Office Hours |h.s|

six

Harry

Walking through my front door, I take my bag off my shoulder, putting it down on the floor with a sigh. What a long fucking day.

Maude Sterling. She's fucking dangerous. I need to stop thinking about her, especially her lips, but it's been over a month now and she's taken over my every thought and dream. My mind is fully consumed by Maude, and I'd give anything to forget about her.

She's my student. My smart, sexy, irresistible student. It's not like I need this job as a professor, but it's something I'm genuinely passionate about. I want to be able to give these students a good foundation for if they do choose to go down the criminal law route. But it's hard to remember my greater purpose when she's sitting there, distracting me with her big innocent eyes. And those lips...

I've opted for the 'get her to hate me' approach, this way I could try and tell myself that she'd never go for me. But after what she said in my office about nobody believing in her, well I regret a lot of the things I've said and done.

Honestly, I think it's amazing that she's doing this, since criminal law, well- law in general, could be a very male dominated field. She's smart and on top of things, and has amazing intuition. She's going to be an amazing lawyer one day, especially a criminal defense lawyer if that's what she chooses to do.

It's a stark contrast having her in my class compared to her brother, or any of her other cousins. Lance would always fight with me over cases and try to prove he was some hot shot, up and coming criminal defense lawyer. Every time he was in my class, I'd fight the urge to reach over and strangle him.

Compared to Maude, he's not a good lawyer. Yes, he graduated, but I doubt he would have found good placement if it weren't for the family firm. I have no doubt Maude will be able to find work easily, but I know she'll more than likely end up working for her dad.

Clearly, my attempt at hating Maude didn't quite work out. I'll admit that accusing her of plagiarism was a bit much and I feel like an idiot for going that far, but it's just hard having these thoughts about my student. She could easily get me fired, as she's made clear, but I just have to do my best keeping it in my pants.

Is it also against the rules to think of your student while you're getting off? Because if it is then I'm fucking screwed.

God, she's going to absolutely ruin me.

I probably deserve it for going after my student like this.

As I'm unbuttoning my top, my phone starts ringing in my pocket. For some reason, my heart starts to race as the worst case scenario pops up into my head, the Dean calling and saying someone told him I've been hitting on my student. But I relax when I see that it's just Niall calling. He doesn't know about Maude, not like I'm going around telling just anyone about her. Nobody knows honestly.

"What's up?" I ask when I pick up, leaving the phone on speaker as I continue to undress to get into something more comfortable.

"What are you doing tonight?" My eyes roll at his question, figuring I'm not gonna have the quiet night in that I was hoping to have.

"Shea and I are grabbing dinner, you should come! I feel like I've barely hung out with you since the semester started."

Great, a night being a third wheel. He's coming from a good place, I know, since he's just trying to get me back out there after the breakdown of my last relationship. I think he wants to stop me from self sabotaging as a response to getting dumped by my ex, but he's probably a little too late considering that Maude's in the picture now.

Six years down the drain. Her biggest complaint was that I was married to my job, which led her to cheat and eventually dump me because this other guy was going to give her the life she wanted. It hurt a lot, especially since I thought we were at a good place in our relationship and that she understood the demands my job came with, but I guess we weren't. Post break up has been full of random hook ups, especially when the frustration starts to hit with my caseload, which leads us back to Maude.