Page 1 of The Naughty Professor

Chapter One

Felix

“Dr. Sterling,” Juniper snapped, “if you touch that beaker, I swear I’m writing my will.”

I adjusted my glasses and squinted at the beaker. Juniper cleared her throat again. Loudly.

“Juniper, it was a minor hiccup last time.”

Her arms crossed. “A hiccup? You nearly blew the ventilation hood off the ceiling.”

“Teensy mistake,” I said, pinching my fingers together. “Barely worth mentioning.”

Her eyes rolled so hard I swear they made a full orbit.

Truth was, she had a point. Last semester’s demonstration of “controlled exothermic chain reactions”—an experiment designed to dazzle freshmen and convince them chemistry wasn’t just about memorizing the periodic table—had ended with the fume hood coughing black smoke like an old diesel engine.

I’d spent the rest of the afternoon filling out safety reports and apologizing to the janitorial staff.

But I wasn’t about to let Juniper, my twenty-four-year-old teaching assistant with a Napoleon complex, dictate my syllabus. Even if she was right ninety-nine percent of the time.

Juniper was the kind of Gen Z goth who could make fishnet tights look like battle armor.

Curvy and unapologetically so, she had a cascade of inky-black hair with purple streaks, kohl eyeliner sharp enough to draw blood, and a wardrobe that was ninety percent black leather and band tees from groups I’d never heard of.

“Trust me,” I said, with a confidence I didn’t feel, “I’ve got it under control.”

Juniper leaned against the counter, her ponytail swinging like a metronome of disapproval. “Control? You?” She jabbed a finger at the beakers and burners. “This is a bomb waiting to happen, and you’re acting like it’s a soufflé recipe.”

“Now, now,” I said, forcing a smile. “That’s not fair. I can’t cook a soufflé to save my life.”

She didn’t laugh. She never did at my jokes.

So I did what any man backed into a corner would do: I changed the subject. “How was your… ah… business event last night?”

Juniper’s eyes lit up instantly. “Pleasureware?”

“That’s the one.”

“Oh, it was amazing, Dr. Sterling.” She leaned forward, suddenly animated in a way she never was about chemistry. “I cleared almost a thousand dollars in one night. One fucking night!”

I blinked. “On… sex toys?”

“On high-quality personal massagers and accessories, thank you very much.” Her grin was sharp, like she dared me to make it weird.

I nodded slowly. Juniper’s side hustle was selling sex toys at house parties—her own brand of Tupperware gatherings, but with vibrators instead of plastic bowls. She was terrifyingly good at it. I, meanwhile, struggled to get a decent paycheck even with a PhD and a closet full of tweed jackets.

Briefly, I wondered if I should moonlight in the sex toy business.

The cash was tempting. But then I pictured myself standing in front of a living room full of strangers, holding up something called the “Triple Thruster 9000,” and explaining how many settings it had.

I’d keel over from embarrassment before I sold a single unit.

“Well, congratulations,” I said, meaning it.

Juniper’s eyes gleamed with mischief. That was never a good sign. “Actually, Dr. Sterling, I’ve got something for you.”

Panic prickled at the back of my neck. Last time she’d said that, she’d handed me a strand of shiny beads.

I’d assumed it was a bracelet. An odd gift, sure, but I was raised to be polite.

The next day, I decided to wear it to class.

I’d wrapped it around my wrist, and since I couldn’t find a clasp, I held it in place with a safety pin.

Juniper had walked in, taken one look at me, and collapsed into laughter so violent she had to sit down.

“What?” I’d asked, bewildered.

She’d pried the “bracelet” off my wrist and explained, between gasps, that it was called The Pearls of Pleasure—also known as anal beads.

I had never wanted the earth to swallow me whole so badly in my life.

Now she was rummaging through her bag again, and I whispered a prayer to every deity I could think of. Please, please let it not be another… sex thingy.

“Hold that thought.” Juniper darted out of the lab.

Alone with the bubbling glassware, I tried to focus, but dread twisted my stomach.

When she returned, she was carrying a small box, glossy purple with bold silver letters across the front that read Buzz Bracelet.

A little plastic window on the side showed the thing itself nestled in molded packaging—black silicone, shaped in a way that made my ears burn just looking at it.

She set it down in front of me like it was a live grenade.

“Just so you know,” she said, pointing at the label, “this isn’t jewelry, despite the name. It’s a vibrating cock ring.”

My face went nuclear red. “Oh. Um. Th-thank you?” Was I supposed to put it on my… oh, God.

Juniper smirked. “You’re welcome.”

“Why,” I squeaked out, voice cracking, “do you keep giving me sex toys? Aren’t these things expensive?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Because of all the people I know, you could use them the most.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Too afraid to ask what exactly she meant.

“Anyway,” she went on breezily, “it didn’t cost me anything. Not really.”

I stared. “What does not really mean?”

“A customer returned it.”

I yelped, dropping the box as if it had teeth. “That doesn’t sound sanitary!”

Juniper sighed, scooping it up. “Relax. They never took it out of the box. Carly broke up with her boyfriend before she got the chance to use it on him.”

“Oh.”

She shoved it back into my hands. “Instructions are inside. And don’t even think about asking me how to use it like you did with the anal beads. Once was enough.”

My entire body was a bonfire of embarrassment.

Sometimes I wished I could be more like Juniper—confident, assertive, unbothered by anything.

She could explain a Treasure Seeker in broad daylight without blushing.

When it had fallen out of her backpack last week, I’d asked what it was, and she’d explained that it was designed for the G-spot.

I’d nodded like I knew what that meant, but honestly? I still wasn’t sure.

Juniper clapped her hands. “All right, Dr. Sterling, enough dilly-dallying. Finish setting up your bomb before the students arrive.”

I froze. “Bomb?”

She gestured at the precarious array of chemicals and tubing. “This thing is going to explode. Twenty bucks says so.”

“You’re supposed to encourage me,” I muttered, setting the Buzz Bracelet box on the corner of my desk.

“I am,” she said sweetly. “I’m encouraging you not to commit arson.”

The door creaked open, and students began filing in. I scrambled to adjust the Bunsen burner, double-checked the clamps, and tightened the glass fittings.

Please, I begged the universe silently, don’t let me blow up the lab again.

Juniper leaned against the wall, arms folded across her chest, a smirk firmly in place.

The first student through the door stopped dead in his tracks, eyes zeroing in on my desk.

More specifically, on the small purple box with Buzz Bracelet splashed across it in shimmering silver.

His eyebrows shot so high I thought they might launch into orbit.

Without a word, he jabbed an elbow into his friend’s ribs.

The friend looked, blinked, then stifled a laugh that came out like a dying hyena.

I wanted to die. Right there. Chemical fireball, meteor strike, spontaneous combustion—anything would be better than this. With a strangled noise that was supposed to be casual, I snatched the box and dumped it into the nearest desk drawer so fast I almost slammed my own fingers.

By the time I straightened up, more students were filing in, the room filling with chatter and the squeak of chairs against tile. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Juniper leaning against the counter, smug as a cat that had pushed a vase off a shelf.

“Uh—” a voice piped up. One of the freshmen, a gangly boy with a mop of curls and a perpetual smirk, was staring at Juniper. “Uh, June, can I—”

Juniper didn’t even glance at him.

“June?” he tried again, louder. “Could you answer a—”

She raised her head slowly, eyes glinting like scalpels. “If you call me ‘June’ one more time,” she said evenly, “I will be forced to murder you.”

The boy’s face drained of color until he matched the lab coats hanging on the wall. He swallowed hard and slid into his chair without another word.

I cleared my throat and stepped to the front of the room, forcing myself into professor mode.

“Good morning, everyone,” I began. My voice came out steadier than I felt. “Today, we’re going to talk about one of my favorite topics: controlled exothermic chain reactions.”

Blank stares.

“Which is,” I added quickly, “how we make things go boom! on purpose without burning the building down.”

That earned a ripple of laughter. My shoulders loosened a notch. This was my zone. No matter how awkward I was at literally everything else, when I started explaining chemistry, the words just…flowed.

“Picture a line of dominoes,” I said, pacing a little.

“Push the first one, and it knocks over the next, and the next, and so on. In chemistry, we call that a chain reaction. Controlled exothermic chain reactions are like dominoes where each falling tile releases energy—heat, light, gas—and, if you do it right, you get a predictable, contained outcome.”

I grabbed a marker and drew a quick diagram on the whiteboard: carbon molecules like little hexagons, arrows showing energy release, a cartoon explosion with a smiley face.

“Carbon, when bound in this configuration,” I tapped the drawing, “can release energy in a slow, steady burn, or,” I underlined another sketch, “in a sudden burst, depending on the catalyst we introduce. Today, I’m demonstrating how introducing a micro-stabilizer—that’s my term—lets us keep the energy under control. ”

Now they were leaning forward. Phones down. Eyes on me. This—this was why I loved teaching.

“Questions before we start?”

Silence. Well, except for one student near the back who whispered, not nearly quietly enough, “Didn’t Dr. Sterling almost blow up the building doing this last year?”

My stomach dropped. I loosened my tie and felt sweat trickling down my side. Juniper smirked from her post by the fume hood, mouthing, twenty bucks at me.

“No explosions today,” I said brightly, even as my hands trembled. “We’re going to do this by the book.”

I moved to the lab table, laying out the components like a magician showing his props. “Step one: base compound. This is a carbon-rich polymer I synthesized this morning. Think of it as our dominoes.”

I measured a thick, blackish liquid into a beaker, the smell sharp and vaguely sweet, like burnt sugar and acetone.

“Step two: energizer. We’re going to introduce a measured amount of hyperoxide solution—don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it sounds—to prime the chain reaction.”

I poured a clear fluid from a stoppered bottle into the beaker, watching it swirl and shimmer.

“Step three: stabilizer. This,” I held up a tiny vial of pale blue crystals, “is my secret ingredient. It slows the reaction just enough to keep it safe. Without it, you get…well, last semester.”

A few students chuckled nervously.

“Finally,” I said, sliding on my goggles, “step four: ignition catalyst. This is where we give our dominoes their first push.”

I took a long breath, steadied my hands, and added the catalyst—a single drop of bright yellow liquid—into the mixture.

For a moment, nothing happened. The liquid stayed dark, silent. Relief fluttered in my chest. Maybe this time—

The beaker rumbled.

“Oh no,” I whispered.

Bubbles the size of marbles began to rise, the liquid turning a sickly green. A hiss escaped the beaker, followed by a low whoosh.

“Um,” I said to the class, “this is…normal.”

It wasn’t normal.

The hiss became a roar. The beaker shook. A jet of greenish steam shot toward the ceiling. Students screamed, chairs scraped the floor and notebooks flew through the air. Someone yelled, “Run!” and the room erupted into chaos.

I stumbled back as the beaker exploded in a flash of heat and light, shards of glass raining down into the sink. A mushroom cloud of glittering carbon dust puffed up, coating everything—including me—in black specks.

Students bolted for the door, shrieking. Juniper remained at the rear of the lab, utterly calm, shaking her head slowly like she’d known this would happen all along.

Through the haze, two figures appeared in the doorway.

Dr. Joan Stanwyk swept in first, all sharp cheekbones and sharper eyes. Today she was in a tailored green dress that clung to her like it had been born there, a clipboard tucked under one arm. Her hand, as always, rested possessively on the arm of Professor Thorne Carr.

Thorne was a stunning man who made tweed jackets look like they belonged on magazine covers. His hair was dark blonde, a little unruly, his firm jaw coated in thick stubble that made my knees go weak.

I’d had a crush on him since my first day at the university. Not that he’d ever noticed me. Why would he? I was the awkward, perpetually broke junior professor who wore anal beads as a bracelet.

Now he was looking straight at me.

“What happened?” Carr asked, and I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me.

Joan’s fingers tightened around his arm. “Dr. Sterling,” she said, her tone halfway between a scold and a purr, “what on earth have you done this time?”

I wanted to sink through the floor. Static made my hair stand on end, and black dust covered my lab coat. Around me, the lab looked like a set from a disaster movie: overturned stools, a scorch mark creeping up the wall, students peering in from the hallway like they were watching a zoo exhibit.

And Thorne—Professor Carr—was here, his eyes flicking over me with a mixture of concern and, God help me, amusement.

Heat crawled up my neck, and my mouth went dry. Of all the ways to finally get noticed by Thorne Carr, this was not the one I’d imagined.

Juniper raised an eyebrow at me from across the room, as if to say, I told you so.

I swallowed hard, trying to summon words, any words, as Thorne stepped closer.

Could this day get any worse—or was it about to?