Nocticadia

by Keri Lake

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.

Something dark and violent, and at the center of it was a troublesome girl, with her ridiculous berry lips that I wanted to bite, who’d somehow corrupted me.

“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.”

“You’re going to destroy me. And I won’t stop you.

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

She was a sorceress. She had to be. What else could possibly explain the toxic poison running through me right then?

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

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.

“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.

“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 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. The words I kept secret like all my other trinkets–safely tucked away.

“Don’t hide from me, Lilia. You are no less beautiful than that day you walked into my classroom and stole my fucking breath.”

I would kill for you without a beat of hesitation, or remorse. And yet, at the same time, I could be reduced to nothing more than a pile of ash without you. I’m weak for you, Lilia.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You and I? This? There’s no escaping it. Doesn’t matter how fast you run, or how far you get, I will always be inside you just like this. In your bones and in your blood and in your head. It doesn’t matter what you tell the universe–what secrets you spill. Nothing can change what we are, what we’ve become.”

“I have lived a lifetime in death–a cold existence in an endless void. Never feeling. Never knowing the warmth of touch. Every unfulfilling breath a suffocating reminder of how hollow I’d become. It wasn’t until you came along and cast the first ray of light that I felt a pulse of life. A pull that I couldn’t resist.”

My dark sea. The mystifying depths that both captivated and terrified me.

I fell in love with him–his abrasive heart and blood-stained hands. The dangerous and erudite professor, with fiery eyes and cold steel flesh. We hid away in shadows, stealing kisses under midnight stars. He taught me passion and courage, and to seize what I wanted by the teeth. And in return, I taught him to feel again.