Chapter 5: Dark Desires
His thumb was a slow, circling shock over her nipple. Callie gasped into his mouth, the sound swallowed by the dark and his kiss. Her entire world narrowed to that point of contact—the rough pad of his thumb, the terrifying sensitivity, the way her back arched off the cold shelf without her permission.
“Okay?” he breathed against her lips, his voice husky and strained. His hand stilled, waiting.
She couldn’t form words. She just nodded, her forehead bumping his, and let out another shaky sound that was answer enough.
His fingers, fumbling slightly in the dark, worked the front clasp of her bra. It gave way with a quiet snick. The cool air of the room hit her skin, followed immediately by the heat of his palm covering her, his fingers splaying wide. He broke the kiss, his head dipping down. His glasses were still somewhere on the shelf, forgotten.
“God, Callie,” he muttered, the words a warm puff against her collarbone.
Then his mouth was on her, hot and wet, and her knees genuinely almost gave out. Her hands flew to his hair, gripping the messy strands as a bolt of pure, electric sensation shot straight down her spine. It was too much. It was nowhere near enough. A low, ragged moan vibrated from his throat, and the sound of it, of Fender making that sound because of her, did something irrevocable to her insides.
She pushed at his shoulders again. “Wait. Just… wait.”
He froze instantly, pulling back, his chest heaving. “What’s wrong? Did I hurt—"
“No. Just… come here.” She found his face in the dark, her palms against his stubbled cheeks, and pulled his mouth back up to hers. This kiss was slower, deeper, a desperate attempt to communicate what she couldn’t say. That she needed him closer. That the dark was a gift. That she was terrified and exhilarated and so far out of her depth she’d lost sight of the shore.
Her own hands became bold, driven by a curiosity that outweighed her nerves. She tugged his t-shirt up, her fingers skating over the hard plane of his stomach, feeling the muscles jump under her touch. He shuddered and helped her, pulling the shirt over his head and tossing it into the void. The skin of his shoulders was smooth and warm under her palms, his body lean and tense.
He crowded her back against the shelves, his bare chest pressed to hers. Skin on skin. The reality of it stole the air from her lungs. This was Fender. Her lab partner. The guy who argued with her about quantum causality over bad pizza. His body was a foreign country, and she was mapping it in the dark.
His mouth left hers, trailing a searing path down her throat, back to her breast. His teeth grazed her, gentle then not so gentle, and she cried out, her head thumping back against a binder. One of his hands slid down her side, over the curve of her hip, and hooked under her thigh, hitching her leg up around his waist. The new angle brought him flush against the core of her, denim on denim, a hard, insistent pressure that made her see stars behind her eyelids.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his hips rocking against hers once, a short, stuttering grind that was pure instinct. The friction was a blunt, delicious shock. He stilled again, panting. “Sorry. I’m… I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Neither do I,” she whispered, her voice wrecked. She rolled her hips, experimentally, seeking that feeling again. He made a choked sound and met her movement, and for a few seconds, they found a clumsy, desperate rhythm against each other, fully clothed, in the dusty dark. It was adolescent and frantic and so intensely real she felt tears prickle at the corners of her eyes.
His hand left her thigh, sliding around to the button of her jeans. His fingers felt huge, clumsy. He fumbled.
“Let me,” she breathed, and her own fingers, nimble from years of typing, made quick work of the button and the zipper. The sound was obscenely loud. He pushed the fabric down over her hips, just enough, his palm sliding against the lace of her panties. He went perfectly still.
“Callie…” His voice was full of awe, and fear, and a wanting so deep it mirrored her own.
Then his fingers slipped beneath the lace. He touched her, really touched her, and her whole universe fissured.
She was wet. So wet. The sheer, embarrassing evidence of her own desire made her want to hide, but his low, gut-punched groan transformed it into something powerful. His touch was hesitant, exploring, a careful stroke that had her biting down on her own lip to keep from screaming.
“Is that… does that feel…” he started, the eternal researcher even now.
“Yes,” she hissed. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. His touch grew more confident, learning her responses by the gasps she couldn’t suppress, by the way her body jerked against his hand. He found a rhythm, a pressure that made her muscles coil tight, her breaths coming in short, sharp pants. The world dissolved into a throbbing, building point of light behind her eyes. She was climbing a ladder in the dark, each rung a shock of pleasure, her grip on his shoulders the only tether to earth.
The door at the far end of the storage room creaked.
They froze, a statue of interrupted heat. A sliver of hallway light sliced into the room, widening.
“Hello?” a voice called. Professor Henley’s reedy tenor. “Is someone in here? The security log showed a door ajar.”
Fender’s hand snapped back from her jeans as if burned. He pressed his body against hers, shielding her from the line of sight, his head buried in the crook of her neck. His heart hammered against her chest, a wild, frantic drum.
Callie held her breath. The world came crashing back—the dust, the cold, the precarious reality of their situation. She could see the silhouette of Henley’s lanky frame in the doorway, peering into the gloom.
After an eternity that lasted ten seconds, the door groaned shut. The lock snicked into place. Henley must have assumed it was a glitch, a student who’d left it unlocked earlier.
The darkness was absolute again, but the spell was shattered. The frantic, hungry energy bled away, leaving behind a trembling, post-adrenaline awkwardness.
For a long moment, they just stood there, entangled, breathing each other’s air. Callie’s jeans were still undone around her hips. Her bra hung open. Fender was shirtless. The heat between them was now a stifling, confused warmth.
He was the first to move, slowly, carefully. He leaned back, his hands finding her waist, gentle now. He rested his forehead against hers. In the quiet, she heard him swallow.
“Well,” he whispered. “That was… suboptimal timing.”
A laugh hiccupped out of her, half-hysterical with relief and leftover tension. “Understatement.”
He didn’t laugh. His thumbs rubbed small circles on her skin. “We should… we should get dressed. Before he circles back with a janitor key.”
The practical words were a lifeline. She nodded, stepping back, her limbs feeling loose and uncoordinated. She turned away, fumbling in the dark to fix her bra, to pull her sweater down. The lace of her panties was damp. The sensation was a stark, physical memory. She heard the rustle of him finding and pulling on his t-shirt.
He found his glasses. The faint light from the crack under the door caught the lenses as he put them on.
They stood there, two shadows in a room full of dead technology. The unspoken thing hung between them, vast and complicated.
“My place?” he said finally, his voice tentative. “We could… I don’t know. Talk. Or not talk. But we wouldn’t have to… stop.”
She reached out, her fingers finding his in the dark. She laced them with his. His hand was warm, solid. Real.
“Yeah,” she said. “Your place.”