Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

The conversation with Briceson consumed my head as I exited the Dragon’s Lair, having eaten nothing more than a piece of avocado toast and a latte that I’d charged to Bramwell’s card. I spent half the night thinking about the black stones Briceson had mentioned in the birds, and the skull I’d seen in the photograph, trying to establish a connection between them.

Black to-go cup in hand, I made my way to Bramwell’s lecture, if he bothered to lecture today, and felt the pressure of an oncoming storm tickling the back of my neck. Vibrant red, oranges, and yellows colored the trees, as the full breadth of autumn had settled over the campus, and gray clouds hung heavy and thick in a sky that promised rain. The euphony of early morning birds lent a peaceful song to my walk, while an errant breeze stoked the scent of wet leaves. Although the temps remained in the mid-fifties, warm for those of us who suffered brutal winters as a general rule, the air cast a chill over my bare legs. The temps were expected to climb up to sixty at some point during the day, so I wasn’t too concerned about the outfit I’d chosen, but it sure as hell made for a chilly walk.

I sipped my overpriced latte to keep warm, looking like every other student hustling to class, the lid of my cup marked with the lipstick I’d made a point to wear.

Because I wasn’t every other student. I was the one who’d given her professor a blow job and carried his check for five grand in her bag.

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.

A torment I both hated and welcomed at the same time.

Aside from a couple of early birds, the auditorium was mostly empty, and I hustled to my seat. A completely foreign face strode up to the lectern, where he unpacked books and papers, and my heart sank as he introduced himself as the assistant professor.

In other words, Professor Bramwell had either forgotten about our meeting, or had blown it off.

Deflated and bored, I took notes, while Professor Humdrum gave a bland account of Noctisoma’s lifecycle–a topic we’d already witnessed first-hand in the lab. It was only when he mentioned that some seagulls and ravens managed to avoid infection, despite their fondness for consuming noxberries and Sominyx moths, that I perked up.

I raised my hand, and when he acknowledged me, I asked, “What about bats?”

“Bats, unfortunately, are not immune. When they feed on an infected Sominyx moth, they succumb rather quickly to infection, and are often found floating in bodies of water.”

“They don’t have gastroliths, correct?”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “To my knowledge, no.”

“Why do only some seagulls and ravens avoid infection?”

“That would be a question for Dr. Bramwell, I’m afraid.”

Of course it would.

With a nod, I settled back into my chair. My head puzzled the pieces I’d been given, as the professor kept on with his lecture. Bats succumbed. Some seagulls and ravens did not. The latter used gastroliths to digest food. The question was–of the birds who became infected, how many had black stone gastroliths?

I wished Professor Bramwell was there to answer and tame the curiosity swirling in my head.

Spencer sat two rows behind me, and each time I felt a burning gaze at the back of my head, I’d turn to see him staring at me. Trying to ignore him, I slogged through the rest of the lecture, grateful when it was finally time to pack up. It was then that Professor Bramwell entered the class with that arrogant and dominant gait that made a girl’s ovaries ache. The sight of him stirred a flurry in my chest, like dried fallen leaves in a wind tunnel. He took a moment to shake the assistant professor’s hand, and when his gaze landed on me, I nearly stopped breathing. Why the hell did he have to look so good in his dark jeans and white button-down standing next to Mr. Khaki-Pants-and-Pullover? As if he was trying to torment me?

One of the other girls in class sauntered up to him, as if to ask a question. I watched as he gave her no more than a minute of his attention before directing her to the assistant beside him. I could almost feel the disappointment radiating from her.

As I slung my bag over my shoulder and made my way down to the front of the auditorium, his gaze caught mine, and he jerked his head for me to follow.

Not waiting for me to catch up, he strode from the room.

I hustled after him, and when I exited the class, I sighted him striding toward the corner at the opposite end of the hallway.

“Hey,” Spencer said from behind. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Hey, sorry. I gotta run.”

He reached out and gripped my wrist. “Please.”

It was only the look of pleading in his eyes that made me pause, at all. “What?” An air of annoyance thickened my tone. When he didn’t answer, I jerked in his grasp. “Spencer, I don’t have time for this,” I said, my impatience blossoming to full-on irritation.

Instead of answering, he dragged me to a small alcove in the hallway, and I twisted my arm to get loose.

“Spencer!”

Once out of the main corridor, he pushed me into the wall behind me. “My mother told me … something,” he whispered, his throat bobbing with a swallow, voice shaky. “Lippincott isn’t my father.”

I froze, frowning as I peered up at him. “What?”

“He’s not my real father.”

Words failed to come to mind. I didn’t know what to say to him. How to respond without sounding like an idiot, and the seconds ticked before Bramwell would become impatient and forego our meeting.

“I’m so sorry, Spencer. I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m not sorry. I’m elated. Fucking elated.” Through tears, he chuckled, the contrast of his emotions unsettling, as if he might snap at any moment.

“Then … I guess I’m happy for you?”

His face softened. “I knew you’d be.” Before I knew what hit me, he took my face in his palms and pressed his lips to mine.

My spine snapped to attention, muscles stiff with the shock that sputtered up my throat, clamping off the air. As I let out a muffled protest, he broke the kiss, his chest heaving, tears breaking over his cheek. “Please, I’m begging you. Meet me tonight. The courtyard outside of the commons.”

At the shake of my head, he leaned in, as if to kiss me again and I pressed a hand to his chest to stop him. “Don’t.”

The aggrieved expression on his face might’ve earned a small bit of sympathy from me, if he hadn’t so boldly trampled my boundaries.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have done that.” What might’ve been a genuine apology hardly carried over the warring thoughts in my head, as I tried to wrap my mind around what the hell had just happened.

Stepping to the side offered just enough distance to regain some of my lost composure. “Spencer, I told you from the beginning, it’s not like that. I’m not … I can’t–”

“Lilia …”

“I have to go.” Head pounding in calamity, I jogged down the hallway toward where I’d seen Bramwell go. Rounding the corner brought me to another hallway, but he was nowhere in sight.

“Shit,” I muttered, peering into a packed lecture hall. The next was a small auditorium, but equally packed. The next two rooms at the opposite side of the hall were the same. It wasn’t until I reached the last room, which opened on an empty auditorium, that I found him leaning against the wall at the front of the room with his arms crossed.

Mouth suddenly dried, I swallowed a gulp as I approached, my head still swimming with what had happened with Spencer. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to meet down in your lab?”

“Easier for you? Perhaps.” His gaze cruised over me, lingering on my legs for a moment before he lifted it to mine. “For me? No.”

Still reeling from the unwelcomed kiss, I reached into my bag and pulled out the uncashed check, slightly humiliated when it shook like a leaf from my outstretched hand. “I can’t accept this.”

Nothing more than a quick glance at it. “You want to so badly, you’re probably tearing yourself apart right now.”

Unable to look him in the eye, I shook my head. “It’s too much, Devryck.”

He pushed off the wall, not bothering to uncross his arms. “Cash the fucking check.” The sharp tone in his voice swung my attention to the equally annoyed expression on his face.

“Why? So you can look at me with pity? Call me pathetic?”

“Why do you have to be so goddamn stubborn? You need the money. I’ll be just fine without it.”

I silently tried to wrap my head around the thought that what would save me right then was nothing for him. A pittance. Lowering my arm, I stared down at it, telling myself that I shouldn’t take it. “Working for you wasn’t about the money, you know.” Clearing my throat, I blinked away the mist in my eyes, a cataclysm of emotions hammering my brain. “I’ll pay you back.”

“You won’t. You can’t.”

“Then, tell me how I can repay you?” I folded the check in half, wondering what he’d do right then if I tore it to pieces in front of him. “I can’t just accept this. It isn’t right.”

“Neither is intentionally letting yourself sink in quicksand. Focus on yourself for once. And eliminate the roadblocks that stand in your way.”

I sighed at that. “You were never a roadblock.”

“Only because we weren’t caught.”

I hated that he could hold himself so composed, while I felt like my insides were being crushed by a wrecking ball. The utter chaos of wanting to wrap my arms around him for having single-handedly eliminated months of stress and worry, while at the same time wanting to tear at him, the way his indifference tore at me. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“What am I doing?”

Was it not written across my face? Had I hidden the ache that well?

I tucked the check into my bag, because if nothing else, it just felt too heavy in my hands right then. “You push and you pull, and I feel like I’m being torn apart.”

His dark chuckle echoed through the room, and I looked up, scowling at the audacity of him laughing at me while I felt at my most vulnerable. “You think you’re the only one?” His jaw hardened, lip curled in disgust. “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.”

The breath shot out of me at the realization that he’d seen what had happened with Spencer. Oh, God, how that must’ve looked. 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 just professor and student. Just like before.” I forced the same aloof tone that he’d fed me. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“We’re more than that, and you know it.” The tight clench of his teeth almost made me think he was insulted by what I’d said.

“I don’t, actually.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, he looked away. “For the love of Christ, stop biting your lip.”

It was only then I realized I’d been gnawing the hell out of my bottom lip as I swept my tongue over a slight sting there.

“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!” His voice thundered around me, shaking every nerve in my body to life, as I watched him unravel.

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.

I wanted to watch him come completely undone, to turn reckless, just like me. To grab me by the throat and tear away this resistance between us. “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.

Every emotion seemed to flash across his face, like a battle waged inside his head. He lifted his hand, brushing only his finger across my cheek as his tongue swept across his lips. “The things I want to do to you …” Wincing, he looked away, and as he recoiled, I snatched up his hand. A look of torment claimed his expression as I dragged his palm across my cheek.

Eyes closed, I focused on the texture of his skin, the sensation taking me back to that night. I kissed his palm, drawing it across my lips, and latched onto his finger. Gaze locked on his, I sucked it into my mouth, moving up and down the length of it, just as I had done to his cock in the shower, a trail of lipstick marking the path.

Jaw slack, he watched me with heavily hooded eyes. “Lilia …” His grip hardened around my face, the veins in his neck popping as he snarled back at me. “You want to know how you can repay me?” The grit in his voice sharpened his tone. “Stop making me think of fucking you every hour of the day, so I can get back to my work!”

Exasperated, I gnashed my teeth. “If that’s what you want, then okay. I’ll stop.” I didn’t even wait for his reaction as I stepped past him for the door.

A hard grip of my nape was the only warning, before my body spun back around and he slammed his lips to mine in a kiss that was neither gentle, nor calm. One hand fisted my hair, the other took hold of my jaw. He kissed me ruthlessly. Plundered angrily. And he groaned and bit my lip, digging his fingers into my flesh with unflinching possession. And jealousy. God, the jealousy beat through me in punishing fury, as he held me to his face and ate the breath from mouth.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, he broke away, chest heaving, and crossed the room back toward the lectern. In a subtle gesture, he thumbed away the lipstick from his mouth, wiping it onto his pants.

Trying to catch my breath, I somehow snapped into motion after that kiss, and after wiping my lips as he had, I hid my hands behind my back as I scampered in the opposite direction, putting distance between us.

An older woman I didn’t recognize popped her head into the room and smiled. “Oh, I’m sorry, Professor Bramwell, I didn’t realize you were holding a meeting.”

“We’re just wrapping up.”

I winced at the breathlessness in his voice, something the woman didn’t seem to catch onto when she answered, “No problem.”

She quickly exited, her heels clacking against the hardwood floor as she made her way back down the hallway.

Exhaling a long breath, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Not getting caught is far more difficult than you might imagine. Even my lab is subject to the occasional visitor.”

“We’ll have to be creative. Assuming you’re interested.”

“You know damn well I am,” he growled, as if it angered him to admit it.

“Then, I know of a place. Library rotunda. There’s a room at the top that’s used mostly for storage.”

“And how would one go about finding you there?”

“I have work study tonight. My shift ends at eight o’clock. The library doesn’t close until after midnight. I need to show you something, anyway. Something I think you might find fascinating.”

Wearing his usual frown, he swiped up his bag on the way to the door, and came to a stop alongside me. “If you’re smart, you won’t show.”

With a defiant tip of my chin, I stared back at him. “And if you want me as much as you claim, you will.”