He looked left, then right to see if anyone was listening, then lowered his voice.
“I want to go through sub training with you, and have a collaring ceremony when I pass it.”
I stood up straighter. It had been a long time since I’d attended a collaring ceremony, and I never quite pictured having one myself. It was such a private and intimate affair that it felt sacred, almost religious.
“We’ll make that happen,” I promised, the pocket inside my jacket feeling heavy with its contents.
“I also want to go to high protocol BDSM parties with you,” Luke said.
I smiled; one of the full smiles that I could feel crinkling my eyes. “How are you learning about all of this stuff? I mean, not that I’m not completely delighted that you are, but I’m curious.”
“Lily’s been telling me stuff in class,” he answered simply. “And she showed me some Youtubers to follow.”
My grin didn’t fade. “I like Lily. And I like Victoria.”
“Victoria’s scary,” Luke admitted.
“She’s supposed to be a little scary. She’s a Dom, remember?”
Then my mind went back to that time I was in the squad car with Claire; how she admitted she was a Dom.
“We have a lot of interesting friendships starting to form within the kink community,” I commented.
“We do,” he agreed. “I can’t wait to go to the next munch! And… and we should have Lily and Victoria over for dinner. I’d love to cook for all of us.”
We swung a right, walked up a flight of steps, and were at the doors of Parsons.
A shadow crossed Luke’s face, and he took a deep breath. “Well, let’s see what the damage is.”
Luke
I led Adam up a flight of stairs in the atrium, sunlight pouring in through the wide window. Other students were eyeing him nervously since he was still in his police uniform. Though, I couldn’t tell if they were eyeing him with apprehension or curiosity because he was clearly the hottest man in the world.
Especially in that getup.
“Her office is up here,” I uttered, feeling a pang of nervousness flood through me.
Though, this was just regular nervousness. My anxiety didn’t sharpen it; it couldn’t make me bleed.
“Professor King?” Adam asked.
“Yeah… hopefully my grade wasn’t impacted by my disappearance.”
“There’s no way she would do that,” Adam doubted as we reached the top of the stairs.
“You don’t know Professor King,” I said. “This semester, she failed a student for not showing up to class one day.”
“…wow,” he said in that low voice.
“Yeah. She runs a tight ship.”
We walked down a carpeted hallway, and the cacophony of voices from the atrium died down to a muffled hum. The sudden lack of noise only intensified the feeling that something great or terrible was going to happen; like the hushing of voices before a movie starts.
Anticipation was tingling in my body.
We approached her closed door, the thick, polished wood like a barrier.
“I’ll wait on this bench over here,” Adam said, gesturing a little further down the hallway.
“Thanks,” I said, squeezing his hand.
Adam was my anchor. It meant so much to me and my sense of control that he’d be waiting outside no matter what happened when I entered that room.
As Adam walked away, I raised my fist to knock on the door, willing my bravery to the surface.
I can do this, I said over and over again in my head. I can do this.
But before I could knock, the door swung open.
I was suddenly looking face-to-face to the formidable Professor King, her sand-colored eyes blinking intelligently behind her red glasses.
“Luke, I’ve been expecting you,” she said.
There was the tiniest sagging of her shoulders.
Was she… was she relieved? Had she been worried about me?
I followed her into the office. Everything in here was no-nonsense: Her glass desk was clean and organized, stacks of papers were neatly piled around her closed MacBook, and the right side of the room was taken over by a bookshelf, all of the books organized into a steady rainbow. Her office reinforced her personality: That she demanded order and organization in all things.
“Close the door and sit,” she commanded.
I obeyed and sat in the chair across from her, feeling like I was going to be fired.
Then I had to remind myself that I didn’t work here.
She took the seat across from me and interlaced her fingers on her desk.
“You’ve come to get your grade for the semester,” she guessed.
I nodded sheepishly.
Then there was a flash of something in her eyes and she cleared her throat. “I was worried about you, Luke. Everyone was. Are you all right?”
Some kind of gentleness was bleeding into her voice, a gentleness that I wouldn’t have guessed existed in the mind of someone with her all-business-all-the-time attitude.
“I’m alright now,” I said carefully. “I just… I had to know what happened after my show.”
Professor King smiled, showing her sparkling teeth.
I was taken aback by her beauty when she did that; her smiles were rare and only given out to those she deemed worthy. It felt like I’d been walking under a storm cloud, and the sun had just begun to peek through.
I felt warm, and that’s when the trembling inside my body stopped.
“You did outstanding work, Luke,” she said with pride. “I’ve rarely seen a student with your kind of prodigy.”
My mouth dropped open. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“There have only been two other students I’ve mentored in my career that were at your level so early,” she confessed.
“So… I didn’t fail the class?” I asked sheepishly, hardly daring to believe it.
Her eyebrows came together. “What? No, of course not. You’ve earned a ninety-five percent.”
“What?!” I cried. “I thought I was trending towards a seventy-eight… because of how long it took me to get that ombre dye to work right, and the fraying at the bottom of my third piece…”
“Your collection at the show was stunning. Showstopping. You hit it out of the park, and you earned well-deserved full marks. Because of how the final show is weighted, it brought your grade up.”
This
