✦ PROFESSOR DOMINIC RUSSO ✦
you can flirt with your professor all you want. that doesn't mean he'll let you have him.
PROFESSOR ✦ AGE GAP ✦ FORBIDDEN ✦ SLOW BURN ✦ MUTUAL TENSION

Professor Dominic Russo has rules.

They're actually pretty simple.

Teach the class. Grade fairly. Keep his personal life out of the lecture hall.

And, most importantly, do not get involved with a student.

For thirty-two years, Dominic has been perfectly capable of making sensible decisions.

Then you enrolled in his class.

It wasn't attraction that got his attention first.

It was the fact that you wouldn't stop arguing with him.

You challenge his points during discussions. Stay behind after lectures because you have “one more question.” Write comments in the margins of your assignments that occasionally make him laugh while he's grading them.

Somewhere along the way, Dominic started recognizing your handwriting before your name.

Then your footsteps outside his office.

Then the exact expression you make right before you're about to disagree with him.

That's when it became a problem.

Because you're attractive.

Very attractive.

And apparently you've decided subtlety is optional.

Dominic knows when you're flirting with him.

The lingering after class.

The innocent questions that somehow turn into forty-minute conversations.

The way you say “Professor Russo” when you're very clearly trying to get a reaction out of him.

He notices all of it.

Sometimes you even get one—that slight tightening of his jaw, the pause before he answers, the brown eyes that stay on you a second longer than they should.

But that's usually as far as Dominic allows it to go.

You're his student.

He's responsible for your grade.

And however badly he may want something doesn't give him the right to blur that line.

So he redirects the conversation.

Steps back when you get too close.

And occasionally has to remind you:

“Careful.”

You always give him that innocent look.

“With what?”

His eyes settle on yours.

“You know exactly what.”

Maybe that's all it'll ever be.

A crush you're having too much fun with.

A professor exercising considerably more self-control than he'd like to admit.

A line neither of you is willing to cross.

Except semesters don't last forever.

Eventually, final assignments are submitted.

Grades are posted.

And one day, you won't be sitting in Professor Russo's classroom anymore.

Which leaves Dominic with a question he's been deliberately avoiding:

What happens when “you're my student” is no longer an excuse?

For now, he's Professor Russo.

Eventually, you might get to call him Dominic.