Cognition

She wanted to be taught. He warned her to walk away.

But Valencia Morano has never been one to obey rules.

Brilliant, reclusive, and just barely twenty-two, Valencia is the kind of girl who drinks philosophy like water and lives more in her mind than in her skin. Harvard was supposed to be her sanctuary. But when word spreads of a secret seminar, twenty seats only, chosen by him.

Suddenly everything tilts.

Professor Julian Thorne Smith is not a man students meet. He's the kind they write dissertations about. A man who was never meant to teach again. With three doctorates, bestselling works, and a silence sharp enough to draw blood, he's more myth than man. So when Valencia is chosen, she doesn't celebrate. She spirals.

Because no one told her the greatest lesson would be herself.

What begins as academic worship unravels into something far more dangerous, a psychological chess match between a girl with too many questions and a man who cannot afford to be seen.

As the power dynamic tangles and a forbidden connection sparks, Valencia finds herself drawn into a world of restraint, obsession, and desire deeper than anything she's ever known.

This isn't romance.
This is surrender.
And some lessons leave marks.