The Professor's Girl | 18+ | COMPLETE |

+ chapter 23 +

I was pretty sure Jay dropped our class altogether after that. Heather continued to show up, alone. I tried to smile at her if I ever caught her eye. I honestly hoped that whether they were still together or not, she wouldn't have to go through the same bullshit I had.

"I left the teaching course on my own," Kahlan had told me. "That's why I had that meeting with my professor. I figured since I felt like things were getting more . . . serious, despite what you said you wanted, that I should admit it to someone up front. So my professor arranged for me to do the course next year. He said it wasn't the first time this kind of thing has happened."

I was relieved, in every possible way. Jay was no longer bothering me, and Kahlan and I were no longer sneaking around campus. We met for coffee between classes, and Sarah finally met him without being a drunken mess. She almost screamed when she walked by Starbucks and happened to see us sitting together.

"Oh my goooddd, you two are so cute," she said, giving me a suffocating hug around my chest. "Hold on, hold on, let me take a picture."

She stood back and snapped a photo of us with her phone, smiling over our cups of coffee, Kahlan holding my hand across the table as I furiously blushed. It was the same photo we used later that semester to make our relationship official on Facebook.

"To whom do you belong?"

"You, sir."

Dark cotton cloth blinded me. Leather straps hugged my limbs and spread me. I was lying on my back on his bed, naked and blind. Ready and willing.

I felt the bed creak, and his breath on my face. Slim leather sensations trailed down my chest, between my breasts and over my navel. "To whom," he insisted, "Do you belong?"

I gulped as excited shudders flooded over me. My bindings were a promise of what was to come: I needed to be held down. Controlled. Perfectly captivated. A little smile curled my mouth, both nervous and excited. "I belong to Kahlan Travis, sir."

The words were as sweet as sugar on my tongue. I absolutely relished saying it, and I knew how much he loved hearing it too. Now that there was no denying it, he took every opportunity both to remind me, and to confirm with me: to whom did I belong?

The leather flogger stroked between my legs, threatening my most sensitive places with its deceivingly gentle tease. I exhaled deeply to steady the energy that was building within me, adrenaline telling me to brace for pain even as my nether regions tried to prepare for pleasure. The flogger caressed my inner thighs, making me jump and twitch as tender nerves were awoken. Down it continued to go, exploring my flesh, leaving me in wonder as to where it would strike.

"You look beautiful, Liz," Kahlan's dark, gentle voice surrounded me, my guiding light in the dark. I could imagine him standing there beside the bed, blonde hair tousled, shirtless, his jeans unbuttoned, the flogger in one firm, commanding hand. The image made me bite my lip, and I almost told him he looked beautiful too.

"I love to see you like this," he said, his voice moving as he walked around the bed. I squirmed, testing my shackles just to feel the tightness with which they held me. "Helpless, needy, desperate for a touch. Entirely at my mercy."

The flogger bit across my breasts, more sting and impact than true pain. I gasped nevertheless, cut off mid breath by another solid strike. The urge to cover myself was strong, and my arms strained uselessly. Struggling in vain made me hot, even wetter than before.

"Where shall I flog you, Liz?" Kahlan said curiously. "Here on your tender little nipples?" The flogger barely brushed over them. "Or on this needy pussy?" Again, the flogger taunted its potential victim. I whined at the prospect of a choice. My rational brain said to choose the former. My cruel, masochistic inner self wanted to choose the latter.