Chapter Five
December 4, age 20
“Pay attention,” came the velvet-low murmur in my ear. The nauseating smells of chalk and industrial-strength cleanerwere lost to the woodsy perfume of gin, cypress, and fern.
“I can’t,” I whispered.
His lips brushed my earlobe. “You’re going to have to try, Love… I told you that once I started, I wouldn’t be able to stop.”
The uncomfortable warmth I’d felt only moments prior from the stuffy classroom dissipated as cool hands ran from the nape of my neck down the length of my back. Goose bumps rippled from where lips brushed against my lobe, down my neck, across my arm, ending at my fingertips.
I’d tested out of composition and into an advanced grammar course as a college freshman. The class was probably useful for everyone else in the program, but I’d already developed strong feelings on descriptivism over prescriptivism when it came to grammar, language, and pronunciation. The dark academia of my short tweed skirt and white blouse were utterly wasted on the undeserving crowd of pedestrians. Perhaps it was precisely this getup that had allowed me to project myself into a fantasy land wherein I was the smutty librarian in a period-piece romance novel. The professor droned something about regional dialects from the front of the lecture hall. I’d detached from the present, mind in a wandering fog before my imagination took control.
His otherworldly shock of snowy hair, his cold touch, the stretch of black fabric over his ripple of muscles, his ice-chipped eyes, his silver aura.
He had a stranglehold on me, and he knew it. The maladaptive daydreams had only increased in their intensity after my eighteenth birthday: visions of friendly companions, of foxes, of chitchat and advice and however else one used their neocortex to conjure tangible somethings from nothings. I’d long since taken to calling my imaginary friend Caliban—Shakespeare’s dark, feral son of a witch. And because he was a product of my imagination, he’d reveled in my cleverness, furthering my not-so-subtle conviction that I was an undercover narcissist.
This was a dreadfully inconvenient time to be turned on.
Fingers traced daringly close to my skirt.
“Don’t—”
A few of my classmates turned and looked at the whispered word, casting me annoyed glances. I clamped my mouth shut as my imagination shushed me.
The class went from dreary and dull to an instant state of adrenaline. My fingers wrapped around the pen in my hand, eyes tightening, breath quickening as I stole glances at my classmates to ensure that no one else could tell my brain had wandered off in such a visceral way. The slumped postures, glazed expressions, and utter disinterest around me reassured me that this particular brand of escapism belonged to me alone.
His lips moved from my ear to my jaw, dragging his teeth along the lines that led to my neck. He dragged cold lines of static and fire down my throat. My heart skipped. My nipples pebbled against my shirt. I wanted to scream.
“Shut your mouth, or I’ll shut it for you.”
With a pleased smile, his mouth found my own, but only once. I wasn’t given the opportunity to make a fool of myself by giving in to the invisible tongues and presses and movements, the animalistic limbs, teeth, and passion requiredof the kisses I wanted.
I struggled—and failed—to get control of this maladaptive daydream.
I wasn’t dumb enough to make the mistake of speaking aloud again, but I begged against reason to be sane, to be normal…
Please, please, please…
My imagination was equal parts torture and pleasure.
Darkness took me for the barest of moments as I allowed my lids to flutter shut. Half of the class was asleep, so I knew I wouldn’t be missed for a second or two as I indulged in the decadent sensations of grazing teeth, gentle sucking, and cruel petting as mouth and hands took me from my freshman lecture hall to a den of toe-curling pleasure. I bit my lower lip hard, fingers tightening on my pen as hands moved on my thigh, just below the desk.
Oh, god.
My favorite distraction and greatest obstacle in academic excellence propped his elbows on the table, the corner of his mouth tugged up in a devilish smirk.
“Nod once for yes,” he said.
My heart quickened. Given the summer heat and my overall hatred for bras, I’d forgone the protective layer that might have hidden my arousal from my classmates. My eyes darted to the personality-free professor, who continued with such a deadpan drone that I wasn’t convinced they weren’t an automated hologram. I stole glances at my classmates once more.
“Stop looking at them,” said the low, dominant voice in my ear, “or you’ll give yourself away. I’m a gentleman, Love. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to. Just say yes. Nod, and you’re mine.”
God, my imagination was convincing.
Of course, I knew what I liked. Of course, I’d be able to procure precisely whatever dirty fantasies I might need to transport me from the single least interesting class tosomething sensational. And why shouldn’t I give myself over to my imagination? I was learning nothing and missing nothing. I was surrounded by my contemporaries, not my peers. I could miss every lecture in advanced grammar for the semester’s remainder and skate by. Maybe just once, I’d allow my brain to take me somewhere truly filthy.
I closed my eyes again and nodded into oblivion, convinced the most vivid parts of my imagination manifested the dark rumble of a satisfied chuckle, set to the background music of mouth-breathers, the hum of projectors that had been dated for more than a decade, and the squeak of dry-erase markers on the board as the professor moved an adverb around in the written sentence.
