Chapter 187: My Professor

PRIYA’S POV

The text message sat on my screen like an unexploded pipe bomb.

Book an Uber to the Grand Harborside. Room 408. Don’t make me wait, Miss Patel.

The contact was saved under a deceptively unassuming name: A.F. — Research Advisor.

I sat on the edge of the futon in Room 304, staring at the cursor blinking steadily in the green message bubble. My thumbs hovered over the glass, and my lungs felt uncomfortably tight.

’This is a bad idea.’

The warning flashed loudly in neon red across my brain.

’This is a monumentally, professionally catastrophic bad idea. I shouldn’t be doing this.’

I was a pre-law junior with a spotless academic record, a 3.98 GPA, and aspirations for Yale or Columbia.

He was Professor Adrian Flores, twenty-nine years old. Harvard Law alumnus, former federal appellate clerk, and Briar University’s newest visiting professor of Constitutional Jurisprudence.

He was also the man whose signature on my faculty recommendation letter could open any door in the country... or, if anyone ever found out what was happening between us, burn both of our careers down to the bedrock.

Briar’s Faculty Handbook, Section 4.2: Zero-tolerance prohibition against romantic or physical fraternization between instructional faculty and undergraduate students.

Penalty for him: immediate termination of his visiting appointment and blacklisting from tenure-track academia.

Penalty for me: mandatory referral to the Academic Integrity and Ethics Committee, disciplinary suspension, and an ethics violation stamped onto my permanent transcript that would ensure no law school admissions board touched my application with a ten-foot pole.

Every shred of legal logic I possessed told me to lock my phone, toss it onto the futon, and spend the next seventy-two hours eating stale popcorn in my sweatpants just like I promised Nora.

Instead, my thumb moved across the keyboard treacherously.

Priya: Sure. I’m on my way.

I hit send before my survival instinct could intervene.

I dropped my head into my hands, letting out a ragged breath that tasted like pure adrenaline.

Three weeks.

It had only been twenty-one days since the universe tilted on its axis, and I was already sprinting headfirst into a career-ending felony of the heart.

—

It started on a rainy Friday night in early November at The Hawk-Thawk, a dimly lit cocktail lounge tucked away near the downtown harbor.

It was miles off-campus, the kind of velvet-and-mahogany spot favored by young corporate attorneys, venture capitalists, and people who drank vintage rye instead of cheap draft beer.

I had just submitted a grueling thirty-page appellate mock brief at five in the afternoon, and my brain felt fried. Nora was studying with Knox, so I put on a tailored black slip dress, threw an oversized blazer over my shoulders, and grabbed a corner stool at the bar with a dry gin martini.

Ten minutes later, the seat beside me shifted.

A man sat down, ordered an Old Fashioned in a voice that was pure gravel and smoke, and casually loosened his silk tie.

He was strikingly handsome in a dangerous, aristocratic way: lean six-foot-one build, broad shoulders beneath an impeccably cut charcoal suit, sharp jawline shadowed with evening stubble, and dark hair carelessly swept back.

He looked over at the thick casebook open beside my drink.

"Dormant Commerce Clause?" he asked, tilting his glass. "Either you’re a glutton for punishment, or you actually believe in federal regulatory efficiency."

I turned, raising an eyebrow at him. "I believe in statutory precision. Most people just don’t have the stomach for the reading."

A slow smirk touched the corner of his mouth. "An ambitious viewpoint. Arrogant, but refreshing."

"I prefer competent," I countered, looking straight into his sharp, observant eyes. "Competence is only arrogant to people who can’t keep up."

That single exchange lit a match.

For the next two hours, the crowded lounge faded into background noise.

We traded intellectual jabs with ruthless speed, debating constitutional theory, appellate procedure, and the moral bankruptcy of corporate law. He was brilliant... razor-sharp, cynical, and the first person I had ever met who could anticipate my counter-arguments before I finished speaking.

He didn’t give me a resume. I didn’t ask for one.

To me, he was just Adrian, a visiting legal consultant in town on business, unwinding after a long week. To him, I was just Priya, a woman with an appetite for sharp conversation and zero patience for small talk.

By midnight, the drinks were finished, but the tension between us had wound tighter than a coiled spring.

Every time his hand brushed mine on the bar, my skin ignited. Every time his low laugh rumbled in his chest, heat curled deep in my stomach.

"Are you going to keep analyzing my arguments, Priya?" he murmured, leaning closer until the scent of cedarwood, bitter orange, and bourbon enveloped me. "Or are we getting out of here?"

I looked down at his mouth, my pulse hammering against my ribs. "I don’t leave bars with strangers, Adrian," I whispered.

He reached out, his long fingers trailing slowly up the bare skin of my arm, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. "Then ask me a question, counselor. Whatever you need to establish jurisdiction."

"Are you going to waste my time?"

"Never," he said, his voice dropping into a dark, commanding baritone.

Twenty minutes later, we were tumbling through the door of his high-rise executive suite overlooking the harbor lights.

His coat hit the floor first... my blazer followed.

His mouth crashed down onto mine against the wall with a ferocious, starving hunger that stole the breath straight from my chest. There was no polite hesitation, no awkward stumbling.

It was an all-night collision of raw, breathless passion... his strong hands gripping my waist, skin slick with heat against the cool linen sheets, his mouth worshiping every inch of my throat and collarbone while he took me with an intensity that left me completely undone.

He matched my fire in every way, commanding, possessive, and relentless until the grey morning light began to bleed through the sheer curtains.

By six in the morning, while he was still deeply asleep, I quietly gathered my clothes, slipped out into the cold drizzle, took a cab back to North Hall, and crawled into my bed with sore muscles and a racing heart.

It was a reckless, magnificent one-night stand. The kind of secret escape you lock in your memory and never speak of again.

Or so I thought.

—

Monday morning arrived forty-eight hours later.

The November rain was pouring over Briar’s campus, turning the stone paths into slick grey mirrors.

I walked into the historic wing of Briar Hall, climbed the stairs to the lecture room, and took my usual seat in the fourth row for my honors seminar: Advanced Constitutional Jurisprudence.

The syllabus had listed a new visiting professor taking over the section for the rest of the semester, replacing Dean Hastings’s lecture track.

I unzipped my backpack, set out my notebook and laptop, and took a sip of my black coffee, completely oblivious.

At precisely nine o’clock, the oak door at the front of the amphitheater clicked open, and a man walked into the lecture hall.

He was carrying a black leather briefcase, wore a crisp white shirt beneath a charcoal wool vest and tailored trousers, his sleeves rolled twice to his forearms, with a silver watch glinting at his lean wrist. Wire-rimmed glasses rested on the bridge of his sharp nose.

The room fell dead silent under the weight of his commanding presence.

He set his briefcase on the oak lectern, picked up a dry ease marker, and turned to the board.

In elegant script, he wrote: Professor Adrian Flores, Constitutional Jurisprudence

My coffee cup froze halfway to my mouth.

The air rushed violently out of my lungs.

My heart seized in my chest, a cold shockwave tearing down my spine so fast my vision blurred.

No.

The word echoed in my skull like a siren.

No, no, no. This is impossible.

Adrian Flores set the marker down and turned slowly to face the amphitheater. His gaze swept across the terraced rows of students with a cold detached expression... until it reached the fourth row.

His eyes locked directly onto mine, and he froze.

For three agonizing, suffocating seconds, the stillness between us was loud enough to shatter glass.

His jaw tightened, and his eyes flared with a stunned intensity that pinned me to my wooden desk. The realization crashed over me like an avalanche, suffocating and terrifying:

The man who had held me pinned against his mattress forty-eight hours ago wasn’t a visiting corporate consultant.

He was my professor.