She gives up the phone.

Deep down, Anna was a goody two-shoes and would not generally disobey a teacher's order. None of her recent confidence glow-up had changed that so far.

She handed the phone up to M. Dumas, blushing as she did so. Her screen was still showing the exchange of messages with Lily.

M. Dumas held the phone up and read the screen silently. Anna watched his gray eyes flicker over the text, then widen. She held her breath wondering if he was going to read it aloud.

There was a long pause. Anna looked up at M. Dumas, and saw that he was red-faced and grim-looking. "For Anna's privacy, I'm not going to read these texts out loud," he said, sounding irritated. He slid the phone into his pocket and walked over to his desk, assigning them all an exercise to work silently on.

Anna tried to work on the exercise, but couldn't resist glancing up at Dumas every few seconds. He was staring intently at his computer screen, and he had one hand on his mouse but the other in his lap, concealed from view. Anna couldn't see her phone anywhere.

The rest of the class flew by as Anna struggled to complete the assignment. Before the class ended, Dumas handed back graded papers. Hers had an 'A' and a note: "See me." Usually that note meant a person was in trouble. Was she in trouble? It would be a first, for this class.

It wouldn't occur to someone like Anna to try to ignore the summons. As the class was filing out, Anna dutifully approached the professor's desk. Dumas looked her up and down. He was wearing a dark cable-knit sweater with a collared shirt under it, with stylish jeans and nice brown shoes. His hair was brown with grey at the temples, and he had a very short brown-and-gray beard. He looked to be in his early forties.

He turned towards her and said, "Anna, I'm sorry to bring this up, but after I read your text messages, I had to ask, what's really going on? I noticed the mark on your face." His voice had a concerned tone.

Anna frowned. This wasn't the response she'd expected. "It's what's in the message, Professor, that's what happened." Instantly she was kicking herself mentally for not coming up with a story that was a little less...compromising. But Anna still wasn't inclined to lie to a teacher.

Dumas sighed. "It's not uncommon for domestic **** victims to make up stories, both to protect themselves and to protect the perpetrator.

Anna's temper flared. "If anyone was the 'perpetrator,' it's me! I knocked him out, just like I said!"

Dumas's eyebrows went up. "Look, I didn't mean to offend you. I'm just saying, there's no way it happened the way you said and I have a responsibility to find out the truth."

Was he serious? "It's none of your business either way, but for the record, I think it's incredibly sexist that you assume I couldn't have knocked Billy out."

Dumas winced at Anna's confrontational call-out. "If we were ignoring training, I wouldn't make the same claim. But isn't Billy a highly trained boxer? And I've never heard you say you liked it."

Anna relaxed a little bit. Maybe she was being a bit unfair. "Well, I just started practicing, but he taught me his tricks, and I ended up using them against him," she said, by way of explanation.

Dumas studied her. "Don't you think he was going easy on you?"

"And let himself be knocked out?" Anna retorted.

Dumas recognized her good point, but wasn't convinced. "Maybe he was going easy on you and underestimated you, allowing you to knock him out with a lucky hit?"

"All I know is I've done it twice, and this mark you see on my face is all that he's managed to do in return," Anna said matter-of-factly.

"I still think that's because he would have felt guilty if he went full **** on you and hurt you," Dumas said. "Even against an untrained man, I don't see how you could legitimately win."

"You don't? Well, maybe I should SHOW you!" Anna said angrily, smacking the professor's desk lightly for emphasis. Dumas's eyes flickered to her chest, and Anna knew he was looking at her breasts, which had bounced as she'd smacked the desk.

Now it was Dumas who was turning red. He had presumably expected to have control of this conversation, but it was leading in directions he seemed not to want it to go.

"Wh-what do you mean?" he asked. "Like, you and me...boxing each other?" He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

Without thinking about it, Anna doubled down. "Yeah...you and I grab some gloves and go a few rounds in the gym, and we find out if women are really as inferior as you think they are," she said.

Dumas leaned back in his chair and looked at her. "Anna, that wouldn't be...very professional of me. I'm still the one who has to grade your papers, you know."

Now Anna really wanted to fight him. Images came unbidden to her head, images of her squaring up with her college professor, weaving around him, slamming her fists into him. Maybe taking advantage of him once he was woozy and half knocked out. Dumas was a lot older than Billy, and probably had no training. He didn't look like he was in unusually good shape. Anna was pretty sure she could beat him easily.

From the way he was looking at her, Anna could tell the professor was tempted. But it looked like his professional restraint was getting the better of that temptation. Anna decided to use some of the tricks she'd picked up from two semesters of debate team.

She took advantage of the fact that the professor was seated, and she was standing. She leaned over his desk a little bit, resting her hands on the edge. She'd worn a modest top today in terms of what it revealed, but it was still form-fitting, and her breasts were right in Dumas's line of sight. She saw his eyes flicker toward them again. Anna arched her back, drawing herself up to her full height.

"I trust you to grade them fairly, whether you win or lose this little sparring match," Anna said. She wanted to cut all his rationalizations out from under him so that he had to confront the truth: that he was afraid to face her.

"I wouldn't want to hurt you..." he said lamely.

"You're assuming that you would," Anna retorted. "Are you a boxer?"

"Not really," he said, shrugging. "But I'm so much bigger than you, you wouldn't stand a chance."

"You can't say that and simultaneously refuse to fight me," Anna said fiercely. "You're challenging me with every statement! If you're so much better, you should be able to beat me without injuring me."

She saw the gears turning. Dumas looked at her, trying to gauge how serious she was. She stared back at him, not lowering her eyes.

"Fine. Meet me at the field house at 4:30 this afternoon and we'll do a little sparring. LIGHT sparring," Dumas said.

Anna blinked. She wasn't expecting him to give in so easily. Then again, maybe he was like Billy. Maybe he secretly wanted to get knocked out by her, and he was setting up the situation for it. She realized she was starting to get wet.

Blushing slightly, she said "I'll be there," and turned on her heel. She could feel Dumas's gaze on her as she walked out of the room.

Anna went home and ate and changed her clothes. She chose short gym shorts and a tank top that bared two inches of her belly. She wanted Dumas to be distracted, but she wasn't sure she wanted to wear anything too racy. But she had a pink sports bra on under the tank top in case she changed her mind.

She eyed the weights, wondering if she should load her gloves back up just to be safe. No, she thought. The whole point of this was that she could beat him in a fair fight, not a rigged one. And she could. Billy was in better shape and had infinitely more training, and she'd beaten him, hadn't she?