fair game in the lecture hall

The wooden folding seat cut into my thighs without mercy, the weight of my torso driving the steel rig deeper against my pubic bone with every breath. The narrow strip of lace between my cheeks had long since become a searing garrote, pulling tighter at every microscopic shift.

Beside me, Emma crossed her legs. The fine wool of her trousers brushed my thigh, so close that her body heat radiated through the stiff denim. To her right, her two friends were whispering back and forth, while down at the podium the dean held forth in a dry, reverberating drone on the first-semester examination regulations.

Inside my pocket, the phone gave a muted double vibration.

With numb fingers, I slid the screen out beneath the rim of the lecture desk. My heart missed a beat.

**Loona:** *Emma is looking after you today, sweetheart. You obey her every look and follow her every word to the letter. If she tells me after the lecture that you gave her any attitude, that bathroom photo of you in your pretty little panties goes straight to your first-year cohort’s WhatsApp group.*

My stomach twisted violently. There was no way out, no room for protest, nowhere to run. They held the leash between them—Loona from afar, Emma right at my side.

As if she had read the text off the screen herself, Emma turned slowly toward me. Her lips parted in a sweet, venomous smile. She leaned in so close the scent of her expensive perfume choked off my air.

"Well?" she whispered, barely audible, eyes glinting dark. "Ready to be a useful little boy?"

Before I could answer, her right hand moved casually across the table, brushed her notebook, and nudged her heavy designer pen off the desk in an apparently clumsy motion. The metal struck the floorboards with a sharp clatter, rolling between the seats and under the bench behind us.

"Oops," Emma breathed with mock dismay. The friend beside her looked over and giggled. Emma pinned me with icy disdain, kicked the tip of her leather shoe against my ankle, and said in a dismissive, carrying tone: "John, be a dear and pick that up for me. It's right behind you."

My eyes darted across the tier. Directly behind us sat three students, completely alert, pens and laptops at the ready. There was no room in the narrow row. If I bent over, the tension in the jeans would drag the waistband down without mercy.

"Emma, please… I can't reach it without—" I whispered, voice catching in my throat.

"Now, John," she hissed, her eyes narrowing to slits. "Or should I text Loona real quick and tell her you're being lazy?"

The name struck like a whip.

Limbs trembling, I slid forward onto the lip of the folding seat. The padlock leveraged with vicious force against inflamed tendons; a smothered gasp died in my throat. Bending my torso low into the cramped gap between the rows, my hand swept blindly across the dusty parquet behind my heels.

As feared, it happened at once: the rigid denim caught on the hard rim of the wooden seat and pulled taut across my backside. The waistband slipped down an inch, then two.

The delicate black lace was laid bare—a gossamer, gleaming band stretched unmistakably over pale skin, sitting right above the hard contour of the steel base ring.

Behind me, the clicking of a keyboard cut out.

"Oh my God…," one of the students in the row behind whispered, followed by an incredulous snort of laughter. "Look down there… is he wearing lace?"

A second face leaned over. The rustle of fabric, followed by a mocking laugh that struck the back of my neck like needles.

"Seriously? The guy wears thongs to uni?" the other whispered in plain disgust. "How embarrassing is that?"

My fingers scrambled for the pen, palms slick with sweat. The soft, unmistakable click of a smartphone camera sliced through the murmuring—dry, final. Someone had taken a picture of my exposed lower back.

Emma leaned back luxuriously, pressed a hand to her mouth as if holding back a laugh, and tossed the girls behind us a knowing, condescending glance.

"Leave him be, girls," she said in a honeyed, cutting drawl, loud enough for half the row to catch. "Our good boy John just loves fine fabrics. He needs something soft against his skin."

Smothered, shrill laughter rippled through the row. No one stepped in. No one felt pity or looked away in secondhand embarrassment. They stared at me like a bizarre museum exhibit, a plaything meant to be passed around and mocked.

Scrambling upright, I yanked frantically at my jacket to cover the exposed skin, setting the pen before Emma with shaking fingers. My face burned with absolute, obliterating shame. And deep beneath the denim, locked inside the rigid iron bars, the trapped flesh surged helplessly and fiercely against the cold lattice—agonized, humiliated, and seized by a sickening, perverse arousal.

The stifled giggles behind me burned like acid against my skin. Every single pair of eyes boring into my back felt like a spotlight exposing me to the entire room. My fingers clawed at the hem of my sweater, pulling it down, but the gesture was pathetic—the girls had seen it, the camera had captured it, and my secret was no longer a secret, but cheap amusement for strangers.

My eyes darted in panic toward Emma. There was no trace left of the trembling, broken girl who had wept on our living room rug days ago. This Emma was cold, calculating, and unpredictable. A freezing dread rose in my chest as the brutal truth settled in: she had absolutely nothing left to lose. Loona had stripped her down to the bone, and that was precisely what made Emma so dangerous. She was using me as a stepping stone to keep from drowning in the wreckage of her own humiliation. If tearing me apart was what it took to play the queen before her new friends, she wouldn't hesitate for a heartbeat.

At the same time, a frantic, helpless disbelief at Loona raged in my mind. Why was she doing this? Why hand me over to Emma of all people, the spiteful viper who had treated me like dirt back in school? I had obeyed every order. I had put on the lace, endured those dreadful hours kneeling before Vanessa, and sent the required photo from the bathroom tiles only minutes ago. I had thought her cruelty would stay confined within the walls of our flat, a sick, private bond between the two of us. But Loona hadn't kept me for herself. She had tossed me out like garbage, thrown to the wolves of the Charité elite. That betrayal cut deeper than any spoken threat.

And the most horrifying, devastating part of the moment was my own body.

Beneath the wet, delicate lace, the trapped flesh began to pulse out of control. It was a disgrace that brought tears to my eyes: my mind was screaming in panic, my dignity was in ruins, the laughter of the students behind me cut to the marrow—yet the blood rushed violently into my groin regardless. The dark, twisted thrill of being a helpless plaything in women's underwear, surrendered to the whims of two vicious women, aroused me in a way that made me sick to my stomach.

The steel ring and rigid bars refused to budge. The swelling flesh rammed hard into the unyielding lattice until the pain throbbed almost past bearing. Wedged tight between pubic bone and cold metal, the arousal burned like fire, suffocated and locked away, unable to expand, unable to escape.

I sat there frozen, knees clamped tight, sweat beading on my forehead, while Emma smiled beside me and my own wet, tortured lust sealed my ruin.

The remaining forty minutes of the lecture dragged on into a thick eternity. Behind me, the whispering never died down; every rustle of a pen or suppressed snicker set the back of my neck on fire. I didn't dare move an inch. Every breath made the steel ring scrape against raw skin, while the burning pulse beneath the black lace consumed me alive.

Emma sat next to me like royalty. She tapped notes into her tablet with manicured nails, completely unbothered, occasionally crossing her legs the other way and ignoring me entirely. It was that casual detachment that chilled my blood. She had put me on display, tossed a scrap to her friends, and turned away as if I were worth no more than the floorboards under her boots.

When the lecturer finally gathered his notes and the crash of hundreds of folding seats echoed through the hall, my only thought was to run. To sprint to the nearest cubicle, throw the bolt, and press my forehead against the cold tiles.

I reached for my backpack, but before I could rise, Emma’s hand clamped around my forearm like an iron cuff.

"Easy, John," she murmured with velvety malice. She didn't even look at me as she slipped into her tailored coat. "Did you really think you could just slink off home?"

"Emma, please… I have to go," I managed, voice thick and ragged.

"You're not going anywhere," she cut me off. A crooked, venomous smile touched her lips as she turned. "Didn't you understand the message earlier? You're my responsibility today. And we have plenty left on the schedule."

Behind us, the two girls who had seen the lace stepped into the aisle. They looked at me without a shred of respect—only open, amused derision. The brunette eyed me from head to toe, pausing deliberately at my waistline before flashing Emma a loaded smile.

"Is your delicate little friend joining us for orientation, Emma?" she asked, loud enough to turn a couple of other heads.

"Of course he is," Emma trilled, linking her arm through mine in mock affection while her nails dug painfully through my sleeve. "John needs the company. Wouldn't want him getting lonely on his first day."

Inside my pocket, the phone vibrated again. A long, unyielding pulse.

With a shaking hand, I pulled the screen up as Emma steered me toward the crowded corridor.

Loona: "You stay right by Emma’s side, John. You’re heading to the student association flat together now. And so you don't get any bright ideas: your phone goes into the box by the front door. You won’t be needing it tonight. Emma will give me a full report in the morning on how obedient you were. Don't you dare screw up."

The floor seemed to drop out from beneath my shoes. No phone. No line to the outside. No way to prove my compliance to Loona—only total, defenseless abandonment to Emma and a circle of strangers who already held my darkest secret.

Emma felt the vibration against my side. Catching the deathly pale look on my face, she tilted her head toward my ear and breathed:

"See? All taken care of. Now smile, John. We have an unforgettable night to give our new friends."