Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“That is the tragedy of women, isn’t it? We deny ourselves beauty for the sake of misleading men.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched and he dragged his attention from me to the server. “Je comprends. Et je décline votre offre.” The smooth cadence of his voice held an alluring fluency that left me both intrigued and wanting more. Whatever he said to her, though, seemed to knock her composure off kilter, as the server rolled her shoulders back, offered a clipped nod, and sauntered off.

“You think they’re staring at you because you’re poor?” He buried a smirk in his drink and tipped back a long swill that emptied the glass. His jaw flexed with the clenching of his teeth as he swallowed. “The wealthy possess an insatiable appetite for the rare and priceless. They stare because you’re the only thing worth staring at.”

“Go, Miss Vespertine,” Professor Bramwell whispered, his proximity setting my nerves aflame. “You’re far too young to live a life without mistakes.” On those parting words, he strode off with an air of arrogance that made my knees weak.

“I wonder what your wife would think, if she knew you were groping the young girl beside you, Charles?” Everyone at the table gasped in unison, as Professor Bramwell casually took a sip of a new glass of champagne. “Or do the two of you partake in extramarital activities, which gives you a pass, hmmm?” Professor Bramwell’s tone carried an edge of mocking that echoed Mr. Dandridge’s from moments ago, and I didn’t know what was more shocking–what he’d said or that he’d heard Dandridge’s words to begin with.

“Yes. I’ve had quite enough.” Bramwell turned his attention to Spencer. “Be a gentleman and switch seats with her.” His gaze flicked my way, and hardened into something almost murderous when it shifted beyond me. “And if you value your anatomy, I’d strongly advise you keep your hands to yourself, Mr. Dandridge.” With that, Professor Bramwell tossed his napkin onto the table and pushed to his feet.

“No.” The answer came out faster than I’d have expected at the prospect of money, especially when I desperately needed to catch up on Bee’s tuition. But I desperately needed to know more about the worms, too—and faster than I was learning in Nocticadia. “I’ll leave. I’ll take off for a few days, and you won’t have me here to clear your name.” I didn’t even know who was talking at that point. Maybe I had been infected and the parasite was steering the ship, because no way in hell was Lilia Vespertine that bold.

Calling her beautiful was like calling the sun lukewarm. She’d blazed like the hottest part of a flame in that dress. And fuck me, I’d felt the heat.

With curious steps, I entered the moderately-sized office, where the scent of leather, polished wood, and old books mingled on the air along with the mouthwatering echoes of his cologne. If the lab was the heartbeat of his research, this room was the brain, given all of the medical and parasitology references that lined the bookshelves on each wall. Sketches of human anatomy lay scattered on the coffee table as I sauntered past it. My gaze fawned over the exquisitely carved, cherrywood desk gleaming in the dim light. Behind it, a vintage-looking record player in a wooden cabinet sat with the lid cocked open. And above that, on the wall hung a plaque with the Latin phrase: Mortui vivos docent. I recognized it from a forensics class I’d taken two semesters ago.

“Annoying. Truly, you’d make the worst captive in the history of kidnappings. A pack of howler monkeys would cause less headache.” He pushed the door open, allowing me to exit first. The heavy door slammed behind us as we made our way over the small hill toward the open yard where the road stood about a hundred yards away.

“Is it wrong that I’m insulted by that?” I let out a laugh and turned to see a smile stretch his lips. A true and genuine smile, and holy shit, it was the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen. Straight, white teeth, and a dimple in his cheek. I wished I could’ve captured it, but it faded as quickly as it arrived, and I watched as his brows tightened and a look of panic claimed his face.

As I lifted my phone to dial campus emergency, the grip of my arm loosened. I looked back to see the tension in his face softening. His body trembled less as he exhaled through his nose. Eyes still closed, he seemed to calm, and the brush of something on my forearm was his thumb stroking me. Back and forth, back and forth. When he opened his eyes, there appeared an almost intoxicated serenity, before it morphed before my eyes. The laxity in his face hardened again, and he released me, kicking back as he jolted upright.

“Or perhaps it’s the sea who fears the depths of you, Miss Vespertine.” The amusement in his voice and dimple in his cheek told me the comment wasn’t serious, but it left me wondering if there was an element of truth in his humor. If the man buried his compliments that way, or softened his insults behind handsome smiles and poetic words.

I shook my head, not wanting to tell him, because telling him would’ve definitely made me cry, and I was not crying in front of the man. “I’ll clean up this mess.” As I stepped in the direction of the utility closet, he sidestepped and blocked me.

The door swung open, and I dove headfirst into the body standing in the doorway. I wrapped my arms around it, fingers clawing into flesh to keep me rooted there, away from that room and the death it held. Every muscle in my body convulsed in terror, and I let out a shaky breath, the tears spilling down my cheeks.

He placed his much bigger hand against mine, palm to palm, and curled his fingers around mine, swallowing them. “I feel everything.” He let out a choke of a laugh. “I fucking feel everything!” He whisked me into his arms and spun me around.

Brows tight, he ran his fingertips across my clavicle and licked his lips. “You feel good.” My nerves caught in my throat as I said, “You do, too.” Curious eyes seemed riveted on my lips, and he ran his thumb over their surface. Before I could gauge his next move, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine.

I held his biceps, as he ate the breath from my mouth and ran his palms over my exposed skin. He pulled me closer still, kissing me with such passionate fervor that my knees weakened. I’d never been kissed by a man. Boys, yes. But never a man. Not even Ghostboy, who was technically an adult, held a candle to Professor Bramwell’s skill and mastery. The way he teased with his tongue, and held me as if I were fragile porcelain. It was right then that I realized, I’d never truly been kissed before, at all.

His grip tightened, his nostrils flaring in obvious anger, and when I brought my other arm up to push him off, he swiped up that wrist, too. Something inside of me snapped, and I wriggled to break free from his grip. The strength in his arms proved true, as he held me with little effort or exertion, while I thrashed for freedom. He gathered my arms together and, with ease, turned me to my side and dragged me against him, putting my back to his chest. Heaving breaths sawed out of me, as I lay trapped in his inflexible embrace with no chance for escape. Not a word spoken between us.

“You’re a sickness inside of me that begs never to be cured. Infecting me with this unshakable craving for things I shouldn’t want.”

He hissed and rolled his hips in the motion of thrusting into my palm. “You’re going to destroy me. And I won’t stop you. It feels too fucking good to stop.” On a growl of frustration, he squeezed my breast as if punishing me for his lack of control, and I let out a moan, but the dominating grip of his palm felt so fucking good.

His rough grip lightened as he ran the pad of his thumb over my nipple. “Every inch of you is something new to explore. A new texture. A new curve. Sensations I’ve been robbed of for so long.” In tiny circles, he painted an inescapable pleasure that left me in a dizzy lust. “Goddamn it, your skin is like fine silk. I could spend hours touching you and never tire of it.” With a nudge, he urged me onto my back and lifted my shirt up to my neck. He peeled back the cup of my bra and bent forward, sucking my nipple into his mouth.

“You’ve what? Tell me everything. Every detail. I want to hear what you do when you’re alone.” It seemed to keep him interested, and though I risked the most humiliating confession of my life, I was too intoxicated to care right then.

“I like this dream.” His palm pressed into my throat, the pressure parting my lips, and fucking hell, it was perfect. The lack of breath. The disheveled state of my clothes that made me look ravished, the feel of his fingers plunging and stroking while he held me captive against him. Every detail culminated into the flawless visual inside my head.

“And because I’m a selfish prick who has to live with the fact that I cannot have you to myself, I’m going to ruin you so that any boy who comes after me will leave you deeply unsatisfied, and you’ll be left fucking your own fingers, desperate to remember the time you had your professor’s face between your legs.”

I wanted to bite, scratch, scream, but instead, I dragged the pillow over my face, pressed it there, and focused on every sensation he’d commandeered. The sounds he made in his throat. The way his fingers plunged in and out of me, working in tandem with that relentless mouth. It was a level of mastery I couldn’t even fully appreciate, because I’d never had someone so boldly dive between my legs before. In my limited experience, boys took. They took without much thought, and they rarely ever reciprocated.

His big palms cuffed my ankles to the mattress, holding me spread open. I waited for him to do something. To stick his fingers in me again, or drag his tongue over my throbbing clit. My thighs trembled with a ravenous gluttony I’d never felt before. Instead, he bent over me, those muscled arms caging me beneath him. “I’ll bet your pussy is aching to be filled right now.” It wasn’t a question. The sadist knew what he was doing.

A sharp pain struck my skull as he yanked my hair, lifting my head from the bed. “Did you think I’d feel sorry for you? That I’d be gentle? I feel this torture every fucking time you walk into a room.” He pressed a thumb into the crease of my ass, and I sucked in a breath as he threatened to breach the tight ring of muscles there, pushing and massaging. “So, I don’t feel sorry for you, Lilia. In fact, it warms my dirty bastard soul to know you ache this way.” Holding his thumb there, he alternated between licking my pussy and fingering it. Each time I neared climax, he stopped, dragging me back from the edge, and I was left soaking wet and twice as needy. He toyed with me like that for what felt like an eternity, never seeming to tire of this vicious little game.

He released me on a pop, and I rode out the subsequent shocks that rocked through me like tiny bolts of electricity. It was everything. Everything I ever dreamed it would be with him, and when he moaned, lapping up the fluids spilling out of me, I lifted my head from the bed to commit the scene to memory. Every sensation, every scent, every sound. I wanted him in my blood, pulsing through me, heating my skin on the nights when I’d be alone in my bed, thinking of this moment. Right here. Right now. Forever.

He didn’t answer, but the carnal and possessive glint in his eyes, as his fingers dug into my skin, said everything. Mine. With a firm grip of my ankles, he slid me down to the edge of the bed and fell forward, catching himself on outstretched arms. One hand stroked down my hair as his lips latched to my neck. “You can shower first, if you’d like,” he said against my throat.

He pulled away, and for the first time since the night before, I saw a flicker of pain in his eyes. Good. I wanted to frame it, study it, just to know that I’d left something inside of him, too. That he could still feel me crawling over his skin.

Eyes locked on his, I reached up the hem of my skirt and pulled down my panties, slipping them over my ankles. I balled them in my palm and stuffed them into the pocket of his slacks, next to the hard length that brushed the edge of my thumb. “Panties are for the modest,” I said, and turned for the door.

I paced my office, running my hands through my hair. Hours had passed since Lilia left. Hours I’d sat at my desk, trying to focus on something that wasn’t my tongue in her pussy. It was futile. She’d crawled beneath me, inside of me, infecting me with the kind of drunken lust that had me pausing to fuck my own hand every hour.

I’d faced Gilchrist a number of times after having actually fucked her and felt nothing. Not a single twitch of my dick, or desire to have her again. Lilia was different. She made me physically feel things I hadn’t felt in a long time—a feat I didn’t think was possible, even with my senses having returned. Beyond the superficial caresses of every other woman I’d known, Lilia’s touch had branded itself into my flesh and blood, and now it was all I craved.

She was the warmth of the sun on a cold and rotting corpse. The first breath after a lifetime of death.

I wanted the pain of it. The impossibility. The absolute rapture of claiming her for myself. And therein hid the tragic reality of just how tempting she’d become—if fucking her meant an eternity in hell, I’d welcome damnation with a goddamn smile.

Clad in dark jeans and a white button-down, Professor Bramwell stood at the front of the lecture hall, describing chemotactic behavior in Leishmania–a topic I suddenly didn’t care about–not sparing me a single glance. I would’ve been frustrated by that, if he hadn’t rubbed the back of his neck a few times, rubbed his jaw, and even loosened a button on his shirt at some point, which didn’t go unnoticed by the girl sitting in front of me. She snapped a picture of him with the caption, Yes Daddy Death, and had zoomed in on the front of his pants, to the obvious outline of a bulging hard-on.

At that, he finally turned around with an absolutely murderous look carved into his expression. “Tomorrow, Miss Vespertine. After lecture.” The snippy edge of anger in his tone told me what the man would never admit to my face.

Rough palms slid up both my arms as he guided them over my head and manacled my wrists with his hands above me. “I’ve been starving for you ever since.” Hungry lips hunted my throat, while his free hand palmed my exposed breast. He paused his kissing just long enough to suck one of my nipples into his mouth, the teasing little tug between his teeth coaxing a moan past my lips. Still holding me captive with one hand, his other palm slid up the hem of my skirt, and he froze.

I let out a shaky breath, as he hiked my leg up to his hip. Cheek pressed to mine, he forced my head to stay watching, as he bunched my skirt to my hip, my cocked leg offering a clear view of my bare flesh. “You’re pink and perfect now, but you’ll be a red and swollen mess by the time I’m finished with you.” His words rooted themselves in my head while I clenched around his fingers.

The deep, burgeoning ache he’d summoned escaped me on a tearless sob, as my muscles relented and an overwhelming pleasure bulleted through my veins. I tipped my head back, mouth gaping around a scream that he captured behind his palm. On a blinding explosion, I succumbed to bursts of ecstasy winding through my muscles in fevered pulses. My knees buckled, but he held me up as he circled his fingers, drawing out the last drops of my orgasm.

I tilted my head back toward the window beside us, through which the stars twinkled with constancy in a world that felt like it was spinning out of control. Time liquefied between us, rippling in slow currents that bent and swayed with our sweat-slickened bodies. I was slipping, falling, tumbling into feelings that I’d never felt with anyone.

The dark smile on his face sobered to something serious, and he pushed a stray hair behind my ear. “Jealousy is a callow schoolboy’s emotion that ends in hard feelings and bloody noses. What I feel for you, Miss Vespertine, would destroy lives.” Palm to my jaw, he kissed me hard and bit my lip to emphasize his point.

Stealing away with Devryck had become my favorite dangerous game. The leering glances in class, the brush of hands as we passed in the courtyard. Stolen kisses behind buildings, and in empty classrooms. In the darkest corners, hidden from prying eyes, we were more than professor and student. We were forbidden. Scandalous passion and the ache of longing, wrapped in a blazing fire too powerful to smother.

At night, we held trysts in the most obscure places. Sometimes, his lab, his office, the top of the clock tower, anywhere that was warm, hidden away from others, and lacked cameras. After sex, he’d pull out his books, and we’d lay naked in quiet study until it was time to return to our sleeping quarters. Three days before, we’d met in our secret little room in the rotunda, where he’d helped me study for my parasitology exam, quizzing me while I rode his cock.

If Heaven existed, I'd found it in those ancient, dark hallways, under cold misty skies with autumn's wet leaves sticking to the soles of my boots, in the scent of coffee and old books. And him. My moody and devilishly handsome professor.

On a squeal, she jumped back, then cautiously stepped forward. Another wave followed the first, and I watched her legs jerk, as she lifted her dress and let the water pool around her. Over her shoulder, she shot me a smile–one so fucking beautiful, I wanted to frame it. Capture it. Study the alchemy of it. How wonderfully intoxicating one simple expression could be.

Emboldened, she skittered forward, letting the next wave pool above her ankles. A little more, and the next one pooled at her calves. I watched in awe as she let the sea seduce her, tickle her into a giggling young girl, dancing, hopping, and tumbling in the waves. It was there that my failures and her worries were swept away, cleansed by the salt and air and the sounds of calm that reverberated off the surrounding rock walls.

“C’mon, Devryck, please. Please!” I ran my hand over his damp hairline and choked back a sob. “You can’t leave. I won’t let you. You hear me? I won’t let you fucking die. You are my most important thing, and I swear, if you don’t come out of this, I will fucking hunt you down in the afterlife.” More seconds. “Wake up, Devryck!” I scrambled for my phone, tucked inside my bag that I’d left in the car, but by the time I returned to his side, he’d stopped shaking.

“Get over here,” he said, pushing the seat back to a lying position. “Get the fuck over here.” The rough and needy tone of his voice mirrored the need pulsing through me. After the stress of earlier, I’d had a rush of pure adrenaline pumping through me. The prospect of burning it off enticed me enough to move without thinking too much about how the hell we were going to do so in his car.