LATELY, ANSEL HAS been texting me around dinnertime—when he’s working and I’m home. The routine has only been going on maybe the past four days when our schedules land like this, but somehow I know to expect it around seven, when he takes his evening break.

I’m ready, in the bedroom, when my phone buzzes on the comforter beside me.

Don’t forget what I want tonight. Eat dinner. I will keep you up.

With shaking hands, I press his name to call him, and wait while it rings once . . . twice . . .

“llo?” he answers, and then corrects to English. “Mia? Is everything all right?”

“Professor Guillaume?” I ask in a high, hesitant voice. “Is it an okay time to call? I know it isn’t your office hour . . .”

Silence greets me across the line and after several long beats, he clears his throat, quietly. “Actually, Mia,” he says, voice different now—not him, but someone stern and irritated at the interruption, “I was in the middle of something. What is it?”

My hand slides down my torso, over my navel and lower, between my spread legs. “I had some questions about what you were teaching me, but I can call back if there is a better time.”

I need to hear his voice, to get lost in it to find the bravery to do this when he’s not expecting it. When he may be sitting across the table from someone.

I can almost imagine the way he leans in, pressing the phone flush to his ear and listening carefully for every sound on the other end of the line. “No, I’m here now. Out with it.”

My hand slides up and back, fingers pressing to my skin. I pretend it’s his hand, and he’s hovering over me, watching every expression as it passes over my face. “Earlier today in class,” I start, my breath catching when I hear him exhale forcefully. I search my memory for some rudimentary law terms from my poli sci class two years ago. “When you were talking about judicial politics?”

“Yes?” he whispers, and now I know he must be alone in his office. His voice has gone hoarse, goading, deep enough that if he were here I can just imagine the way the sunshine would melt from his eyes and he would pretend to be hard and calculating.

“I don’t think I’d ever been more wrapped up in a lecture before.” I hold my phone between my ear and hunched shoulder, sliding my other hand up and over my breast. My br**sts . . . Ansel loves them in a way no one ever has before. I always loved being able to move around them easily. But under his touch, I realize just how sensitive they are, how responsive. “I’ve never enjoyed a class as much as yours.”

“No?”

“And I couldn’t stop thinking . . .” I say, pausing for effect but also because I can hear him breathing and I want to dive into the slow, deep cadence. I feel something inside me ignite with want. “I was thinking what it would be like if you would meet with me outside of school.”

It’s several tight, pounding heartbeats before he answers. “You know I can’t do that, Miss Holland.”

“Can’t because of the rules? Or because you don’t want to?” My fingers are moving faster now, sliding easily over skin that has grown slick with the sound of his voice, the sound of his breath through the line. I can imagine him sitting behind a desk, his hand clutching himself through his zipper. Even the thought makes me gasp.

“Because of the rules.” His voice drops to barely a whisper. “Also, I can’t want to. You’re my student.”

Without meaning to, I moan quietly, because he does want it. He wants me, even when he’s drowning at work and miles away.

How would it feel to really be his student, or to be one of the girls on the métro, watching him, wanting him? What if he really were my teacher, and every day I had to sit, and listen to his quiet, deep voice, unable to move forward, catch his eye, run my hands up his chest and into his thick hair?

“Mia, you’re not doing anything . . . inappropriate right now, are you?” he asks, stern voice back in place. It’s the first time I can’t see his face when we’re playing like this, but already I know him well enough to know he’s pretending. His voice is never stern with me, even when he’s upset. He’s always even, always steady.

My back arches off the mattress, sensation pooling and warming in my thighs, low in my belly. “You want to hear me?” I ask. “Do you like to imagine me doing this here in your bed?”

“You’re in my bed?” he hisses, sounding irate. “Mia! Are you touching yourself?”

The thrill of the game spins through me, making me dizzy and nearly high. I remember the way he looked over me this morning, conflicted, wanting to take me before he left for work. I remember how his mouth felt on my neck when he climbed into bed last night, how he pulls me against his chest, spooning me every night. And then, when I barely whisper, “Oh, oh, God,” I hear his rumbling groan on the other end and completely fall to pieces under my own hand, pretending it’s his, knowing how much better it will feel when it really is his, later.

And he can imagine me now, because he’s seen me do this.

My legs are shaking and I’m crying out into the phone, riding through the wave of heat, of slick pleasure sliding across my skin. I say his name, some other things I’m not sure are even coherent but just knowing he’s listening, and it’s all he can do—he can’t touch or see or feel—prolongs my release until I’m spent and gasping, my hand sliding to my hip and then down to the mattress beside me.