Knocked Up and Tied Down Page 2

  “I actually Googled him,” I say. “He’s only twenty-eight. Not even thirty. You said he was thirty, but he’s much younger.”

  “Listen to yourself,” Lily says. “Let’s just go to a bar tonight and find you someone to get your mind off this guy.”

  “I need to study,” I say.

  While Lily goes to the bar that night, I study — Professor Leeds’ office hours. I also write down a list of topics I can argue with him about when I go to his office. I noticed that he got the most emboldened when I questioned and argued with him. I want to see that happen again.

  But I have to avoid another ‘Good Day.’ I shouldn’t push too hard, at least not at first.

  I had to wait until Wednesday morning for Professor Leeds’ office hours. That’s more than a full day without seeing him. A full day for my mind to wander and my imagination to get the best of me. I put on a really low-cut shirt and a nice short skirt, grab my annotated copy of Steppenwolf, and walk into his office ready to go.

  “Miss Faria,” he says, his accent nearly melting my insides straight away.

  “I thought we decided on Nicole,” I say, pouting.

  “Um,” he mumbles. “Of course. Have a seat, Nicole.”

  “You remember in Steppenwolf,” I say, “when Hermine and Haller first meet?”

  He nods.

  “Maybe my translation is bad, but I don’t really understand what they are talking about…”

  “Oh,” he says, leaning forward. “Let me explain.”

  I smile, knowing he’s fallen right into my trap.

  Professor Leeds grabs his copy of the book off the corner of his desk. “Haller keeps calling Hermine by the formal version of ‘you’ in German, which is ‘Sie.’”

  He opens his book and flips right to the page in question.

  I look up at him through my thick, dark lashes and lean forward over his desk so he can get an eyeful of my cleavage. My copy of the book actually has good footnotes for this part of the translation, but I’m playing dumb for the fun of it. I lean even closer toward the book, realizing his copy is in German.

  “Why does she call him that?” I ask. “If she’s part of him, wouldn’t she be less formal?”

  “He’s a…” Professor Leeds says, “stiff old man.”

  Our eyes meet, and I part my lips, desperately hoping he’s making an intentional callback to my innuendo from our previous meeting.

  “I see,” I say. “So stiff old men like to be formal?”

  “Haller does,” he says, pointing. “It takes several pages until Hermine finally goes off on him, telling him to relax and just call him ‘Du’—the informal version—instead, because honestly who wants to drink with someone who is calling you ‘Mr.’ or ‘sir’…”

  He trails off, realizing the trap he’s walked into, and I grin at him. “So, since you keep calling me Ms. Faria, does that make you a stiff old man, too?”

  He slams the book shut and looks darkly at me from across his big, imposing desk. His eyes trail down across my body. He doesn’t look away quickly this time, he takes his time looking me over. Only after many long moments does he meet my eyes once again.

  “How old are you, Ms. Faria?”

  “Nicole,” I say. “Almost nineteen.”

  “So you’re eighteen,” he says. “I’m twenty-eight, ten years older than you. I’m also your professor, and that means you call me Professor Leeds and I call you Ms. Faria. We’re not having a drink together, we’re discussing your reading assignment. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” I say, nodding.

  “Good,” he says, running his fingers up along his strong forearms.

  “Does that mean we can’t enjoy a drink together? Later on, I mean?” I ask innocently. “Or does there have to be this stifling wall of formality between the two of us?”

  “It would be entirely inappropriate,” he says.

  That’s what he says and his lips remain pursed, but his eyes are betraying him.

  “Languages like German, French, Spanish, and Russian,” Professor Leeds says. “They all have the formal and informal forms of ‘you.’ It helps to establish the correct...distance...between people. Germans will often call co-workers that they spend dozens of hours per week shoulder-to-shoulder with by the formal “Sie,” and refer to them only as ‘Herr’ or ‘Frau.’ Why do you think that is, Miss Faria?”

  “Hmm,” I say, pushing my arms down so that my breasts smoosh together. I bite my bottom lip and look right up at him. “It’s probably a subconscious way to remind themselves that they aren’t really friends and are just co-workers, to keep distance between each other so that they can form a super-efficient German workforce. It’s probably why the trains run so perfectly on time.”

  “Your sarcasm makes it sound like you don’t entirely agree,” he says.

  “Well,” I say, looking into his beautiful brown eyes.

  I put a finger to my lip and touch my tongue to it, and then I run my wet finger along my lips. I watch as his dark eyes trace my movement. I have him where I want him.

  “It just feels so cold,” I say. “Doesn’t it? Maybe it’s just because I’m an American, but we like to be friendly with people who we are around a lot. If I work with a guy, I want to be able to talk to him normally. Like at my old job, I’d go to the guy in the stockroom and be all, ’Hey, Chuck, how was your weekend? You get laid?’”

  He gives me the slightest smirk at that. “Stockroom? You worked in a grocery store?”

  His condescending tone tells me he thinks that’s funny.

  “I was a cashier,” I say. “But I didn’t turn my nose up at anyone, so I’d shoot the shit with the guys in the stockroom, sure. No, ‘Good Day to you, sir, Mr. Wellington! Top of the day to you!’”

  “We don’t talk like that,” Professor Leeds says, laughing through his nose. He grabs my book off the desk and flips idly through it.

  “This is why I’m studying abroad,” I say, “to understand these cultural differences. Already I’m understanding the relationship between Haller and Hermine so much better.”

  He slams my book down onto his desk and slides it toward me. “Ms. Faria, it looks like your copy has footnotes explaining everything I just told you. You’ve even highlighted them.”

  Damn it. Why the hell did I let him take my book? I should have never left it lying on his desk like that. Now he knows exactly what I was up to.

  “I have students with real questions,” he says, standing abruptly from his chair and walking past me to the door. He opens it and looks down at me, shaking his head. “So if that’s all, Good Day, Ms. Faria.”

  The semester abroad turns into more of me studying Professor Leeds. He is a puzzle. If I work him just right, I can get him to smile at me. His real smile, the one that makes it looks like he is considering risking his career to fuck me right on his desk.

  It takes wit, charm, and perseverance to get him to look at me like that, though, and I still haven’t figured out how to follow up from there.

  Several times, I try to turn up the heat, say something just barely masked in innuendo, something like, “Well, I personally see a lot of phallic symbols in Kafka, but maybe it’s just because I’ve got dicks on my mind.”

  Anything like that earns me an immediate “Good Day, Ms. Faria,” and a prompt signal for me to get out of his office or his lecture hall.

  If, on the other hand, I decide to chill out after I get him to look at me like a real woman, he...chills out. He goes back on-topic, talks about literature, and allows me to keep asking questions. When I get him on-topic, he never looks at me like I want him to look at me, and there’s no way to take things further without getting booted from his office.

  With the semester rapidly coming to a close, I decide I need to take some serious initiative. Sometimes I build it up in my head that Professor Leeds and I really do have some kind of relationship. I like to pretend that every one of those looks he gives me means more than it probably does. I think
of it like one of those images of a glacier: a little ice visible on the surface, but a mountain of it hiding beneath the water. So, in my mind, each time Professor Leeds smirks at me, he is secretly professing his love to me.

  It’s a stupid, schoolgirl’s fantasy. In reality, I’ve spent ninety percent of the semester here just showing up to his office hours under weak pretenses, or making doe eyes at him during lectures. Aside from some wandering eyes—or what were probably just polite smiles—Professor Leeds stays professional and turns down each one of my advances.

  That’s probably it: he’s probably just not into me. But I can’t go back to Pennsylvania and wonder my whole life if maybe, just maybe, he was into me.

  So I decide I have to figure out for sure. There’s only two weeks left of classes, so I’ve got nothing to lose.

  “You’re going to stalk him?” Lily asks me, laughing. “Nikki, I’ve fucked like, four hot British guys since I got here, and you’re hung up on one you can’t have. Don’t do this to yourself.”

  “I didn’t intentionally stalk him!” I snap. “I was getting some curry late at night a few weeks ago, and I saw him go into this pub. If I was stalking him...I’d have followed him in. Or I’d have gone back there, or—”

  “You just said you’re going to go there tonight,” Lily says.

  “Yes, but...okay, call it stalking if you want. But I need to see this guy outside of his stupid office and off that stupid campus.”

  “It’s a beautiful campus, Nikki.”

  “Shut up. You know what I mean. I need to see him in a dark, dingy pub, where the lighting makes me look older, and where the beer that he’s hopefully downed lowers his good sense, and…”

  “Okay,” Lily says. “I think it’s actually a solid plan, now that I hear you walking it through like this.”

  “You do?” I ask, incredulously.

  “Yeah,” Lily says. “Just make sure you look hot as hell when you go in there.”

  4

  Elijah

  I go to the pub with the intention of getting drunk. That seems like an obvious reason, but going to the pub doesn’t have to be about getting drunk. You can go to pull a girl, or to meet friends, or to grab a bite.

  Tonight, though, I’m going to get drunk. If any of those other things happen incidentally, so be it, but getting drunk will take priority.

  “A big pint,” I say to the bartender.

  “All the pints are the same size, chief.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Units of measurement tend to work like that, I suppose. Keep them coming, though.”

  I slap ten quid down onto the bar, and he snatches it up.

  Everything is going right for me. I just got another paper published, and Oxford has extended my contract by three years. Including a raise.

  I down a good chunk of the pint in one big swig. I should be celebrating, not drinking alone.

  The problem, of course, is Nicole Faria.

  In my career, I’m getting everything I want. It’s everything I have worked hard for these past ten years. I never thought I’d want one of my own students. Especially not one so young. Of course I can’t have both: I can’t have my career and Nicole Faria.

  Oxford has an extremely strict policy about dating students—even former students.

  “She’ll be gone in a few weeks,” I whisper to assure myself. I take a big swig of beer, hoping it will muddy my brain enough that I won’t keep thinking about this.

  It doesn’t work. The beer starts to hit me, making me feel a bit numb and dizzy, but then I feel my cock starting to harden as I think about all the times Nicole all but offered herself up to me. Each time, I merely needed to reach out and take her.

  Each time, I imagined shoving her face-first against my desk, and commanding her to submit to me. I imagined binding her wrists behind her back. Tying them in tight knots, ones that only I could undo. I’d tell her how bad she’s been, and make her beg me not to punish her for it.

  I look down at my empty glass. Idle fantasies. Taking any action would ruin my career. And even though she’s smart, curious, and wise beyond her years...she’s still too young.

  “Buy me a drink?” a voice asks.

  I look up to see a woman in a black, sleeveless dress. Her accent is northern, and her smile dimples up her face too much...but she looks good. Especially after having a few beers.

  I hold up my empty glass.

  “Maybe I should buy you one,” she says, sitting down next to me at the bar. “Two pints.”

  The bartender nods.

  “I was joking,” I say. “I’ll get us a round.”

  “It’s fine,” she says, smiling. “I got it. I’ve seen you around campus. German Lit, right?”

  I nod. I don’t remember seeing her. I’ve been too distracted.

  “And you are…” I start to mumble.

  “Rosie,” she says, holding out a hand. “Math.”

  “So not a student,” I say. “I’m Elijah Leeds.”

  She laughs. “Of course I’m not a student, that would be...awkward. And I know your name.”

  She smiles at me, and the smile tells me everything I need to know. If I want, she’ll go home with me. And that look in her eyes tells me that she’ll eagerly submit to me, too.

  “Mathematics,” I say. “Not my forte.”

  “German is only spoken by what, one hundred million people worldwide?”

  I sigh. “Native speakers, if you’re being generous. Maybe twice that if you count non-natives.”

  “Math is the only universal language,” she says. “And I mean that literally. If aliens from another galaxy came in contact with us, how do you think we’d talk to them?”

  “I like to think that aliens could appreciate Goethe, or at least Hansel and Gretel.”

  “Maybe after a while,” she says. “But to talk to them at first, to start teaching them English or Chinese or German, we’d need math.”

  And as she drones on about using pi and the planck constant to communicate with aliens, I see Nicole walk into the bar. Her shoulders are back, her posture is straight, and she’s dressed in a tight red dress. It hugs her breasts and hips, and my eyes lock onto her curves involuntarily. I stop breathing.

  Nicole looks up at me through her thick lashes, licks her painted lips, and strides up to the other side of the bar. She’s behind Rosie, and I can look at Nicole while still maintaining the illusion that I’m paying attention to whatever Rosie is saying.

  “So what do you think?” Rosie asks.

  I tear my eyes away from Nicole, to whom the bartender is handing some kind of hard liquor.

  “Uh,” I mumble. “I think it’s not the most compelling reason to learn mathematics. It’s...unlikely, and it’s not like everyone on Earth needs to be able to talk to the aliens directly as soon as they land.”

  “But the people who know math will get to write the first message,” she says, grinning.

  I nod absently and look over toward Nicole, but she’s since moved away from the bar. Some guys—students—are talking to her. One has his hand on her arm, and she’s laughing at whatever joke he’s telling her.

  She looks right at me for a brief moment, then returns her attention to the younger guy.

  “First impressions are important,” Rosie says, taking my hand.

  5

  Nikki

  I see the stupid woman with Professor Leeds take him by the hand. I’m watching out of the corner of my eye while I fake laugh at whatever the hell Benjamin said.

  Benjamin bought me a drink and invited me to sit down with him and his “lads.” I accepted because I thought it would make Professor Leeds jealous...and judging by the way he keeps looking over at me, the plan might be working.

  But now that woman is touching him, and I’m the one feeling foolish and jealous.

  I’m again reminded how stupid and childish I’ve been, and seeing this unfold in front of me is making me think this whole plan to tell Professor Leeds how I really feel was
just as misguided as being interested in him in the first place.

  I avoid looking at him, instead listening to Benjamin brag about how good he is at soccer. He calls it football, of course, but it will always be soccer to me.

  One of his friends laughs. “Bennie is just like Arsenal, always trying to walk it in!”

  “Speaking of Arsenal,” Benjamin says. “Did you see that ludicrous display last night?”

  I try my hardest not to yawn. “I’m going to go to the bathroom.”

  They nod to me, and I get up from my stool.

  I could just leave. I should, really. I do have to pee first, though, but getting to the bathroom means walking right past Professor Leeds and that woman.

  I try not to look at them, but right as I pass by them, with my eyes down, I feel a hand tap me on my shoulder.

  I look up to see that she touched me.

  “You’re one of Elijah’s students,” she says. “He was just talking about you.”

  I look at both of them. I should just politely nod, say hello, and walk away. But anger surges through me, and the adrenaline numbs all the parts of my brain that can make good decisions.

  “Yes,” I say. “I am. And you are?”

  She laughs, and Professor Leeds looks on nervously.

  “I’m Dr. Woods,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say. “So you two are colleagues.”

  I throw them an accusatory glare. “What does a German Lit professor and a math professor have to talk about, really?”

  “All kinds of things,” Dr. Woods says, eyeing Professor Leeds over with a stupid, knowing glance.

  “I see,” I say. “I notice she called you Elijah, Dr. Leeds. Do colleagues really use du to each other?”

  “Do?” Dr. Woods asks. “What do you mean?”

  “Never mind,” I say. “I’ll leave you two to it; it sounds like you have so much in common.”

  I turn to walk off, but Professor Leeds grabs hold of my wrist, holding me back. He stands up and glares at me.