Office Hours
"Fail her class and you go to the mines. Pass, and you give her something else entirely."
The email arrives at midnight.
Mr. Kade—Your performance in Executive Ethics has fallen below acceptable standards. Report to my office tomorrow at 6 PM for remedial evaluation. Failure to appear will result in automatic course failure and immediate reassignment to labor allocation.
—Dr. Helena Vance
I read it three times, my stomach sinking lower with each pass.
Labor allocation. The corps' polite term for the lithium mines in Neo-Arizona, where failed executives and corporate washouts spend the rest of their shortened lives digging rare earth metals out of irradiated soil.
I can't go to the mines.
Which means I have to face her.
The Vance Academy occupies the top three floors of the Meridian Tower.
It's where the megacorps send their most promising recruits—the ones destined for boardrooms and corner offices, the ones worth investing in. Three years of grueling education, and at the end, a guaranteed position in the upper echelons.
Unless you fail.
Dr. Helena Vance runs the Ethics department, which is a cruel joke in itself—there's nothing ethical about corporate culture, and everyone knows it. But someone has to teach the rules of the game, and no one does it better than the woman they call the Iron Maiden.
I've been in her class for six months. Six months of watching her command a lecture hall like a general commands an army. Six months of that voice—low, precise, capable of cutting through bullshit like a laser through tissue paper.
Six months of trying not to stare at her body.
She's fifty-five. Built like something from a pre-Collapse painting—thick everywhere, curves that her tailored suits can barely contain, hips that sway when she walks, breasts that strain against silk. Her hair is silver-white, cropped short, severe. Her face is lined with decades of corporate warfare.
She's terrifying.
And I want her so badly it makes me stupid.
Her office is on the top floor.
The door is heavy mahogany—real wood, obscenely expensive. I knock twice, my heart hammering.
"Enter."
I push through the door.
She's behind her desk, framed by the Neo-Chicago skyline—towers of glass and steel stabbing at a sky the color of bruised plums. Her desk is massive, obsidian black, empty except for a tablet and a single glass of whiskey.
"Close the door, Mr. Kade."
I close it. The lock engages automatically—a soft click that sounds like a trap springing shut.
"Sit."
There's only one chair, positioned directly across from her desk. Low-slung, designed to make the occupant feel small. I sit.
She studies me for a long moment, those grey eyes cataloguing my weaknesses like a predator assessing prey.
"You're failing my class."
"Yes, Dr. Vance."
"Do you know why?"
"I—" I hesitate. "The material is challenging."
"The material is elementary." She leans back in her chair, and I watch her body shift—the way her breasts move under her blouse, the way her thick thighs spread slightly beneath the desk. "A child could master it. So either you're an idiot—which your aptitude tests contradict—or something else is affecting your performance."
"Something else?"
"You're distracted, Mr. Kade." She rises, moves around the desk with the slow deliberation of someone who knows exactly what she's doing. "I've watched you in my lectures. Your eyes wander. Your attention drifts. You're not thinking about ethics. You're thinking about something else entirely."
She stops in front of me. Close enough that I can smell her perfume—something dark and complex, like aged bourbon and night-blooming flowers.
"Tell me what you're thinking about."
"I don't—"
"Tell me."
The command in her voice bypasses whatever filter I have. The words spill out before I can stop them.
"You. I'm thinking about you."
She doesn't look surprised.
"Elaborate."
"Dr. Vance—"
"Elaborate, Mr. Kade. Or I mark you as failed right now and you can spend the next thirty years in the mines fantasizing about what you should have said."
I swallow hard. My face is burning. My whole body is burning.
"I think about your voice. The way you lecture—like you're daring anyone to challenge you. I think about your body. The way your suits fit. The way you move." I'm past shame now, into some free-fall of honesty I can't escape. "I think about what you look like under those suits. What you'd sound like if someone made you lose that perfect control. I think about—"
"Enough." She holds up one hand. Her expression is unreadable. "So. My failing student is distracted by an inappropriate infatuation with his professor."
"I'm sorry. I know it's—"
"Do you think you're the first?"
I blink. "What?"
"You're not even the first this semester." She crosses her arms, and the motion pushes her breasts together in ways that make it hard to think. "Young men—and some women—developing fixations on the woman who holds their futures in her hands. It's predictable. Pathetic, even."
"Then why did you make me say it?"
"Because I wanted to see if you had the courage." She moves closer, until she's standing directly in front of my chair, her thick thighs at my eye level. "Most of them deny it. Lie. Dig themselves deeper into the hole. You told the truth."
"What difference does that make?"
"All the difference in the world, Mr. Kade." She reaches down, cups my chin, tilts my face up. "I can work with honesty. I can't work with cowardice."
"Here's what's going to happen," she says.
Her hand is still on my face. I can barely breathe.
"You have two choices. The first: I fail you, you go to the mines, and we never speak of this again. Your infatuation remains a shameful secret that you carry for the rest of your short, painful life."
"And the second?"
"The second requires something from you. Something more than just passing tests and writing papers." Her thumb traces my lower lip. "I am a lonely woman, Mr. Kade. Fifty-five years old, married to my work, with a body that most men your age would rather pretend doesn't exist. I've spent decades being powerful, being feared, being respected. But I haven't been wanted in a very long time."
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat.
"You want me to—"
"I want you to earn your grade." Her voice drops to something lower, rougher. "Not through essays or exams. Through service. You come to my office three times a week. You give me what no one else will. And in return, you pass my class, graduate with honors, and never end up in a mine."
"That's—"
"Coercion? Of course it is. This is the corporate world, Mr. Kade. Everything is coercion dressed in polite language." She releases my chin, steps back. "The question is whether you want what's being coerced. And I think we both know the answer to that."
She's right.
God help me, she's right.
"Yes."
The word comes out before I can think better of it.
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, Dr. Vance. I'll do it. Whatever you want."
Something shifts in her expression. The ice cracks, just for a moment, and I see something underneath—hunger, loneliness, a need that matches my own.
"Stand up."
I stand.
"Undress me."
My hands shake as I reach for her. The buttons of her blouse are small, fiddly, but I manage them. Beneath the silk is more silk—a black camisole straining against breasts that are even larger than I imagined. Her skirt has a hidden zipper; I find it, slide it down, let the fabric pool at her feet.
She's wearing black lace underneath. Garter belt. Stockings. The whole classical fantasy, wrapped around a body that society says I shouldn't want.
I want her more than I've ever wanted anything.
"On your knees."
I drop.
She looks down at me—the professor, the Iron Maiden, the woman who holds my future in her hands—and for the first time, she smiles.
"You're going to learn a new curriculum, Mr. Kade. And I expect excellence."
I learn.
Three times a week, I come to her office after hours. Three times a week, she teaches me things that have nothing to do with ethics and everything to do with her.
I learn what she likes. The drag of stubble against her inner thighs. The pressure of fingers gripping her hips—harder, don't be gentle, I won't break. The slow, deliberate pace that makes her breath catch, followed by the fast brutal rhythm that makes her scream.
She's demanding. Exacting. Gives direction the same way she delivers lectures—precise, unyielding, expecting nothing less than perfection.
And when I give her perfection—when I make her lose that iron control, make her clutch the edge of her desk and cry out like the lonely woman she is—
The look on her face is worth everything.
"You're improving," she says one night, months into our arrangement. We're lying on the couch in her office, her head on my chest, her thick body pressed against mine.
"In class or in here?"
"Both." She traces patterns on my stomach. "You're paying attention now. Engaging with the material. Your test scores have improved by forty percent."
"Because I'm not distracted anymore."
"Because you have motivation." She props herself up to look at me. "Fear of the mines only takes you so far. But working toward something you want—that's sustainable."
"Is that what this is? Motivation?"
"It started that way." She hesitates—the first time I've ever seen her uncertain. "I'm not sure what it is now."
"What do you want it to be?"
She doesn't answer. Just kisses me—soft, almost tender, nothing like the demanding professor who owns my future.
Graduation comes faster than I expected.
I finish top of my class—not just passing, but excelling. The corps line up to bid on my contract. I have my pick of positions, all of them lucrative, all of them light-years away from the mines.
Dr. Vance shakes my hand at the ceremony. Her grip is firm, professional. She gives no sign of what we've been doing for the past eighteen months.
But that night, I'm in her office again.
"You don't have to be here," she says. "Our arrangement is over. You've earned your grade. Your future is secured."
"I know."
"So why did you come?"
I cross to where she's standing by the window. The city burns neon below us, a sea of light and possibility.
"Because I want to."
"You don't owe me anything."
"I'm not here because I owe you." I cup her face, make her look at me. "I'm here because somewhere between the coercion and the curriculum, I fell in love with you. And I don't want this to end just because I'm not your student anymore."
Her eyes are bright. Wet. "I'm fifty-five years old."
"I know."
"I'm your professor."
"You were my professor. Now you're just the woman I want to spend my life with."
She laughs—broken, incredulous, hopeful.
"That's insane."
"So is everything about this." I kiss her forehead. Her cheek. The corner of her mouth. "Come away with me. I have money now. Connections. We could go somewhere no one knows us. Start over."
"And do what?"
"Whatever we want." I grin. "I hear you're an excellent teacher. I still have a lot to learn."
She stares at me for a long moment.
Then she grabs me by the collar and pulls me into a kiss that makes every lesson she's ever taught me pale in comparison.
"Office hours are over, Mr. Kade," she murmurs against my mouth.
"What comes next?"
She smiles—warm now, open, nothing like the Iron Maiden I met eighteen months ago.
"Everything else."