Page 1

Roman

“And that’s where emotional truth outweighs technical perfection. A flat plot can still cut deep if the character’s desire is real enough.”

My voice is steady. Controlled. The kind of practiced cadence that tells a hundred hungover undergrads I know exactly what I’m talking about.

And I do. I have enough published novels under my belt that I could teach this kind of thing in my sleep.

But today, I’ve said this same line three times.

My hand gestures toward the bullet points on the slide behind me. Half the students are already packing up, fingers tapping their phones or closing laptops with one hand while yawning behind the other. A few are still scribbling notes. I think one is asleep in the second row.

And none of them notice that my eyes haven’t stopped drifting toward the corner of the desk since I started talking.

The notebook is still there. Same place I left it before the start of the lecture, like a quiet, innocuous little landmine. Worn edges. Spiral-bound. The kind you’d find in a discount bin at the campus bookstore.

It shouldn’t matter. Shouldn’t still be sitting in the back of my head like a pulse I can’t shake.

But it is.

And no matter how many times I loop back to this final point, I can’t stop thinking about the damn thing. The weight of it. The tension it’s been feeding me since the second I picked it up yesterday and realized what filled the pages.

I take a breath and force my focus forward.

“Okay. That’s it for today,” I say, a little sharper than intended. “Email your second draft by Friday. Peer reviews start next week, so don’t come in unprepared.”

A wave of movement rolls through the auditorium. I raise my voice just enough to carry over it.

“Oh, and Callie Dawson, can you stay behind for a moment?”

There’s a subtle shift in the air. A few students glance around curiously, but most are too busy packing up to care. The exodus begins, the low thrum of idle conversation echoing up toward the rafters as the students begin filing out.

I don’t look for her. Not yet.

Instead, I walk slowly back to my desk and sink into the chair behind it, the familiar creak of the worn leather grounding me.

I reach for the notebook, fingers brushing the curled corner of the front cover. Then I flip it open.

Again.

I’ve read every word already, twice. But it doesn’t matter. My hands move like they have a mind of their own, flipping slowly through the pages, as if I need to feel them again to believe any of it was real.

It was just a forgotten spiral notebook left behind on the back row yesterday after my last class. I only noticed it because I always scan the room before locking up. An empty coffee cup. A crumpled gum wrapper. And... this.

I’d tossed it into my bag without thinking. I wasn’t expecting gold. But I opened it before bed, anyway. Planning to skim it, and maybe return it if there was a name inside.

Instead, I barely slept.

I couldn’t stop turning the pages as I fell into her words. The innocent-looking notebook was filled with filthy, raw fantasies, detailed and visceral enough that I’d had to wrap my hand around my dick and jerk off while reading it. Three times.

But it wasn’t just the acts she described that made her words so addictive. It was the way she wrote it.

Emotion curling beneath every scene. Desire so potent it felt like a punch to the gut. There was longing in the lines. Worship. Obsession. Hunger.

And the kicker? Every single fantasy starred me.

Not just a vague professor. Me.

Even if she hadn’t used my name, the descriptions would have been unmistakable. My build. My voice. My books. Even the small scar on my left cheek from that goddamn knife training exercise in Quantico a decade ago.

She knew me. Or thought she did. And I can’t decide if that makes things better or worse.

What I do know is that when I turned to the inside cover and saw the name scribbled there in confident, looping handwriting - Callie Dawson - something inside me shifted.

Now I need to find her. I need to find the person with the filthy imagination and the talent to weave the kind of dirty fantasies that have kept me awake and hard as a fucking rock since I first opened the notebook.

The door clicks shut behind the last student, and silence falls.

I look up.

And there she is.

Standing maybe five feet from my desk, caught in that heavy pause between expectation and fear. One hand wrapped around the strap of her bag, knuckles white. Her wide, brown eyes are locked on the notebook in my hands, full of horror and realization.

But all I can do is stare.

Holy fuck.

She’s... breathtaking.

Not in some polished, plastic, runway-ready way. No. She’s all soft curves and flushed cheeks and nervous energy that rolls off her like heat.

Her body is built to be touched. Built for pleasure.

Full hips, plush thighs, a waist that begs to be held, and a generous ass that would fill my big hands perfectly.

Her breasts are round, heavy, straining just slightly against the thin cotton of her top.

Fuck, they’d look even better in my palms. Or wrapped around my cock. Or bouncing as I...

Jesus.

I drag in a breath through my nose. It doesn’t help. She smells of something sweet, like vanilla and innocence. My cock responds instantly, swelling behind the zipper of my pants with painful urgency.

My jaw clenches. She’s too young for me. I’m forty-three, and she must only be twenty. Not even old enough to drink. And she’s my goddamn student. I should not be thinking these things about her.

And yet, one word keeps running through my mind, over and over again, in time with my pulse.

Mine.

My blood roars with the certainty of it. My entire body tenses with the weight of it.

She doesn’t know it yet, but she belongs to me. Every inch of her. Every gasp. Every moan. Every filthy little fantasy she hasn’t written down yet. I want them all.

I want her.

She shifts nervously, catching her bottom lip between her teeth, and it takes every ounce of control I possess not to growl aloud. Her gaze flicks up to mine, just for a second, and it hits me right in the chest.

There’s something in her eyes. Shyness. Panic. Need.

My fingers tighten around the edge of the notebook, the pages crinkling slightly beneath the pressure.

This isn’t just about lust anymore.

This is possession. Obsession. Destiny.

She wrote about me, and now... now I will write myself into every breath she takes.

And I’m going to start right here.

Right now.