Before this day, her appreciation of male beauty had always been theoretical, removed. A handsome guy in a movie was nice to look at, but she rarely felt stirred by any particular one—well, aside from her brief fascination with Tony Stark in the first Iron Man movie.
Nick was different. Looking at him made her heart pound and her palms sweat. Looking didn’t feel like enough. She wanted to touch him, to learn every inch of him. Last night, the focus had all been on her, but maybe next time—because she was determined there would be a next time—it would be different. Next time, she’d be the one to touch. There was so much more of him to be explored.
Downstairs, she could hear Gemma up and about. She slipped out of his room and quietly shut the door behind her. Spudge, waiting patiently in the hall, hesitated for a moment, looking mournfully at Nick’s closed door. In the end, he left his post near Nick and followed Livie down the stairs. She found Gemma in the kitchen, of course, puttering at the stove, grating something over a pan full of eggs.
Livie got a mug down from the cupboard and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Morning.”
Gemma flashed her a brief look over her shoulder. “Morning.”
“How was last night?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Gemma replied.
“I wasn’t at the bar last—”
“I meant here.” Gemma kept her eyes on the pan. “I noticed when I got home that your door was open and your room was empty. And Nick’s door was closed.”
Livie could feel the heat flooding her cheeks. “Gemma—”
But Gemma held up a hand to silence her. “Look, Livie, it’s none of my business. You’re an adult and you’re going to make your own choices. But be careful.”
“You don’t like him.”
“I like him! But he’s a mess.”
“I know he is.”
“He doesn’t strike me as a happy-family kind of guy,” Gemma said carefully.
“He’s not. He hasn’t spoken to his family in eight years.”
“Why?”
“He won’t talk about it.”
“That’s not a good sign, Livie. Because you’re a happy-family kind of girl.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
“I know you don’t have a lot of field experience yet, but I don’t think damaged bad boys are quite your speed.”
She sighed again. “They’re not.”
“Maybe—”
“Gemma, I know. I know him better than he thinks I do. I know at some point he’s going to freak out and run.”
Gemma stopped stirring the eggs and turned to look at her. “Yes, he will. So?”
Livie dropped her eyes to the scuffed linoleum floor. Now that she’d crossed the line and done the dumb thing she’d been trying to avoid, it was too late to go back to how it was before. She didn’t want to. He was here for now, and she was going to enjoy as much of him as she could get. “I want to enjoy him for as long as he’s around. That’s all.”
“And what happens to you when he’s gone?”
Livie didn’t want to think about that. It was like a giant black hole straight ahead in her future, one that would suck her in and crush her into nonexistence. But not yet. That event horizon was still, hopefully, a long way off. “I’ll be fine,” she lied, keeping her eyes on the floor.
“Really?”
“Sure. I know what I’m doing. We’re friends, and now we’re friends with benefits. People do that all the time, right?”
Gemma let out a chuckle and shook her head. “Oh, sweetie, not you, though.”
“Gem, it’ll be okay. Don’t worry about me.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. Worrying about you is part of my DNA. But promise me you’ll try to protect yourself? Go ahead and give him your body if you want. Lord knows you waited long enough. Have fun. Knock yourself out. But hang on to your heart.”
They were in perfect agreement on that one. She might have given in to this thing with Nick against all her better judgment, but that was the last mistake she planned on making. He wasn’t looking to win her heart, so she had to make sure she didn’t accidentally give it to him.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Livie’s phone alarm went off and she groaned as she flailed a hand to silence it. After a week of nights spent in Nick’s bed, it was harder than ever to pry herself out every morning.
“Where are you going?” Nick’s voice was a low, rough grumble behind her. The arm he’d draped across her waist tightened as he pulled her back against his chest.
“I have to teach class this morning.”
He took her by the shoulder and rolled her onto her back, smiling down into her face. That smile made her heart thump painfully in her chest, every single time. “I can’t imagine having a teacher who looked like you when I was in college. I might have tried harder to stay in DeWitt.”
Livie rolled her eyes. “Come on. You don’t have to say stuff like that to me because we’re...you know.”
A wicked smirk unfurled across Nick’s face. Oh, she knew what was coming next. Nick was going to tease her. He loved doing that, saying anything and everything he could to get her to blush. He didn’t have to work hard to do it. “We’re what, Livie?”
“Come on.”
“You mean because we’re hitting it? Tapping that? Netflix and chilling?”
She shoved ineffectually at his shoulders. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, but I want to hear you say it.” He captured her wrists in his hands and pinned them to the pillow on either side of her head. Her body began to hum with arousal.
“Why?” She’d suddenly gone all breathless.
“Because it’s hot. I wanna hear you say it.”
Of course she knew what he was getting at, but she played dumb to drag the moment out. Two could play at this game. “Say what?”
Nick leaned down until his lips were right next to her hear. “Tell me what we did last night, Livie. Tell me what we were doing when I put you on your knees and made you hold on to the headboard, and grabbed hold of your hips. What did we do, Livie? What did I say to you while I was doing it? Say the word.”
Her eyes fluttered closed and her sex was suddenly aching and wet. Her voice came out as a breathy whisper. She rarely cursed, but for Nick, right now, she’d make an exception. “Fucked. We fucked.”
Nick let out a sound that was little more than a growl. “Damned right we did,” he muttered, as his teeth closed over her earlobe. “And we’re gonna do it again.”
She hooked her heels over his calves, pulling his hips tight against hers. “If you say so.”
Oh well. She hoped the subway was on time today, because she was definitely going to be running late.
* * *
Half an hour later, she scrambled out of his arms. “I really do have to go this time.”
Nick fell back on the bed, exhaling dramatically. “Fine. When are you back? I finally finished that stupid security system job. We could work on the program this afternoon, if you want.”
“Sure,” Livie muttered distractedly, hunting for her bra in the clothes scattered across Nick’s floor. Last night Nick had started undressing her seconds after he’d closed the door behind her, flinging garments everywhere in his haste to tumble her into bed.
The bra emerged from underneath Nick’s inside-out jeans. As she clipped it closed and twisted it around her body, Nick propped himself up on one elbow and reached out to drag his knuckles along the side of her breast. “Bye, friends.”
She swatted his hand away. “You’re obsessed.”
“With your breasts? I am absolutely obsessed. I will not apologize for that. I’m literally going to be counting the minutes until I can see them again.”
She pretended to frown, but secretly his words warmed her already heated body. She loved that he
loved touching her—that he wanted her so much. It made her feel beautiful, desirable, sexy. Never in her life had she ever thought to apply any one of those three words to herself.
He toyed with her bra strap as she turned her T-shirt right side out. “You sure you can’t stay?”
“Class.”
“Right. You stand up front while half the class fantasizes about you.”
She burst out laughing. “You’re deluded. They don’t even know I exist. I’m just a boring grad student telling them a bunch of stuff they have no interest in hearing.”
He ran a hand down the length of her thigh as she reached for her phone on the bedside table. “Trust me, they know you exist. I promise you, you’re starring in a dozen sexual fantasies during class.” He sat up behind her, brushing her hair away from the back of her neck before dropping kisses down the length of it. “If you’d been my teacher, it would have been all I could think about.”
But she barely heard him, frozen into disbelief as she stared at the latest message to show up in her university email account, reading it and re-reading it, trying to understand.
“I can’t believe this!”
“What?”
“I’ve been yanked off my lab assignment!”
“What lab assignment?”
“I teach the lecture class three times a week, and one night a week I oversee the undergrad lab hours. Janet assigned me to the Tuesday night slot at the beginning of the year, but for some reason I’ve been moved to Friday nights.”
“Nobody talked to you about it?”
She shook her head. “Not a word.”
“Can they do that? Change an assignment Finch gave you?”
“Janet gave it to me when she was chair of the department.”
“And now the chair is...”
With a sinking sensation, the realization hit home. “Langley.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Professor Langley?” Livie stopped right inside his office door. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”
Langley looked up at her. “Did we have an appointment, Olivia?”
“No. Sorry. I’ll just be a minute. My lab assignment has been changed.”
“Ah, yes.” He leaned back in his chair. “It was unavoidable, I’m afraid. I needed Peter’s assistance with my research. We had to shuffle the lab assignments to free him up.”
His smile was fake and brittle, entirely at odds with the hostility he was silently emanating. A few months ago, she’d have slunk out of his office without another word, too intimidated and scared to question him. But if Nick was inspiring a whole lot of pleasant new emotions in her, Langley was inspiring a host of less pleasant ones. She let all those unpleasant emotions power her next question.
“You need Peter’s help with your research on Friday nights?”
Langley’s smile didn’t shift, but it turned ice cold as he stared at her in silence. Adrenaline flooded her body, but she refused to back down or apologize.
“Precisely,” Langley finally said, his voice tight with anger. “Now, if there’s nothing else, Miss Romano? I’ve got work to do.”
Work. He was staring at that useless little laptop, as usual. Probably posting selfies from that trip he’d just taken to London.
Livie stood her ground for another moment, but Langley was still acting chair of the department, as unjust as that was, and in the end, he could do what he wanted. But at least she’d called him out on his bullshit. This had nothing to do with needing Peter’s help and everything to do with punishing her because she wouldn’t abandon Janet’s research to work on his. Now he knew she knew.
“No. Nothing else.”
“Enjoy your Friday nights,” he murmured as the door closed behind her.
Some unfamiliar emotion exploded in her chest. Rage. She’d never been so angry in her life. Her hands were shaking with it as she forced herself to walk away. She was still shaking as she entered the departmental office.
Michiko was there, leaning on Anita’s desk as they chatted. They both looked up as Livie entered.
“Hey, Livie,” Anita called.
Behind her glasses, Michiko’s eyes quickly assessed Livie from head to toe. “What happened to you? You look totally freaked out.”
“Nothing.” Livie shook her head, trying to rein in this feeling, to get herself back under control. Her anger wasn’t going to help anything. “Just asking Langley about something.”
Anita huffed. “It’s the lab assignment, right?”
Michiko looked back at her. “What about the lab assignment?”
“I got bounced to the Friday night lab.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“What?” Michiko bounded to her feet. “In the middle of the semester?”
“He said he needed Peter’s help with his research, so he had to shuffle the schedule.”
There was a beat of silence as Michiko and Anita absorbed that. Finally, Anita snorted in disgust. “That’s some stone-cold bullshit, right there.”
“Total bullshit,” Michiko said. “What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? He’s the department chair.”
“Acting chair,” Anita growled.
Which was true, but what were the chances Janet was coming back anytime soon? And until she did, Livie was at Langley’s mercy, and that was starting to feel like a very bad place to be.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
When Livie arrived home, both Gemma and Jess were in the kitchen. Gemma was making a pot of something to take to the bar when she started her shift later in the evening, while Jess chatted to her about her latest story. Spudge was crashed out on her feet, snoring loudly.
Gemma glanced at Livie over her shoulder. “You okay? You look rattled.”
Livie sank into a chair and dropped her head into her hands. “I’ve had better days.”
“Problems with that feral hacker you dragged home?”
“I’m going to ignore most of that, and no, it’s not about him.”
“Are we talking about Nick?” Jess interjected. “Did something happen?”
“I told you, it’s not about him,” Livie said, at the same moment Gemma said, “Oh, yes, something happened.”
Jess’s eyes went wide. “Livie, tell me everything.”
“It’s personal.”
“Um, I distinctly recall the two of you grilling me like CIA interrogators the first time I stayed over at Alex’s.”
“We’re sort of...” Livie waved her hands in front of her, searching for the right word to use. Without other relationships to compare it to, she had no idea how to classify this one. How did people describe these things?
“Are you sleeping with him?” Jess pressed.
Livie felt her face heat. “God, Jess.”
“She is,” Gemma said.
“Gem!”
“Holy shit, Livie. This is big! I can’t believe I had to hear it from Gem.”
“Are you going to tell me you don’t like him, too?”
“I like him!” Gemma protested.
“I like him, too,” Jess said. “But he seems like trouble.”
“Ha!” Gemma thrust her spoon in Jess’s direction. “See? That’s exactly what I said.”
“Be careful, Livie,” Jess said, reaching out to cover Livie’s hand with her own.
“Can everybody quit worrying about it? I promise, I have it under control.” She wasn’t quite as confident about that as she sounded, but right now, she had bigger problems to focus on. “Nick’s not even the problem.”
Gemma tipped her head to the side. “Then what’s wrong?”
“I’m pretty sure Dr. Langley has it out for me.”
“Is he that douchebag with the Italian loafers I met when I went to that lecture thingy with you last year?” Jess asked.<
br />
“That’s him.” Briefly she outlined how Langley had been promoted to Acting Chair and had abruptly changed her lab assignment on the flimsiest of pretexts.
“It’s not fair that he’s playing favorites with his own research assistant,” Jess said. “But unfortunately there’s probably not a lot you can do about it. The power imbalance in the university system is huge.”
“I don’t think he did it to play favorites with Peter Hockman. Honestly, I don’t think he even likes Peter.”
“Then what’s it really about?”
“He wanted me to drop Janet’s research and work on his. I said no.”
“And you think he’s doing this to punish you?” Jess pressed.
“A few months ago, I’d have said it was impossible. Nobody in science could be that petty and underhanded.”
Jess snorted in disgust. “Dream on.”
“But now? I don’t know.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Gemma asked.
“I don’t know that either. Like Jess said, there isn’t a lot I can do. I guess I have to keep working on the research as best I can and hope Janet recovers soon.”
Jess and Gemma exchanged a dubious look, which Livie pretended not to see. She was fully aware that she was clinging to a very thin hope, but she wasn’t ready to let go of it yet. Because if she let go of that hope, then she’d be facing a problem she had no good solution for.
Spudge lifted his head from the linoleum floor and let out a soft woof before scrambling to his feet and lurching away toward the front door.
“That’s got to be Nick,” Gemma said. “He’s the only person besides Dad Spudge is psychically attuned to like that.”
Sure enough, Nick strolled into the kitchen a moment later, Spudge fast on his heels. He was smiling, brimming over with that contagious energy Livie found so infuriatingly irresistible.
“You’re all here,” he said.
Love and the Laws of Motion Page 18