“Thanks,” Mary groaned. “Did the boyfriend leave?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t have to.”
“It’s alright.”
“Have you been here the whole time?”
“It had only been an hour.”
Mary sat up. “I have a headache.”
“You should sleep.”
She nodded. “I will.”
Ella stood up.
“Thank you, Ella,” Mary said before she fell back on her bed again.
Hours later, as the morning sun broke through the blinds in Ella’s room, Mary knocked on her door. Ella was sleeping as Mary slid into the bed beside her.
“What time is it?” Ella murmured sleepily.
“6 am.”
“Are you better now?”
“Never been better.”
They lay next to each other just like they used to before they started fighting.
“I miss you, Ella Scott,” Mary said at length.
“I miss you too.”
“I know I said we can’t be friends like we were before… but maybe we can try.”
“I would love that.”
In the silence of the morning, the two girls drifted off to sleep again. Things seemed infinitely better after that.
Chapter Twelve
Lucas’ lips were warm against hers. They were perfectly synchronized with hers and felt good against her lips. Ella pondered on this fact as she kissed him. They were interrupted with the sound of the door banging open.
“I’m not a fan of PDA,” Mary mocked.
Ella smiled. “Hi, Mary.”
“Hello, Ella. Lucas.”
Mary stepped between them and draped an arm around each of them. “Let’s go, then. I’m excited about this exhibition.”
Mary felt a sense of relief when she made up with Ella. Ella and Lucas’ relationship didn’t bother her as much as fighting with Ella did.
Mary and Lucas helped Ella carry her paintings and artwork into The Gallery. A few major artists were displaying their work too which is why all tickets were sold out, and the halls were going to be packed in a few hours. The exposure was excellent for emerging artists like Ella.
As the exhibition progressed, Ella was in the middle of a conversation with a few people who had seemed interested in her work earlier but were now going on about their own art endeavors and how they had to give them up for “real careers.” Ella listened politely and looked around for an escape which came minutes later in the form of Lucas.
“Mind if I borrow Ella?” he asked the group. Without waiting for an answer, he led her away into a small room at the end of the hall.
“You just saved my life,” Ella told him.
“I had my reasons for saving your life,” Lucas said. Ella was pressed against the wall, and Lucas’ lips lingered near hers.
“Like what?” Ella breathed.
Lucas closed the distance between them as his lips crashed into hers. The kiss was urgent, a sign of how they had only a few minutes to steal from the exhibition before the manager would start wondering where Ella went. Ella reciprocated with equal fervor. Their tongues fought for dominance. Lucas pushed up her dress. A finger hooked her underwear to the side and nudged into her. Ella clutched his shoulder tightly as he rubbed and pumped with his fingers. Her back arched and she clung to his neck.
Ella could hear people walking around outside. As Lucas withdrew his hand, Ella looked around. There was a small couch in the corner of the room.
“I don’t like the idea of having sex on someone else’s couch,” Ella told him.
“Good,” Lucas replied. “Because I was going to take you against the wall.”
“Hurry up,” she told him. Unbuckling his belt, Ella pushed down his jeans. Lucas lifted up her right leg and wrapped it around his torso as he brought her down on his erection. She bit down on his neck to stop herself from crying out loud. Lucas lifted her leg up further which gave him deeper access. Ella stifled her cries and suspected that she might be hurting Lucas with the bites, but he didn’t seem to mind. She thought her left leg would give way, so she wrapped that around him too. He thrust into her easily, making her moan his name.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.
“Ella?” She recognized the voice as that of the exhibition’s manager.
“Y-yes,” Ella managed to stammer.
“Are you in there?”
Lucas slowly moved into her again, and Ella’s head rolled back. She knew he was doing it on purpose.
“She’ll be out in a moment,” Lucas replied loudly. Ella wanted to reprimand him for making the situation obvious, but she didn’t have the strength too.
When they exited the room, Ella felt lightheaded. The manager didn’t mention her brief disappearance. Ella smiled inwardly. People should get used to it.
The Love Laboratory
A Paranormal New Adult Romance
Serena Silver
The Love Laboratory
Copyright 2017 by Serena Silver
All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to a person, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Warning: Due to mature subject matter, such as explicit sexual situations and coarse language, this story is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18. All sexually active characters in this work are 18 years of age or older, and all acts of a sexual nature are consensual.
Chapter One
Starting at a new school can be very nerve-racking. I had a really long week trying to prepare for everything, and the cost of new books was making me wish that I had never started this in the first place. I was confident in what I could do, and I wanted to learn but somehow this first week had me questioning all my abilities and my reasons for being where I was. Did I really want to start all over in a new place, new university, and a new life? I was more stressed than I had ever been in my life and all I wanted was to relax a bit.
Very few people seemed to be paying attention to the man standing in the middle of the room, telling us about all the things that we need to do to even be considered students. He wasn’t bad, he was actually kind of funny even, and he tried to make us feel comfortable and welcome. He was a middle-aged guy born and raised in the US, with a bit of a patriotic mindset.
Coming from the UK, I didn’t see much of a difference in culture so I didn’t have a culture shock or anything but it was still crazy weird to be there. It didn’t feel like home at all, yet it felt like the right place to be. I never felt alone thanks to my two best friends who came here a year ago, they welcomed me with open arms when I joined and showed me all the ins and outs of this place.
Everyone thought they knew what they were doing, but the truth was that none of us really did. You could feel the smell of poorly made sandwiches and bottled water all over the room - they gave them out for free to all the students since we were forced to spend way too much time stuck in that room. The room wasn’t that bad - it was painted all in blue like most universities and schools. Apparently blue is supposed to calm you down constantly and lower the chances of you going crazy in class. The room wasn’t bad, but the energy inside was - the first day was never easy. I could feel everyone’s fear about being here, starting a new education isn’t easy and to do it in a room where you must calmly sit in a chair and listen to people talk wasn’t making it any better. It felt kind of hostile and formal, even though they made sure to tell us a million times that there was nothing to worry about.
I looked around and enjoyed the view of so
many kinds of different people. You could easily tell that they were from at least three different continents. That’s what an international program was supposed to be like. It was my first year as a master’s student in Language studies and I was both excited and slightly scared, but determined to learn a lot and finish my education...hopefully. Now, let me just tell you that I am definitely not the kind of person who likes to get in a messy situation. In no way did I intend to spend my first year in a totally new place getting into trouble and messing with things way bigger than anything that I knew - but I did. I did it without looking back even once.
The welcome to the university lecture was getting more and more boring since I thought that I had it all under control and needed nobody’s advice about anything, my friends had told me everything that I needed to know, right? My attention was everywhere, but at the words that the lecturer was saying, I was thinking about what I would have for lunch, about how pretty the girl’s hair next to me was, about how cute my lecturer’s nose was until I heard something about a student card.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” I said from my seat a little embarrassed that I had to, I was normally a good student, I liked paying attention, and I liked being one of the best, so having to ask him to repeat something felt slightly embarrassing.
Thankfully, he seemed to have no problem with my request, so he just smiled politely and answered.
“No problem, I just mentioned that you must have gotten your student card from the International accommodation office by now.” The time stopped for a second and panic set inside my mind.
Crap! I had not done this. I panicked for a bit but then I realized it was probably ok… I mean, I could just go do it now. It was time for me to stop thinking that I knew everything and start listening. I googled it up and found out where I should go. Apparently, people who hadn’t gotten their cards could go to some address inside the university’s main building and find it in there from 3-6pm only. I was in luck - the time was 4:30 pm, so I had just enough time to get there and deal with it.
After the lecture, I got up as fast as I could and headed that way. It didn’t seem to be far, I walked lost around the hallways a bit, found some souvenir shop and ended up buying a university t-shirt, and a mug asked a few people and eventually ended up in front of a big gray door. What was wrong with the zero signs in this school? Quite difficult to find your way around, I felt like I was in Hogwarts or something, didn’t expect it to actually take me such a long time. I was there at 5:44 which meant that I had just about 15 minutes to get it done. I opened the door, and the moment I entered I realized that I was in the wrong spot. This was definitely not room number 152 even though the campus map said it should be exactly there.
The place seemed like a weird kind of laboratory that wasn’t filled with chemistry sets and weird smells. Instead, it had very few science-looking objects and quite a lot of computers and books all over. Maybe it was some kind of an IT-lab? The room was huge, looked like it could fit a whole average-sized concert audience, which is why I was surprised that it was so empty at that time. On normal days this was probably filled with people making the world better. I was never a computer geek - I was like an old person when it came to those things, but I sure appreciated having my Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram and was very grateful to the people who made things like this for us. Lucky for me, my best friend Jacob was a computer guy so anytime I had a problem I could just hit him up, and he would deal with it. There was nobody inside, but I really needed that card. I walked forward a bit - still nothing. When I reached the end of the room, I looked toward the window, and right next to it on the ground, I could see something which, from afar, seemed like a person.
I went forward to see if something was wrong and it sure seemed that way. A man was laying on the floor and seemed to be unconscious. I wasn’t sure what to do. At that moment it felt like my brain stopped for a second - you don’t see a man lying unconscious on the floor every day. I felt scared, and my heart started beating fast. What I got in that short minute was that he was insanely beautiful. Despite seeming pale and worn out, I had never seen anybody more beautiful in my life. He had dark hair that seemed to be styled by him. When I looked closely I noticed he had some blood on his Star Wars t-shirt, I could see that his ear was bleeding earlier. Despite having dark hair, I could see by his freckles that his skin was pale and his face may be sculpted by some kind of God.
Enough time, getting lost in the beauty of the random person lying on the floor. I grabbed my phone quickly and called an ambulance. While waiting for the ambulance, I had no idea what to do. I checked for his pulse, and thankfully I felt it, I tried to wake him up, but it didn’t seem to work, I grabbed his hand and said that everything will be okay, maybe he could hear me, I didn’t know.
They arrived surprisingly fast and me being mesmerized by his beauty and feeling somewhat responsible for him having been the one to call an ambulance, I joined him in the ambulance and then spent my night in the waiting room at the hospital. I couldn’t get a lot of what was happening when I was in the ambulance. They pulled me aside while everyone was shouting and trying to awaken the boy. I couldn’t see exactly what they were doing to him, but I know that they were trying really hard to keep him alive and it wasn’t that easy. Spending the night at the hospital was a choice, I was in no way obliged to do it. At first, I was just waiting for his family to show up, but nobody did, it was just me waiting. I was surprised, but I figured that he may also be an international student, I knew that if I were in his spot, I would have really appreciated somebody to be there and wait for me, even if it were a complete stranger, I would have appreciated the support.
Chapter Two
As a child, I was very close to my grandmother. When she got sick I spent a lot of time at the hospital, I enjoyed being around her, she was always telling me stories and teaching me new things and like most grandmas - she always had candy. My grandfather was a train driver, so she spent a lot of time being on trains with him, they went all over the country, and she got to experience many different places, so she always had amazing stories to tell. The time I spent with her was never boring. She always entertained me and told me that if I use my imagination, I never had to be bored in my life, she encouraged me to travel, and one of the reasons why I went to study in the US was exactly everything that she told me about traveling and what it does for the soul. That’s why I was used to the hospital smell, even though I lost her it reminded me of amazing moments that we had together and of all the wise things that she told me that I will always remember and pass on when possible.
This time was different. The hospital smell was making my stomach turn, I could feel the dizziness and the urge to leave as soon as possible. I couldn’t though, I felt somewhat obliged to stay and wait for this person that I didn’t even know, this beautiful human that nobody was showing up for. I found it quite strange, everybody has some family, where was his?
He was all alone, and I felt like nobody should be alone in a time like this, I would have hated being alone at the hospital, I would have probably even been completely freaked out.
I was waiting and waiting for hours -nobody was telling me anything. I woke up by a loud noise, it was just the garbage truck, I had spent the whole night sleeping in an uncomfortable hospital chair, I could feel the pain in my upper back and neck, this was going to take a long time to feel better. By looking outside, I could tell that it was very early in the morning, maybe around 6 am. I had to get to school for my first real day, people who don’t show up, in the beginning, are just bound to drop out as soon as possible, so I took the liberty of walking up to the pretty redheaded nurse at the desk.
“Hi, I’m sorry, yesterday I came in with a guy that had passed out, young, brown hair…”
“We have been waiting for somebody to look for him,” she told me and started typing something with the speed of light into her computer.
“You’re free to see him, room 305” she added with a
lovely smile. I saw her dimples, and I could easily tell that she would break many hearts. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m obliged to write your name if you’re going to visit him, what’s your name?” she added right after and took out some tablet to write on. The hospital here was quite modern, and they seemed to have all of the newest technology at least from what I could tell, they had nice sponsors.
“Lana Wood” I answered and smiled back.
When I got to his room no sound was coming out of it, so I knocked on the door, but nobody answered. It was slightly cracked open, so I just continued opening it. The boy was lying on the bed, and he seemed unconscious. His face looked even worse than before, he was so pale you could see all his veins, it was like his face was begging for my help. I felt so much compassion for him, I felt like I wanted to help him with all that I had no matter how long it would take me.
I walked toward him and sat near the hospital bed. The room was actually really nice, everything was right in order, the window had a great view, and a lot of light could come in. It was a lovely room for a hospital, and the TV was also quite big, maybe too big. My eyes were grabbed by the blue hospital bracelet on his right arm. I turned his hand around, and I read his name - Troy Parker. Troy was quite the handsome guy; despite being obviously sick, he still looked like he just got off a photo shoot or the runway. He wasn’t that tall, but he still looked handsome, he probably hadn’t shaved in a while because I could notice a slight beard forming - it suited him. I imagined that he would look great with a small beard, it really suited some guys, and he was probably one of them.
His eyes were starting to open, and I didn’t want to seem like a complete weirdo, so I let go of his hand and took a step back away from his bed. He was slowly waking up, and I could finally see him awake for the first time. His eyes were a beautiful dark brown, and he had long lashes. It is so unfair when guys have perfect long eyelashes - they don’t deserve it.
The Campus Jock: A College Bad Boy Romance Page 20