BARE SOULS: A STEAMY TEACHER/STUDENT ROMANCE

CHAPTER 77 | BARE SOULS

A flicker of the mind leading to another lapse of judgement, just an excuse to put his shell at ease when the mind is a storm. Temporary pleasure to fight the guilt of his too many shortcomings and to hurt the one he could not forgive. He became the type who lives for these flimsy moments of skin and flesh in exchange for the sake of forgetting who he is for a couple of minutes. 

That's how he felt he protected himself ever since he fled from his previous illusion, shutting down and using women for his benefits as a defense mechanism. A simple trade relying on appearances and fantasies, convincing himself that this fake feeling of dominance was enough to satisfy his body, as long as his soul kept dormant. He was a fool and the fool is what this man will be called from now on. 

Burying his head to the ground was easy as long as he stuck to his precepts. No links, no tomorrows, just a once and go. No worries, no call back, no need to seek  anything further. He would that way respond to his primary instincts, paying no mind to his secondary needs that he was determined to kill once and for all. 

Beautiful creature of the night she was, like many other he met before. He laid his lustful eyes on her and the fool recognized his own. Another lost soul wearing a mask, seeking a temporary thrill without the promises of a potential tomorrow and for a fleeting moment, he felt she could and would give him exactly what he needed, except she did not. 

How foolish he was for paying no mind to his intuition! He felt that night that something was different about her. Something frail, innocent and youthful. Something he decided to ignore, preferring to solely obsess over the promises her body held, since her soul did not matter to him. But his promised thrill threatened to put an end to the only spark that remained in his life when she turned to be one of the souls he was supposed to guide and protect. 

Oh, the irony!  

A promise to himself he was never to commit the same mistake again and he thought he was back on track. Easy to forget and move on when he had done this many times before, although this one mistake thankfully turned into a missed take. 

He however underestimated how Intriguing this young soul under the disguise of femme fatale;  her sound did not quite match the appearance she exuded and he became unable to stop wondering about what laid under the facade: curiosity made place to temptation and temptation become hard to ignore when she decided to play with fire. 

One can know what is wrong yet still make excuses to make it  sound right and his weakened mind, for every wrong he could point found twice as much reasons to give in. He would still fight the physical attraction with all his willpower perpetually asking himself what an 18 year old soul had to offer? He knew so himself she was not special. Her body was as tempting as others and her fine facial features did not justify the obsession growing inside of him. What differed between her and he others?

Answers come easy to the one who seek them and he was definitely not looking for any. Because he already knew that what ignited the spark in him was something he never got to see in the others: a glimpse of their bare souls. And her soul was beautiful. Raw darkness with a lexical field beyond her years, a mind with a cathedral of references who probably swiped more pages that he probably ever did, a tormented soul searching for relief that his twisted self knew he could never provide. Two added pains never made a medicine and he never even wanted to come close to what she was seeking. Because he saw in her soul a fraction of his. The same pain hidden under layers and layers of false pretense and he knew he had to stay away for his own sake. 

But fate is twisted and as hard as he was trying to avoid complications, karma's jokes on him  placed her on his path whenever he was desperately trying to escape her and he felt himself slowly but surely drowning. So be it! If he was doomed to be obsessed with her then he would face it and surrender once and for all, just so he could free his mind from the painful conflict she stirred up in him.