The apartment has grown too quiet—the kind of suffocating silence that follows when someone’s patience has finally snapped. Outside, rain lashes against the windowpanes, but inside, the only storm is Sven. He’s been perched on the edge of your desk for the last forty minutes, watching you fail. Again. His posture is deceptively casual—one hand braced against the wood, the other holding your latest worksheet between two fingers like it’s contaminated—but his shoulders are rigid beneath that charcoal sweater, and the muscle in his jaw keeps ticking. Three months. He’s been coming here every Tuesday and Thursday, walking through your door with his leather satchel and his expensive cologne and his impossible standards. Three months of him leaning over your shoulder, his breath warm against your ear as he explains the same quadratic equations for the fifth time. Three months of his dry, cutting remarks that leave you flushed and stammering, unable to tell if you want to snap back at him or… something else. And tonight, the air is different. Heavier.

"How?"

he asks, his voice dangerously soft.

"Can you get everything wrong despite me showing you step by step?"

He doesn’t yell. Sven never yells. He speaks in that low, cultured baritone that somehow cuts deeper than shouting ever could. He drops the worksheet onto the desk and leans back, arms crossing over his broad chest, dark eyes pinning you to your chair.

"I’m starting to think my time is being wasted,"

he continues, and there’s something new in his tone—not just frustration, but a dark, simmering intent that makes your stomach flip.

"That you’re wasting my time."

He moves before you can apologize. One second he’s by the desk, the next he’s in your space—close enough that you have to tilt your head back to maintain eye contact. The scent of him surrounds you: cedar, black tea, and the faint trace of cigarette smoke from the balcony break he took an hour ago. His shadow falls across you, blocking the desk lamp’s glow.

"You need to get your shit together,"

he growls, and his hand lifts—not to strike, but to grip the back of your chair, caging you in. His knuckles brush your hip as he does, a casual cruelty that sends electricity crackling up your spine.

"I’ve been patient. I’ve been kind. But kindness clearly isn’t the language you understand."

His face is inches from yours now, all sharp angles and displeasure. His dark eyes search yours, predatory and assessing, watching the way your breath hitches and your pupils blow wide.

"So let me translate,"

he whispers, and his lips curl into something that isn’t quite a smile—more a promise of violence dressed up as pedagogy.

"One more mistake… and I’ll take you over my knee myself. Do you understand?"

The words hang between you, obscene and thrilling. Your pulse hammers against your throat, heat flooding your cheeks and pooling somewhere far lower, shameful and undeniable. You should be offended. You should push him away, tell him to leave, and call someone. But your hands stay frozen on your thighs, fingers digging into denim, and you don’t pull back. Sven notices. Of course he does. He notices everything—that your breath has gone shallow, that your gaze dropped to his mouth, that you’re trembling not with fear but with something far more dangerous.

"Keep failing me,"

he murmurs, and this time his smirk is real, wolfish and knowing. He leans in until his lips nearly brush your ear, his voice dropping to a register that vibrates through your chest.

"And you’ll learn exactly what happens to students who don’t listen… my bare hand on your skin until you’re red and sorry and pleading."

He pulls back just enough to watch your reaction, his hand still gripping your chair, his thumb now tracing idle, maddening circles against your hip. The threat should terrify you.

"Well?"

he asks, arching one dark brow, dominance rolling off him in waves.

"Shall we continue the lesson? Or are you finally ready to disappoint me again?"

The worksheet waits on the desk. The rain keeps falling. And Sven’s eyes are dark with the certainty that, this time, you’re going to fail on purpose.