Mr. Thorne’s office.

October 3rd

The rain in Vancouver has a particular smell. It’s not just wet asphalt and damp earth. It’s the scent of cedar needles steaming on hot pavement after a sudden downpour, a clean, sharp perfume that gets into your lungs and makes you feel alive. I was breathing it in, standing under the awning of the Humanities building, watching the water sheet down in a grey curtain, separating me from the rest of the world. My backpack was heavy with books I hadn’t read, and my mind was a thousand miles away, or maybe just one floor up, in a corner office with a flickering fluorescent light.

Mr. Thorne’s office.

I’m not supposed to call him that anymore. “Call me Elias,” he’d said on the first day of his Advanced Narrative Theory seminar, his mouth quirking into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. It was a challenge. He was dismantling the hierarchy before we even got a chance to build it. He was young for a professor, maybe thirty, and he carried himself with a quiet weariness that was at odds with the sharp, hungry intelligence in his gaze.

That was the hook, I think. The weariness. It made me want to unravel him.

The seminar was small, just twelve of us around a scarred oak table. I chose the seat directly to his right, not across from him. I wanted the angle. I wanted to watch his profile, the way his brow furrowed when he listened, the way his long, elegant fingers—a pianist’s fingers, I decided—tapped a silent rhythm on the tabletop when a student said something particularly obtuse.

That first class, he talked about the space between the author and the text. “The most compelling stories,” he said, his voice a low, resonant baritone that seemed to vibrate in the marrow of my bones, “are born from desire. Not just the desire for a happy ending, but a raw, unvarnished wanting that the writer can barely contain. It bleeds through the sentences. It makes the prose feel dangerous.”

His eyes scanned the table, and when they landed on me, they paused for a fraction of a second too long. Or maybe I just wanted them to. My skin prickled, a flush of heat rising up my neck. I looked down at my notebook, where I’d already scribbled, Elias Thorne. Desire. Dangerous.

That was six weeks ago.

Now, standing in the rain, I was practicing a kind of alchemy. I was turning a simple academic crush into a full-blown, heart-thumping, stomach-clenching obsession. It wasn’t just that he was beautiful, though he was, in that unkempt, intellectual way. Dark, unruly hair that he’d push back from his forehead in a gesture of mild frustration. A lean build hidden under layers of worn-in sweaters and corduroy. It was the glimpses of something else underneath the tweed and theory. A sharp, almost cruel wit he’d occasionally unleash. The way he’d sometimes stare out the window during a lull in discussion, his whole body going still, as if he were remembering a touch, a taste, a moment of pure, uncomplicated feeling.

I wanted to be that feeling.

My plan, if you could call the chaotic flutter of my nerves a plan, was to go to his office hours. I had a question about my midterm paper proposal. It was a real question, technically. I’d chosen “The Erotic as a Narrative Engine in Anaïs Nin and Marguerite Duras.” I’d spent the last three nights reading until my eyes burned, highlighting passages that made my breath catch. I was building a trap, and I was using the most seductive bait I could find: my own burgeoning intellect, sharpened and aimed directly at him.

I took a deep breath of the cedar-rain air, tightened my grip on my backpack strap, and walked back into the building.

The hallway to his office was quiet, the kind of silence that feels heavy, absorbing sound. My sneakers squeaked on the linoleum. I could hear the hum of the vending machine from around the corner. His door was slightly ajar. I knocked, the sound too loud in the hush.

“Come in.”

His voice. It was different up close, without the buffer of a classroom. Softer, more intimate.

I pushed the door open. His office was exactly as I’d imagined it—a controlled chaos. Towers of books threatened to topple from every surface. The air smelled of old paper, ink, and the faint, spicy scent of his cologne. He was sitting behind his desk, pen in hand, frowning at a stack of essays. He looked up, and for a moment, there was no recognition in his eyes. Then it clicked.

“Chloe,” he said. My name. He said my name, and it sounded different in his mouth. Like a secret.

“Hi. Elias.” I tested it out, feeling the shape of it on my tongue. It felt forbidden. “I hope I’m not interrupting. You said office hours…”

“You’re not.” He gestured to the worn leather chair opposite his desk. “Sit. What can I do for you?”

I sat, perching on the edge of the chair, my knees pressed tightly together. I pulled out my notebook and the printouts of my research. I launched into my question, my words coming out in a rushed, nervous torrent. I talked about Nin’s unflinching honesty, Duras’s fragmented longing, the way they used physical sensation to map the interior landscape of their characters.

He listened, his elbows on the desk, his fingers steepled under his chin. He didn’t interrupt. He just watched me, his dark eyes intent. I felt seen. Not as a student, but as a mind. A woman with ideas.

When I finished, there was a silence. He leaned back in his chair, the old leather creaking in protest.

“That’s a sophisticated angle,” he said finally. “Dangerous, too. It’s easy to slip into cliché when writing about the erotic. To make it about mechanics, not meaning.”

“I don’t want to write about mechanics,” I said, and my voice was steadier now, laced with a confidence I didn’t know I possessed. “I want to write about the… the ache of it. The tension in the space between two people before anything even happens.”

His eyes held mine. The air in the small room felt charged, thick. The only sound was the relentless patter of rain against the window.

“The tension,” he repeated softly, almost to himself. Then he looked down at my proposal. “Your thesis statement is a bit muddled here. Let’s take a look.”

He stood up and came around the desk. He didn’t pull up another chair. He leaned over me, one hand on the back of my chair, the other pointing to a sentence on my paper. His body was close. So close I could feel the warmth radiating from him. I could smell the clean, sharp scent of his soap, mixed with that faint, spicy cologne. It was all I could do not to lean back, to let my head rest against his chest.

His finger, with its clean, trimmed nail, traced the line of my text. “See here? You’re saying the erotic is a ‘catalyst for self-discovery,’ but you’re not defining the ‘self’ that’s being discovered. Is it the character’s? Or is it the author’s, projected onto the character?”

His voice was right by my ear. A low murmur. I could feel his breath stir the fine hairs on my neck. My skin was on fire. Every nerve ending was screaming. I stared at his finger, at the way it hovered over my words. I imagined that finger tracing a line down my spine.

I swallowed. “I think… it’s both. The writing becomes an act of discovery for the author, which then informs the character.”

“Hmm.” He was so close. I could see the tiny weave of his sweater, the dark shadow of stubble along his jaw. I could have turned my head just an inch and my lips would have brushed his cheek.

He stayed there for a long moment, his body a parenthesis around mine. Then, slowly, he straightened up. The space where he had been felt cold, empty.

“Rework that section,” he said, his voice returning to its professional timbre, though I thought I detected a slight huskiness. “Focus on the duality. The internal and external exploration. I think you’re onto something powerful here, Chloe.”

He moved back to his side of the desk, and the spell was broken. But it had happened. I was sure of it. That wasn't just a professor helping a student. That was a current, a live wire that had passed between us.

I gathered my papers, my hands trembling slightly. “Thank you, Elias. This was… really helpful.”

“Any time,” he said, and he gave me that small, weary smile again. But this time, his eyes didn’t look weary. They looked alert. Watchful.

I left his office, my heart hammering against my ribs. The hallway seemed brighter, the hum of the vending machine a triumphant fanfare. I walked out into the rain, but I didn’t feel the cold. I was burning up from the inside.

I had felt it. The tension. The space between.

And I knew, with a terrifying, thrilling certainty, that I was going to do everything in my power to close it.

October 17th

The leaves are turning. Fiery reds and brilliant golds against the ever-present green of the firs. The air is crisp, carrying the smell of woodsmoke from the houses that cling to the North Shore mountains. I love this time of year. It feels like a beginning disguised as an end.

My campaign of seduction, for lack of a less ridiculous term, has been… subtle. I’ve been living inside my own personal romance novel, and every interaction with him is a highlighted passage.

I stay after class to ask one more question, letting the other students file out until it’s just the two of us in the seminar room. I’ve started dressing differently for his class. Not overtly. Nothing tight or low-cut. That would be too obvious. Instead, I wear soft, thin cashmere sweaters in muted colours—heather grey, dusty rose. Things that look like they would be lovely to touch. I make sure my neck is always visible, a vulnerable, pale column. I read somewhere that the nape of a woman’s neck is an erogenous zone. I want his eyes to linger there.

And they do. I feel his gaze on me during class, a physical weight. When I speak, he listens with an intensity he doesn’t grant the others. He challenges me, pushes back on my ideas, but it feels like a dance, not a debate.

Today, we were talking about unreliable narrators. He used an example from Lolita, and his eyes flickered to me for just a second. A jolt went through me. Was it a coincidence? Of course it was. This is a literature class. But in the secret, feverish map of my desire, it was a sign. A nod to the thing growing between us.

After class, I lingered again. I pretended to be searching for something in my backpack until the room was empty.

“Lost something?” he asked. He was erasing the whiteboard, his back to me. I watched the muscles in his shoulders move under his sweater.

“My pen,” I lied. “It’s my favourite.”

He turned around, leaning against the board, arms crossed. He had a smudge of blue marker on his wrist. “A writer attached to her favourite pen. I understand the sentiment.”

I finally zipped up my bag and slung it over my shoulder. I walked towards the door, but I stopped when I was level with him. The room was so quiet. I could hear the soft sound of his breathing.

“I was thinking about what you said,” I began, my voice a little too quiet. “About desire bleeding through the prose.”

“And?”

“And… I think I understand it now. Not just intellectually. I feel it when I’m writing. It’s like a… a hum under the skin. A need to get something out.”

His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were dark, focused entirely on me. “What is it you need to get out, Chloe?”

The question hung in the air, loaded, dangerous. My mouth went dry. I could have said it then. I could have told him. You. It’s you. I need to get you out of my system, or maybe get you deeper into it.

I chickened out. I gave him a small, playful smile. “A good grade on my midterm, obviously.”

He let out a short, surprised laugh. It transformed his face, wiping away the weariness. He looked young. Handsome. Approachable.

“Obviously,” he echoed, a smile still playing on his lips.

I left before I could do something stupid, like reach out and wipe that marker smudge from his wrist. But as I walked away, I replayed the moment in my head. The way he’d said my name. The way he’d looked at me. The laugh.

It was fuel. It was all the fuel I needed.

November 5th

The midterm paper is done. I handed it in this morning. I poured everything into it. I wrote about the erotic as a form of knowledge, a way of seeing the world that is more visceral, more true, than intellectual understanding. I used my own words, my own burgeoning feelings, filtered through the lens of Nin and Duras. It was a confession disguised as literary analysis.

I dropped the paper on the pile in his office. He wasn't there. Part of me was relieved. The other part was desperately disappointed.

I spent the rest of the day restless, my energy buzzing under my skin with nowhere to go. I went for a walk down by the water, through Stanley Park. The sea was a churning, leaden grey, the sky low and heavy with more rain. The wind whipped my hair across my face, and the salt spray stung my lips. I felt wild, untamed. I felt like I was waiting for a storm to break.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. An email. From him.

My heart stopped.

The subject line was: Your Paper.

I leaned against the rough bark of a Douglas fir, my fingers trembling as I opened it.

Chloe,

I’ve just finished reading your midterm. I don’t usually provide feedback so quickly, but I found it… compelling. You’ve managed to capture the very ‘ache’ you spoke of in your proposal. The section on the ‘silent dialogue of the body’ is particularly sharp. And brave.

It’s after hours, but if you’d like to discuss it, I’ll be in my office for another hour or so.

Elias

I read it three times. Compelling. Sharp. Brave. And then the killer: It’s after hours.

This wasn't an invitation. It was a summons. A deliberately vague, professionally defensible summons that my desire-soaked brain interpreted as a green light.

I didn’t hesitate. I turned and started walking back towards campus, my pace quickening until I was almost running. The wind pushed at my back, as if urging me on.

The Humanities building was deserted at this time of day. The cleaning crew’s cart was parked at the end of the hall, but there was no one in sight. The silence was absolute. My footsteps echoed like gunshots.

His office door was closed. I stood before it, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm against my ribs. I could see a sliver of light from underneath. He was in there.

I knocked.

A pause. Then, “It’s open.”

I turned the knob and stepped inside.

He was sitting at his desk, but he’d taken off his sweater. He was just in a thin, white cotton button-down, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. My paper was in front of him, covered in red ink. The sight of it, of his marks all over my words, felt intensely intimate.

The room felt different at night. Smaller. The light from his desk lamp pooled in a warm, golden circle, leaving the corners in deep shadow. It felt like a cocoon. A secret room.

“You got my email,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“I was in the park.” My voice sounded breathless. “I came straight here.”

He gestured to the chair. I sat. This time, I didn’t perch on the edge. I sank into the leather, letting my backpack fall to the floor.

“Your paper,” he began, tapping it with his pen. “It’s exceptional, Chloe. Truly. But it reads less like an analysis and more like… a manifesto.”

I held his gaze. “Maybe it is.”

A slow smile spread across his face. It wasn’t the weary smile or the surprised laugh. This was something new. Something knowing. Predatory, almost. “A manifesto for what?”

“For feeling,” I whispered. “For not being afraid of what you want.”

The air crackled. The space between us, the few feet of dusty office carpet, felt like a chasm I was ready to leap across.

He leaned forward, the desk lamp casting shadows across the sharp planes of his face. “And what is it you want, Chloe?”

This was it. The point of no return. I could still back out. I could make a joke, talk about wanting an A+, and this would all remain in the realm of tantalizing, unacted-upon fantasy.

But I didn’t want the fantasy anymore. I wanted the reality. The messy, complicated, potentially disastrous reality.

I stood up. My legs felt weak, but they carried me. I walked around the desk until I was standing beside his chair. He didn’t move. He just watched me, his eyes dark and unblinking.

I could see the pulse beating at the base of his throat. I could see the faint lines at the corners of his eyes. He was real. This was real.

“I think you know,” I said, my voice low.

I reached out. My hand was shaking. I placed it on his shoulder. The cotton of his shirt was soft, warm. I could feel the solid muscle of his shoulder beneath it.

He let out a slow, shaky breath. He closed his eyes for a second, as if in pain. “Chloe… This is a very, very bad idea.”

“I know,” I said, and I leaned down.

I didn’t kiss him. Not yet. I brought my lips to his ear. I could smell his skin, that intoxicating blend of soap and cologne and something uniquely him—the scent of ink and long, quiet hours.

“I don’t care,” I whispered.

That was the breaking point. I felt it happen. A tension in him snapped.

His hand came up and gripped my wrist. His grip was firm, almost too tight. He opened his eyes and looked at me, and the look in them was pure, undiluted hunger. It stole my breath.

“We can’t do this here,” he said, his voice rough.

“Then where?” I asked.

He stood up, still holding my wrist. He was taller than I realized this close. I had to tilt my head back to look at him. His other hand came up and cupped my cheek, his thumb stroking my skin. It was a gentle gesture, at odds with the fierce look in his eyes.

“My place,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was a decision.

He let go of my wrist to grab his coat and keys, his movements quick, efficient. He switched off the desk lamp, plunging the office into darkness except for the faint glow from the hallway through the open door.

He didn’t take my hand as we walked out. He locked his office door, the click of the lock sounding final, decisive. We walked down the empty hallway side-by-side, not touching, but the space between us was electric, alive. It was the most intimate walk of my life.

We didn’t speak in the car. He drove an old, dark green Volvo that smelled of coffee and books. The wipers swished back and forth, clearing the rain that had started to fall again. The city lights blurred past, streaks of gold and white in the wet darkness. I stared at his profile, at the way his hands gripped the steering wheel. Strong, capable hands. I imagined them on my body.

He lived in a small, character house in Kitsilano, not far from the university. It was tucked away on a tree-lined street, shrouded in darkness. He unlocked the front door and held it open for me.

I stepped inside.

It was exactly what I thought it would be. Books everywhere. On shelves, on the floor, stacked on a small wooden desk by the window. A single lamp cast a soft light over a worn, comfortable-looking sofa. A jazz record was playing softly on a turntable in the corner—Miles Davis, I think. It was a lonely, beautiful sound.

He closed the door behind us, and the lock clicked shut. The sound echoed in the quiet room.

We were alone.

He turned to me, and all the professional restraint, all the weary intellectualism, was gone. What was left was raw and potent.

He didn’t say a word. He just crossed the room in two long strides, cupped my face in his hands, and kissed me.

It wasn’t a gentle, exploratory kiss. It was a claiming. His mouth was hard and hungry on mine, his tongue sweeping past my lips with an urgency that made my knees buckle. I gasped into his mouth, my hands coming up to clutch at his shoulders, holding on for dear life. This was what I wanted. This was the ache, the tension, finally, gloriously, breaking.

I kissed him back with everything I had, with all the months of wanting, of fantasizing, of building this moment up in my head. It was better than any fantasy. It was messy and desperate and real. I could taste the coffee he’d been drinking, feel the slight scratch of his stubble against my skin. His hands slid from my face, down my back, pulling me flush against him. I could feel the hard length of his body, the evidence of his desire pressing against my stomach.

He broke the kiss, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He rested his forehead against mine, his eyes closed.

“God, Chloe,” he breathed. “I’ve been thinking about this since the first day you walked into my seminar.”

“Me too,” I panted. “Every second.”

He kissed me again, softer this time, but no less intense. His hands roamed my back, my hips, learning my shape. Then one hand slid under my cashmere sweater, his palm warm and rough against the bare skin of my lower back. I shuddered, a moan escaping my lips.

“I want to see you,” he murmured against my mouth. “All of you.”

He took my hand and led me towards what I assumed was the bedroom. It was just as cluttered, just as book-filled, but the bed was a large, inviting expanse of rumpled sheets in the semi-darkness.

He stopped me beside the bed and turned me to face him. His eyes were dark pools of want. Slowly, deliberately, he pulled my sweater up and over my head. He tossed it aside, his eyes devouring me. I was wearing a simple lace bra. His gaze felt like a physical touch.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, his voice thick.

He reached behind me and unclasped my bra with a surprising dexterity. It fell away. The cool air hit my skin, raising goosebumps, but I was burning up. His eyes dropped to my breasts, and he let out a soft, appreciative sound. He cupped one in his hand, his thumb brushing over my nipple. A jolt of pure, white-hot pleasure shot through me, straight to my core.

I reached for the buttons of his shirt. My fingers were clumsy, fumbling. He smiled, a slow, sexy smile, and finished the job himself, shrugging out of the shirt. His chest was lean, defined, with a light dusting of dark hair. I splayed my hands over his warm skin, feeling the steady, strong beat of his heart.

He lowered his head and took my nipple into his mouth.

I cried out, my head falling back. The sensation was exquisite, overwhelming. His tongue was hot and wet, laving, sucking, while his hand worked its magic on my other breast. I tangled my fingers in his hair, holding him to me, my hips arching against him instinctively.

He laid me down on the bed, following me down, his body covering mine. The weight of him was intoxicating. He kissed a trail down my stomach, his hands hooking into the waistband of my jeans and panties, pulling them down my legs in one swift motion. I was completely naked, exposed under his gaze. I should have felt shy, but I didn’t. I felt powerful. I had done this. I had brought us here.

He knelt between my legs, his eyes drinking me in. “So perfect,” he whispered, and then he lowered his head.

The first touch of his tongue nearly made me come apart. It was slow, deliberate, expert. He explored me with a scholar’s attention to detail, learning what made me gasp, what made me moan, what made my back arch off the bed. I was completely at his mercy, lost in a whirlwind of sensation. The room filled with the sounds of my ragged breathing, my soft cries, the wet, intimate sounds of his mouth on me.

“Elias… please…” I begged, not even sure what I was begging for. More. Less. Everything.

He understood. He moved back up my body, kissing my stomach, my breasts, my throat, before finally finding my mouth again. I could taste myself on his lips, a salty, musky flavour that was wildly erotic.

He fumbled in his bedside drawer for a condom, sheathing himself with quick, practiced movements. Then he was poised over me, the tip of him pressing against my entrance. His eyes locked with mine.

“Are you sure?” he asked, his voice strained with the effort of holding back.

In answer, I wrapped my legs around his hips and pulled him into me.

There was a moment of sharp, breathtaking fullness, and then he was moving. It wasn’t gentle or slow. It was fierce, primal. A release of all the pent-up tension of the past months. Each thrust was a punctuation mark to a sentence we’d been writing since we first laid eyes on each other.

I met his rhythm, my hips rising to meet his, my nails digging into the sweat-slicked skin of his back. The world narrowed to this room, this bed, the feel of him inside me, the sound of our bodies moving together. I looked up at his face, at the look of intense concentration, of pure, unadulterated pleasure. This was the man behind the professor. The raw, real man.

It didn’t take long. The coil of pleasure that had been tightening in my belly since he first kissed me finally snapped. My orgasm crashed over me, a wave of such intense, shuddering pleasure that I saw stars behind my eyelids. I cried out his name, my body convulsing around him.

Feeling me come undone pushed him over the edge. He drove into me one last, deep time, his own groan muffled against my neck, his body shuddering with his release.

Then, silence. The only sound was our harsh, ragged breathing, and the soft, persistent rain against the window.

He collapsed beside me, his arm thrown possessively across my waist. We lay there for a long time, not speaking, just breathing each other in. The scent of sex, of sweat, of his skin, filled the air. It was the most honest smell in the world.

He finally stirred, pressing a soft kiss to my shoulder. “Stay,” he said. It was a command, but a gentle one.

“Okay,” I whispered.

He got up to dispose of the condom and came back to bed, pulling the covers over us. He drew me into his arms, my back against his chest, his nose buried in my hair. I felt safe. I felt… claimed.

As I drifted off to sleep, listening to the rain and the sound of his steady breathing, I thought, This is just the beginning.

And I was right. It was.