Succubus

It was not going to work, but fuck if I would admit it!

I planned to continue making believe my students' stories were riveting until she noticed I was ignoring her. She took up far too much of my attention during class for me to volunteer more.

Down that path lay damnation, or at least losing my job.

The unfortunate part happened to be that I wouldn't lose my job if I talked to her or did the ten thousand sexual things I wanted to her body.

I would not lose my job because teaching college students not to use the passive voice, or to intend alliteration instead of puking it on a page was not really a job to me. I considered it a hobby away from my career of amazing myself stupid by the amount of praise I could collect from literary critics.

My hobby was also safe since technically she wasn't one of my students. I took roll call a half-dozen times hoping to see after which name she raised her hand, but she never did.

"You're not like the characters in your stories," she said.

Her voice was a Stradivarius violin playing Handel in a moon-shunned field.

"Excuse me?" I replied.

I learned after my first book how to say those two words in a way that made them sound like 'Why are you talking me?'. Critics like being insulted; if a writer does not look down at them, they feel cheated. I think it has something to do with not enjoying tearing someone down as much when they put out a bad book.

"I figured that out from watching you in class," she continued. "There are girls throwing themselves at your feet, but you kick every one of them aside."

"They are my students," I pointed out. "It would be unethical for me to have anything to do with them."

"I'm not your student."

I KNEW SHE WAS GOING TO SAY THAT!

"You're still in my class," I answered quickly.

"I'm in your class because you are in your class," she told me with a smile.

"I need to go," I told her standing up and walking around the desk.

"It's incredible!" she said standing up. "Are your characters who you want to be, or who you don't dare to be?"

She was between the door and me so I stood still. There was no way I was getting that close to her. The motion she used to stand up was also hypnotizing; everything she did was seductive.

"What's really your name?" I asked trying to push some of the discomfort I felt onto her.

"L"

"L is a letter," I said reasonably. "Is it E-l-l-e, or E-l?"

"My name is L," she replied. "If you're lucky, someday you'll know the rest."

So much for making her uncomfortable!

L closed the distance between us. I backed away, but the very table I hid behind earlier thwarted my escape.

The woman was flat-out stunning!

Her hair was strawberry-blonde as if God could not decide between making her a redhead or a blonde so he split the difference and moved on to creating something less beautiful like a star. Her bodylines followed a thoroughbred mare's; slim with obvious strength. The most devastating feature was her green eyes; I'd watched every male in the class stutter when she applied their full force, even the one guy I was sure would have preferred that L had a cock.

My first smell of her confirmed my suspicions; dealing with L was like fucking a virgin, bloody was an assumed adjective.

"I've read your books," she said standing too close for my sanity. "They're nothing like your stories. I found the books empty, as if no part of you is in them."

"Books... stories?" I asked. "I've only published books."

"I'm sorry," she said. "Let me clarify, I was talking about your erotica. You're not at all like the characters you write about online."

"Oh," I said stupidly.

Writing online erotica was another hobby of mine. I started doing it my sophomore year in college hoping to develop my writing skills. The feedback was useful so I kept doing it until I felt ready to tackle the commercial world.

The critics lauded my first assault on the publishing world as a classic first book. I would have preferred less praise and more sales. I considered it a monumental failure since my aim had been pop rather than something only writers and critics 'appreciated'. I had to re-read my own book trying to find what one critic called 'the bourgeois lamentations of a mediocre middle class'.

The strictly critical success of my first book engendered me to write a second one that I thought a scathing insult to the cockroaches also known as critics. The main character was a suicidal literary critic suffering from a variety of physical problems that included leprosy, rampant acne, and an underdeveloped penis.

'Heroic' was the worst thing any critic said about it.

I sat in front of my computer for three months of insomnia after that. I never read that third book, and until the reviews came out I didn't know what it was about. The critics had many different opinions about what I tried to say; I made each one feel good by agreeing with whichever cockroach had me cornered.

By then, the University noticed that a 'beloved' of the elite was slaving away as a TA in the English Department. They offered me a choice of classes that my Master in Fine Arts qualified me to teach. I chose a creative writing class usually filled with freshmen.

Students fell into several categories in my classes; the easy A's, the couldn't-be Hemingways but tried anyway, the hobbyists, and kids with credits to throw away. There were even the occasional individuals who wanted to wipe my ass in the hope that I would get them closer to the Holy Grail of being published. I let them; I even introduced some to their cockroach relatives.

L did not fit into any of those categories. She never handed in written work or participated in the discussions unless asked direct questions. Until the day she did not leave as soon as class ended, all L ever did was catch me staring at her.

"I thought you would be different," she said. "More decadently vibrant."

"You're vibrant, L," I told her. "I'm corduroy."

I tried to edge by on her left, but she cut off me better than most boxers could have.

"Take me to lunch," she commanded and turned around to lead the way.

I followed meekly.

There was no avoiding whatever L wanted from me. I did not have the protection of her being my student, not that it would have mattered to the University. My class was pointless, so if I banged a co-ed or twenty, what was the harm? Writers are prone to those kinds of slip-ups, or so I hear.

I could have run but that would have looked even sillier than whatever marks she would leave on me. I brightened thinking I was getting too far ahead of myself, and maybe L only wanted to get to know me better just like the critics I so easily impressed.

It was not that L intimidated me so much as she was built to overwhelm. Being overwhelmed sounds attractive, until the Category Five hurricane overwhelms your house into the next county. Any hurricane regardless of category would have known better than to tangle with L, which made me wish I were following the hurricane instead.

"You should have ordered a salad," she told me when we sat down at the off-campus cafe.

"Listen, it's obvious you're going to fuck up my life," I told her. "I have two requests; lay off the burgers with extra bacon, and I'm not watching figure skating."

I learned if a woman respected those lines, there was a chance I could escape with my pride.

"That's a very limited set of demands," she said playing the straw across her lower lip. "Is that all you desire?"

"I'd like your lips around my dick," I said sarcastically. "I'm quite fond of the fantasy where I bend you over my office desk and lay some serious pipe into your ass. I admit to quite a few thoughts about handcuffs and your extremities. Hands down though, my absolute favorite is the one where I drink tequila out of your snatch, and wake up twelve days later on a Hawaiian beach wearing a grass skirt and a coconut bra with a tattoo of a burly, biker chick named Sam on my arm."

Sexual harassment suit, here I came!

"Why do so many men have that thing with woman's ass?" she asked me calmly. "Are you sure you're straight? Although, I find it hard to believe a gay male could write a story like the 'Sunrise On Her Skin'."

"I'm married," I said.

Since the disgusting misogynistic bit did not make her flinch, her morality might be a better angle.

"No, you're not," she told me confidently. "So which is it, Miguel?"

"What?" I asked.

"Are your characters who you want to be, or who you don't dare be?"

"I don't have the genital equipment to be any male character in my stories," I told her honestly.

The last resort of a desperate man; 'I got a little dick!'

"I'll leave if you ask me to," L said quietly.

"Has there ever been a man who sent you away?" I asked curiously.

"One, a very long time ago," she admitted with a sadness so deep I could have cried.

"Is 'Sunrise' your favorite story?" I asked sighing.

"I don't have a favorite," she told me. "I treasure all of them."

I nodded and looked out the window.

"Do you remember when the Orlando realizes what Malia means to him?"

"Yes," she told me. "You wrote 'A sunrise would never be the same without her.'"

"I might dare to be 'someone' with you," I told her.

"Is that bad?"

"I'll be no one when you leave," I answered. "A lonelier no one than today."

"I don't leave men lonely, Miguel."

"If we lined up every man who has been with you, I would bet not a single one would agree with that statement. It's probably the only thing they could disagree with you about."

"There was one who made me lonely," she said angrily.

"He regretted it every day for the rest of his life," I told her.

She snickered.

"You don't have to believe it, L," I said. "But I know it."

Her green eyes burned into mine trying to make me take my words back, but like burgers with extra bacon and figure skating I was not budging.

"You're cheating those poor girls who drape themselves across your shoes," she told me with a wicked smile.

I laughed out loud surprising everyone near us.

"I'm doing them a favor," I told her reaching for my burger.

"How?"

"I'm a bad experience," I answered around a mouthful of beef and pork.

"I've been on a few discussion groups; female readers love your stories," she said.

"Women like the romance in my stories, and that I keep the sex nasty enough to inspire some shower-head fun," I said with a smirk.

"You seem disdainful of that," she said.

"Hell no!" I exclaimed. "I'd trade each and every one of my books for a successful romance novel. Women are more loyal than critics."

"What about your male readers?" L asked me.

"I like the 'more such-and-such type of sex' requests," I told her. "Other than that the male readers come and go, sort of how I moved from sci-fi to horror to romance to impressing the critics with my own meaningless drivel."

"Hmm," she said.

We ate quietly for a few minutes until I cracked.

"So... what do you like about my stories?" I asked her.

I had the same chances of not asking that question as not getting a hard-on if L and I happened to fall naked onto the same bed. I guess it was always possible to break my neck on the way down so the odds of not getting wood were better; discounting any engorging effects of rigor mortis obviously.