Searching for a cure for love was almost as foolish as searching for a cure for cancer.
But it was my only option. The more time I spent around her, the harder it got to breathe and the weaker my body felt.
But if there was anyone who could find a cure, it would be me.
Selfishly, for my own sake and no one else’s.
Otherwise, my body would mutate out of unfulfilled desires. The pain and frustration of having to deny myself her for so long would transform my body into something unrecognizable.
She was almost twenty years younger than I was. Barely legal. Barely resistible.
Love made my body need something it could never have.
And either I would cure myself of her or Lilith Montgomery would destroy me from the inside out.
Lilith
I stared at the biochemistry text in front of me, pretending to absorb the equations on the page. I clicked my pen against my lip. Once. Twice. And then a third time.
Slam.
“Lil!” My best friend, Troy—Troian, glared at me as her hand stayed planted firmly on her kitchen counter where she’d smacked it. “Stop clicking. I can’t take it,” she huffed. “I—we need to ace this AP exam tomorrow.”
She was stressed. Not because of the pen thing - those little incessant noises always bothered her while the rest of us were able to drone them out. She was stressed because this was our first big AP Biochem exam since we’d come back from winter break; there were only three of them and she needed to ace them all.
Not that you could see it, except from her outburst. No, her face was always calm and coolly collected – like a glacier, it hid well the emotions that moved beneath.
“You know that’s not true for you,” I said softly, but she ignored my comment. “You’ll get in anywhere even if you fail the entire class.”
She didn’t need to ace anything, and she was smart enough to know it. Still, my best friend was always stressed about being the best at everything. Not in a bad way or a mean way… but in almost a desperate way. Like everything she accomplished was getting her closer to the thing she most wanted, only I couldn’t fathom what else that could be.
But it definitely wasn’t going to get her any closer to college - that she had on lock.
Her name alone - Troian Milanovic - meant that she would be going to any school of her choosing for chemistry because by accepting her, the college would be forming an association with her father, the illustrious chemist whose drug was currently undergoing human trials for FDA approval as the cure for certain types of lung cancer.
“Yeah, yeah,” she mumbled, her eyes not breaking from her textbook and highlighted notes.
Illustrious.
That was how he was introduced to our AP Biochemistry class at the beginning of the year and the old-fashioned word clawed into my mind and wormed deeper and deeper into every cell of my body.
I didn’t describe him like that because of his ‘notably brilliant achievement.’ No. I described him as ‘illustrious’ because from that moment, when his body that looked like it belonged to a swimmer rather than a scientist, topped off with impossibly murky, black eyes, walked into our classroom, I felt physically ill. With lust.
Ill.
Lust.
Illustrious.
That was why the word stuck. Because it was the same reaction every time I saw him since. And I couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was the force of his gaze under those narrow glasses that were either resting on his sculpted nose or on top of the thick, dark brown hair that fell in waves on his head. Buttoned-down shirts, usually with a vest over them, and pants that fit to his body like he was the experiment to figure out just how sexy a scientist could be.
Yeah, it all made my body tingle but that was only part of what happened to me.
There was this intensity about him. A determination, a focus… so strong, I was sure it could split atoms. And definitely strong enough to split me.
I wanted to be a scientist. A researcher. I want to create compounds that would help people. So, I tried to think about my reaction logically. I needed to know what was happening to me around him - and either how to stop it or how to get more of whatever it was pulling me towards.
Step one of The Scientific Method: Form a hypothesis.
Hypothetically, I was incredibly attracted to my best friend’s father.
Hypothetically, if I were to spend more time around him, I would be able to further determine what was going on in my brain.
Hypothetically, I’d be able to get over this ridiculous crush.
“Troy…” I began softly, chewing on my lower lip nervously as my hand clutched my shirt in front of my stomach. I hadn’t expected the roll of nausea.
My hypothesis… my experiment… it needed a controlled environment.
Sure, I’d been coming over to their house to study or just hang out with Troy regularly for months. I thought that would be enough time in his presence for my body to give me more data. Unfortunately, Damien Milanovic was hardly ever home. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before - how Troy was always cooking or making lunches or telling me that she’d come over to hang out as soon as she was done cleaning - but now that I was acutely aware of his presence, or lack thereof, it was clear that my friend had been in charge of running the house probably since her parents had divorced almost six years ago.
Ok, yeah, she probably had some help back then. But we were eighteen now and my girl looked like she had a system down that has been perfected for at least a year, if not two.
“What’s up?” Only her eyes flicked up to me before disappearing back into her notes.
I groaned. “I need a huge favor. I still need to do my internship requirement for graduation…”
The private school that we attended had both a community service and an internship requirement for senior year. In my defense, I’d planned on going over to the National Institute of Health over break to see what my options there were.
And then Damien Milanovic had come to speak in front of our class…
I wouldn’t say that the thought had occurred to me then, but the seed had been planted. The pull toward him began and, finally, I admitted to myself that I’d put off the NIH idea for this moment: to beg my best friend for one thing when my body was begging for another.
“I thought you were going to the NIH?”
I hoped my head ducked fast enough before she saw how red my cheeks were.
“T-they didn’t have anything for me,” I stammered softly. I was the worst liar. “I was hoping… I was hoping that you could maybe ask your dad… if I could intern with him. I’m running out of options… and time.” I bit my lip to stop rambling.
I prayed she took my desperation for anxiety that graduation was just around the corner and I still hadn’t completely this requirement - and not for what it really was, that I was asking my best friend for the opportunity to seduce her dad.
I jerked back.
Seduce.
I’d never thought about seducing him before. Watching. Yes. Breathing. Yes. Absorbing in that energy that pulsed with such magnetic purpose… All yes.
But seduce…
I crossed my legs as warmth rushed between them.
“Seriously?” Her eyebrows rose. “I mean, of course, I can ask him. Are… are you sure though?”
I began to nod and then halted. “I-I mean, unless you think he’ll say no.”
“He won’t say no,” she laughed like the thought hadn’t just made my heart stumble.
“Oh.”
“I just meant… well… that’s going to be a rough internship. You sure you don’t have any other options?”
I shook my head nervously. It felt like she could see right through me - right into my brain that wanted to study her father. To strip him bare, put him in my own version of a petri dish, and watch him… touch him… taste him.
“W-why is it going to be rough?” I blurted out quickly.
Her head glanced
from side to side, like I was supposed to note the emptiness of her house. “I mean, when was the last time you saw my dad here?” she asked and, as her best friend, I didn’t miss the flash of pain across her face.
Troian had wanted to stay with her dad after the divorce. I didn’t ask too much after my first attempt to find out what happened; it was pretty obvious she felt like her mom had betrayed her dad in some way or another with the man that she was still currently living with up in Rhode Island. Damien was all she had. And me. Which meant that she mostly had me, since Damien wasn’t around.
“He’s always working,” she continued, shrugging her shoulders like it was supposed to make me believe that she didn’t care. “He usually doesn’t get home until after I’m asleep and then is up and off for his run in the morning just as I’m getting up.”
“Y-you think he’ll make me stay that late?” A thrill shot through my body straight down to where it shouldn’t.
“I have no idea, but I would be prepared for it. I think they stopped giving him a laboratory assistant two-and-a-half years ago because he had no concept of personal time - which is fine except when you expect everyone else to have the same,” she snorted.
“I think… I’ll be ok.” Please.
She pulled her lower lip into her mouth and didn’t say anything for long enough to make my awkward word-vomit rise to the surface.
“Unless you don’t want to ask, then it’s totally—”
“No!” Her hand raised as she shook her head. “It’s not that. My dad… he just has very high standards. And expectations. And I know what he’s going to do. This is only supposed to be an internship, but he won’t treat it like that; he won’t know how to. He’s going to work you and probably drive you crazy in the process….” Her voice, laden with insecurity, faded off for a second as she took a deep breath. “I just don’t want it to ruin our friendship.”
The breath that rushed from my lungs could have propelled an airplane up off the runway.
“No!” I exclaimed. “Oh my gosh, Troy. Don’t think that.” I laughed breathlessly. “Please. Don’t. I’ll be fine. It’s just for a few weeks. I’ll survive. I’m just glad… I’m just glad that I don’t have to worry about this stupid requirement anymore.”
“If you’re sure…” She stuck her pen on top of her ear and hopped off the counter stool to head for the fridge which sat on the other side of the modern gray and white marble kitchen island. “I can ask him, probably tomorrow morning. I talked to him right when I got home and said you were coming over to study, but, like I said, chances are he won’t be home until much—”
We both jumped as the door from the garage flew open. Thank God I was already gripping the countertop because the sight of Damien blowing through it would have taken me to the ground.
His eyes pinned me. That split-second felt like a wrinkle in time, dragging the moment out so his stare could seep into every cell of my body. And then it was gone, along with the noose its intensity had around my neck.
Maybe I had imagined it.
Why would he be looking at me that way?
Suddenly, I was self-conscious, wearing just a t-shirt and gym shorts; I looked the part of the teenager that I was. Whereas he was dressed perfectly. From the pleat in his pants to the starch in his collar to the fine knit of the sweater he wore over it… after a full day of work, nothing was out of place. Not. One. Hair.
Clarity is like getting an injection; there is the initial sting of the realization, followed by the prolonged burn of, in this case, embarrassment.
If I wanted Damien to look at me… to see me… I couldn’t look like his teenage daughter’s best friend.
Wait.
I wanted him to look at me?
I didn’t know what shocked me more - the things that I wanted or the fact that I was just realizing them all.
Him.
I wanted all of him.
I watched in fascination and horror as he walked slowly into their kitchen to set down his briefcase, each movement - smooth and silken - making my stomach clench tighter and my breasts ache and tingle.
“Troian.” Jealousy struck me as he leaned down to kiss the side of her head. I couldn’t even hear her greet him the blood was pumping so loudly in my ears.
And then he turned to me.
“Lilith.”
We were reactants. The pieces… the start… of an equation.
My name from his lips was the catalyst. The rasp and rumble of his voice over me sparked the reaction between us.
It was a reaction that had never occurred before - and may never occur again.
I didn’t know what the products of this reaction would be.
I just hoped their creation didn’t involve my destruction.
Damien
I shouldn’t have come home.
I knew she was going to be here, and I shouldn’t have tortured myself.
Even as I kissed Troy’s head, all I could think about was my daughter’s best friend. The way she stared at me like I was some sort of god. Her entire class did when I came and spoke to them about my work. That’s what happened when kids are taught both that only God performs miracles and that curing cancer would be a miracle.
It wasn’t a miracle. It was science.
I didn’t care about how the rest of them looked at me, though. Only her. With her bleach-blonde hair and bright blue eyes, she radiated life and everything about it worth living. And when your world has been focused solely on stopping death for so long, that kind of vivacity was like a punch straight to the gut.
She looked at me like I was the beginning and the end. The alpha and the omega. And, so help me, God, I wanted to claim her.
“Lilith.” The way her eyes locked with mine as I rasped her name. Lilith. A lullaby… the kind that promised all sorts of untold pleasures to come in my dreams.
“I was just about to make us dinner, Dad,” Troy’s voice required my attention. “Sit and eat with us.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to refuse but I couldn’t. Just like I couldn’t stop myself from coming home early from the lab, knowing that Lilith was going to be here studying.
I grunted my assent, taking a seat at the dining table while my daughter prepared dinner.
Guilt cramped my stomach. Objectively, I could say without a shadow of a doubt that Troian would have been better off living with her mother. Instead, when we divorced six years ago, Troy had been old enough to know that she wanted to stay with me; however, she wasn’t old enough to realize that just because I might know how to save a life, didn’t mean I knew how to be a parent.
One of the many reasons that her mother and I had ended things.
That, and the fact that there was no love between us any longer.
Somewhere along the way, my love for Meghan evolved into my obsessive love for my work. I wasn’t a good husband to her. And I didn’t blame her when she found someone who loved her the way that she deserved. I could care less if the world thought she’d cheated on me… that she’d left me for another man. We both knew that things between us had ended long before that.
But Troy… Troy had stayed with me and that meant she’d had to grow up faster than she should have. The worst part was that she wanted to take on the responsibilities. I could have hired a housekeeper. I could have hired someone to cook and prepare meals for us. She didn’t want me to.
She did it all and, as grateful as I was, I was also objectively aware that she felt like this was her responsibility. I couldn’t be thankful to her when I resented myself for it.
I pulled at the neck of my tie with a sigh. Immediately, I felt her eyes on me and a bolt of lust shot straight to my groin. Fuck.
I couldn’t… I bit back a groan. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had sex. Too busy with work and trials and trying to get my drug approved.
“Lil, can you help me?” my daughter asked her friend.
I was about to stand and offer my assistance when Lilith jumped down from her
seat and sauntered into the kitchen. I couldn’t get up then. I was too fucking hard. And I couldn’t stop myself from staring - her tits that seemed too large for an eighteen-year-old bouncing against her t-shirt and those tight, little gym shorts… Holy fuck. They rode up so high, and the strangest part was her hands reached for their edges like she was going to pull them down, but then she stopped herself and continued to move around with the fabric riding up so high that I could just see the bottom swell of her ass.
Maybe I should have been masturbating in the shower every morning instead of just running past my morning wood. My dick felt like it was about to explode just watching her tight little teenage ass move around my kitchen. God, I was so fucked up.
I shouldn’t have come home.
I shouldn’t have agreed to eat with them.
But leaving now would just add one more disappointment to the scale weighing all the ways that I’d already failed Troy.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I pretended to be thinking about what was on my computer instead of fantasizing about what was beneath those gym shorts. The hot, tight little pussy that was both untouched and untouchable—
“So, how’s work going, Dad?” Troy’s voice jerked my eyes open. They were both seated at the table and dinner was in front of us.
“Good,” I said gruffly. “Busy. Lots of lab work making sure everything is perfect for the FDA.”
I cut into the chicken parmesan that she’d made for dinner. As I took a bite, I saw her eyes flick to Lilith’s. Instinctively, my body tightened in apprehension. Coming home early was just the first domino in the chain reaction that would take me down.
“Do you… have a new lab assistant?”
What?
I blinked a few times before responding, “No. I haven’t had one…” I had to pause to think. How long ago had it been since that incompetent moron, Seth… Scott… had been assigned to help me? “For over a year. But you knew that, Troy. I’m sure you would have heard my complaints if they’d given me someone new.”
No Limits Page 20
