Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

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.

“What do you want, Lilia? Want me to proclaim my attraction and fuck you in front of the student body and administration? To let everyone know that I’m so bitterly obsessed with you, I’ve rubbed my dick raw since you left? Maybe I should apologize to the board this afternoon for a half-assed report, because my student’s pussy was all I could think about when I was writing it.” He ran his hands through his hair, pacing in front of me. “No, I can’t look at you right now because I’m crawling out of my skin wanting to touch you.”

“There isn’t a sharp enough blade to carve you out of my head, Lilia. I’d have to tear out my own goddamn eyeballs to

keep from noticing your every move. Who you talk to. Who you fucking kiss.”

I opened my mouth to offer an explanation, but the resentment sketched in his expression told me it didn’t matter. At the same time, a twisted part of me enjoyed that I could hurt him that way. That something poked at his emotions, when it seemed like he’d been trying to forget what had happened between us.

“We’re more than that, and you know it.”

“These little things you do that mess with my head.” Hand raking through his hair, he paced. “There’s a violence in my blood. This rage that twists in my gut, and it makes me sick. I’m fucking sick when it comes to you. That I could even fathom breaking his neck …” He paused his pacing, eyes lost to whatever images spun through his head, like he could vividly see himself in them. “I can’t control it,” he said, curling his hands to tight fists. “I can’t reel it in because I still feel you. I still smell that nauseating sweet scent on your skin that drives me fucking crazy. That sickening shade of lipstick that takes me back to that night. I’m losing my mind!”

There was a beauty in it. The vulnerability I longed to see in him. The visible distress creeping over him was unfitting

for a man so otherwise collected and detached. He was coming apart at the seams. Finally, a dent in the armor he wore like a second skin. What I’d mistaken as indifference wasn’t that, at all. He ached and burned as much as I did.

“Why are you fighting it?” “You know damn well.” He stepped closer, backing me against the wall. “I’m not one of your goddamn classmates, Lilia. I’m your professor. Your future would be destroyed. You’d be kicked out and sent home to whatever life you were living, and I’d be here, hating the fact that I fucked you up. That I took everything from you.” “That’s only if we get caught,” I whispered.

“If you’re smart, you won’t show.”

“And if you want me as much as you claim, you will.”

“If you ever show up to class like this, I’ll take you aside and spank your bare ass.” “Is that a threat, or a promise?”

Another glance at the mirror, and I took in the slackened jaw and drunken lust on my face as he teased me. How utterly intoxicated the man made me.

“You like to watch?” Licking my lips, I nodded. Two fingers pushed up into me on a wet glide, and I felt him shudder around me. “Look how beautifully your body surrenders to me when my fingers are inside you.”

“You’re pink and perfect now, but you’ll be a red and swollen mess by the time I’m finished with you.”

“You don’t want to know what you do to me, Little Moth.” He stirred his fingers, so deep inside of me, I pushed up onto my toes, releasing a whimper as his thumb pressed against my sensitive clit. Teeth grazed my jaw. “This is what I see at night when I’m drenched in sweat, stroking my cock to thoughts of you.” A kiss behind my ear. “You make me come so hard I can’t fucking breathe after.”

“Good girl,” he whispered, his palm still pressed to my mouth. He guided my face toward the mirror again, where my heavy-lidded eyes and weak posture made me look drunk. A kiss behind my ear, and he slowly withdrew his fingers that glistened with my release. “I’m going to fuck you delirious.”

In the mirror’s reflection, I watched him shove his fingers into his mouth, and a rough sound of satisfaction rumbled in my ear as he rested his head in the crook of my neck. He breathed against me for a moment, his fist in my hair, body trembling like he was fighting for control. “You taste like innocence, Lilia. A good man would walk away from you right now.”

Although the door was locked, I fantasized someone walking in and seeing us, me spread before him like a sacrifice.

“Whether you’re a virgin, or not—the fact is, I’m not a gentle lover. I don’t want to hurt you.” His heated gaze trailed down my body and back, and a pained expression flashed across his face. “But just looking at you stirs my compulsions. This rapacious need to take what I want.”

“Then take what you want.”

“I can assure you, this isn’t going to last a minute and a half. I’m not some adolescent boy who comes the moment his dick gets wet. I’m a man who fucks hard and thoroughly enjoys the torment of delayed gratification. You’re going to be sore. And I really fucking hope you want this, Lilia, because you’re going to hate me when it’s over.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to stay away from you after this. But let me be very clear,” he gritted through clenched teeth as his hand gripped my throat. “I don’t share. If anyone else so much as looks at

this pussy, I’ll take pleasure in dissecting him, starting with his eyeballs.”

“Show me what I shouldn’t want. Make it hurt.”

“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.

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.

“The decision was made the moment I met you, though. To stay here. I choose you.”

Damn her. Damn this. What the hell was I doing to this girl? What the hell was she doing to me? I pushed past the revolting lack of feeling and hooked my finger beneath her chin, turning her to face me. “I choose you,” I said, and pulled her in for a kiss, feeling the smile against my lips. “And believe me when I say, you’re hard to forget, Miss Vespertine.”

I came to a stop on a short stretch the tide hadn’t yet reached, and she sauntered up beside me, wind sifting through her hair as if it longed to touch her the way I did.

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.

It was there that I began to wonder if what I felt for Lilia was something more than I cared to admit.

I dared not slip into those thoughts, though, because I knew fate and the world didn’t give so freely. It lured us on a siren’s call and pulled us to th...

“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.

He looked at me as though he were fantasizing his baby in me, then quickly blinked out of it.

“You’re the fever in my veins,”

“An incurable madness I can’t shake. Fucking you is the only thing that keeps me sane, Lilia.”

“This pussy is all I think about. All I crave. You’ve infected every part of me, and I can’t stop. I can’t stop this obsession.”

The lack of air, his words, and the feel of his cock filling me had my head in chaos, my body in a state of paralysis.

“No. No quiet sounds from you. I want to hear you fucking scream. You’re in the throes of fire now, Little Mo...

“Eyes on me. I want to watch you come.”

“You are a merciless vision of perfection.”

With his lip caught between his teeth, brows pulled tight, neck shimmering with the sweat of his rough and overworked body, he grunted, watching himself come all over me. As if he was marking me. Making me as his.

“You don’t have to be scared. I will never hurt you, Lilia. In fact, I’ll rain hell on anyone who ever hurts you again.”

I loved him. Every cell, every fiber of my being couldn’t hide that truth. Even if I wasn’t bold enough to say it or brave enough to risk the universe stealing it away from me, the words were as real as my fears.

What I felt for Lilia wasn’t healthy. Beyond simple obsession, it was a sickening possession. Savage and rapacious, bordering on violence.

“You were brave to fight him. My brave Little Moth.”

“I don’t feel safe anywhere anymore.” “You’re safe with me, Lilia.” Tears slipped down my cheeks, and on a bold breath, I pushed forward, wrapping my arms around him. He held me against him, shifting my body so my legs wrapped around him. Strong arms enveloped me in warmth. Safety.

“There was … the briefest moment … when I was running toward that room. Your screams had silenced. And I thought—“ Lips pressed to a hard line, he flashed me a sullen scowl that tore at my heart. He shook his head, refusing to say it. “That was the first time I truly felt that something could hurt me. That I could be brought to my knees. I don’t ever want to feel that again, Lilia.”