Chapter 10: The Professor's Confession
Viktor shifted beside her, the sand gritting under his bulk. Without a word, his hand went to her shoulder and pressed, a firm, inexorable guidance that rolled her onto her back. The sky above was deepening to a bruised purple.
“Lift,” he murmured, his voice losing its philosophical edge and becoming practical. His hands slid under her knees. He wasn’t asking. He moved her legs, bending them at the knee, planting her feet flat on the sand so her thighs were angled upward. The position was vulnerably open. He settled his weight between them, his own legs outside hers, and she felt it immediately—the hard, insistent press of him against the thin, damp fabric of her shorts, a blunt demand through his own clothing.
He began with her calves, his large, lotion-slick hands working the muscle from ankle to knee. His touch was slow, methodical, a possessive kneading that had nothing to do with massage and everything to do with cataloging a specimen.
“The Ross Sea shelf,” he said, his tone shifting seamlessly back to the academic, as if discussing a peer-reviewed paper. His thumbs pressed into her tendons. “A critical nursery for Adélie penguins. The ice retreats not in meters, but in kilometers now. The chicks hatch, and the parents must swim further, much further, for krill.” His hands slid higher, palms skimming the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, mapping the contour of her quadriceps. “A death sentence measured in extra nautical miles. The weakest are always culled first. Nature’s austerity.”
Jennifer held herself very still, her gaze fixed on the first evening star blinking to life overhead. The dissociation was a survival tactic. She focused on the timbre of his voice, the genuine, gravelly passion in it. He cared about this. Deeply. The thought was a bizarre lifeline. If only his hands weren’t now mapping her as he pleased.
He squirted more sunscreen, the white cream shockingly cold on her sun-warmed belly. His palm spread it in slow, broad circles, dipping into the narrow valley of her waist, sliding lower to the taut plane below her navel.
“The Sundarbans,” he continued, his fingers splaying just above the waistband of her shorts. “The mangrove forests. Saltwater intrusion from rising seas kills the freshwater trees. The Bengal tiger’s territory shrinks not from poachers, for once, but from chemistry. The land literally dissolves beneath them.” His touch was clinical, even as it trespassed. “A profound, silent agony. We record the loneliness of the last male in a sector, his roars unanswered. We measure his grief in scat samples and fading paw prints.”
She caught her breath as his hands moved upward, bypassing the bra, but coming to rest heavily, fully over the lace-covered curves of her breasts. He didn’t fumble with the ties. He simply took possession, his hands engulfing her, shaping her, testing her weight and resilience through the fabric. He cupped, lifted, squeezed with a thoughtful, appreciative pressure, as if assessing ripe fruit.
“You are a resilient variant,” he mused, his thumbs brushing over the peaks, feeling them harden against the wet lace. “High fertility signaling. Strong bone structure. A survivor’s phenotype.” It was the highest compliment his zoological mind could offer.
When his hands, slick and warm, moved to her neck and shoulders, his voice changed. The lecture hall cadence dropped away, replaced by a low, husky rumble that vibrated against her skin. “You know, little bird,” he said, his breath hot in her ear, his fingers working the tension at the base of her throat, “I really wish that during games you’ll give me a titfuck with those pesky breasts of yours. What do you say?”
The vulgarity was a bucket of ice water after the stream of ecological tragedy. It yanked her back into the brutal present. She kept her eyes on the star. Her voice, when it came, was calm, devoid of hesitation. A simple statement of policy. “If the game demands it.”
“If the game demands,” he laughed, a short, sharp bark that echoed on the empty beach. He released her, rolling to lie on his back beside her again, their shoulders almost touching in the sand. The physical pressure was gone, but the imprint of his words remained, a deeper brand. “Rein trained you well, didn’t he? You know, he’s actually great with girls. Maybe,” he said, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial grunt, “and I’ll deny I ever told this, he’s the best at sex among all of us. A real craftsman. You know you’re the very first candidate he ever brought?”
She turned her head on the towel to look at his profile, a dark mound against the twilight. A spike of something hot and fierce—not jealousy, but a hungry curiosity—pierced her calculated calm. “Am I?”
“Yeah.” He was looking at the sky again, his hands folded on his great stomach. “Makes you think, no? The brilliant, careful Jack Rein, breaking his own protocol. For you.” He let that hang, a tantalizing, terrifying piece of data. “And that makes you very special. A premiere. An inaugural edition. Everyone at the party will see that. They’ll smell it on you. They’ll all want a piece of you.”
The finality in his tone was absolute. He had assessed her, not just as a body, but as a unique artifact in their twisted ecosystem. A first. A prize. The fear that coiled in her stomach now was laced with a dark, unexpected thread of pride. Jack had never done this before. He had chosen her. For this. The contradiction was a knot she couldn’t untangle.
The contradiction was a knot she couldn’t untangle. It pulled tight in her chest, a strange alloy of dread and illicit, soaring validation. He had chosen her. The sky bled from purple to a deep ink, the first stars pinpricking the expanse above Viktor’s silent, massive form beside her.
Back at the cafeteria, April pushed her empty espresso cup away with a definitive scrape. “Thank you for that vodka,” she said, the ghost of her earlier smile gone. Her large brown eyes were sober and direct. “But let’s go save your little assistant.”
They found them on the darkening beach, two shapes on a single towel. Even from a distance, the proprietary sprawl of Viktor’s body, the way one of his hands rested possessively on Jennifer’s stomach, was a clear, crude statement. Jack’s stride hitched, a cold fury tightening his hands into fists at his sides.
April’s hand slid into the crook of his elbow, her touch anchoring. “Okay, Dr. Rein,” she said, her voice low and urgent, watching the scene ahead. “There’s only one right way to play it now. Your hand should be grabbing my butt. Not through the fabric, but under the dress. Right on the skin. We should be laughing.” She glanced up at him, her expression utterly serious. “And my hand will be in your trousers. Yes, rubbing you.”
Jack stiffened, a protest forming on his lips. “April, I can’t just—”
“Don’t look so fret,” she interrupted, her whisper fierce. “We both know it will happen a lot during the games. This is for Jennifer. Right now.” Her hand moved, a swift, practiced motion, and cupped him through his trousers, finding the hardness that was purely an adrenal response to the scene before them. “And remember to smile and laugh. We need to show them we’re both having a great time.”
She let out a peal of laughter that sounded genuinely bright, tossing her head back, the loose strands of her crimson hair catching the last of the light. Jack forced a grin, his face feeling like carved wood. His arm slid around her waist, his fingers finding the bare skin of her lower back, then dipping beneath the satin waistband of her dress to grip the full, firm curve of her rear. The warmth of her skin was a shock.
April sighed playfully into his neck, her own hand slipping past his belt, her cool fingers finding their way inside. The intimacy was a brutal, performative weapon. They stumbled-laughed their way down the sand, a spectacle of borrowed lust.
Viktor saw them first. His monologue about trophic cascades died mid-sentence. His hand retracted from Jennifer’s stomach. Jennifer turned her head, and her breath caught. Jack had April pinned against him, one hand buried in her hair, the other unmistakably under her dress, gripping her thigh. April’s arm was wrapped around his neck, her body arched into his.
Twenty paces away, Jack stopped walking. He looked directly at Viktor, a challenge in his eyes. Then he turned April’s face to his and kissed her.
It wasn’t a peck. It was deep, consuming, a raw reclaiming of territory. His hand moved from her thigh, traveling the entire length of her leg to hook behind her knee. He lifted it, wrapping her leg around his hip, pulling their bodies into an even more intimate, impossible-to-misread knot. The slit in her dress fell open, revealing the long, sleek line of her limb in the twilight.
Viktor sat up, the sand falling from him in a cascade. The look on his face was pure, unadulterated flashfire—a jealous possessiveness that wiped away all his intellectual posturing. It lasted only a second before he buried it under a guttural laugh.
“Rein!” he boomed, the sound too loud for the quiet beach. “Saving me the walk! We were just finishing up.” He slapped Jennifer’s thigh, a loud, familiar smack. “We also had a great time, little bird, didn’t we?” He didn’t wait for her answer. He heaved himself up, brushing sand from his shirt with sharp, irritated motions.
In three swift strides, he was upon them. He didn’t acknowledge Jack. His hand shot out and clamped around April’s wrist, yanking her hand from Jack’s trousers and pulling her away from the kiss with a jarring force. “Mine is tired now,” he growled, the jovial pretense gone, leaving only a blunt territorial claim. “We sleep before the party.”
He turned, towing April behind him like retrieved luggage. He didn’t look back, didn’t say goodbye. April threw one glance over her shoulder, not at Jack, but at Jennifer on the towel. It was an unreadable look, swallowed by the gathering dark as Viktor marched her towards the path.
The sudden silence was immense, filled only by the sigh of the surf. Jack stood frozen, the heat of April’s skin still on his lips, the ghost of her performance humming in his nerves. He turned slowly to face the towel, to face Jennifer, who was now sitting up, watching him, her kimono hanging open, her eyes wide and dark in the pale oval of her face.
The space between them crackled with everything unsaid—what Viktor had revealed, what Jack had just done, the terrifying chasm of the night to come. He took a step toward her, the sand dragging at his feet.
He took a step toward her, the sand dragging at his feet. "Jen, it was just for sho—"
"I know." Her voice cut across the dark space between them, clean and flat as a scalpel. She didn’t move from the towel. "It doesn't matter. I really hope you had a good time. Honestly, I do." She drew a slow breath, the sound of it lost under the distant waves. "If there will be games where I need to be with another woman, I sure hope it will be April. She's fantastic. It's a privilege to compete against her."
"Jen, it's not—" he tried, taking another step, his hand lifting in a futile gesture.
"That's fine," she said, firm and final. She rose to her knees on the towel, the movement fluid in the gloom. "That's the rule of this place: girls are a transactional item to be passed along. For what it's worth, I really hope you'll fuck her during the party. In a controlled environment instead of just thinking about her." Her eyes gleamed, reflecting a sliver of moonlight. "I want you to know for sure that I'm better for you."
"You are!" The words burst from him, raw and too loud.
"Shut up," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper that carried more force than a shout. "And come closer. I do very much need it now." Her hands went to the ties of her kimono, then the knot of her bralette. The delicate fabric loosened and fell away into the sand. She was effectively topless, her skin pale and luminous in the low light, the curves Viktor had assessed now offered freely.
"And remove your shirt."
He hesitated for only a second, his mind a riot of protest and electric need. He fumbled with the buttons of his linen shirt, his fingers clumsy. "Jen, someone might see us!"
"I don't care. Maybe I even want them to." She leaned back on her heels, her posture open and defiant. "But I don't care more. I just need to suck the feeling of those hairy hands away from me." Her gaze dropped to the front of his trousers. "And I need your dick to do so."
Her words weren’t an invitation; they were a verdict, issued from the dark shore of whatever line she had just crossed within herself. The last fragile pretense of their professional boundary dissolved into the salt-thick air. Jack’s shirt joined her kimono in the sand, a pale heap.
He stood before her, the cool night breeze raising goosebumps on his skin, a stark contrast to the furnace burning in his gut. Her eyes, wide and dark, didn’t leave his face as her fingers worked the button of his shorts, then the zipper. The sound was obscenely loud. She pushed the fabric down his hips in one firm motion, taking his underwear with it.
He was already incredibly hard, the blood pounding there a visceral echo of the night’s chaos—the sight of her with Viktor, the performative taste of April, this sharp, desperate version of Jen now claiming him. She didn't hesitate. She took him into her mouth with a focused intensity that stole his breath.
This wasn’t sensual or slow. She established a fast, punishing rhythm from the start, bobbing her head with a tireless, mechanical precision that felt less like pleasure and more like a meticulous erasure. Each movement was a deliberate scouring. She would pause only to run her tongue along his length with clinical curiosity or to take his balls into her mouth, sucking gently before returning to the primary, relentless task.
It didn’t take much time for him to start losing his mind. The sensations were too fractured, too layered. The primal, building heat clashed violently with the image of her on the towel under Viktor’s hands, with the memory of April’s staged moan. Guilt, fear, and a devastating arousal twisted together in a knot behind his navel, pulled tighter with every expert stroke of her tongue.
She worked with a dedicated innovation, trying and checking all new ways she could think of. A twist of her wrist here, a change in pressure there, her eyes flicking up to gauge his reaction. She was conducting an experiment, and he was the raw, overstimulated data.
“Oh, and finally start that IQOS of yours,” she said, pulling off him for just a second, her voice husky but utterly composed. “I want you to smoke it while I do it.”
The request was so bizarre, so specific, it cut through his haze. He fumbled for the device in his discarded shorts, his hands trembling. He put the heated tobacco stick to his lips, the tip glowing a steady orange in the darkness. He took a shallow puff, the familiar, slightly sweet vapor filling his mouth.
She watched the act, nodded once in approval, and then took him back into the warmth of her mouth. The contrast was violently surreal. The clean, technological taste of the vapor, the quiet crackle of the heater, against the ancient, wet suction of her mouth. He exhaled a cloud that hung around her head like a phantom crown before the sea breeze tore it away.
He leaned back, bracing himself with one hand in the sand, the other holding the IQOS. Each rhythmic pull of her mouth coordinated with the desperate, shallow drags he took from the stick. The two rhythms synced, the pleasure and the ritualistic smoke creating a feedback loop of heightened sensation. He was observing himself from a distance, a man coming apart on a dark beach, torn between the need to stop this and the terrifying, accelerating urge to let her erase everything.
The light of the device pulsed like a tiny, dying star in his hand, marking the frantic, silent passage of time until he knew he couldn’t hold on.
The light of the device pulsed like a tiny, dying star in his hand, marking the frantic, silent passage of time until he knew he couldn’t hold on. He dropped the IQOS into the sand, its glow extinguished with a faint hiss. The observational part of his mind, the scientist that catalogued cause and effect, shut down entirely.
He was standing over her, this tiny assistant he enjoyed working with so much, this beautiful lady he had feelings for, this great scientific mind that was the future of his field, and observed her working his hardness with a focus that bordered on the devotional. The incongruity should have shattered the moment. Instead, it fused together into a single, devastating truth. He knew now this island was a place for her—she should be on those games, she should be sucking and moaning for all to enjoy. On her knees—this was where she was best.
She tried taking him deeper but still not full length, a careful calibration of her own limits. A final, fragile thread of her control. He watched it, the last resistance, and something in him needed to sever it. So he put one hand in her hair, holding her in place, and starting fucking her in her mouth. Fast and deep.
The rhythm was his now, not hers, a relentless piston drive that erased the last few minutes of her clinical study. She was moaning around him, a continuous, vibrating hum of submission that traveled straight up his spine. Tears and lack of breathing became visible, her eyes squeezing shut, her fingers digging into his thighs. He didn’t stop. The salt of her tears, the frantic clutch of her hands, the utter surrender of her throat—it unlocked a brutal, culminating need.
He finally came into her mouth—deep in her throat. She took it all, swallowing convulsively, her body shuddering as she managed the flood. He held her there until the last pulse faded, until the tension bled from his own limbs.
When he finally released her and she was catching her breath, he could see she was extremely happy. And proud. A radiant, messy triumph lit her face, glowing through the tears and streaked mascara. She looked up at him, panting, her lips swollen, and smiled a dizzy, conquest's smile. And maybe, just maybe, in love.
She collapsed sideways onto the towel, pulling gulps of the cool night air. After a moment, she pushed herself up on one elbow. "Well," she rasped, her voice shredded. "That should... sufficiently mark the territory." She grinned, a flash of white in the dark. "For now."
Jack sank to his knees beside her, the world swimming back into focus—the sound of the waves, the chill on his skin. He touched her cheek, wiping a tear-track with his thumb. His own hand was shaking. "Jen..."
"Don't." She caught his hand, pressed his palm against her warm cheek. "It was perfect. Exactly what I wanted." She nodded towards the path Viktor and April had taken. "I needed to wipe that off the map. Now it's just us again." She leaned into his touch, her eyes searching his. "We're a good team, Jack. In the lab. Here. Everywhere."
He helped her up, gathering their discarded clothes. They dressed in silence, the intimacy of the act now replaced by a quieter, more profound closeness. As they walked back towards the bungalow, her hand found his, their fingers lacing together without discussion.
"Tomorrow night," she said, her voice still rough but steady. "The villa."
"Tomorrow night," he confirmed, the words heavy with a future he could no longer deflect.
The path was dark, lined with the silhouettes of silent palms. He could still taste the vapor on his tongue, could still feel the frantic pull of her mouth. The guilt was there, a cold stone in his gut, but layered over it was something else—a grim, settled certainty. She was ready. And, for better or worse, so was he.