My heart stuttered. How did he know that?
I was about to deny it; the words right on the tip of my tongue when his head bent closer to mine as he whispered, “I heard you… in the bathroom. I followed you.”
Again, what I thought would embarrass me only made me hotter - and bolder.
“Did you like what you heard?” I took a deep breath in, the celebratory thrill rushing through me as he was now close enough for my chest to brush against his.
His fingers tightened on my hand as his chest rumbled in front of me, teasing my nipples with is vibration.
“No,” he replied angrily, and I thought for sure I would die of mortification then and there. “I don’t like hearing things that I should see… that I should be responsible for. Especially when you have so much to learn.”
It wasn’t an insult... it was a promise. A small moan of pleasure escaped me and I pressed my legs tighter together. “So, what are you going to do about it?”
His head dropped down and I expected his lips on mine as his answer. Instead, they halted just a breath from mine as he spoke, “Be more responsible. And teach you.”
Then came the kiss that turned the stoplight from red to green and allowed my heart to start beating again.
His mouth tore into mine, leaving nothing rational or logical in its wake. The silken hardness of his tongue pushed inside to torment mine, sweeping over teeth and tongue leaving a hot path that had my core clenching. When I moaned again, he released me to spin the stool so that the rest of my body was facing him - so that he could stand between my legs.
I changed my mind. I was grateful for the skirt that did nothing to hide my desire because now it rode high as his hips lodged between mine.
My arms wound around his neck as my head tipped to give him deeper access. My fingers itched to feel his skin, to touch him and burn myself by openly touching his flame, but I couldn’t let go.
“You know why I made you wash the beakers?” he asked as his mouth angled away from mine, leaving me panting against his cheek. “Because I couldn’t look at you without wishing the damn lab coat was the only thing that you were wearing.”
“Damien…” I gasped as his teeth scraped a borderline painful path down my neck.
“I can’t focus because of you. Is that what you want to hear? When you’re around me, I couldn’t care less if my drugs didn’t save a single goddamn person as long as you’re close enough to touch.”
I knew that exact feeling, but I couldn’t answer him because the anticipation of what was going to happen next - and the fear that it was all going to stop - made me incoherent.
“You know what I want to look at right now? Not proteins or cell membranes, not drugs and death— none of it.” To make his point, his arm swept out and pushed all of the dishes we’d been examining into a jumbled, piled mess, some of the slides scattering onto the floor. Even though I gasped, I knew it wouldn’t be until later when I cared if there was actually any damage done. “What I want to examine… to explore… to fucking chart like it’s my very own goddamn ocean, is that sweet space between your thighs.”
My need for him was leaking everywhere. Onto my skirt. Through the fabric. Onto the chair.
Still, I managed to meet his stare without being in a complete sexed-stupor and charge, “I thought you didn’t feel anything for me.”
I gasped as he lifted me and deposited me onto the empty space on the table. His arms caged me with hands planted firmly on either side of my hips.
His head angled up so that he could speak right against my mouth. “Sometimes, feeling too much of something has to feel like nothing,” he growled against my collarbone, “especially when nothing is all I’ve ever allowed myself.”
“And what if I said that I don’t feel anything for you?”
He shook his head with a dark laugh. “I don’t need a microscope to see how much you want me, Lilith. I may not be good at feelings - having them or reading them - with anyone else, but with you, it’s like I have the fucking Rosetta Stone. I see it in your eyes. I see it in the way your pulse trembles on the side of your neck. I see it in the way your tits are always hard and straining against whatever is hiding them from me. You want me so badly, your sweet little pussy left me a goddamn trail to find my way to her.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks as I realized that the wetness I’d felt was definitely visible on both of the stools that I’d been sitting on.
I shivered and twitched when I felt his fingers on the inside of my thigh just at the edge of my uniform skirt.
“I want to open your thighs and bury my face in your needy little pussy. Is that what you want?”
I nodded frantically, not caring how stupid and desperate it might look, especially when his fingers began to move up my thighs towards where I needed them.
“I want to eat, lick, breathe you and know whether you’re as sweet and as addicting as you look,” he continued with a ragged, rasped voice, hooking two fingers on the edge of my panties and yanking the drenched fabric to the side.
I thought I’d imagined how this was going to go, but when he pushed a finger inside of me without warning, I realized that I was completely wrong. And I was completely ok with that.
Vaguely, I felt his other hand push me so that I was resting back on my elbows before he flipped my skirt up onto my stomach and bared my clenching sex to him.
I watched in a daze as he drew his finger out of me, pulling with it a string of moisture. Thunderstorms had less fury than the need I saw raging in his eyes. He pulled up the stool behind him and sat, yanking me to the edge of the table and pulling my legs up to rest on the edge.
No one had ever looked at me like this before. Not even a gynecologist. And still, I wasn’t embarrassed.
In fact, I couldn’t look away from him as he stared at my sex like it was the cure for cancer.
“Lilith, you are in my lab and I’m a man of science, so you better believe that I am going to eat you until I could get the sweet drug your cunt makes passed through the FDA on my knowledge alone.”
“Oh God…” I whispered with a strangled voice because I had nothing left.
My eyes rolled back when his mouth latched over my sex, but they didn’t stay there for long. No, I needed to see him. The sight of him feasting on me, with his perfectly styled hair, the cool metal frames of his glasses that sometimes brushed against my skin, and the way his mouth was spread wide over my pussy, easily covering it all so that he could jam his tongue inside me… it was enough to make me insane. Certifiably. With how much I wanted him.
I moaned over and over as his tongue brought me higher and tighter towards that release, the one that would have the well of my desire spilling out over him soon.
“Christ, Lilith,” he groaned as he flicked over my clit. “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything so sweet… watch me while I eat you and make you come. Look at me take responsibility for your perfect little cunt. I will create her… and god, I will fucking destroy her.”
I saw stars when his lips closed over my clit and sucked. Hard.
Garbled sounds started to leak from my mouth as my orgasm - one like I’d never been able to give myself - worked like a hydrogen bomb inside of me, pulling everything towards it, sucking away all my willpower.
“Damien…” I cried weakly.
Two fingers entered and curled inside me the same moment his teeth nipped on my swollen clit and the bomb exploded. I was annihilated by the blast of brutal pleasure that tore through every inch of me and left absolutely nothing in its wake.
Still, he stayed there, watching me and lapping at the remains of my climax.
Almost reverently, he placed a kiss on the top of my sex before pulling my panties back into place and righting my skirt. By that time, I had enough brain cells recover that I could sit up fully to stare at him with wide, astonished eyes.
I never knew it could be like that.
I wanted more.
“How do you feel?” he asked, sti
ll standing between my legs. “Assuming you could feel something for me, how do you feel?”
His attempt at a joke turned a moment that could have gone all shades of awkward into a relaxed comfort, one that I desperately needed.
“Hypothetically,” I drawled with a voice of mine that I’d never heard before, “if I did feel something, I would say that something was incredible.”
The way victory and satisfaction danced together in his eyes made my body begin to tingle all over again. I wanted to give him this. I wanted to give him the same.
“How do you feel?” I countered, shifting closer to him even though my butt was slightly stuck to the table.
“Hypothetically,” he mirrored me with a boyish grin that made him look so much younger - so much more like a person who believed he deserved this happiness, “I would say that I feel hungry for more of something so perfect.”
I swayed against him, wanting more too, but when he lifted me down and set me on my feet, it was clear that that wasn’t happening today.
Wanting Damien Milanovic had taken me by surprise. But needing Damien Milanovic, more with every breath, had taken me by storm.
And I was afraid that lust was the wrong l-word for the depth of what I felt for my gorgeous genius.
If I were to fall in love with Damien, I wouldn’t really be falling; I would be running into it, headfirst and willingly.
If I were to fall in love with him… Hypothetically.
Chapter Six
Damien
She had nice handwriting.
With a groan, I slammed my fist down on the counter, causing several beakers and glass dishes on my desk to rattle in the aftershock.
I’d tried focusing on my notes, but all I saw was her sprawled out before me - the perfect subject, untouched and unblemished; her reactions were unobstructed and uninhibited. Her moans still echoed in my ears like they had after the first night when I grabbed a towel and chased after my little spy. Ending up outside the bathroom door, I’d been an inch away from banging on it to confront her when I’d heard her. Like a chain reaction, her moans that grew louder and louder created in me an unstoppable need to hear her as she came. So, I stood and did the same thing that she had: I listened, but only wished that I could watch as she worked her body until it came apart.
It had made me rock-hard again, but I refused to give in, tossing and turning painfully in bed until the pain subsided and sleep came.
I thought the weekend would be enough to recover, but the second she walked into the lab, her face flushed because she was still thinking about me, I knew right then I’d have some part of me inside her before she left. I needed to. More than I needed to breathe. More than I needed to cure cancer.
I groaned, feeling my dick harden painfully in my pants. I could still feel her tight little cunt clenching around my fingers and her taste still lingered on my tongue a day later.
I couldn’t stop thinking about her. And that’s why I tried to focus on her handwriting because it was a small step away from all the twisted, irresponsible thoughts my body begged me to indulge in.
The smartest thing I’d done was tell her that she didn’t need to come in for the rest of the week. I’d sent Troy the message in a moment of anger at my own weakness, falling all over myself for a girl - a girl my daughter’s age. Maybe it was the coward’s way out, but I knew she wouldn’t fight Troy over it; it was the only way to guarantee that she would listen.
I still needed to figure out something for her internship though. It wasn’t entirely her fault that I couldn’t fucking control myself around her. I’d literally been in control of my every thought, emotion, and action for the better part of my thirty-eight years. Not once had I ever felt this. And aside from all of the blatantly obvious reasons why I shouldn’t, the one that really nagged at me was that there was no quantifiable reason for it.
I didn’t know Lilith Montgomery. I mean, I knew her because of Troy; I knew of her. I knew that she was naturally smart but still worked hard for her grades - just like Troy. I knew that Troy considered her parents to be nice and generous with Lilith’s time, allowing her to spend most of it with my daughter since I was never around. I knew that she’d never had a boyfriend. The one time I awkwardly broached the subject with Troy about her own interest in the opposite sex, she scolded me and said that she and Lilith had made a pack that there would be no boyfriends until they were accepted into their first-choice colleges.
I knew trivial things, not life-altering facts and still, just days in her presence had managed to alter my life irreversibly.
Sure, she was young and had a perfect ass and perky tits, but there were plenty of women my own goddamn age I could suffer this paralyzing need for. But I didn’t. Not even with Mary had I ever felt like this - like with the choice between air or touching her, I’d pick her every time. There was no explanation for the insurmountable lust I felt.
And there was certainly no explanation why she was able to get to me the way that she did. No equation, no reaction in my body or my brain that would tell me why I wanted to open up to her, why I wanted to feel things when I’d been comfortable without feeling anything for so long.
Lilith was like my own personal cancer. She changed my behavior, altered my DNA, into something unrecognizable and something unstoppable. What I’d done - what we’d done - was malignant and destructive. She was only eight-fucking-teen. Nothing good could come of this - not for her, not for me, not for our lives or the people we cared about in them. The obsession I was feeling now was invasive and rapidly-growing.
And sometimes, the only way to cure that kind of malignancy was to cut it out.
So, I cut her out.
Somehow, I’d figure out a way to get her the rest of her time in the internship. Hell, at this point, I’d forge the damn paper if that’s what it came down to. But it wouldn’t. Tomorrow I would ask around here if anyone would mind taking her on. If not, I had a few colleagues over at the NIH who owed me.
I couldn’t risk it.
Like with any cancer, early detection and treatment was the best shot at a full recovery.
I just hoped that cutting her out wouldn’t leave too big of a hole inside me that the rest of me couldn’t heal.
Lilith
“Lil!”
I jumped as Troy yelled my name.
“What? Sorry.” Shit.
“You didn’t send me what you want, so I just got you a hot tea.” She handed me a travel cup. I’d come with her to the park to study because I’d been blindsided as we left school - cut off at my knees - and my mind still struggled to process the damage.
I was supposed to stay with the bags and text her what I wanted, only I’d been too busy slowly dying on the inside. It was like I was looking through the microscope again, but instead of seeing the cancer cells denaturing and decaying, it was myself - and my heart.
“Sorry, I was thinking about next week,” I said with a voice that strangely sounded emotionless even though I was overflowing with hurt.
“He didn’t answer me,” she said quietly. “I can ask him when he gets home later what happened. I’m sure he just has to meet with people or do something for the FDA, so it would be pointless for you to go…”
I gave her a weak smile even though we both knew that one, he wouldn’t be home early enough for her to be awake to ask, and two, it wouldn’t make any difference.
He decided what he wanted - and what he wanted wasn’t me.
I’d been flying - soaring - above Cloud Nine this morning, my body still humming with what he’d done to it last night. And then Troy had stopped suddenly on our walk over here, her brow furrowing in consternation as she read her phone. Funny that I was worried for her. It never crossed my mind that it was my downfall she was reading.
Damien didn’t want me back in the lab this week.
Only, I knew better than Troy to think that he only meant this week. This week was just to buy him time - time to find some other arrangement for my intern
ship, time to pass me off onto someone else.
“Lil, seriously, are you ok?” Now she looked really worried as she put her hand over mine. “I don’t know what’s going on with my dad, but I’m sure it’s not a big deal. You’ll still get to finish your internship; he would never leave you hanging when he knows how much it could mean.”
No, he knew exactly how much what was between us could mean and that was exactly why he’d left me.
I could only wish he’d left me hanging, at least then it would have been quick. Instead, I was left here to feel the noose slowly tightening and taking away everything it felt like I needed to survive.
“What do you do,” I began to wonder out loud, “when you feel like you just found the one thing that you want more than anything and now realize that it’s quickly slipping away?”
It was a dumb question; she could have no idea what I was talking about, still, I felt too numb… too broken… to not ask, to not beg, for answers.
“Lil, is working with cancer really what you want?”
I could only nod, because the answer was that working with him was what I really wanted.
Troy put her arm around my shoulder for comfort and I’d never felt like a worse friend.
“Look, I know things are really stressful for us right now. I know that it’s easy to take the little setbacks and view them as mountains to be climbed, but this isn’t a setback. When it comes to what you want, there are no setbacks, there are only situations that will make the result all-the-more worthwhile,” she said with a smile that was almost enough to reassure me. “Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.” Anything, if it meant it would take my mind from my own pain.
“Sometimes… I think that I want to do something other than chemistry,” she said softly.
It was all I could do to stop my mouth from dropping. Her… her dad… her grades… her everything… it had all always been about chemistry. “W-what? You mean like another science?”
Troy shook her head, this time leaving me speechless. “No.” She let out a small laugh. “Sometimes, I think I want to do something completely different than science.”
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