Wicked Lectures

What happens when the man protecting you is the same man you need protection from?

SOLÈNE
I'm the only Black woman in my department at an ancient English university where every face on every wall is white. I can handle that. I've been handling that my whole life.
What I can't handle is Professor Thane Aldric.
He requested me as his student before I ever applied. He put me in a cottage where a woman disappeared three years ago. And underneath my floorboards, I found her notebook - full of warnings about a secret society that runs this university and buries anyone who gets too close.
Someone searched my office. A dead raven showed up on my doorstep. And the man who keeps telling me to trust him? His name is carved into their wall.
I should run. My mama would tell me to run. Amara is screaming at me to run.
But a Black girl from Atlanta doesn't cross an ocean to quit. I'm going to find out what happened to the woman before me. Even if the answer destroys the man I'm falling for.


THANE
I've been watching her for two years. Reading her work. Planning her arrival. I told myself it was about redemption - about finishing what the last woman started before I failed to protect her.
I lied.
I'm obsessed with her. A brilliant Black woman who walks through my ancient, rotting world like she owns it - and she should. My father wants her gone. The society I've belonged to since eighteen wants her silenced. The same machinery that disappeared one woman is turning toward another.
I could stop it. Protect my name. Do what Aldric men have always done.
Or I could hand her every secret I have and watch her burn my world to ash.
She doesn't know it yet. But I already chose.

Wicked Lectures is Book 1 in the IVORY & OBSESSION dark academia series. BWWM interracial romance. Professor/student. Obsessive morally grey hero. Strong Black heroine. Forced proximity. Secret society. Someone is in danger. Explicit content. Standalone with guaranteed HEA.