Yes, Professor

Part 1

CAITLIN

The brass handle of Lecture Hall 4B was ice beneath my palm.

I checked my watch.

Twelve past nine. The seminar had started at nine sharp.

I didn't hesitate. Hesitation was for people who thought an apology could shrink them down to nothing, and I had never been particularly good at making myself small. I pushed the heavy oak door inward.

The hinge gave a long, rusted groan.

Every head in the tiered room swung toward the aisle. One hundred and twenty students, perfectly silent, staring down at me like spectators at a public execution.

And behind the lectern, mid-sentence with a piece of chalk suspended two inches from the blackboard, stood Professor Callahan.

He stopped.

He didn't drop the chalk. He didn't sigh. He simply turned his head, slowly, until his dark eyes locked onto mine.

My pulse kicked against my ribs, hard and sudden.

I had heard the rumors through the department grapevines for weeks: the new hire for Advanced Rhetoric wasn't an emeritus fossil with elbow patches and a tenure belly. But seeing him in the cold wash of fluorescent light was a different thing entirely.

He was broad-shouldered, thick-chested, with ink-dark hair cropped close at the sides and left just long enough on top to look like he'd run blunt fingers through it in frustration. His nose had a slight crooked bend to the bridge-broken once, probably in a bar or a boxing ring, not an archive. His white button-down was unbuttoned at the throat, the sleeves rolled cleanly to his elbows to expose thick, vascular forearms covered entirely in dense black tattoos. Intricate line work, heavy shading, dark geometry that vanished up beneath his cuffs and reappeared at the left side of his throat, curling like dark smoke along his jawline.

He looked less like a scholar of classical argument and more like the kind of man who resolved disputes in alleyways.

I stood in the doorway, clutching my leather tote bag against my hip, and met his stare.

For five full seconds, neither of us said a word.

"The door closes from the inside, Miss Carter," he said. His voice was a low, dry rasp. Gravel ground under steel.

I pulled the door shut behind me. The latch clicked into place with the finality of a prison bolt.

"Sorry I'm late," I said, keeping my chin up, my voice smooth enough to carry up the amphitheater steps.

Callahan didn't blink. His dark eyes flicked down the length of my body-over the cream cable-knit sweater that fell off one shoulder, the fitted dark jeans, the curve of my hips-before dragging back up to my face with excruciating, deliberate slowness.

"You're not sorry," he said simply.

A few students in the second row snickered.

A small, dangerous thrill coiled in the pit of my stomach. I gave him a faint, insolent tilt of my lips. "If you say so, Professor."

"I do." He set the chalk down on the tray with a soft clack and dusted his hands on a rag from his back pocket. "Find a seat. You've already wasted twelve minutes of everyone's tuition."

I glanced around the auditorium.

Every single desk was occupied. The latecomers had taken the back rows; the eager brown-nosers had claimed the middle. There was exactly one wooden desk empty in the entire hall.