Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

“What separates monsters from good men is only a matter of perspective.

At one time, he was brilliant, but he’d chosen politics and administrative drama instead–a path I avoided with the fervor of an unwanted syphilis infection.

“Got it. I just … spend the couple hours I’m here reading?” “Yes, exactly.” I couldn’t have picked a more perfect job. Except maybe one that required sleeping.

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

A ravenous hunger shook my muscles. In all the years I’d taught–as a TA in grad school, a resident in medical school, and as a professor—I’d never felt such sexual temptation.

“Allow me to caution you, Miss Vespertine. You are a confused moth dancing about a wild flame. Blind to the incomprehensible danger of your curiosities.” “I want to know the truth.” “The truth is an intangible luxury of the powerful.”

“Is that a threat?” “Yes.” One step forward backed me against the shelf behind me, and he threw out his hand, creating something of a cage. “You have no idea who you’re fucking with.”

“Stay out of trouble, Curious Moth,” he said, as he strode for the door. Curious Moth. A nickname. A fitting one, too, given the fact that I had no intentions of avoiding the flame.

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

“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.”

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

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.

Some kisses were said to feel like fireworks. His felt like a slow-drip anesthetic, silently siphoning my senses, until all I could smell, taste, and feel was him.

“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.” “Then, let me go.” “No,” he said in an uncompromising tone, his fingers digging into my hips. “I can’t.”

He wasn’t like any professor I’d ever known, either. He was moody, like rainy days and bitter coffee. Sensual whispers in dark corners and the slow burn of fine whiskey.

“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.”

I’d come to learn that at the heart of life was suffering, and pain was an inevitable consequence of love.