"The Taming"
The Teacher:
She doesn't strike.
Not yet.
The art of seduction is not in the taking
it's in the taming.
In watching a wild, innocent thing
choose the leash on its own.
She waits.
Three days.
No messages. No extra assignments.
Only absence.
Because silence is hunger
when the heart has been teased with a taste.
And on the fourth day,
when the girl lingers again after class,
her voice softer than before
"I was wondering if you had any reading recommendations…"
The teacher smiles, just a little.
That smile
the one that knows what's coming
but lets the storm pretend it chose the rain.
"Come by my office," she says,
velvet-voiced.
"After hours. I keep the better books there."
No one hears.
Only the girl.
Only the flushed yes in her breath.
That evening, the lights are low.
No overhead glare just a warm, amber desk lamp
that paints shadows like lovers across the walls.
A soft record playing somewhere in the background.
Satie or Coltrane. Something slow. Something liquid.
And the girl enters,
nervous in a way that makes the air sweeter.
"Lock the door behind you," the teacher says,
not looking up from the book she's pretending to read.
Not a suggestion.
A cue.
The girl obeys.
Of course she does.
The teacher rises slowly.
She doesn't touch her.
Not yet.
Instead, she moves like fog
around her.
Past her.
Close enough for the girl to feel the warmth of her
without the sin of skin.
"Do you know," she says gently,
"how long I've been waiting to hear you say something real to me?"
And the girl stammers
"I didn't know…"
"No," she interrupts softly,
placing a book in her hand.
"You still don't."
The girl looks down.
The book is thick.
Heavy.
Marked.
There are underlined passages about temptation, longing, and guilt.
All subtle. All intentional.
"I want you to read it," she says,
voice sliding like silk between their breaths.
"And then come back. We'll discuss it."
No kiss.
No confession.
No promises.
Just the weight of the book.
The heat in the air.
And the cruel grace of being wanted by someone who doesn't need to touch you
to own you.