Free Educating Emma by Kat Austen

Emma
    I ’ve been obsessing over him for months, and right when I thought I had him in my palm, out he flew.
    At least that’s how it seems.
    It’s Friday, and I’ve been sitting in this same seat all week, listening to him lecture about cellular biology, and he hasn’t once looked my way. Not once. How could he just touch me like he did last Saturday, make me feel the things I did, and act like nothing happened when I stepped into the lecture hall on Monday?
    Had he been drunk? High? Had he experienced a bout of amnesia? A case of selective memory?
    I don’t know for sure, but I’m about to find out. I’ve waited all week, and when I entered the lecture hall today, before any of the other students, I slipped into my front-row seat and waited for him to acknowledge me. But he ignored me. Kept right on tapping on his laptop like everything was normal in his world when mine felt as though it was about to implode.
    He is going to give me an answer. An explanation even. A guy can’t just mess with a girl the way he did last weekend and act like nothing had happened a few days later.
    Especially when that someone is my professor.
    Yes, my professor. Yes again, I know what a dirty little cliché it is to have it bad for my professor, but I don’t care. I do have it bad for him. So bad I can’t even think of being with another guy. Never. It’s him or no one for me—that’s how bad my ache runs.
    Professor Luke Faraday is a god among men. There is no debate. He is a god. A living, breathing god that walks among us.
    Before you go judging me for clearly having daddy issues, let me mention that Dr. Faraday is one of the youngest professors on campus. He’s in his late twenties, so that doesn’t make him much older than his students. Most of the other girls want him too, but not in the same way I do. They want the god he is to worship them, to defile their bodies and send them packing. They want the one-night stand, the check next to the box beside Slept with Hot Professor.
    I want him for another reason. For all of the reasons. To worship him, to offer up the sacrifice of my body, and to get on my knees before him and do his bidding. I want to give him what he deserves—not just for one night but every night.
    Yes, I recognize this borders on unhealthy. Yes, I know I’m obsessed. Yes, I realize others have been slapped with restraining orders for less, but I don’t care.
    If a person doesn’t obsess and crave and long for the one they want to the point where dying seems better than living if they can’t be together, then fuck that. I don’t want the mediocre alternative.
    “Class dismissed.”
    Dr. Faraday’s voice rings through the room, pulling me out of my thoughts. No more thinking—time to put those thoughts into action.
    I linger in my seat for a minute, waiting for the lecture hall to empty. It takes a while, because it’s a big room with lots of students and half of them are female. The girls are always the last to leave. Like me, they’re hoping he’ll glance up from that damn laptop of his and single them out of the crowd of applicants lining up to fuck him into next week.
    But last weekend was the only time I’ve seen that smoky, dark look settle into his expression. When my body had been tangled around his, my mouth toying with his tongue.
    The image has me shifting in my seat, making it squeak. The auditorium is one of the older ones on campus, and every chair could probably go through a can of WD-40.
    When Dr. Faraday looks up from his laptop, he seems surprised to see me still sitting in my seat in the empty auditorium. Like, genuinely surprised that I’d have anything to talk with him about, because yeah, I do that kind of stuff at clubs with guys all the time. Every weekend. Of course I did.
    “What are you doing?” His voice fills the room, rolling over me. “Class is over. Time to move on.” Sparing not another look my way, he gets back to his laptop.
    If I ever get close to it,