Page 5 of Killing Me Softly

Obsession

Present Day, Friday, September 16th

Dr Kenneth Lyons was done.

Leaving the muffled symphony of laughter and conversation spilling from the after-conference drinks behind him, he stepped out of the university hall into the courtyard. The heavy doors groaned shut behind him. As if they, too, wanted to see the back of him. He needed a drink. Just not in there. Not among the clinking glasses, the posturing, the ‘brilliant’ exchanges traded like currency. He couldn’t stomach another congratulatory handshake. No. He needed to burn off the past two days.

To beundone.

A soft, golden glow from the overhead lanterns highlighted his exit from the polished debates, guiding him into the city. Whilst the sandstone facades of the University of Barcelona, framed by arches and climbing shadows by the old plane trees, made it a tempting place to spend an evening—inspiring, too—two full days jam-packed with back-to-back workshops,talks, symposiums, and keynotes had been relentless. Academiasuffocatedhim. Tonight, he wasn’t in search of answers.

Only escape.

So he weaved through the streets and the narrow cobblestone alleys, where the air filled with the scent of saffron drifting from late-night kitchens, heat clinging to him, cloying and insistent. It seeped through his dress shirt, the fabric sticking to his damp skin. Even at this hour, gone nine, the city pulsed with warmth, as though the stones absorbed the sun’s heat, refusing to let go, and he wiped his upper lip dotted with sweat, pushing back his dark, shoulder length tousled hair, shaking off the last tendrils of the day ready to be set on fire. The world beyond the academic bubble beckoned him. He had a new city to explore. Wild and alive. New places to lose himself in.

There were some perks to attending these conferences far away from home.

He ripped off his tie, scrunching it into a ball to tuck in his pocket, and loosened the first button on his shirt, then the second. An act of rebellion over the persona he’d been playing these past couple of days. And as the night air whispered against his collarbone, cooling the sheen of sweat, he rolled his sleeves to his elbows, baring his forearms, shedding the last remnants of work like an exoskeleton.

Tonight, he belonged somewhere else.

Maybe he always had.

And with his phone in hand, he followed the route he’d mapped out earlier, each step carrying him further from academia, further from the world he often tried to escape yet couldn’t quite sever himself from completely, and toward something else. No change there. After a gruelling conference talking about the depravities of the human psyche, he often searched for the complete opposite. He wasn’t looking to talk up his research, nor engage in a conversation forcing him back tohis lecture notes or a chance to gain a peer review which could aid his chance for the Professorship. No. What he sought was something else entirely.

To getoutof his mind.

Ahead, a narrow street opened to a crossroad where neon glowed in fractured hues across the stonework. Music rose from underground and he clomped faster, heart rate elevating. The building’s low windows barely peeked above street level, glass fogged with the condensation of bodies swaying below. Outside, a pride flag caught the breeze, colours dulled by the night but still defiant. Still alluring.

Exactly what he wanted. Right here. Right now.

Some habits just don’t die.

He smiled. He’d done his research. A good little academic always does. And it led him tohere. Excitement thrummed beneath his skin. Just like it had when he’d found all those other hidden worlds where no one cared who he was or what accolades he’d gathered like dust. Where he could shed himself for a while. He collected these clubs in his memory bank. Portugal. Greece.London. All had somewhere exactly like this. And the anticipation of this one caused his pulse to spike as he snuck down the narrow stairwell, the bass vibrating through the soles of his dress shoes, travelling up through his ribs to throb in his chest.

Yeah. This was where he could go a littlecrazy.

The air was thick with heat and smoke, a blur of perfume and sweat mingling in the dim, flashing lights and the crowd surged and parted, a sea of silhouettes caught between beats, the sharp glint of pierced lips and collarbones flashing like constellations in the gloom. He squirmed past them, bumping shoulders, and caught sight of the bar stretched ahead, polished but worn at the edges. He raised two fingers at the bartender. Simple. Nopretension. No champagne. No fine wine. He wasn’t here to toast.

He was here todrink.

“Whisky. Neat,” he called.

The glass landed with a satisfying clink on the bar, and Kenny wrapped his fingers around it like a lifeline. God, he needed this. And he lifted it to his lips, letting the burn seep into his chest, hot and steady, as though he could cauterise what had broken inside him. He closed his eyes for a second, savouring the moment, then turned, settling back on one elbow, scanning the room.

The club was small. Basement-close.Intimate. The dancefloor level to him blurred the lines between the watchers and the watched, and there wasn’t any balcony to peer down from. No safe distance separating his solitude from their spectacle. Just a writhing mass of bodies locked in a rhythmic war, sweat-slicked and shameless, grinding to the music in their bid to be seen. A game of lust and posturing.

He wanted to roll his eyes. The scene was so familiar he could script it. Recite it blindfolded. The same men, brimming with overconfidence and cloaked in secrets, moving like kings while quietly craving to be conquered. Even here, amid the pulse and thrum of bodies, his mind ran its course of quiet analysis. The crowd, for all its chaos, was predictable. Hypnotic in its repetition.

But the current shifted. Parted. Revealed something quite spectacular.

Kenny hovered his drink shy of his lips as he faltered, caught in a different trance. One that didn’t follow his mental choreography. Or, if he was honest, one that hadn’tusedto. A couple of years and a world of experience had reshaped him, grounding him in theories. Though some things still defied logic.

Because therehewas. Proof of it.

Rivalling anything the city offered as its top ten attractions, the man in the centre of the throng had Kenny drinking in a new poison. Blond hair caught the overhead strobe lights and shimmered like spun gold. Just as rich. Just as tempting. But it wasn’t his hair that had Kenny frozen to the spot. It was the graceful curve of his throat as he tossed his head back, dancing with an unhurried, sensual grace. Smooth as silk, yet crackling with energy.

Just the way Kenny liked them.

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