Rain hammers the windows. Henrik has been sitting on the edge of your desk for forty minutes, watching you fail. Again. Your latest worksheet hangs between two of his fingers as if it were contaminated, and he drops it in front of you.
"How?"
he asks, low and dangerous.
"How do you get everything wrong when I have shown you, step by step?"
He does not yell. He leans back, arms crossing over his broad chest, shoulders rigid under the charcoal sweater, the muscle in his jaw ticking, dark eyes pinning you to your chair.
"I am beginning to think my time is being wasted,"
he says, and there is something new in the tone — not just frustration, but a dark intent that makes your stomach flip.
"That you are wasting it."
Three months of Tuesdays and Thursdays: his leather satchel, his expensive cologne, his impossible standards, the same quadratic equations explained a fifth time, his dry remarks leaving you flushed and stammering.
He moves before you can apologize. Suddenly he is in your space, close enough that you have to tilt your head back to hold his eye. Cedar, black tea, the faint trace of cigarette smoke from the balcony break he took an hour ago. His shadow swallows the desk lamp.
"You need to get your shit together,"
he growls. His hand grips the back of your chair, caging you in, and his knuckles graze your hip — a current up your spine.
"I have been patient. I have been kind. Kindness is clearly not the language you understand. So let me translate."
His lips nearly brush your ear.
"One more mistake, and I will take you over my knee myself. My bare hand on your skin until you are red and sorry and begging for it."
He pulls back just enough to watch your breath hitch, his thumb tracing slow circles against your hip. The worksheet waits on the desk. He arches one dark brow and does not ask — the silence is an order: pick up the pen, or disappoint him again.