Bannister
No one else is here. Just us.
God, his focus and precision and patience were relentless, and it wasso so sogood—
Bannister
While you’re writhing under my fingers, I’ll move between your legs. Your panties are so wet, aren’t they?
Erin
Please—
Bannister
I want to taste you.
Erin
Y-yes.
Bannister
I kneel down by your desk. I lean close to breathe you in. Then I press the flat of my tongue to you, edging your panties aside, because I don’t want their rough lace, I only want… w-want you—
F-f-f-fuck!
She couldn’t breathe. Incandescent electricity was sizzling through her body, scorching strikes of pleasure building,building—but if she couldn’t answer him in words?
A fourth photo: thighs spread, hips lifted, fingers blurred with movement.
Bannister
(New Audio Message)
“Fuck, I—God, Erin, you’re—I can’t—keep—I’m—”
She was burning, hot enough to ignite carbon fusion, combusting with the shockwaves of an exploding supernova, destruction and creation intertwined. A gasp, a groan, a cant of her hips, and she chased him into blazing oblivion, overwhelming her fingers and her panties in quaking, toe-curling, spine-arching currents of ecstasy, choking out his name.
“Ethan…” came her strangled whisper, sending in an audio message of her own.
And then, in the sweet, shivering, boneless silence that followed, her vision white with stars: again, “…fuck.”
If she hadn’t before, she definitely needed medical attention now. She’d driven them both insane. She must’ve. Because she grinned through her body’s aftershocks as she tapped back into her phone. She licked her lips while she changed Bannister’s contact name.
Dr. Ethan Meyer
17
He’d been right about the location of Modern Physics’ defibrillator: mounted on the wall by the kitchenette in an attention-grabbing red case, its cover stamped with the jagged peaks of a heart rate.
But he’d been wrong to imagine that he could walk past it without thinking of—her legs splayed for him across her desk, spine arched, tortoiseshell glasses misted over black, hazy eyes, throat convulsing as he worked his fingers past the lace between her thighs, as he bent close to inhale her, to taste the heat of her desire—
He thrust a mug into the coffee machine’s slot so hard that the ceramic rattled.Breathe.He didn’t need a defibrillator. He didn’t need caffeine. He needed a damn tranquilizer. At least a cold dose of oat milk. Or ice—that job assignment in Antarctica? Since Antarctica was out of reach for the moment, however, he yanked open the staff refrigerator to grab his creamer. When he swung the metal door closed again, Erin was entering the kitchenette.
The speed of traffic on Sand Hill Road had blown tangles into her hair; her ponytail was loose from its elastic, twisting over her shoulder and catching in the teeth of her utility jacket’s zipper, half-closed over a burgundy sweater. Her lips glimmered where she’d run her tongue across the wind-chapped skin. A tiny fleck of grit dotted her nose.
“Uh.” His brain blanked. “You have a…”
