My Mouth Before 8

“Oh my god, you look like hell.” Ayden’s voice cut through the room like a slap, followed by the slam of the door and the squeak of Cleo’s heels.

He had one arm wrapped around her waist, still in his post-practice hoodie, damp hair curling at his temples. Cleo carried two overloaded grocery bags and dropped them dramatically on the kitchen counter like they were dead weight.

I didn’t look up. I sat on the couch in a hoodie and fuzzy socks, eating ice cream straight from the tub with my hair in a claw clip that hadn’t seen shampoo in forty-eight hours.

“What happened?” Cleo asked, eyes narrowing like she already knew I was spiraling.

I shoved another spoonful into my mouth. “He hasn’t texted me back. Since yesterday.”

Cleo blinked. “Mystery Daddy?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, voice muffled by ice cream and shame.

“Damn.” Ayden perked up like a frat bro smelling drama. “Maybe his wife came back from vacation or something.”

My head whipped toward him. “What the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

“Sorry, just sayin’.” He grinned unapologetically and shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

“You’re a jackass.” Cleo rolled her eyes and slapped him on the back of the head with a perfect thwack. “Go to my room. Now. Before I bury you under the broccoli.”

Ayden smirked and slung his duffel bag over one shoulder. “Yes, ma’am.”

He disappeared down the hall, and Cleo turned back to me, grinning like the devil.

“You know, you’re more dramatic than me when you’re in sex withdrawal.”

“I’m not in sex withdrawal,” I muttered.

“Soph.” She tilted her head and gave me a look. “You had one taste of mystery fingers and now you’re curled up with ice cream like he ghosted you after a honeymoon.”

“I don’t want to hear about anything right now,” I groaned and sank deeper into the cushions. “Especially not your weird mating calls.”

She grabbed a banana and wiggled her brows. “Too late. The walls are thin tonight, baby girl.”

“Disgusting,” I muttered, throwing a pillow at her before hiding under my blanket.

Later that night, when the apartment was dark and Cleo and Ayden were busy doing a PornHub worthy performance behind a closed door, my phone lit up.

I stared at it for a long second, afraid to hope. No text. No apology. No words at all.

Just a video.

My stomach flipped. The thumbnail alone made my pulse race. I recognized the backdrop. The velvet couch. The wall. The shadows.

I hit play and there I was. Back in the private VIP room.

My dress hitched up around my hips, my legs trembling as I clung to the wall. His hand was between my thighs, his fingers moving inside me like he already knew my body better than I did.

My mouth was open in a soundless moan, eyes glazed, completely lost to the moment. The video was grainy and dimly lit, but it captured everything—the way I shook, the way his fingers pressed deeper, the arch of my back as I was coming undone against his hand.

The message came right after.

Private Room Service: I watch this often lately. Helps me feel myself good. Helps me remember what it actually feels like to have you in my hands.

Shame hit me hard, a slap to the chest. But it wasn’t the kind that repels.

It was the kind that pulled.

My body responded before my mind caught up. A pulse between my legs. A quickening breath. The memory of his breath against my ear, his fingers, the absolute ruin of what he’d done to me.

Another text followed a beat later.

Private Room Service: Wanna see if this helps you feel yourself good too, princess?

I couldn’t resist. My body moved before my brain caught up.

I slipped into the bathroom and locked the door behind me, barely able to breathe as I sank down onto the cool tile floor. My rose-shaped vibrator trembled in my hand, already buzzing to life as I restarted the video.

There I was again. Moaning. Falling apart. Coming undone on his fingers like I’d never known pleasure before.

I spread my legs, pressed the toy to my clit, and gasped.

The vibration was soft, almost teasing, but with the image on the screen, the sound of my own broken whimpers, the memory of his dominance, it was everything.

My hips bucked against the rhythm. I didn’t even try to be quiet. Let Cleo and Ayden remember that the walls were thin. Let them hear me fall apart again.

The toy circled slowly and tight, and I matched the movements on the video with my fingers brushing against my slick folds, mimicking what he’d done to me.

My thighs trembled, eyes burned. My breath caught in my throat as I watched myself lose it on camera again and again, the echo of his unheard growl in my mind—’You’ve been such a good girl, princess’.

My orgasm crashed through me, violent and hot, my forehead hitting the bathroom counter as I shook all over, choking on a sob of pleasure. The rose slipped from my hand, still humming against the tile as I lay there—wrecked, used, aching.

And still wanting more.

His video still looped on the screen. And I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop watching.

***

The next day, reality crashed back into me like cold steel.

Seminar felt suffocating the moment I stepped in. I had worked on my paper all day, made the revisions Lewis had demanded, poured every ounce of myself into every paragraph.

I handed it in with a quiet kind of hope.

Lewis stood at the front in his usual all-black ensemble—dark slacks, pressed shirt, sleeves rolled just enough to show his muscled forearms. His expression was unreadable as he returned our drafts after the end of the seminar.

When he reached me, he didn’t say a word. Just handed my folder without a word, then straightens.

“Miss Hale,” he said as class ended, voice cool. “My office. Ten minutes.”

My stomach drops. Cleo shoots me a look that screams ‘what the fuck did you do?’ but I just gather my things and try not to look like I’m walking to my academic execution.

His office is exactly what you’d expect—dark wood, leather-bound books, the kind of intimidating setup designed to make students feel intellectually inadequate.

The door clicks shut behind me with an ominous finality.

When I entered, he didn’t ask me to sit. He doesn’t even look up from his desk, just continues writing something with a fountain pen that probably costs more than my textbooks.

“I gave you explicit guidelines last time,” he said, voice clipped. “So I expected improvement. What I received was emotional fluff disguised as insight. This—” he motioned to the folder in my hands, “—is beneath even you.”

I opened my mouth, then closed it.

“Your work,” he says without preamble, “is insufficient. Distracted. A waste of both our time.”

Each word lands like a physical blow. I’ve spent years perfecting my academic armor, but somehow he’s found every weak spot.

I stand there taking it, because what else can I do? This is Professor Adrian Lewis. You don’t argue, you don’t defend. You accept your intellectual annihilation and try to learn from it.

“Have you opened your returned folder yet?”

“No, sir,” I whispered, swallowing my shame down my throat hard. “Not yet.”

“Then do it now, I assume.”

Confused, I stepped forward and lifted the cover.

My hands shake slightly as I flip open the manila folder. The first page is covered in red ink—his precise handwriting dissecting every paragraph with surgical brutality. I flip to the second page, then the third, trying to process the extent of my academic failure.

Then I see them.

Folded neatly between pages four and five, like some kind of twisted bookmark, are my lace panties. The black ones with the little bow. The ones I lost at the club.

The ones that disappeared after that private VIP room.

The world tilts sideways. My vision blurs at the edges as every piece clicks into place with devastating clarity.

The voice in the dark. The commanding presence. The way he’d pressed me against that wall. The skilled fingers that had me coming apart. The man who’d sextexted me for weeks, who’d demanded honesty, who’d called me princess.

Private Room Service.

I looked up at him, stunned. “You,” I whispered. “It was you.”

Professor Lewis—my professor—stands slowly and walks to the door past me. I hear the lock click with mechanical precision.

His voice drops to that low whisper I now can recognize from the club, from every fevered memory I’ve been trying to forget.

“Surprise, princess.”

He moves behind me with that same predatory grace, and I feel the heat of him at my back.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t recognize you? Even in that dim light?” His breath touches my ear, sending electricity straight through my core. “I know exactly how you sound when you come. I know how you taste.”

I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Can’t process that my untouchable literature professor is the same man who had the video of him fingering wrecked and moaning me.

“You’ve been playing games, haven’t you? Texting me about fantasies. About me. About wanting to surrender.” His voice carries that same dangerous authority from the VIP room. “Well, here’s your chance.”

I’m trembling now, caught between terror and anticipation.

He leans closer, his lips almost brushing my ear. “On your knees, Cinderella.”