My eyes jerked to hers, molten honey bathed in fire.
“I’ve dreamt of fucking you for so long. For so long I thought it would only ever be a dream, Lilith,” I rasped, my fingers traveling down to pinch and roll her swollen clit. “I’m going to fuck your little cunt, baby. I’m going to rip right through that last piece that says you’re too young and make you my woman. And I’m so goddamn sorry, sweetheart, because I need you too fucking bad to do any of it carefully.”
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done something without being in control. Without weighing all the outcomes. Without any analysis. But this… to feel her… to just take her. It freed something inside of me - something that could never be put back.
She nodded frantically as my tip teased her entrance one more time. Every muscle tensed. I sucked in air like I was never going to let it go again. And when her hips jerked up slightly, begging for me, I slammed inside of her so hard I didn’t even feel that thin barrier break as I tore through it.
There was a split second of her scream before my mouth swallowed it up.
She clamped down around me – the pain right on that edge of being both good and bad. Her cunt revolted and clenched around my cock to the point where I thought it might kill me. And I didn’t care if it did.
I didn’t stop thrusting into her, I couldn’t. The vise of her muscles around me demanded it, they sucked me in and begged me deeper. I did manage to tear my lips away and with a voice contorted with raw need, ask, “You ok, baby?”
I growled as her legs tightened around me at the nickname.
“Yeah,” she said even as she whimpered. I worried but then she moaned again, “More, Damien. I need more.”
I growled and hitched her leg up between us so I could slam even deeper into her, my balls smacking against her ass.
“Is that what you want, Lilith?” I said with a hard voice against her ear. “You going to come for me? Does your little cunt want to squeeze me until I’m sure that I’ll die?”
She nodded frantically as her hips thrashed up against mine.
The wet slapping noises of desperation between us echoed in my room.
“Because I might die, baby,” I groaned, feeling her body begin to tighten and seize around me. “The feel of you around me. So wet and tight. Fuck living in the lab. I want to live right here between your thighs. I want to experiment every goddamn way I can fuck you. I want to measure how hard and how many times I can make you come. You are my new disease - my new obsession. Wanting you is like cancer and fucking you is my only goddamn cure.”
“Damien!” she cried out my name because she was so close. Her breath hitched on the edge of her orgasm.
I wanted to rip her apart with desire. I wanted to fuck her so good that she would think twice about wanting more because she might not survive it. Reaching between us, I pinched and pulled on her clit mercilessly as I rammed myself against her sweet spot… and her cervix… hell, I ploughed into her like I could fill her entire torso with my dick if I tried hard enough.
My head dropped and as I clamped my teeth on her nipple, she exploded with my name on her lips; it was the hottest and most life-changing thing I’d ever created.
I pounded into her through the blackness that enveloped me, through the suffocating grip of her pussy around my cock, maybe two or three more times before I came with long, groan that felt like it had to be carved out of my chest.
We’d been loud. One of the many things that I should have done: muffle her screams. Along with not fucking her in the first place. But I wouldn’t go back now; I couldn’t.
Our breaths crashed like waves as the silence settled around us.
“Lilith…” I began but I had no idea where I was even going. This was the part I wasn’t good at. I didn’t know what to say. Hell, I didn’t know what to do. I should say that it was never going to happen again, but I couldn’t. “I don’t… I don’t know what to say. Are you ok?”
I’m sorry.
Was it a mistake?
Do you regret it?
“Don’t, Damien,” she whispered back as if she heard my thoughts. “I’m… more than ok. Are you ok?”
A quick laugh erupted from me. “Of course, I’m ok. I just had the most incredible sex of my entire life…” I trailed off as the truth rushed from me. “With the only woman who’s ever made me feel.”
I didn’t have to hear her sigh to feel the way her body accepted my compliment.
I couldn’t stop staring down at her upturned face. I’d never get tired of looking at her, watching her emotions paint a rainbow over her perfect face.
Whatever it took - whatever it cost - I wasn’t going to give this—give her up.
Hoarsely, I began, “Lilith, we—”
“Lil?”
Troy. The only person able to tear apart our two halves that had finally fused together.
Chapter Eight
Lilith
I saw the moment I’d lost him.
Actually, I saw the moment right before it happened, like an accident that was about to happen, I watched the two cars of dreams and realities race head-on towards each other with lightning speed. I winced at the moment of impact - and the moment that Damien pulled out of me and tossed my clothes at me before diving into the bathroom.
I’d just pulled on my clothes and was yanking the blanket from his bed - my original purpose for coming - when Troy opened the door and peered inside.
“Lil?” She stared at me in blatant confusion.
“I-I was cold. I came up to get the blanket,” I stammered, wrapping it around me when I noticed before she did that there were a few blood stains on the insides of my thighs.
“Is my dad home?”
“He… umm… I think he’s in the bathroom. I didn’t realize he was home when I walked in…” I tried to stick to the truth.
“Oh, ok.”
“I’m… uhh… just going to use the bathroom and then I’ll be down. I think I just got my period,” I tacked on lamely at the end.
She held the door open for me, not giving me the opportunity to stay and talk to Damien even if I could think of a good excuse.
And just like any other exothermic reaction - we went from the brightest, hottest burning heat to a pile of ash a few seconds later.
I thought I’d see him the next morning.
Pieces of my heart flaked off like dandelion seeds for every slow second it took me to realize that I wouldn’t.
I knew why. I knew it was his habit to run from emotions. And I’d decided that I was either going to break that habit or it was going to break me.
Ok, I’d been a coward for a few days because of the latter possibility, unsure of what to do and afraid of what would happen. Hypothesizing how many ways he could reject me and crumble the castles I was determined to build in the sky. But there was only one way to find out - one way to shove this reaction forward whether it cured us or killed us.
The moments after the final bell rang caused time to pass in fractured intervals. I said goodbye to Troy. The radio in my car a dull drone until I pulled into the lot at the laboratory. The same empty glass elevator took me up to his floor. My hand, still unsteady, turned the doorknob as I quietly let myself in.
Not that he would have heard them anyway if he was working, but I slipped off my shoes, leaving the thin, dark nylon socks on to help quiet my step. My bag and my blazer I left with my shoes.
I had a lot of ideas about how this was going to happen, what I was going to say and do, how I was going to throw myself at him without looking like a complete fool. But then I saw it.
He’d hung the lab coat he’d given me to wear on the rack next to the door into the lab.
Next thing I knew, I pulled it from the hook and systematically began disrobing like I was in the doctor’s office and had to put on one of those papery gowns before an exam. Skirt, blouse, bra, panties… the fell into a small pile and left me with nothing but my knee-highs. And the lab coat.
B
ecause I was a scientist and not a seduction-ist, I still buttoned it up all the way, but because it wasn’t my size, the V in the front still fell well below my breasts.
I looked down as my hands smoothed the fabric, pulling my loose curls to one side over my shoulder. There was no mirror. God, I hoped I didn’t look like a complete fool.
As I walked towards the light coming from the neighboring room, my anxiety disappeared.
Reactions.
Reactants combine to form products.
They don’t have a choice. They can’t question or decide not to. They react because what they are made of gives no other option. Science… nature… God… doesn’t allow it.
And what he and I were made of was meant for this. He and I were meant to form us.
I found him in the same spot that he inhabited ninety percent of the time he was here. The same strain of focus on his face as he read and examined and notated. If one man could save the world by sheer determination and dedication, Damien Milanovic would be that man.
The unruly lock of hair was behaving, which meant that he’d been home and showered recently, since it was only when his hair was slightly damp that it stayed in place.
He wasn’t wearing his lab coat though which I thought strange. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the veiny, toned forearms that rippled with each subtle movement. As I stepped quietly over the threshold, I realized that even his focus wasn’t the same before, it was forced - like it was punishment. The more I looked around, the more things looked out of place. The pristine neatness that characterized everything about this man was fraying.
Beakers and trays were no longer organized. Different microscopes and the centrifuge lay scattered across various countertops - like instead of putting one back before getting another, he’d just moved to an open spot. And where he sat, in front of him were several empty wrappers of either protein or granola bars, all cluttered around a beaker that was being used for something other than science. The few ice cubes and healthy milliliter content of clear liquid said that the only experiment it was involved in was one of inebriation.
I wasn’t the only one who’d been tortured this weekend.
I wasn’t the only one that had tugged on something and sent it unraveling.
I walked towards him, wanting to announce myself, but also wanting to see just how close I could get. Like when you see an animal in the wild, something huge and imposing that you should probably stay away from, and still you walk closer, believing that there is no way it could hurt you.
I got fairly close before I saw the change in him - the tensing of his body, the way the hairs on his arm stood on end, the way his head tipped up, but refused to turn around because he was afraid that sensing me was just a drunken false alarm.
Slowly, those black eyes melted over my body, raising goosebumps to the surface and making my nipples tighten against the sturdy fabric of the white jacket.
“Damien.” His name rushed from my lips, just like the unstoppable need for him rushed through my body, disrupting… mutating… every single cell in its path to only live for him.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, everything from the look on his face to his unkempt hair telling me he was just as frayed as I was.
That’s what happens when your taste of heaven is ripped away.
“W-we need to talk.” I stepped closer, feeling like I was fighting against an invisible force field the entire way.
“No, Lilith. You need to leave. You need to leave and not come back,” he said tightly, turning away from me. “I’ll get you an internship at the NIH, but we’re done.”
With the precision of a scalpel, his words cut right through me. He wasn’t just talking about the internship; he was talking about us.
“How can you say that?” I asked as my lip quivered, hating that I would resort to begging.
“How can you not?” he sneered, taking a sip from the beaker.
“Do you not remember the other night?” My feet stopped me a few feet from the side of him and I crossed my arms over my chest in frustration - and not because of the way it made his jaw tick seeing how it smashed my breasts together.
“Yes, I do, Lilith. But maybe you don’t.” His stare was self-loathing cloaked in anger. “Maybe you don’t remember that I took the virginity of someone who was barely legal. That I slept with my daughter’s best friend. That I thought for one fucking second that something like this would be ok.”
“But if it was ok for that second, how could it not be now? D-did you not feel what I felt?”
His fist tightened on the beaker to where his knuckles went white and I was sure that he was going to shatter the glass.
“What I felt was a teenager’s tight cunt wrapped around my starved cock. What I felt was shame and then the worst kind of failure realizing that my daughter - the one person I love that I can never seem to do right by - almost walked in on my defiling her friend.” Each word flowed over me like lava. It didn’t eviscerate me quickly. No, his cruel words scorched and melted right through any shred of hope that had been tenacious enough to hold on.
“I may not have done much for Troy up until this point, but at least I could make her proud - proud of who I was to the world and what I’d done. Now, because of my fucking feelings, the only thing I’ll leave her with is a legacy of unconscionable lust and betrayal.”
“N-no.” My fist clutched the long sleeve of the coat and pressed against my mouth to mute my sob. “You’re wrong. You’re so wrong.”
“What do you know?” he scoffed, slurring slightly. “Certainly not me.”
My spine jerked straight. Clearly, this habit of his was going to break me, but if I was going to break, I was going to do it brilliantly.
“Liar,” I rebutted. “I may not know how you like your coffee or your favorite composer, but I know how your handwriting changes from block to cursive the closer you get to a certain conclusion. I know the exact moment that one piece of hair will break off from the rest, finally free from its styled cage and hang over your forehand like a guardian angel for your thoughts.”
I stepped closer to him, his eyes practically daring me to continue.
“I know the weight you wear around your shoulders - the one that says you have to save the world because you couldn’t save yourself. I know that you want to be there for Troy because you love her, but you can’t because you are afraid of making a mistake.”
I stood right in front of him - and right on the edge of a cliff, my breath surprisingly steady as I threw myself off of it.
“And I know that you love me,” I finished softly, “otherwise, you wouldn’t be so determined to send me away.”
He stared angrily at me. I bit my lip because it wanted to kiss his hard, thinned ones so badly. I wanted to give him softness. I wanted to give him hope. I wanted to make him understand that everyone loves in their own way and just because he may have all the right ingredients to cure cancer doesn’t make him a failure if he struggles to find the words or actions to show others what they mean to him.
“I just want you to feel… I want you to love.” I just want you to love me. “And not hide from it because you’re afraid you won’t do it well enough.”
Like watching the curtain fall after a play, impassive floated down over his face and any trace of any emotion vanished. That’s how lies worked best - with no emotional fingerprint to betray their falseness.
“I don’t love you, Lilith,” he said flatly, staring right into my breaking heart as he spoke. “And that isn’t a hypothetical.”
“You’re right. You can’t love me. You can’t love Troy. You can’t love anyone, Damien.” I hoped my voice wasn’t shaking as bad as my heart was. “You can’t love anyone because you can’t love others until you know how to love yourself!” I yelled frantically, swiping tears from my cheeks left and right.
I held his stare for as long as I could, but as soon as I saw his lip flutter with unspoken words, I couldn’t stand tall a
ny longer. Clutching the lab coat over me, I fled. In that moment, I could understand why he hid from his emotions - why he hid from failure…
Because failing at love was the worst possible defeat you could experience.
And it didn’t matter how fast I ran, I wasn’t going to be able to outrun my defeat.
Chapter Nine
Damien
“Troy,” I yelled as I walked in, the door barely shutting behind me before she was in the kitchen staring at me in wonder. “Yes, I’m home for dinner.”
“Seriously?” she asked, eyes wide. “Is everything ok? Did you get fired?”
I sent her a glare that was enough of an answer.
“Ok, ok. I’ll get started.” Her smile was blinding - and I’d only come home for dinner.
Was it really that simple?
I tried not to think about Lilith as I went to change - or the way that I was realizing how right she was about all the little things that clearly made a difference.
I tried not to think about her as I talked to Troy about colleges, asking whatever the hell I felt like asking regardless if it was the right thing or not.
I tried not to think about her when I complimented Troy on her chicken parmesan and told her that she must have gotten her cooking gene from her mother’s side because everything she makes is delicious. The way she lit up when I just told her the truth made it impossible for me not to credit Lilith with that.
But it was when I (jokingly) asked if she was sure she wanted to go to school for chemistry and not culinary science that her face fell.
“What… did I say something wrong?” I set my napkin on the table, afraid that this was the point where she would turn and yell that I knew nothing about her nor her life and that all these years with me were a mistake.
Her eyes met mine and I recognized the organized, exploratory look in them - it was the scientist in us.
“Do you ever wonder if a decision that you are making is based on what you really want or based on what you think other people want… or expect of you?”
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