The rest would have to keep until that night. But somehow, though the end of the day couldn’t come soon enough, the wait now seemed a tiny bit more bearable.
I wish I could say we were discreet and tasteful about our reunion that evening. Sadly, as it happened, we were neither. Ivan greeted me on my back doorstep when I came home, and pinned me to the door in a liplock before I could even turn the key. We were still there, necking and panting and generally acting like teenagers in a hormone frenzy, when Ed, Ben and Ben’s girlfriend came strolling by on their way out somewhere.
The gasp and somebody’s cry of “Whoa!” broke us apart, and then there was much throat-clearing, waving awkwardly and avoiding eye contact among us. For four of us, that meant glancing to the side or up or down or anywhere that seemed safe. For Ivan, it meant a very obvious eyeroll followed by a grumpy glare that finally got the little group of friends moving along again. As soon as they were safely past, he spun around, turned the key in my lock and shuffled me through the door before closing it firmly behind us. Then we repeated the mutual attack from the other side of the door, with no onlookers and a lot more groping.
I don’t know how he got my shirt and bra off in that process, but I’m fairly certain wizardry was involved. By the time we finally came up for air, I was in slacks and heels, and feeling overdressed in even that much.
Ivan trailed his fingertips inside my waistband. Then he slipped one hand all the way down to tug at the top of my panties, stoking the heat that had been smoldering all day.
“Have you been a good girl today, Camilla?”
“Define good, Professor,” I purred. Did he want a good girl or a bad girl right now? Did it make any more difference to him than it did to me?
Ivan looked thoughtful. “I’ll have to start thinking up some responsibilities for you, for when we’re apart. For when you’re at work, especially. And some restrictions. No orgasms, for one thing. Unless I’ve approved them.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s not like I’m in the habit of doing that at work anyway, Professor. I wish I had that kind of time.”
He cocked his head. “Maybe you should make the time, in that case. That can be your first task. Sneak an orgasm in at work tomorrow. Think of me when you’re doing it. And when you’ve finished, email me to let me know. You can be discreet in the email. But I’ll want a full accounting afterwards. With a lot more descriptive language than ‘doing that.’”
“You’re joking. Right?”
“No. I’m quite serious.” And he looked it.
“I can’t do…I can’t masturbate at work. It’s not conducive.”
Ivan shrugged. “Not my problem. I want you to make the time and do what it takes to get into the right frame of mind. I believe it will help you relax, help get your mind off the tension of work for a short time. And it will also help keep you sensitive and primed to respond to me later.”
How could something that patently self-serving sound so damn sexy? I had to wonder about my own wiring sometimes.
“And if I don’t do it? How would you know, anyway?”
“I’ll know,” he assured me cryptically. “And if you don’t do it, then you won’t be permitted to come later that night, either. Now take your pants off.”
I was already on it.
* * *
The week went along that way, for the most part. Frantic, kinky after-work sex, hurried dinners over which we attempted to discuss the fast-approaching fundraiser, followed by more mind-blowing lewdness until we both keeled over from exhaustion.
Ivan approached having sex like conducting an experiment. He was knowledgeable. He was thorough. He used all the resources at his disposal and was determined to get his result or know the reason why not. He aimed the full force of his attention at me, and it was so intense it almost scared me.
But as the days passed, something else started to take root. Fragile, tender at first. Neither of us addressed it head-on. But we spent more and more time together just…being together. With me naked, typically, and Ivan at least nominally clothed. The dynamic, skewed as it might seem, felt unquestionably right to me. Ivan seemed soothed by it as well. He seemed to relax into that role of confident, quiet dominance as if he was putting on a favorite pair of slippers at the end of a rough work day.
Wednesday I capitulated and managed a coffee-break climax in the bathroom at work, and Ivan greeted me that night with barely restrained triumph. And praise, and petting, and allowing me to climb all over his naked body, exploring as I hadn’t had a chance to do before. I wallowed in it, a completely sensual beast for those few magical hours.
Afterward, we talked about nothing much at all.
“How about pets? Any pets growing up?” I wound my fingers through his springy chest hair and stroked the smooth skin beneath, enjoying the interplay of textures. “Country boy, you must have had pets.”
“Of course.” Ivan was staring up at the ceiling but his eyes were half-closed. He looked as sated and drowsy as I felt. “We always had dogs, for one thing. And there was usually at least one cat around the house. More in the horse barn, of course.”
“Horses? Your family lives on some acreage?”
“Mmm. A hay farm. My father’s family has owned the land forever. Mom was a dressage rider when she was younger. The horses are mostly hers, and one of the dogs at any given time.”
“One house dog, the rest for hunting?”
“Yeah.”
It was a common enough arrangement in our neck of the woods. A pair of highly trained but goofy retrievers or hounds in a kennel out back, and something smaller and cuter for the lady of the house. At least ostensibly. In my experience, the cutesie little house dog usually ended up attaching itself to the biggest, least likely male, who would then pretend not to dote on it while sneaking it table scraps.
“So whose was the cat?”
“Mine, I suppose. Cats do what they like, though. They don’t really belong to people. I prefer the cat to Brodie. That’s my mother’s current dog. The last one was Pumpkin. They’re always apricot toy poodles.”
“Okay, so…how about school? Tell me about your academic career, Professor Reynolds.”
He chuckled and tightened his arm around my shoulders, stroking my upper arm in an absent-minded way. Half draped across his body as I was, I could see his face darken a little as he considered the question.
“In elementary school, they wanted to put me in a special class at first. I kept biting the other students and screaming at the teachers whenever they got things wrong. Sometimes I stood up and started explaining things to the whole class. I would pitch a fit if they tried to make me stop before I was done.”
“Shit. Seriously?” Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me. A mind like Ivan’s didn’t come free, and as tough as he found social situations now, he must have been completely in the dark about it as a kid.
Ivan nodded. “But since I had been reading from the age of two or so, and was already doing calculus by the time I was kindergarten age, my parents suspected something was up other than ordinary brattiness. They took me into Houston, and then to Dallas, and had me tested eight ways from Sunday. They never would tell me what all they found out, but I spent the next year or so being tutored at home and seeing a ‘special doctor’ a few times a week. That was when I was six, seven years old. When I finally went back to school, it was a private school.”
“For…for kids with behavior issues?”
“No, no. Just a private school. I was on a special track. I basically tested out of all the grade school information that year, but my parents drew the line at my skipping the school experience completely. When I was nine, they made me go into the seventh-grade class and then move up with that group. They wouldn’t let me move on to college. By the time I graduated from high school I was fourteen, but the graduation was still basically for form. I had also been taking college classes for a few years by that point under a special arrangement, so the next year I finished my un
dergraduate degree and was able to start working more seriously on my thesis.”
“Your life almost sounds like an astrophysics version of—”
“Please. Please do not reference any television characters from the late eighties right now.”
“—Mozart,” I offered. “Have you ever had a time in your life when you were just doing the standard thing like everybody else? No special arrangements?”
“Not really, no. I didn’t think about it much growing up, though. I was too insulated. I didn’t even move out of my parents’ house until after I’d started working on my PhD, and then it was only to the graduate student dorm for a year.”
“Oh.” It made more sense now. The odd sophistication of his kinky roommate wouldn’t be quite so odd for a grad student. I altered my image of two eighteen-year-olds braving the club scene together to the very different picture of an eighteen-year-old Ivan and a twenty-something leather aficionado. The older guy who was sure the young Ivan was gay, taking him to bars, trying to fix him up. It made me mad, all of a sudden, angry enough to want to punch something.
Always perceptive in the ways I least expected, Ivan picked up on the tension in my body. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head as if that could clear the pictures away. “It occurs to me that your old roommate was kind of skeezy.”
Ivan shrugged. “He saw a confused kid, and thought he knew the answer because he saw something of himself in me. He was right, we did have something in common. It just wasn’t the thing he thought it was. But it’s okay. Besides, I’ve gotten my own back, since then.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead and smiled. “We’ve played together at the club a few times. On more than one occasion I’ve tied him to the St. Andrew’s cross and whipped his ass until he had welts on his welts.”
“But he’s a guy,” I protested. And almost immediately realized how incredibly dumb I must sound.
“I don’t have sex with him,” Ivan clarified. “Although he always makes it a point to remind me he’s available if I change my mind. But it’s only been friendly beatings between us.”
We both laughed, and I buried my face in his shoulder to hide what I suspected might be a slightly manic grin. All the strangeness, all the joy of the last several days, had formed a shimmering bubble of delicate tension in my chest. I knew the bubble had to pop, and soon, because that’s what always happened. But for the moment I was able to shelter it in the protective half circle of Ivan’s arm around my body.
Cheap soap and white tile
Contrast sharply with pleasure
Work bathroom of bliss
Why haiku? Because by Friday I was already running out of ways to be discreet when I emailed Ivan regarding my new break-time hobby. I thought maybe haiku would be an interesting challenge for Ivan, requiring him to use his strength with rigid structure to help overcome his weakness at metaphorical thinking.
I should have considered how quick a study he could be at some things. His answer had me blushing so hard I was afraid my coworkers would notice.
Delicate petals
Flow open to receive me
Sweetest kiss of all
Holy crap, the boy had game. Did he even realize that? I still wasn’t sure. Or maybe I was that easily impressed. Probably if my coworkers had read that, they’d have thought it was all about actual flowers and regular old mouth kissing.
I was puzzled to see a fresh email from Ivan come in a few minutes later. Written from his phone, I saw, which also surprised me since I knew he preferred the regular keyboard to thumb-typing.
Need to change dinner plans and stay in. Heard something distressing. Can only discuss it at home. Be upstairs when I get there.
Distressing? What could he possibly have heard in the five or ten minutes since he emailed last? I was too busy to think about it much, because Agatha dumped a fresh load of work in my inbox.
The brusque tone of the email didn’t tip me off to the level of Ivan’s anxiety, because he was usually brusque. By the time he arrived at his bedroom door, though, he was so tense I could see the veins standing out on his neck.
I was already naked, already kneeling down. Ivan stormed into the room and started to pace, running his hands through hair that was already badly rumpled. He seemed to be struggling for words, and I wanted badly to get up and soothe him, calm him down enough to tell me what was wrong. But I sensed it wouldn’t be welcome. He had to get there on his own.
“I was in the break room on the second floor,” he finally blurted out, “and I’d dropped a quarter. It rolled under one of the machines so I crouched down to try to reach it. You know how there’s a half wall?”
“Yes, Professor.” I was picturing the room in question, the little vending machine nook separated from half a dozen wobbly tables by a somewhat pointless waist-high wall where the stained carpet gave way to dull linoleum.
“They were getting coffee from the coffeemaker by the sink, so they didn’t come back there to the machines. They thought the room was empty.”
“They?”
“Dr. Donovan and his crony, Dr. Yu. Discussing my position. My position. And how well they thought Dr. Lance Leandro would do in it. What a great ‘rainmaker’ he would be at the fundraisers. They were looking forward to it.”
“Wait. Lance Leandro, the hunk from Science Street? How could he do your job?”
Ivan snorted. “Not very well at all. But his background is actually in astrophysics. And,” he added grudgingly, “he did some of the seminal research in this area at Caltech before he landed his current gig on television. Pretty boy.”
I had to stifle a laugh at that. Ivan might not have charm, but he had looks in abundance. It wasn’t surprising he didn’t know that, but it was still a bit rich to hear him accusing anybody else of looking too pretty. But the impact of what else he’d said was finally sinking in, quelling any thought of laughter.
“Oh, sweetie. And you’re sure they were talking about your position?”
Ivan, still pacing back and forth across the stretch of room next to the bed, nodded with a look of disgust. “They named the position. I’m not tenured, I have very little security if they really want to replace me. What am I going to do? I’m terrible at finding work. Nobody else in Texas is doing this right now. I’d have to go to California or Florida. And I don’t know people there. I don’t have family there.”
His support system. For somebody who was rotten with people, Ivan sure relied heavily on them. He couldn’t move. I couldn’t even imagine that. Him living thousands of miles from his hometown, all his tentative friendships, the system of routes between safe, known places he’d spent so much time establishing.
Him living thousands of miles from me.
But we had been together a week, if one could even call this temporary insanity we’d hopped into “being together.” I really didn’t know what it was. What it might be. So his proximity to me shouldn’t—couldn’t—be a factor. I tried to put it out of my mind as I shifted to ease my knees.
“What do you need me to do? How can I help?”
He shook his head and slowed to a stop in front of me. “You probably can’t. Just help me get through this party without making too big an idiot of myself. But I don’t suppose it matters much.”
“Maybe it matters more,” I suggested, tipping my head back to look him in the eye. He cupped my cheek with one hand, an unexpected gesture of fond regard that stole my concentration for a moment.
“What do you mean?”
I tried to remember what I meant, while I pushed my head into his caress like a greedy kitten. “Um…oh, I mean if you charm enough big donors at the party, maybe they’ll reconsider. Because it isn’t all about the fundraising, right? And when it comes to the science part you still have more credibility.”
He mulled it over for a few moments, rubbing his fingers into my hair and stroking with a steady rhythm that seemed to soothe him as much as it soothed me. “What other suggestions do you have for me?�
�� he asked at last.
It took me a moment to pry my mind away from the most immediate suggestions that sprang to mind. “I thought we could consider some literary examples. Characters who become more relatable, and what they do to accomplish that. We probably don’t have time to read the book, though, only to watch the movie.”
That was how we ended up watching Pride and Prejudice that night. Because whose transformation could possibly be more instructive than Mr. Darcy’s, despite my own decided preference for the Darcy of the story’s first half? And what sexier way to watch it could there possibly be than sitting naked between Ivan’s knees, my head on his thigh, while he stroked my hair and gave me sips of wine from his glass?
My being there with him like that seemed to calm him. He gave the movie due consideration, although he didn’t see what was wrong with Darcy to begin with. He agreed with me that a sound spanking or two definitely could have fit nicely into the narrative.
“But her mother really is awful,” he objected near the end of the film. “Why shouldn’t Darcy point out her shortcomings when even Elizabeth would agree Mrs. Bennett is clearly doing things wrong? Wrong by the standards of the time, I mean, when social niceties were so significant as indicators of standing?”
“Because it would be an even worse shortcoming to point all that out. By being a snot about it before, he was actually being much less classy.” Privately, I added though a hell of a lot sexier.
“His first proposal makes sense, though. He’s absolutely correct about the damage the marriage will probably do to him socially. It’s a significant challenge they’ll have to overcome.”
“True,” I conceded, “but it’s not really the sort of thing a girl wants to hear during a proposal. It’s not like she wouldn’t have been aware of all that. He’d have done much better to stick to telling her he was in love with her, and leave discussing the obstacles for later. He made it all about him.”
The Theory of Attraction Page 11