I signed up for a seminar because it fit my schedule. Now there is a mentorship form on his desk with my name typed across the top.
I have started needing one man's approval more than I need to sleep.

Preston never wrote his rules down. He named the first one on a Tuesday and I have not broken one since.
Three weeks ago he told me to put my hands flat on his desk and not move until he said so. Then he left me there.
He never touched me. I shook for an hour afterward.

That is the shame of it. Not the desk. That one look across a seminar table takes me right to the edge and leaves me there for a week.
He says not yet and the whole room goes away.

There are eleven weeks left and he has already told me how they will go.
Kept waiting. Kept wanting. Denied at every session. Permitted only when he decides I have earned it.
That form ties my degree to his signature, discovery ends his career and my place in the program, and I am the one who keeps knocking on his door.
Who am I when my worth is one man's permission? What am I in May, when it stops?

A full-length age gap professor edging denial erotic novel featuring a university student and the professor who controls her permission.