The day passed with an uneasy tension Adrian couldn’t quite name. Becca had looked exhausted in the lab—her shoulders drawn tight, her hair up in a hurried knot, her voice low and curt in conversation. But what struck him wasn’t her stress. It was how much he still wanted her attention.
How much he wanted to be in her presence.
Alone.
He didn’t dare approach. Instead, he floated past her cubicle like a ghost, his heart hammering when he saw her bent over a layout with Freya.
She had said, “Tomorrow.”
That was today.
Tonight?
The thought alone had his palms damp.
When she appeared unannounced at his door, without warning, his breath stopped. Becca walked in like she lived there. She paused at the threshold, appraising the chaos: stacks of books, cups of half-finished tea, scattered printouts, and Adrian standing in the middle of it all like a guilty teenager in pajamas. Her eyes moved slowly across the room, lingering on the calibration maps, the bed hastily made, and finally, on him.
She didn’t say hello.
Just slipped off her heels and stepped inside, hips swaying like this was a runway instead of his cramped dorm. Her blouse was emerald, tucked neatly into high-waisted black slacks, her coat folded over one arm. Her hair was loose now, the kind that screams I didn’t plan this, when clearly, she had.
She hung her coat on the stand. That dragon tattoo curled over her collarbone caught his eye again.
“I see you’ve cleaned up for me,” she murmured dryly, brushing a book off his only chair and sliding herself onto his desk instead.
“Didn’t... didn’t know you were coming,” he muttered.
Her lips twitched. “Really?” she asked, crossing her legs. “Didn’t I say tomorrow?”
She leaned back slightly, her weight settled like she’d done this a thousand times before. Then she glanced down at the mess.
“Not a lot of room in here. I might have to sit on your lap.”
She chuckled, and he thought he saw something wicked spark behind her eyes.
He backed up into the wall instinctively.
She tilted her head. “Don’t worry, Adrian. I need you to explain something to me. That calibration model? The one you were mumbling about?”
“Y-yeah. Sure.”
Her gaze pinned him like a specimen.
She gestured at the chair between her knees. “Here. Sit.”
Big mistake.
Her legs brushed his just lightly. She hadn’t even touched him properly, and already he could feel heat crawling up his neck. Then she slipped one foot out of her sock. Bare toes met his ankle, stroking and grazing, almost absentmindedly.
“You were saying something about isotope drift?” she asked, tucking a tuft of hair behind her ear.
He cleared his throat. “Y-yeah. Uh—the drift affects the—uh—spectral balance if the—”
She yawned lazily.
Her foot moved higher, from ankle to shin. Then up to the knee.
He stiffened everywhere.
Becca's foot paused there, flexing slightly against the edge of his leg. “Mm, keep going.”
“I—If the isotope mass isn’t normalised, the calibration reads—uh—”
Her toes tapped gently. Tap. Tap. Tap. “Off?” she teased.
He nearly dropped the folder in his hand. Scrambling, he reached for the thickest book on the desk and slammed it onto his lap.
She arched one brow. “Oh?” Her smile spread slowly.
Then, without a word, she leaned forward. Her blouse gaped slightly, revealing the curve of one breast and that sinuous black dragon winding toward it. Her hand brushed his knee, as if steadying herself, but then she reached forward, her fingers curling under the edge of the book in his lap.
She paused.
He looked up, finally.
She looked at him, meaning to say: No need to hide.
She lifted the book. Rested one foot directly on his hard cock through his pants. The warm arch of her foot was soft, cradling him exactly where he needed it least. Or most.
He swallowed hard. His cock pulsed.
Becca tilted her head. “Still following? Or are we drifting again?”
He clenched the chair.
“Y-yes. I mean—I’m following. I’m—trying.”
The chair gave the softest screech as Becca nudged it with her foot, repositioning Adrian between her legs. He was still speaking—his voice low, a little tight—threading through signal inconsistencies and recalibration thresholds, clinging to logic like a buoy, until her fingers brushed the hollow of his throat to claim his breath mid-sentence.
His words scattered. His spine stilled.
“I’ll help you file the claim,” she murmured smoothly. Her eyes didn’t leave the place where his pulse betrayed him.
“The structure’s off. You’re burying your central argument beneath caveats. Fix the error margin on page four—it’s wide enough to sink peer review. Clean up the axis labels, too. You’ve inverted amplitude decay.”
Her voice was authoritative and anchored in facts.
But her touch… her touch was something else entirely. It felt like a secret language—written in slow grazes across the collarbone, in the arcs of her thumb over his skin.
She tilted her head and studied him. His pupils had widened. So ready, she thought.
“Stop overthinking,” she said, quieter now. “You write like you’re still asking permission to be right.”
Then her fingers slid into his hair, slow and unhurried, tangling in his curls. And with a gentle, undeniable pressure, she drew him down until his cheek came to rest against her lap. As if he’d always belonged there. As if his body had known this place long before he’d met her.
Adrian didn’t resist. Couldn’t, perhaps.
Something about Becca made obedience feel like becoming. His shoulders melted. His breath slowed. His hands opened, unguarded, on his thighs.
She was idly stroking his hair now, her nails tracing delicate paths from scalp to nape like a ritual she’d perfected. Her voice was a current in his ear.
“You need to reframe your findings,” she said. “Your comparative analysis on wave attenuation is buried under theoretical hedging. Strip it down. Let the numbers speak.”
Her words landed like brushstrokes across his mind. They didn’t critique. She wasn’t belittling him.
He made a low, involuntary hum of yes.
And as he sank further into her lap, his cheek nudging into the warmth of her thigh like a cat curling into sunlight, his fingers drifted, barely grazing her calf out of wonder. Like he’d forgotten she was his mentor, and remembered only that she was his.
The touch was innocent enough. But the act was not.
She tightened her grip on his hair. Just enough to make his breath catch. Enough to freeze him mid-motion.
He stilled instantly.
Becca said nothing. Just resumed the gentle stroking, as if nothing had happened. As if she hadn’t just reminded him of who he belonged to at the moment.
Adrian blinked up at her warmly.
And all the while, her fingers never stopped moving through his hair. The patterns slowed. Deepened. Grew more intimate. But never lost that edge of command.
Adrian had always imagined surrender as a quiet kind of vanishing. Like a folding of the self to make room for someone else’s will. But in Becca’s presence, surrender felt like emergence. As if all the jagged, hidden pieces of him were finally allowed to bloom beneath the warmth of her palm and the low murmur of her instruction.
There was power in this stillness. She could bend him with a whisper. And he…? He let her.
Because with her, he didn’t feel small.
He felt chosen.
She didn’t just see him. She understood him.
And more than that, she wanted him.
Not only the sharpness of his intellect or the quiet dignity he wore like armour, but the ache beneath it. The warmth. The yearning to be enough for her. To be good for her.
And in that moment, in the shelter of her lap and the unflinching clarity of her voice, Adrian felt it.
Home.
Becca’s fingers lingered on Adrian’s cheek, tracing the curve of his jaw. Her touch was almost soft, but the weight behind it thrummed with a deeper hunger. Her eyes locked onto his with an intensity that made his breath hitch. The room shrank around them.
The air was dense with her scent; maybe it was a blend of vanilla bourbon, leather, and something sharp. He couldn't quite place it.
"Softness,” she breathed, “is just the eye of the hurricane.”
Her palm pressed firmly to his chest, the steady beat of his heart echoing beneath her fingertips. The heat radiating from her skin seeped into him, grounding him even as the tension in the air wound tighter.
“But for now…” Her breath ghosted over his ear, “Rest. Because when I’m done with you, Adrian…”
She paused. A tantalising smirk curled at the edge of her mouth, the kind that promised exquisite destruction.
“…You won’t recognise yourself.”
Without another word, she turned, the coat forgotten on the stands. And as she walked away, the faint click of her heels was the only sound in the charged silence.
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