Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

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

That she could stand there, making bold demands, while staring me straight in the eye had me wishing I could either throttle, or kiss, her. I couldn’t tell which compelled me more than the other.

It’d been shitty of me to manipulate her into thinking that what she’d seen was nothing but a hallucination, but I’d had to. Lying to her was for her own safety. She had no idea what world of corruption and mayhem she’d be inviting in by getting herself tangled up with The Rooks.

I’d find out who the hell was harassing her and deal with it.

My guess was Spencer. As a new member, he had yet to learn that ceremonial garb wasn’t some fucking Halloween scare. Wearing those masks outside of The Roost brought heavy consequences, and I would see to it that the offender was adequately punished.

Especially since I didn’t like the idea of someone fucking with her. And I was pretty sure that was exactly what Spencer had in mind, having drugged her. The kid had done it before, and with as delectable as Lilia looked in that dress, I suspected the asshole hadn’t been able to help himself.

A realization that irritated the shit out of me.

Since having found that video on her phone, I’d made a point of ignoring the girl–an impossibility, as a general rule, particularly when she wore those short skirts that danced around what I imagined to be a pert ass. When she’d arrived to the gala the night before, though, looking like a walking aphrodisiac topped with whipped cream, and catching the eye of every swinging dick she passed, something had snapped inside of me.

I’d never wanted anything so badly in my life.

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.

I knocked on Lippincott’s door and, at a sound of acknowledgement from the other side, stepped into his office. Papers lay scattered about his desk, along with empty water bottles and discarded granola bar wrappers. I took a seat in the chair across from him, swallowing back the urge to tell him how much I wanted to beat the shit out of his son.

“Devryck, what a nice surprise.” The flat tone of his voice told me the little incident with Dandridge at the gala still rankled him.

I’d always loathed the pervy bastard, a former dean at the university, who’d never even attempted to rein in his affinity for younger women. The man was approaching seventy-two years old, and I’d watched his hand grope more thighs than a starving man at an all-you-can-eat chicken buffet.

It just so happened, he’d groped the wrong thigh that night.

“What brings you out of your crypt?”

“I thought you might want to know that someone was seen wearing ceremonial garb outside of The Roost. I suspect it might’ve been your son.”

He reached for a bottle of Tums on the other side of his computer and popped two of them. “When was this?”

“Just after I left the gala. He was roaming about the gardens.”

“Ah. Yes. The night you gave Spencer a black eye?”

I frowned. “I didn’t lay a hand on your son.”

“He insists that you were the one wearing the ceremonial garb and that he caught you without the mask. He said you punched him in the face and knocked him out cold. He has a lovely black eye to mark the occasion.”

While I had seen Spencer run off toward the mausoleum, I never pursued him, nor laid so much as a finger on him. “As I said, I never touched your son.”

“But cameras did pick up on you carrying Miss Vespertine to your vehicle.”

“She’d passed out. I was merely trying to get her somewhere safe.”

Leaning back in his chair, he ran his fingers through his hair and blew out a sharp breath. “Dean Langmore is getting her side of the story, and for your sake, Devryck, you better pray the girl doesn’t throw you under the bus. One accusation is fairly easy to contain. Two is a bit more challenging. And it would entirely fuck up the opportunity to move toward clinical trials, if you were to be investigated for inappropriate conduct with a student. So, my advice? Stay the fuck away from this girl, in particular.”

Unrattled by his comments, I tipped my head. “What exactly are you accusing me of?”

“Everyone at that table could damn near feel what was going on between the two of you.”

I highly doubted that. If the unscrupulous prick sitting next to her had felt even a fraction of what I was feeling right then, he’d have made a better effort to keep his hands from getting severed. Dandridge was nothing more than a waste of human body parts and precious oxygen.

“Fucking hell, are you crazy?” he prattled on, his voice growing annoyingly hostile. “And then you have the audacity to insult our most generous donor! In front of his wife!”

“He was fondling Miss Vespertine’s thigh while you were nibbling on your goddamn cheesecake.”

“I don’t care if he threw her on the table and ate her pussy for dessert! The man has damn near carried this project with his funding! He can do whatever the hell he wants!”

I clenched my teeth to hold back the rage, until a spasm of pain shot to my skull. The visual he’d planted in my head had my control completely unraveled, and for the sake of dignity and reputation, I kept my hands gripping the chair, calming the urge to grab Lippincott by the throat and tear out his windpipe.

Whatever the hell was going on with me had shifted into something unrecognizable. 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. A crafty little shit who’d bulldozed right through my defenses.

“You are brilliant, Devryck. Perhaps the most brilliant man I know. Do not let some lowly Covington girl fuck up years of research and innovation. I’m tempted to have her removed from your class and placed somewhere else just to eliminate the temptation.”

Exhaling a rage-filled breath, I rolled my shoulders back. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Good. I’ll consider Spencer’s black eye a misunderstanding. And I will inquire about who the fuck decided it was a good idea to wear ceremonial garb as a costume. In the meantime, go back to your work.”

Only the small modicum of respect I had for the man kept me from telling him to shove his misunderstanding and opinions up his ass and fuck himself. Years ago, after my father had finally given up on Caedmon, Lippincott organized something of a task force, comprised of a few tight connections of his, to track down one of the men who’d kidnapped my brother. He’d always been kind to Caedmon throughout our childhood, treating him like something of a son before Spencer had come along. I’d always felt bad for him after the night Caedmon and I had stumbled upon our father fucking his wife, during one of the Lippincott’s dinner parties. Hadn’t been much the poor bastard could’ve done, seeing as it was her money and status that’d given him any clout at all at the university. He was horribly pathetic when it came to his wife, but the man had undoubtedly climbed the ranks and amassed enough power to avoid his shitlist.

I didn’t need the headache of pissing him off. Not when my research had begun to make major strides.

And he had been right about one thing. I didn’t need Lilia fucking things up for me. Not because she was some lowly Covington girl, as he’d said, but because she was the only thing in the last ten years that’d managed to distract me from my research.

Which meant agreeing to let her work in my lab might’ve been the dumbest decision I’d ever made.