In the charged silence of lecture halls, an ambitious grad student tells himself he is straight, even as his professor's voice stirs something he cannot name, a slow ache that builds each time the man speaks his name with approval. The professor moves through the room with the ease of someone accustomed to being obeyed, and the student finds himself staying after class, then returning, then craving the moment when those eyes finally hold his with intent.
What begins as pointed praise over seminar papers shifts into something deliberate, the professor's compliments becoming instruments of control, each one landing where the student is most vulnerable. The student hates how he leans in, how his breath catches, how he begins to perform for this man without being asked. Their meetings grow longer, the door closed, the space between them narrowing until the professor's hand on his shoulder becomes the only thing he can think about.
The student has built a life that does not include wanting this, does not include spreading his knees in a locked office while a man twice his age tells him exactly what he is good for. The risk of discovery coils through every encounter, the university's policies, his friends, his entire understanding of himself all poised to collapse. He keeps returning anyway, needing the praise more than he needs safety, needing to be seen and found worthy by the one man whose judgment has come to matter more than his own.
A full-length MM erotic romance featuring an ambitious grad student and his commanding professor. Includes themes of praise kink and bi awakening.
