Eager to Learn (Complicity Cycle) Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 w ill,” 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 looking 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