I Broke Every Rule with a Grad Student in the Library

Jesus Christ, I fucked someone in the university library last night and I’m pretty sure I’ve lost my mind.

I’m Patricia. Dr. Patricia Moore if we’re being formal. I’m 44 years old and I’ve been teaching Victorian literature at the university for twelve years now.

I have a PhD. I publish in academic journals. I sit on dissertation committees and I’m respected in my field.

And last night I let a 25-year-old philosophy grad student fuck me against the rare books section while the campus security guard was doing rounds two floors below us.

The rational part of my brain is screaming that I’ve just committed about seven different violations of professional conduct. That if anyone finds out, my entire career is over. That I’m too old to be acting like a horny undergrad who can’t control herself.

But the rest of me? The rest of me keeps replaying every second of it and getting wet all over again.

I’ve got a hickey hidden under my collar right now. My inner thighs are raw from carpet burn. There’s a pulled muscle in my lower back from the position he had me in and it hurts every time I move and I fucking love it.

I’m supposed to be in a faculty meeting in twenty minutes and all I can think about is the way he looked at me when he pushed inside me, the way he whispered my name like a prayer, and the way being intellectually matched translated into the most intense sexual experience of my entire life.

Two years of being a divorced, professional, completely controlled woman just went out the window.

Let me tell you how it happened because I still can’t quite believe it did.

….

I should probably start by saying I’ve been divorced for two years now.

My ex-husband was another professor in the English department. We got married young, both working on our PhDs, thought we wanted the same things.

Turns out what he wanted was a 29-year-old adjunct professor with perky tits and none of my “intellectual intimidation” issues.

His words, not mine.

The divorce was brutal and public and the entire department watched it happen. I threw myself into my work afterward because it was easier than dealing with the humiliation.

I haven’t dated since. Haven’t even thought about it honestly. My vibrator and I have a perfectly functional relationship and I didn’t need the complication.

Then three months ago I literally ran into James in the library and everything got complicated.

I do most of my research late at night when the building is nearly empty. The fourth floor is my territory, it contains the special collections and dense theoretical texts that nobody touches except serious academics.

It was around 10 PM and I had my arms full of books when I turned a corner too fast and slammed directly into someone.

Books went everywhere. I was apologizing and bending down to pick them up when I heard this voice say “Oh shit, Dr. Moore, I’m so sorry.”

I looked up and there was this guy I vaguely recognized from campus. Tall, maybe 6’1″, dark messy hair like he’d been running his hands through it, wearing jeans and a worn philosophy department hoodie.

He was already gathering my books and when our hands touched reaching for the same one, I felt this jolt that I immediately told myself was static electricity.

“I’m James,” he said. “James Warden. I’m in the philosophy PhD program. I attended your lecture series last semester on gender and power in Victorian novels.”

I was surprised. Those lectures were open to the university but they weren’t exactly popular outside the English department.

“You sat through all six weeks of those?” I asked while we both stood up, books redistributed.

“Are you kidding? They were the most interesting thing happening on campus. Your interpretation of Jane Eyre’s relationship with Rochester as a critique of masculine ownership completely changed how I think about autonomy and consent in my own work.”

Nobody had talked to me like that in so long. Like my ideas mattered beyond a grade or a publication credit.

We stood there in the aisle and talked for thirty minutes about Jane Eyre and then Villette and then philosophy of language and then somehow we were sitting on the floor between the stacks still talking at midnight.

“Fuck, I have a seminar to prep for tomorrow,” I finally said when I checked my watch.

“Same, I have undergrads at 9 AM,” he said but neither of us moved immediately.

“You’re here late a lot?” he asked.

“It’s when I do my best work. Quiet. No interruptions.”

“Me too,” he said with this smile. “Maybe I’ll see you around then.”

After that night I saw him around a lot.

Same floor, same late hours, both of us supposedly working but increasingly finding reasons to take breaks and talk.

The conversations were incredible. He’d argue with me, actually push back on my theories instead of just nodding along. We’d debate interpretation and methodology and whether authorial intent mattered and I’d leave those sessions feeling intellectually alive in a way I hadn’t since grad school.

I started going to the library even on nights I didn’t need to.

Started checking the fourth floor to see if he was there yet. Started actually caring what I looked like even though it was 10 PM and nobody else would see me.

I noticed things about him too.

The way he’d bite his lower lip when he was thinking hard about something. How his hands moved when he explained complex ideas. The intense focus in his eyes when he listened to me talk, like I was the only thing in the world that mattered in that moment.

We’d sit close when looking at books together, shoulders touching, and I’d feel that contact like electricity.

I told myself it was just nice to have an intellectual equal. That the age difference made anything else inappropriate even though he wasn’t my student. That I was reading too much into friendly academic discourse.

But late at night in my bed I’d touch myself thinking about him.

About what would happen if one of our passionate debates crossed a line. If he pushed me against the shelves and kissed me while we were arguing about Foucault. If those hands that moved so expressively when he talked touched me everywhere else.

I came so hard one night imagining him fucking me on one of the library tables, both of us still half-dressed, too desperate to even find somewhere private.

The guilt would hit after but it never stopped me from thinking about him again the next time.

….

Last night started exactly like it had dozens of times before.

I got to the library around 9 PM, claimed my usual spot in the Victorian literature section, spread out my research materials.

James showed up around 9:45. I heard him before I saw him, his footsteps on the stairs, and my heart actually sped up.

Pathetic, right? A 44-year-old professor getting excited because a grad student showed up.

“Working late again, Dr. Moore?” he said, dropping his bag near where I was sitting on the floor surrounded by books.

“Patricia,” I corrected him like I always did. “We’ve been doing this for three months, you can use my first name when it’s just us.”

“Patricia,” he repeated and something about the way he said it made my skin warm.

We worked separately for a while but I was hyper-aware of him ten feet away. The sound of him typing, the occasional sigh when he hit a frustrating point in whatever he was writing.

Around 10:30 he got up and came over to where I was working.

“What are you wrestling with?” he asked, gesturing at my color-coded notes and the four books open around me.

“Article on Elizabeth Gaskell and the performance of feminine virtue,” I said.

“I’m arguing that her characters’ moral performances are actually subversive critiques of Victorian expectations but I keep hitting walls in the argument.”

“Can I look?” he asked.

I handed him my draft and watched him read, biting that lower lip in concentration.

“Okay so here’s my question,” he said after a few minutes. “You’re arguing the performance is subversive but aren’t you reinforcing the binary by accepting performance and authenticity as opposites? What if the performance IS the authenticity?”

And just like that we were off.

Debating theory, pulling books off shelves to cite passages, getting more animated as we defended our positions.

We ended up standing in the narrow aisle between shelves, both of us talking over each other, and I realized we’d gotten loud enough that if anyone else was on this floor they’d definitely hear us.

“You’re being reductive,” I argued, pointing at a passage in the book he’d grabbed. “Gaskell is deliberately showing the gap between performance and internal experience.”

“No, you’re imposing a modern framework on a text that doesn’t support it,” he countered, stepping closer. “The Victorians didn’t have our concept of authentic selfhood, so the performance ISN’T separate from the self.”

“That’s absurdly simplistic,” I shot back, and I was smiling because this was exactly the kind of argument I loved.

“Then explain to me how I’m wrong,” he said and he was smiling too, and we were standing maybe a foot apart now, both breathing hard from the passion of the debate.

“You’re wrong because you’re prioritizing philosophical framework over textual evidence,” I said.

“And you’re wrong because you’re so caught up in the text you’re missing the larger theoretical implications,” he said.

We stared at each other and the air between us changed.

I don’t know who moved first. Maybe both of us at the same time.

But suddenly he was kissing me and I was kissing him back and we were pressed together between the shelves and oh fuck it was so good.

His hands were in my hair and mine were gripping his shirt and we kissed like we’d been wanting to do this for months.

Because we had been.

“We shouldn’t,” I gasped when we broke apart for air.

“I know,” he said but he was already kissing my neck and I tilted my head to give him better access.

“I’m a professor, you’re a student,” I tried again weakly.

“Not your student,” he said against my throat. “Different department. No professional conflict.”

His hand slid under my sweater and found my breast through my bra and I moaned.

“Someone could come up here,” I breathed out.

“Fourth floor special collections at 11 PM on a Thursday?” he said, pulling back to look at me. “We both know nobody comes up here.”

“James,” I said and I didn’t know if I was protesting or begging.

“Tell me to stop,” he said quietly, echoing my own thoughts from months of wanting this. “Tell me you don’t want this and I’ll stop right now.”

I looked at him. This brilliant, intense, younger man who’d been making me feel alive and seen and intellectually challenged for three months.

I didn’t tell him to stop.

I kissed him again instead and that was it. That was the line crossed.

….

Clothes started coming off right there between the shelves.

My sweater over my head. His hoodie on the floor. My bra unhooked and tossed aside. His shirt followed.

We were kissing desperately, hands everywhere, and the small rational part of my brain was screaming that this was insane but I didn’t care.

His mouth moved from my lips down my neck to my breasts and when he took my nipple in his mouth I had to bite my own hand to keep from crying out.

“Fuck, Patricia,” he groaned against my skin and hearing my name in his voice like that made me so wet.

My hands fumbled with his belt and jeans and then his cock was in my hand, hard and thick and perfect.

“Oh god,” I breathed out because it had been two years since I’d touched anyone like this.

He got my jeans open and shoved them down along with my panties and then his hand was between my legs finding how wet I already was.

“Jesus Christ,” he groaned when his fingers slid inside me easily. “You’re so wet, fuck.”

“I’ve been wet since we started arguing,” I admitted breathlessly.

That made him groan and kiss me harder and work his fingers in me until I was gasping against his mouth.

“I need you inside me,” I begged, past caring how desperate I sounded. “Please, James, I need you.”

He turned me around and pressed my hands against the shelf in front of me and I heard him fumbling with a condom (thank god one of us was thinking) and then he was pushing inside me from behind and we both made these sounds that were way too loud for a library.

“Ohhhhh fuck,” I moaned as he stretched and filled me completely.

“Shhh,” he said against my ear even as he started to move. “You have to be quiet.”

But I couldn’t be quiet because it felt so fucking good.

His cock hit deep with every thrust, his hands gripped my hips, the shelf dug into my palms, the wrongness and rightness of it all combined into the most intense pleasure I’d ever felt.

“God, Patricia, you feel amazing,” he groaned, trying to keep his voice down.

The slap of skin and our breathing and my muffled moans filled the narrow aisle between shelves.

I could feel my orgasm building embarrassingly fast because this was every fantasy I’d had for months coming true.

“I’m close,” I gasped out. “Fuck, I’m already close.”

His hand came around and found my clit and that was it.

I came hard, biting my lip so hard I tasted blood to keep from screaming, my whole body shook as he fucked me through it.

“Mmmhhm god yes,” I moaned into my own hand.

He kept going and I was so sensitive it was almost too much but also perfect.

“Where’s your office?” he asked breathlessly, still moving inside me.

“What?” I couldn’t think straight.

“Your office. Where is it?”

“Second floor, west wing,” I managed to say.

He pulled out of me and I whimpered at the loss.

“Get dressed,” he said. “We’re going somewhere with a door that locks.”

….

We threw our clothes back on frantically, both of us breathing hard, and then we were basically running down the stairs to the second floor.

My office was at the end of a hallway and at 11:30 PM there was nobody around. I fumbled with my keys and got the door open and we fell inside and I locked it behind us.

“Come here,” he said and pulled me to him and we were kissing again, already working on clothes again.

This time we made it to my desk.

He lifted me onto it and I wrapped my legs around him and he pushed inside me again and it was even better than the stacks because I could make noise now.

“Yes, fuck, yes James,” I moaned as he pounded into me.

Papers and books fell off my desk and neither of us cared. My computer monitor got shoved aside. He fucked me on the same desk where I grade papers and meet with students and the wrongness of it made it hotter.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this,” he groaned, one hand tangled in my hair and the other gripping my ass. “How many times I’ve thought about bending you over this desk.”

“Me too,” I admitted between gasps. “God, me too, I’ve touched myself thinking about you so many times.”

That made him fuck me harder and I loved it.

My second orgasm built different, deeper, and when it hit I actually screamed.

“FUCK, oh god, James!”

He came right after, groaning my name, and we collapsed against each other, both sweating and shaking.

We stayed like that for a long moment, just breathing, processing what we’d done.

“Holy shit,” he finally said against my neck.

“Yeah,” I agreed, still trying to catch my breath. “Holy shit.”

….

We eventually cleaned up and got dressed properly.

It was past midnight and we both had early commitments the next day but neither of us wanted to leave.

“So,” he said, running his hand through his messy hair. “That happened.”

“That happened,” I confirmed.

“Any regrets?” he asked and I could hear the vulnerability in his voice.

I looked at him. This brilliant man who challenged my mind and apparently knew exactly how to use his body too.

“No,” I said honestly. “I should probably have regrets about the location and the professional implications and the age gap but I really don’t.”

He smiled. “Good. Because I’d really like to do this again. Preferably somewhere that isn’t a public building.”

“My place tomorrow night?” I offered before I could overthink it.

“It’s a date,” he said and kissed me again, slower this time but still intense.

….

So that’s where I am now.

Sitting in my office the next morning, sore and exhausted and unable to stop smiling.

I can see the spot on my desk where he fucked me and I keep getting distracted thinking about it.

I’m 44 years old. I just had sex with a 25-year-old grad student in the university library and then in my office.

It’s possibly the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever done and I’m absolutely doing it again tonight.

Fuck it. I spent two years being responsible and proper and it got me nowhere.

Maybe it’s time to be reckless instead.