Chapter 229: 229. Playing With Something That She Always Show (Her Bellybutton)
He reached out, his hand moving with slow, deliberate grace to cup her jaw, his thumb tracing the curve of her lower lip. He could feel the heat radiating from her, the sheer, unadulterated vulnerability of a woman whose mind had finally lost the war against her body.
’There you are,’ he thought, a silent, triumphant roar in the quiet of his mind. ’There’s the real Sabrina.’
He didn’t need any more calculations. The system was quiet, the logic was gone, and all that remained was the heat, the steam, and the woman who was finally, beautifully, lost.
Inside the swirling, golden fog of her own mind, Sabrina was screaming, but the sound was muffled, as if she were shouting from the bottom of a deep, warm pool.
’What are you doing?’ the voice of her intellect hissed, though it sounded distant, like a radio station losing its signal. ’Sabrina, pull yourself together!’
’This is madness!’
’This is a lapse in judgment so profound it borders on professional suicide!’
’You are a professor and he’s your student!’
’You are a woman of standing!’
’You are a woman with a partner who expects you to be the anchor, the steady one!’
She tried to conjure the image of her partner: his face, his calm voice, and the stability he represented, but the image was flickering, being washed away by the amber waves of the Scotch. Every time she tried to grasp a logical thought, it dissolved into a sensation.
The sensation of the steam on her skin. The sensation of the heavy, rhythmic thud of her heart. And the sensation of him.
’You can’t act like a fool,’ she pleaded with herself, her internal monologue becoming a frantic, disjointed mess. ’Not to a man like him and not in a place like this!’
’If your students saw you now... if they saw the ’unshakeable’ Professor Sabrina, flushed and trembling, losing herself to a man who treats seduction like a conquest...’
But the ’if’ was becoming harder to sustain. The alcohol wasn’t just in her stomach anymore; it was in her blood, in her nerves, in the very marrow of her bones.
It had bypassed her brain and gone straight for her primal instincts. The heat in her body was no longer a simmer; it was a roar.
Her skin felt tight and overly sensitive, as if the mere movement of the humid air was a physical touch. She felt a sudden, sharp sensation of movement, a shift in the air around her.
Before she could even process the thought, she felt the weight of the heavy, white towel around her body suddenly vanish. There was a soft thud as it hit the marble floor, a sound that seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet, steamy room.
The sudden exposure sent a jolt of pure, unadulterated panic through her, but it was a panicked sensation that was immediately overtaken by a wave of intense, liquid heat. The cool air of the bathroom hit her damp, sensitized skin, and the contrast made her gasp, her chest heaving as she instinctively tried to cover herself.
But her hands were heavy, clumsy with the intoxication. They hovered for a moment, trembling, before dropping back to the edge of the tub.
She was exposed and she was vulnerable. The last barrier, the last ’professional’ boundary she had clung to, had been stripped away by his hands.
’He took it,’ her mind whispered, a final, fading protest. ’ He took the last of your control.’
She looked up at him through heavy, hooded eyes, her vision swimming. Mike was leaning in, his silhouette framed by the soft, glowing light of the bathroom, looking less like a man and more like a force of nature.
He wasn’t looking at her with the respect a student would give a professor or the stability a partner would provide. He was looking at her with the hunger of a man who had finally breached the fortress.
"Don’t hide, Sabrina," he murmured, his voice a low, dark velvet that seemed to caress her very soul. "The lecture is over..."
"The ’professor’ has left the building."
She wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him that she was still in charge, that this was just a temporary lapse, a chemical reaction to high-quality malt and eucalyptus.
But as he moved closer, his heat overwhelming the cool air on her skin, the words died in her throat. Her mind was a beautiful, chaotic wreck, and for the first time in her life, she would rather not fix it.
She just wanted to sink into the heat.
The air in the bathroom felt like it was vibrating, a low-frequency hum that resonated in the very bones of Sabrina’s body. Now completely exposed to the humid air and his predatory gaze, she felt a terrifying sense of liberation.
The last of her dignity had fallen with the towel, leaving only the raw, pulsing reality of her skin.
Mike didn’t rush. He moved with the agonizing patience of a man who knew he had already won.
He leaned forward, his muscular frame casting a shadow over her, and reached out. His hand, large and warm, didn’t go for her breasts or her hips immediately; instead, his palm landed flat against the soft, damp skin of her stomach.
Sabrina let out a breathy, broken sound halfway between a gasp and a moan as his hand began to move. He traced the curve of her abdomen with a slow, possessive rhythm, his thumb brushing against the sensitive skin just above her hip bone.
"You know," Mike murmured, his voice dropping into a dark, teasing register that felt like a caress in itself. "This is the most dangerous part of you, isn’t it?"
He leaned closer, his eyes locked onto hers, watching the way her pupils dilated in the dim light. "All those long walks across the Valcrest campus... you think you’re being subtle, don’t you?"
"The way you wear those tops, leaving this little sliver of skin exposed..."
"You think you’re just being ’fashionable’ or ’comfortable.’"
A low, knowing chuckle escaped him. "But we both know the truth..."
"You leave this part of yourself vulnerable on purpose..."
"You walk past the lecture halls, past the quad, letting every student and every hungry professor catch a glimpse of this."
"You let them stare, Sabrina... You let them wonder what it feels like to touch you right here."
Sabrina’s mind, though clouded by the Scotch, tried to muster a defense.
’He’s being a pig,’ she thought, a flicker of her old, sharp self sparking in the darkness of her consciousness. ’He’s being a vulgar, arrogant, beautiful pig.’
’He’s talking about me like I’m some sort of campus attraction, a piece of meat for the masses to ogle.’
She wanted to snap at him, to call him out on his chauvinism, to tell him that he was being a ’bitch’ of a man for reducing her intellect to the mere movement of her midriff. She wanted to tell him that his observations were shallow and his teasing was borderline insulting.
But the words wouldn’t come. They were trapped behind a wall of sheer, overwhelming sensation.
Every time his hand moved, a wave of heat rolled through her, making her feel heavy and liquid. Instead of the scathing retort she had prepared, all she could manage was a soft, helpless tilt of her head, her eyes fluttering shut as she leaned into his touch.
She was silent, her defiance melting into a quiet, shameful enjoyment of his scrutiny.
Then, Mike shifted. His touch became more precise, more deliberate.
His index finger found the small, hollow indentation of her belly button.
As he slowly, tentatively pressed his fingertip into the sensitive center of her stomach, Sabrina’s entire body jolted. It was a sensation unlike any other, a deep, internal tickle that spiraled downward into her core, sending a sharp, electric jolt straight to her pelvis.
"There it is," Mike whispered, his eyes gleaming with triumph as he watched her reaction.
He didn’t pull away; instead, he began to move his finger in a slow, swirling motion within the small hollow, teasing the most sensitive part of her midsection. "The unshakeable Professor Sabrina, reduced to a trembling mess by a single touch."
He leaned in until his lips were brushing against the skin of her stomach, his warm breath making her skin prickle. "Do they know, Sabrina?"
"Do the students know that behind that brilliant mind and that composed exterior, you’re this sensitive? And that you’re this... easy to unravel?"
Sabrina couldn’t even find the strength to be offended by the word ’easy.’ The sensation was too intense, the pleasure too sharp.
Her hands, which had been hovering near her sides, finally moved, her fingers clutching at the edge of the marble tub so hard her knuckles turned white. She was no longer a woman of logic; she was a woman of sensation, a woman being mapped out by a man who knew exactly where her defenses were weakest.
She was silent, her breath coming in shallow, uneven hitches, her body arching almost imperceptibly toward him. The ’bitch’ in her mind was silent, drowned out by the roar of her own blood and the exquisite, terrifying reality of Mike’s touch.
