking crime scene.

My chest was doing that thing where it forgets how to work properly, and my reflection looked like I'd been hit by an academic truck.

Red cheeks, eyes that had apparently been crying without my permission, lips trembling like I'd just escaped something that wanted to eat me whole.

"What the actual fuck is happening to me?" I whispered to my disaster reflection.

My brain was stuck on repeat—his voice, the way she just dropped to her knees like muscle memory. My stomach was doing Olympic-level gymnastics, and not the good kind.

Was that my future? Was I next in line for whatever psychological mindfuck had just played out in Vaughn's office?

I splashed cold water on my face, trying to shock my system back to normal. Spoiler alert: it didn't work. Nothing was going to work because my thoughts were having a full-scale riot in my skull.

Maybe I was already halfway gone. I'd let him crack me open like a fucking walnut, let him see parts of me I didn't even know existed. And here's the really fucked up part—I liked it.

God help me, I craved it like caffeine in the morning.

But what if this wasn't about pleasure? What if it was about systematic destruction of everything I'd worked to build?

A knock on the bathroom door made me flinch like I'd been electrocuted. I wasn't ready to face anyone—not Cleo with her inevitable interrogation, definitely not Lewis with his mind-reading bullshit.

But hiding in bathrooms is for high schoolers, and I was done being a coward.

If I was going to spiral into complete psychological collapse, I at least deserved to know how deep this rabbit hole went.

My feet carried me straight to Dr. Vaughn's office like they had their own agenda.

When I passed by, Lewis was gone—probably off manipulating some other unsuspecting academic victim.

But Vaughn was still there, perched on the edge of her desk, flipping through a binder like she hadn't just been on her knees five minutes ago.

Her posture was museum-quality elegant, but something in her eyes when she looked up screamed exhaustion. Like she'd been fighting a war for years and was tired of pretending she wasn't losing.

"Can I come in?" My voice came out smaller than intended.

She blinked, genuinely surprised. "Of course."

I stepped inside and shut the door with the kind of finality that suggested we were about to have a conversation that couldn't be overheard.

"I need to know what's really going on between you and Professor Lewis," I said, folding my arms across my chest like armor. "I know you two have history. Shared history."

Her face went very still. "What exactly do you think you know?"

"I know you were together. I know something happened that ended badly. And I know—" I swallowed hard. "I know you still respond to his commands."

She laughed, but it was the kind of laugh that suggested nothing was actually funny. More like the sound of something breaking.

"You saw that." It wasn't a question.

I nodded.

She stood, moving to the window with careful precision. "How much did Adrian tell you about us?"

"He said you had an arrangement. That you wanted more than he could give. That you became... unstable when it ended."

"Unstable." She repeated the word like it tasted bitter. "Is that what he called it?"

Her reflection in the window looked haunted. "Let me tell you what really happened, Sophie. Not his sanitized version, but the truth."

I waited, my heart hammering against my ribs.

"For two years, Adrian controlled every aspect of my life. When I ate, when I slept, what I wore, who I spoke to. He called it training, said I was learning to surrender my ego, my need for control."

Her voice dropped to something rawer.

"He had specific rituals. I'd kneel by his office door every evening and wait, sometimes for hours, until he decided to acknowledge me. He'd test my obedience in public, make me follow commands that humiliated me while maintaining plausible deniability."

I felt sick. "That doesn't sound like what we…"

"It never starts that way," she cut me off. "It starts with red lingerie and gentle commands. It starts with feeling special, chosen. But it escalates, Sophie. It always escalates."

She turned from the window, and I could see tears threatening in her eyes.

"The night before my dissertation defense, he pushed me further than we'd ever gone. Breath play, he called it. Said he wanted me to experience total surrender before I became a doctor."

My stomach clenched.

"I trusted him completely. I thought…" Her voice cracked. "I thought he loved me enough to keep me safe. But something went wrong. The restraints, the pressure—I blacked out. When I woke up, I was in the hospital with a concussion and bruised ribs."

"Jesus," I whispered.

"He never visited. Never called. When I got back to campus, he acted like nothing had happened. Like I was just another student whose dissertation he'd approved."

Her laugh was hollow. "Two days later, he started fucking a graduate student from the psychology department."

The room felt like it was spinning. "But just now, when he commanded you to kneel, you obeyed. You still obeyed when you didn’t have to."

"That's the sick part," she said, her voice breaking completely. "Even after everything, even knowing what he's capable of, my body still responds to him. It's like he rewired my neural pathways."

She moved to her desk, pulling out a small pill bottle with shaking hands. "I've been on medication for years. Anti-anxiety, mood stabilizers. A psychiatrist told me I developed a trauma response that mimics addiction—I crave the very thing that destroyed me."

"The medication helps?"

"Most of the time. But when I see him, when I hear his voice..." She shook the pills into her palm. "It's like being an alcoholic walking into a bar. All my progress disappears."

I stared at her, trying to process everything she'd told me. "Why didn't you report him? Press charges?"

"With what proof? He never forced me. I consented to everything—enthusiastically. That's how he operates, Sophie. He makes you complicit in your own destruction."

She stepped closer, and I could see the desperation in her eyes.

"That's why I'm trying to warn you. Because I recognize the signs. The way you look at him, the way you carry yourself differently now. You're exhibiting the same behavioral changes I did."

"But I'm not you," I said weakly. "What we have is different."

"That's exactly what I told myself." She gripped my shoulders, her hands trembling. "Please, Sophie. I'm begging you. Don't let him do to you what he did to me. Don't let him convince you that losing yourself is the same as finding freedom."

I pulled away, my head spinning with everything she'd told me. "I need to think."

"There's no time to think," she said urgently. "The longer you wait, the deeper he gets his hooks in. I'm offering you something I never had—a warning. Someone who understands what you're going through."

I looked at this broken woman, this brilliant professor reduced to taking pills to function normally, and felt terror clawing at my chest.

"I have to go," I said, backing toward the door.

"Sophie," she called after me. "Don't let him make you disappear like I did."

I fled her office carrying the weight of her warning like a stone in my chest, her words echoing in my head: Don't let him make you disappear.

But the terrifying truth was, I wasn't sure there was enough of me left to save.