Page 9 of Dream a Little Dream

“You’ve got Charlotte with you,” Gail called before he could bound off back down the rickety carpeted stairs. “She’s already there.”

“Keen.”

“Don’t break this one.”

Kenny waved her off and headed toward the gym adjacent to the Halls of Residence where all the newbie freshers were mingling, and he inhaled their nerves and excitement as if it were aftershave. He showered quickly, washing his hair to leave it down, dressed in a suit—navy, white shirt, no tie—then hung his lanyard around his neck, grabbed his bag, and rushed over to the main Lecture Theatre block.

Forensic Psychology had seen an influx in admissions over recent years. The fascination with the criminal mind had becomesexy. He blamedNetflixand the onslaught of true crime documentaries, glamorising the criminal mind. But many dropped out after the first semester when they couldn’t take the reality of hearing, researching, and having to understand the minds of seriously deranged and disturbed individuals, as if they were normal. Because they were. The idea of monsters just wasn’t true. Evil came in human form. Anyone had the potential to do evil. It was the steps people took leading them onto a path of depravity, not a possession of the devil. Being born that way was a theory widely disproven. And it took guts to muse over piles of disturbing documentation detailing what some peoplecould do to another human being. Students needed areasonto explore thewhyand stomach the course.

Like Kenny did.

It meant the two hundred tiered seats in the main Lecture theatre would be full for Intro to Crim-Psych, the students a mixture of those on the Forensic Psychology track, those taking Psychology with Criminology, and those able to take it as an elective simply because they wanted to tell their friends they were being taught by a bloke who helped various police forces catch murderers.

“Apologies for the delay!” Kenny rushed in the side door, bringing him out at the front where Charlotte, this year’s research assistant and Master’s student, was already trying to figure out how to turn the super-duper screen on behind them.

University lecturing had changed a fair bit over the years. Now academics had to have a grafting in IT to even give a lecture on what they were supposed experts in.

“I’m sorry, Dr Lyons,” Charlotte said, face bright red. “I didn’t know how to—”

“It’s okay, it’s an arse to get working.” Kenny turned his back on the rows of students to aid her in switching on the big screen, then pulled out his laptop to plug it in and attach it to the leads that would project his PowerPoint to the class.

His bag fell off the table, sending an array of files and papers to the floor and he shushed the sniggers mimicking the god awful cheers from a pub crowd when staff dropped collected pint glasses. Charlotte rushed to his aid, gathering the manilla file, newspaper cuttings, notes, and detailed case files spread over the floor. Kenny snatched them up, avoiding her look of concern to shove them all in his bag. No one needed to see those. He’d left them in that bag to avoid pining over them during the summer.

He then stood, the screen behind him humming to life and shadowing him from the view of eager minds. Clearing his throat, he stepped away from the screen and scanned over the tiered seats to introduce himself.

“Welcome. I’m Dr Kenneth Lyons, Associate Professor here for the Psychology faculty at the University of Ryston and I’ll be taking you through Intro to Criminal Psychology.”

As he spoke, he found himself inexorably drawn to a figure seated front and centre. A male. With a casual slouch and a scarf wrapped twice around his neck, face tucked into the material. It might be the start of autumn, but the temperature outside was higher than it had been for most of the summer, and in here, it was roasting. But it wasn’t the scarf, nor the hair, a vibrant dusky pink, an anomaly amidst a sea of muted tones, forcing his gaze. It was the eyes, a striking blue, staring back at him in recognition.

Kenny would bet his right arm that if he unwound that scarf, he’d find a tattoo of the Mars symbol with bruising bite marks surrounding it.

Fuck.

The air thickened, the silence a living thing, heavy and pregnant. Kenny’s heart pounded. How was this even remotely possible? It couldn’t be. A matter of behavioural statistics would rule it out. He’d been hundreds of miles away. In the centre ofLondon. A basement gay bar. First-year students had been moving into their new halls at the weekend. And any commuter student would have been at the welcome gathering in the Students’ Union. He couldn’t have been inLondon. It was why he’d allowed himself a little indulgence onthatnight inthatplace. Because the chances of him accidentally hooking up with someone who would become his student were slim to none.

Yet the pull was inexplicable.

The familiarity wrenching.

As all-consuming as it had been that night.

Extracting the reservoir of professionalism that hadn’t yet run dry, Kenny collected himself by pushing back his hair from his face. “Today we…uh…start with the basics.”

His words felt foreign, stumbling off his too-thick tongue as if they were uninvited guests rather than the familiar opening spiel delivered countless times before. His throat dried. The student, Aaron—if that even was his name—sat motionless, posture relaxed yet imbued with an intensity tugging on the edges of his restraint. His stare, sturdy and unyielding, pierced through the veneer of academic formality. He didn’t even take notes. Arms crossed, it was a silent challenge, a wordless communication whispering shared secrets and accusations across the threshold.

Kenny could feel those hidden lips wrapped around his cock. Smell his sultry scent clawing at his senses. Taste the sweat dripping off his neck as if he’d had it for breakfast.

Maybe this wasn’t random at all.

Maybe he’d got himself astalker.A fanboy.

Wonderful.

“Criminal psychology asks one fundamental question: why? Why do people commit crimes? What drives someone to break not only the law but social norms? These aren’t simple questions, nor are there simple answers.”

He clicked to the next slide:Case Study: Frank and Roisin Howell.

The screen displayed a blurred image of an old crime scene—a bloodied carpet, a piano in the background, its keys dusted with fingerprint powder. A few students murmured, recognising the infamous case. And Kenny was desperate to take in all the other faces on the edges of their seats and not on the one among the many cracking him open. He’d never, not once, in his twenty years of lecturing ever had an attraction to a student. Especially not one who couldn’t be a day overeighteen. But no matter howhard he tried to quash the reaction, a mysterious yearning kept forcing him back tohim.

---