The Professor's Captive Wife novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Not Signing

Sylvie can't finish the word divorce on Eliot's desk, he won't sign, her stranger answers her news with one strange word, and in the morning Eliot's voice is all over campus.

He stopped in front of me.

He didn't touch me yet.

He just stood there with the lamp behind him, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off his sweater.

"Go on," he said. "Say it."

"You can't lock me in your office because you don't like my answer."

"The door's locked. You're not." He tipped his head toward it. "The key's in it. Leave whenever you want."

I didn't move.

He knew I wouldn't.

That was the worst part of being married to Eliot Thaxter.

He always knew.

"I heard you," I said. "With her."

"I know you did. And you still put your hand on me."

"You were very convincing."

"I wasn't trying to convince anyone." His eyes dropped to my mouth. "Your hand was halfway up my leg, Sylvie. Were you trying to get me fired or get me to finish?"

Heat climbed my throat.

"I was trying to see if you'd flinch."

"Did I?"

"No."

"Then you lost." He reached out and tucked a loose piece of hair behind my ear, slowly. "Say the word."

I opened my mouth.

"Di..."

His thumb slid down my jaw and stopped on my bottom lip.

I forgot the rest of it.

So I grabbed the front of his sweater and pulled him down to me instead.

He pulled me the rest of the way in, and I bit his lip hard enough to make him hiss.

Then his hands were in my hair, both of them, and he kissed me back like he'd been holding his breath since the door locked.

I shoved at him.

He didn't move.

I shoved again, and he let me back him into the desk.

"Say it," he said against my mouth.

"Make me."

He laughed, low and dry, and lifted me onto the edge of the desk like I weighed nothing.

The essays went first.

I pushed them off myself, swept my arm across the oak and sent the whole stack sliding to the floor.

Neither of us looked at them.

I reached for his belt, but he caught my wrist and pinned it against my hip.

"Not yet."

"Eliot."

"Not yet." He unbuttoned my coat himself, slow, one button at a time from the top down, his eyes on mine the whole way.

I let him.

He pushed the coat off my shoulders and let it fall to the rug, then went to work on the hem of my sweater.

"Arms up."

I did it.

The sweater came off over my head and joined the coat.

Under it I had a plain black bra and the grey wool skirt.

His jaw tightened.

"You came here to leave me," he said.

"Yes."

His hands went to my waist.

He squeezed once, hard enough to make me gasp.

"Then why are you still sitting on my desk?"

He pushed my skirt up my thighs, slow, deliberate.

"To divorce you."

His hand stopped.

"Finish the word."

"Di..."

I got that far.

Then his fingers hooked into the waistband of my tights and pulled.

The tights peeled down my legs, inside out, and he dragged my underwear off with them in one motion.

The sound of it was loud in the quiet office.

My boots stayed on.

I sat there on the edge of his desk with my skirt bunched around my hips and nothing on underneath, and I watched him drop to his knees on the rug.

The same rug I'd knelt on ten minutes ago.

"You don't get to look at me like that," I said.

"Like what?"

"You know what."

He hooked my legs over his shoulders and pulled me forward until I was barely on the desk at all.

"Like what, Sylvie?"

"Like you own me."

"I do." He lowered his head. "I always have."

His mouth found my pussy and I forgot how to speak.

He licked me slow and thorough, flat-tongued and patient, like he had all the time in the world and no intention of rushing.

My hand went to the edge of the desk and held on.

The lamp made a warm pool of light around us.

The windows were black behind him.

He licked up one side of my clit and down the other, and the sound I made was nothing I'd planned.

"Say it," he murmured against me.

"Fuck."

"Not that."

"Divorce."

"Finish it."

"Div..."

His tongue circled my clit and my hips bucked against his mouth.

He did it again.

I lost the rest of the word.

He looked up at me from between my legs, his mouth wet, his eyes dark and sure.

"Finish the word, Sylvie."

"Make me."

He smiled at that.

Then he put his mouth back on me and stopped playing.

He sucked my clit hard and slid two fingers inside me at the same time, and my head went back.

My hand left the desk and buried itself in his hair.

"Eliot."

He didn't answer.

He just fucked me with his fingers, slow and deep, while his tongue worked my clit in circles that changed direction every time I got close.

I was panting.

I was pulling his hair hard enough to hurt him.

"Please."

He stopped.

"Please what?"

"Please don't stop."

"Say the word."

"Fuck the word."

He laughed against my thigh, and then his mouth was on me again, and this time he didn't tease.

He ate me like he was starving.

The green lamplight swam above me.

The building was empty and the door was locked and my husband's face was between my legs, and I was going to come.

My own hand came up and clamped over my mouth.

I came on his tongue with my teeth biting into my palm, my thighs shaking around his head.

He didn't stop until I pulled his hair.

Then he stood up.

I was still catching my breath when I heard his belt.

He opened his trousers and pushed them down just enough.

His cock was hard and wet at the tip, and he didn't give me time to touch it.

He pulled me to the edge of the desk by my hips, one hand fisted in my hair just like it had been under the desk, and the other gripping my hip so hard I'd have his fingerprints there tomorrow.

I wanted them.

I wanted proof.

"Look at me."

I opened my eyes.

He pushed inside me in one long stroke, and I cried out, and his hand in my hair tightened.

"Again."

He pulled out and slammed back in.

"Fuck."

"That's not the word."

"Harder."

He gave me harder.

The desk groaned under us.

The essays were scattered across the floor like snow.

He fucked me deep and hard, his face close to mine, his breath hot on my neck, and every time I tried to say that word, he drove it out of me.

"Div..."

A thrust.

"Div..."

Another.

"Say it."

"I can't."

"You can." His hips snapped against mine. "Say it, Sylvie."

I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deeper.

"Don't stop."

"I won't."

"Please don't stop."

"Never."

His hand left my hip and found my clit, and he rubbed me in tight, hard circles while he fucked me, and I came again with my nails in his back through the wool of his sweater.

I said his name.

I said it over and over.

He came with his face pressed to my neck, his whole body shaking, and he groaned my name into my skin like it hurt him.

We didn't move.

I sat there on the edge of his desk, breathing hard, my legs still wrapped around him, his forehead against mine.

The lamp hummed.

The essays lay everywhere.

I hated him.

I hated that he could still do this to me.

I hated that I'd wanted it for two years and he only touched me in the dark.

But his arms came around me, and I let him.

Afterward he bent and picked up my coat.

He held it open for me.

I put my arms in it.

He buttoned it, one button at a time, from the bottom up.

His hands were perfectly steady.

Mine weren't.

"I'm not signing anything," he said.

"Then I'll file."

"File."

He went back to the desk and started picking up the essays from the floor, sorting them by name.

That was it.

That was all I got.

We drove home in separate cars.

The house was dark when I let myself in through the red door, and his car pulled in behind mine.

I took a shower.

When I came out, the light under his study door was on and the door was shut.

It was always shut.

I could knock.

I went upstairs instead.

I lay in the big walnut bed alone, sore and wide awake, and at one in the morning I picked up my phone.

The app was white and plain.

No pictures, no real names.

Letters took a few minutes to arrive.

I'd started writing on it in February, at two in the morning, to nobody.

Somebody had written back.

He signed every letter the same way.

Your stranger.

I typed fast, before I could stop myself.

"It's done. I said the word to his face. I don't know what I wanted him to say back."

I sent it as "S."

I stared at the ceiling.

Four minutes later, the phone lit up.

"What did he say?"

"No."

The next answer took longer.

Seven minutes.

I watched the clock on the phone the whole time.

"Good."

I read that one word five times.

It wasn't him.

My stranger had spent eight months telling me I deserved to be looked at.

Telling me a man who wouldn't look at his own wife didn't deserve one.

I typed, "Good?"

Nothing came back.

Downstairs, the study light went off.

I fell asleep at last with the phone on my chest.

At seven it rang.

It was Faye, and she never called before the café opened.

"Sylv." She sounded wide awake and furious. "Have you seen the confessions page?"

"What confessions page?"

"The campus one. The anonymous one." She took a breath. "It's a recording. It's Eliot's voice."

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