Eager to Learn (Complicity Cycle) Page 3

  As I started up the interior stairs to his office, I hoped Giacomo wouldn’t chide me again for being late. I’d learned my lesson, and it wouldn’t happen again. Talking about my disability made me feel somewhat naked, and it’s hard to take any kind of criticism when you’re naked.

  The hallways were empty—as they had been earlier that morning—but the sound of lectures echoed behind closed doors and my shoes once again squeaked on the tile.

  Much sooner than I was ready, I found myself standing in front of heavy wooden door with the brass plaque: C. GIACOMO.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and knocked.

  “It’s open,” said a voice from within.

  I pushed on the door and found it was so.

  In contrast to the cold, sterile hallway, Giacomo’s office was dimly lit, warm, and had a lived-in quality that made me think of good soil. A sweet, smoky maple smell suffused the air, and the walls—which held framed degrees and awards—were made of a rich, red wood. The carpet was the color of a billiard table, and both the chair and the couch against the wall were dark, slick leather. The shelves boasted a humidor for cigars, a collection of scotches—their bottles still encased in fine, papery cylinders—and a silver espresso machine.

  Though I’d never thought about it before, I suddenly wondered how much they paid professors. Certainly not enough to decorate an office like this.

  Giacomo sat behind a heavy desk littered with haphazard papers, golden trinkets, and, disjunctively, a doll that looked like it had eloped from a Mexican Día de Muertos festival. The doll stood erect on its stand and wore a strange red costume. Its grinning skull head stared at me.

  The older man didn’t even look up as I entered. He was typing on a Macbook, the blue square of its screen reflected in his glasses. With stern eyes, he referenced a printed spreadsheet beside the laptop, then continued typing.

  “Dr. Giacomo?” I said. “I hope I’m not interrupting.”

  Still without looking up or pausing his typing, he said, “You won’t be in just a few more seconds.” He typed some more keystrokes then hit command-s to save. “There,” he said, closing his laptop. He removed his glasses and, with the squareness of his face and the sharpness of his eyes, he looked astoundingly masculine. Like some indomitable, battle-scarred lion. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m Caitlyn Seager,” I said. “You asked me to come see you during your office hours. I gave you a sheet—”

  “Ah, yes,” Giacomo said. He motioned toward the leather armchair across from his desk. “Close the door and have a seat. Coffee? I just brewed a pot.”

  “Uh, yes sir,” I said, obeying. The door clicked heavily into place as I closed it, and the leather whispered as I sat. Giacomo’s office had no windows, and with the door closed, only the tick of a wall-mounted clock scratched the silence. A warm lamp bathed the room in amber.

  As Giacomo moved to pour two mugs of coffee, I couldn’t help but notice the sureness of his motions. The smooth confidence, so authentic in comparison to Jeffery’s cocky swagger.

  “Sugar or cream?” Giacomo asked.

  “Both,” I said.

  “How much?”

  “Oh, uh, just some,” I said, somehow flustered.

  He chuckled with an ex-smoker’s rugged smoothness. “I’ll make it fairly sweet, then.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  I continued looking around the richly-decorated office as he poured cream and sugar. I studied the landscape paintings on the wall, the violet orchids growing under a light that shone only on them, the sparkling crystal and silver of decanters, snifters, and tumblers in the cabinets overhead. However, my eyes kept returning to that out-of-place straw doll and its hollow bone eyes.

  Giacomo held a dark purple mug out to me, the coffee now lightened to milky beige. I took it and blew across the top, waiting for it to cool before I sipped.

  The older man took a long pull of his own coffee—black—and produced the sheet I’d given him from a desk drawer. He studied it briefly.

  “So,” he said. “Your condition?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “It’s a rare form of epilepsy. Sometimes I have short-term memory blackouts.”

  “You mean complex partial seizures?” he asked, still studying the paper from the university counseling office.

  I shook my head. “No sir. I stay aware throughout the incidents. Sometimes an hour or two will just go missing for a while.”

  “Hmm,” said Giacomo, turning his eyes on me. “Seems like a fairly convenient way to get out of hard test questions, isn’t it?” he asked.

  I felt my face flush and shook my head. “No sir. I almost always remember the missing time within twenty-four hours. I’m always careful to do my studying ahead of time in case I block a cram session, so I never have to worry about that.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Giacomo. He set the sheet down on his desk and interlaced his fingers. “So if it’s no trouble on tests, why bring it up?”

  I sipped my coffee. “I let all my teachers know, but I’m mostly concerned about the lab for this class,” I said. “My blackouts come at random. I usually have about one a week, but some chemicals, lights, and smells can make it worse. I’ve wound up losing full days at a time because the girl sitting next to me wore a perfume that triggered my blackouts. It can be disorienting and affect my schoolwork, so I’m just trying to cover my bases.”

  “That’s fair,” said Giacomo. “We’ll be careful with the lab then. Let your lab instructor know as well.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “Caitlyn Seager,” Giacomo said, as if tasting my name. His rumbling voice kindled a kind of warmth in my stomach. “Any relation to Caleb Seager, perchance?”

  The warmth vanished. I looked away.

  “Yes,” I said. “He was my brother.”

  “I knew Caleb,” Giacomo said.

  I looked up at him. I’d expected that Giacomo recalled my brother’s name from the newspapers.

  “You did?” I asked. The tears that always followed mention of my brother filled my throat, a hot liquid. I forced down some coffee to combat it. The wound may have been two years old, but it was deep.

  “I was one of his three major professors,” Giacomo said. “One of his mentors. He was an excellent student. And seemingly very happy; certainly successful in his research. His death came as a shock to all of us.”

  I blinked back the tears and took a long sip to give me time to recover. “Me too,” I said.

  This was an understatement. Caleb’s death had shattered me. It had come with no warning, no evident struggle with depression, no major life changes. He’d broken up with his girlfriend, sure, but that had been three months prior, and he’d been the one to do the breaking up. By every single account, he was happy, productive, and in love with life.

  And then one night he jumped off a building to his death. No note.

  When I graduated high school, I got accepted into three of my preferred colleges, and I got better scholarships at both of the other two. But I came to LSU because I had to walk where my brother had walked. I had to find out at least a bit more about what happened. It just didn’t make any sense.

  “Stop that,” Giacomo said.

  I blinked and looked up at him, the coffee mug warm between my hands. “Stop what?” I asked.

  “I can tell from your eyes. Stop thinking such sad things.”

  And with strange ease, I did exactly that. I stopped thinking of my brother. The thoughts fell away, and the pain of yesterday became a problem for tomorrow.

  “I’m sorry I gave you such a hard time today in class,” Giacomo said. “I try to make an example out of someone early on. I’m sorry it had to be you. Try not to hold it against me. No hard feelings?”

  I shook my head. “No sir.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now strip.”

  Chapter 4

  “Excuse me?” I said, knowing I must have misheard.

  He continued lookin
g at me with those hard blue eyes. He spoke very clearly. “Stand up, and take off all of your clothes.”

  I froze, processing this sudden turn.

  A horrified thrill rushed through me, and for a moment I could only gape at him. On the one hand, it was completely inappropriate. It violated all social codes and years of ingrained modesty and decency. It would be wrong to strip naked in a professor’s office, to be laid bare in front of someone who I had only met that afternoon. Of course it would. Not only wrong, but heinous! Absurd, even.

  But on the other hand, I found—with a weird sense of dawning revelation—that it was something I was completely capable of doing. That it was something that I even wanted to do on some dark, primal level. It was as if I had lifted a cold and heavy stone deep in the woods of my own mind, and when I looked beneath it, what I found was lust: dirty, wriggling, and wet.

  “I… I have a boyfriend,” I said.

  He looked at me thoughtfully and tapped a pen against his chin. “Interesting,” he said. “Very interesting. However, you don’t really care about that right now, do you?”

  And bizarrely, he was right.

  I stood, pushing the leather chair back slightly as I rose.

  I glanced at the closed door—not even locked—and then looked back into Dr. Giacomo’s unrelenting eyes, locked with mine.

  Was I really going to do this? It didn’t make any sense.

  “Are you sure?” I asked, my voice somehow fragile.

  “Yes,” he said.

  I bit the inside of my lip, hesitating for just a moment. Then I reached down, gripped the bottom seam of my shirt, and pulled it over my head.

  My heart raced. I stood in my jeans and bra in my professor’s office, and I knew I wasn’t going to stop there. I’d already crossed the line. No point in stopping now.

  Giacomo said nothing. His eyes didn’t change.

  This was so foreign. So beyond my realm of usual experience. I felt myself moving on with dream-like inevitability.

  I dropped my shirt on the billiard-green carpet and kicked off my shoes. I pulled my socks off with my toes, which was a trick I’d perfected since high school. Then I unclipped my bra, freeing my breasts. My nipples stood out, already hard as the cool office air spread goosebumps across my body.

  Still, Giacomo’s expression stayed the same. He rocked back in his chair a bit and motioned toward my jeans with his pen.

  I couldn’t believe what I was doing, but part of that incredulity made pushing forward even easier. Because my own disbelief felt forced. Like disbelief was something I knew I was supposed to feel, something that I should feel, but it didn’t have an ounce of truth to it. I wanted this. I wasn’t under any kind of sway, no hypnotic spell from those crazy deep eyes of his. It seemed as though he’d somehow tapped into the exact thing that I’d been wanting to do ever since I stepped into that office—read it in my eyes, perhaps—but the idea had been too unthinkable for me to even properly consider it. I was acting out one of Ashley’s inconceivable fantasies. This was something she would joke about doing, and here I was doing it for real.

  My heart pounded and breath slipped in and out of my lungs in shallow slivers. I unbuttoned my jeans and slid them down my legs. Then I stepped free of them and kicked them aside.

  I wore only pale green boy shorts now, which were Jeffery’s favorite. My stomach muscles tightened in self-conscious nervousness, but Giacomo’s eyes weren’t judging. Appraising maybe, but they hardly flickered from my own. I found it hard to look away.

  “And…” he said, prompting.

  I tightened my jaw and glanced at the door again. My thumbs slipped under the elastic band and hesitated.

  Giacomo raised his eyebrows expectantly.

  I slipped the boy shorts down, and then it was just me and Giacomo. I felt like I was holding my eyes too wide, and my skin felt tingly and alive. I had never felt so extremely naked in my entire life.

  He stood, and I watched him walk around the desk to meet me, his stride smooth and confident. I stepped the last few feet to him, and my breath came quick and desperate. I stood in his shadow.

  He wrapped his hands around the small of my back, his fingers warm. He pulled me close against his jacket, into the heart of his whisky-leather scent. He tipped my chin up with a finger, and my timid mouth found his bold and confident.

  The kiss passed through me like electricity, and I gave myself over to it.

  When we separated, his voice was soft and low. “Lie down,” he said, motioning toward the couch. “Face up”

  I left my clothes on the floor and crossed the room completely naked. I didn’t feel brazen. I felt… almost panicked. Not that I’d get caught, mind you—although that fear rattled around somewhere in the back of my head. Rather, I had started wanting many things, and I worried they wouldn’t come to fruition. I could taste him on my lips.

  He caught me and lowered me to the couch, his mouth never left mine even as I lay all the way down, the back of my head against the armrest. The leather was ice against my back, and the goosebumps redoubled on my body. I gasped lightly as I settled into the couch, my head against one armrest and my heels on the other. My hands ran through his hair and wrapped around the back of his neck as I kissed him, but my knees pulled up defensively. I felt very small and exposed.

  I was naked, but he was still fully dressed. He leaned over me and kissed me down into the cushion, the physical weight of him strangely pleasant. He caressed the back of my head and ran his fingers through my hair.

  When his free hand found the bare skin of my waist, my knees pulled up even higher in defense. But his fingers drifted—they glided—an artist’s touch across my prickled and sensitive skin. And as his hand slid down past my navel, I felt my legs part.

  He cupped his hand over me. Barely touching, but not quite.

  I kissed him harder, my fingertips pressing into the back of his skull, his hair between my fingers. My legs fell open completely, but still he didn’t touch. He hovered, flexing his fingers lightly, teasing me.

  “Please,” I gasped.

  In response, his mouth left mine. I felt his breath travel down my neck, and his nose brushed my nipple. He kissed the skin beneath my breasts and began working his way down.

  My arms dropped back against the couch. I was an exposed nerve, shivering and gasping.

  He got all the way down to the delicate skin beneath my panty line, kissing me tantalizingly before he raised up and came all the way back to my neck.

  “No,” I said. My face pressed against the leather arm of the chair as I arched, trying to close the gap between myself and his gliding, agile hand. But he moved with me, staying always just a fraction of an inch away. Just far enough that we could feel the heat of each other. And I had to be practically radiating.

  He kissed my neck, sending static all throughout my body. He kissed along my jaw and then under my sky-pointed chin.

  I had never needed anything so badly in my life. I realized that, for all of Jeffery’s prowess, he was still a boy. For all of his snares, Jeffery couldn’t deny himself long enough to really make me need him. His cock was always a prodding, needy thing, demanding like a little tyrant.

  Dr. Giacomo was a man. A man who knew himself and knew a woman’s body. A man with patience and sensual cruelty. A man who already had me dangling at the end of a string. And I sucked in every desperate breath in hopes of staying that way.

  And then—finally—he touched me. Just one fingertip.

  I rocked back against the couch and gasped. I grabbed his shoulders, and for a moment our eyes met. Then he kissed me, and ran a single finger knuckle-deep inside me.

  I shuddered and dug my fingers into his back. I pulled my chest to his, and our ears brushed. Every inch of my body tingled and surged and yearned. I rocked my hips forward, taking in first one finger and then another. His thumb found the sensitive spot with too much pressure, and roots of awful ecstasy dug through my entire lower body. I clawed and scratched at t
he back of his jacket, but he didn’t relent. He moved the pad of his thumb in a slow, hard circle, and I buckled and jerked against him.

  His hand left me, and I strained after it with my body, my mouth locking with his and my fingers desperate in his hair.

  Fingers returned, light and gliding and wet with me. He traced around the threshold of my sex, up the exposed and shivering interior of first one leg, then the other, always back down to tease and flicker, but never to touch.

  By then I wanted more than mere touching. I wanted him to gouge me, to fill me, to leave me spent and ragged and crumpled. But he wouldn’t even offer a touch.

  “Please,” I said into his lips, still pressed against mine. “Please, please.”

  “Don’t come,” he said.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  He kissed me firmly one last time, then ran his free hand through my hair. The other continued to work its horrible play, barely there.

  He rose and towered over me, and I lay alone on the leather couch, now sweating and shivering, my legs parted and my hips arched up on their own, begging him to do more.

  “Don’t come,” he said again, and he touched me.

  One finger.

  Just. The right. Spot.

  I buried my face in the back of the couch, my teeth squeaking against the leather in a silent scream.

  “Don’t,” he said, not even moving—just applying simple pressure.

  I tried to grind against him, but he anticipated my movements, and the pressure never altered.

  “Wait for it,” he said.

  I bit the leather, not caring if I damaged it. I wanted to kick and buck, and my whole body was a quivering wreck.

  “Come,” he said.

  And I did. The back half of my mind dissolved into liquid as white-hot pleasure coursed through my every nerve. With unprecedented firmness and alacrity, he powered me through it with his whole hand, riding and circling as I shuddered through every wave of the most intense orgasm I had ever experienced.