Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“Memento mori,” he read from the tattoo on my forearm. “You’re one of those dark bitches who fantasizes about death all the time, is that it?” That wasn’t it, at all. In fact, the tattoo was a reminder of humility, but what did the dumb ass know about that?

She’d possessed the beauty of an untamed flame, destructive and wild.

No one touched what belonged to me without repercussions.

My class. My requirements. My student. Without a doubt, Lilia Vespertine was going to be a massive headache. But she was my headache.

“You have no idea who you’re fucking with.”

This almost felt like an invitation. A dare. Heart pounding in my chest, I gave a defiant tip of my chin. “Who am I fucking with?”

“It’s fascinating how you can be so meek and bold at the same time.” His tongue swept over his lips, and I prayed he’d do something fucking bold, like press them to mine. “You are inarguably brilliant, so quit acting foolish. Leave this alone.”

Breathing hard through my nose, I tried to catch my breath, and it was when my conscience finally caught up to me that I groaned again, but that time in frustration. “Fuck.” Just like that, Lilia Vespertine had become more than a student. She was a serious problem.

I’d been ogled by men since I’d first sprouted breasts, but Bramwell’s gaze held something different. Something I wanted to study and unravel, without all the other people in the room.

An intricate maze I wanted to get lost inside.

They stare because you’re the only thing worth staring at.”

“You’re far too young to live a life without mistakes.”

Perhaps I was dying. Perhaps I would die by the end of the night. Death felt like a warm blanket.

“My, you are a wicked little moth.”

“I knew the moment you arrived at this school that you were going to be a major fucking headache for me.”

“Don’t fuck with me, Miss Vespertine. You want to play hardball? Know that mine are made of steel.”

The girl was a problem. An incredibly beautiful, but annoying, problem.

I’d never wanted anything so badly in my life.

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.

And he had been right about one thing. I didn’t need Lilia fucking things up for me. Not because she was some lowly Covington girl, as he’d said, but because she was the only thing in the last ten years that’d managed to distract me from my research.

Mortui vivos docent. I recognized it from a forensics class I’d taken two semesters ago. The dead teach the living.

“My grouchy nature serves a purpose, Miss Vespertine. Unfortunately, you seem to have some inexplicable resistance.”

“And so the moth befriended the flame.”

“Annoying. Truly, you’d make the worst captive in the history of kidnappings. A pack of howler monkeys would cause less headache.”

“Under different circumstances …” The pause in his words carried a laborious heartbeat that smothered my own, as I watched the slightest smile play on his lips. A beat of hesitation. “I might’ve pursued you.” A nervous rush of breath escaped me. I gripped the strap of my bookbag in some faulty attempt to hold my composure, and swallowed past the dryness in my throat. “And I might’ve let you.”

I was going to be sleeping over with Professor Bramwell. Doctor Death.

“The dead themselves are harmless. It’s what they leave behind that inspires fear.”

“Memento mori,” he read aloud, running his thumb over my tattoo, his soft caress stirring an irrepressible fire beneath my skin. “Remember you must die.”

“A reminder to appreciate life as a gift.” Smiling, I lowered my gaze. “Some days are easier than others.”

“This thing with you. It’s fucking me up.” His voice shook as badly as the muscles in his arms that held me against him like a steel cage. “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.”

As toxic as it was, I relished this game between us, the push and pull, the stolen touches and delicious tension. I knew it was wrong. I knew what hell this would bring.

I both hated and craved the addicting way he’d hooked himself into my veins and fed me with this unbridled and reckless desire. It went against everything I was. Everything I believed. And yet, it was everything.

“Tell me to stop, Lilia. I’m fucking begging you.”

“You’re going to destroy me. And I won’t stop you. It feels too fucking good to stop.”

“Every inch of you is something new to explore. A new texture. A new curve. Sensations I’ve been robbed of for so long.”

Whether intentional, or a mindless act, his other hand gripped my throat as he ran his finger up and down my slippery seam, gathering the slick dew he’d worked up. In my periphery, he brought his hand to his mouth, and a deep throaty sound of satisfaction rolled through his chest. “Why do you have to taste like a sweet forbidden fruit? Goddamn, you’re killing me, Lilia. I can’t do this. I can’t.”

“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.”

Bramwell was right. He’d ruined me. Destroyed me from the inside out, and there wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d ever feel something so raw and thrilling and forbidden again.

“I don’t give a damn about every other girl. There’s only one who crosses my mind a fuck-ton more than she should. So, I’m going to finish you, Lilia. I’m going to give you the release you’ve been craving, and I won’t touch you again. But this pussy belongs to me. You let any other undeserving prick near it, and I will cut out his tongue and send it to you in a specimen jar.”

“I knew you’d be fucking beautiful when you came, but I didn’t imagine you’d look like this.”

He didn’t answer, but the carnal and possessive glint in his eyes, as his fingers dug into my skin, said everything. Mine.

“Good fucking girl,”

“I don’t care what this was to you. It was still worth it.”

“Here, I thought it was the moth who would succumb to the fire.”

She was a sorceress. She had to be. What else could possibly explain the toxic poison running through me right then? The inability to go ten minutes without thinking about her–either sexually, or longingly. My body mourned her. Had spent the last few hours punishing me for letting her walk out of my office like that.

The endless appetite to stick my dick in something was probably the worst of it. Not something. Someone. Her.

The fact that she was entirely forbidden only made me want her more, and the hell of it all was, I held the power to either ruin, or change, her life. She was precisely the kind of woman for whom, I’d easily cast aside whatever pathetic morals still smoldered inside my conscience—one whose drive and passion wasn’t tainted by power and money. So hungry to learn, and I longed to be the one to feed her every spoonful of depravity she craved.

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

But like the monster inside of me, they took root and bloomed into a full-on fantasy I couldn’t shake from my mind. My sweet, decadent Lilia laid out before me like a delicious meal.