Chapter 5: : Chapter 5

Flick, snap. Flick, snap.

I press my teeth into my bottom lip and try to crush the grin that begs to ignite on my face. I fail to keep it at bay. I re-read Hugh’s message for the third time this morning, excitement and nerves zipping through my fingers as I fidget with the lighter in my grip.

I open and close the stainless-steel lid with metronomic precision until the calendar reminder chimes a fifteen minute warning for the meeting.

Flick, snap. Flick, snap.

My grin takes on a wicked edge.

I pick up my office phone and dial Madeleine’s extension. She answers on the second ring.

“Bonjour, ma belle,” she says and I roll my eyes. She’s about as French as a stale baguette from the QwikFill gas station on 2nd Ave. Madeleine was born in fucking Milwaukee, for Christsakes. But I plaster that smile back on my face. They can hear your sunshine through the phone, my mom once said when I’d gone with her to ‘bring your kid to work day’, dutifully writing down her pearls of wisdom as I watched her navigate her daily routine as Ashgrove’s top real estate agent. Smiles sell, baby!

“Hey Madeleine,” I chime. “Are you coming to the meeting?”

“Of course,” she replies, an edge of mystery deepening her voice. “Any idea what it’s about?”

I’ve got a viable theory. “No. None at all. Hey, quick favor if you have a sec?”

“Sure, what’s up?”

“Can you swing by Jack’s office to grab Hugh’s copy of Statistics and Probability in Forensic Anthropology? I passed Hugh in the hall earlier and he asked if I had it, but the last I saw it was in Jack’s office,” I say, obviously leaving out the part where I took the textbook from Jack’s shelf while he was in class. “Since you’re just down the hall—”

“It’s no problem, of course,” Madeleine interjects. The mystery is gone from her voice, replaced with bright and lyrical notes of anticipation. “I’ll go right now. See you at the meeting.”

She barely manages to say goodbye before disconnecting the call in her haste.

Flick, snap.

I rise from my chair with a long stretch toward the ceiling, warming the muscles in my back that are still tight from my recent clandestine activities. With a deep, cleansing sigh, I grab the book from my desk drawer and pocket the lighter, then stride toward the conference room down the hall.

The windows of the long room face the Bass Research Fields, the overcast afternoon light reflecting on the polished oval table. Leather swivel chairs that still smell new are tucked neatly around it, the glass whiteboard at the end of the room streak-free and gleaming. I’m the first of the faculty to arrive and I head to a side table where carafes of fresh coffee and tea and a tray of pastries have just been laid out, pouring a cup of black coffee as I try to force myself not to calculate how much of my hard-earned funding is diverted to Hugh’s frivolous meeting expenses.

“Cannon always comes through with the strawberry danishes,” Brad says as stops next to me, brushing my hip with his fingers on his way to reach for the pastry tray, unraveling the plastic wrap to withdraw a sticky danish.

One thousand, one hundred and fifty-two dollars and thirty-four cents annually, my inner voice proclaims.

Christ.

“Yeah,” I say, gripping the lighter in my pocket. “Maybe he could try not ordering in from O’Toole’s for a change. Shit adds up,” I grumble. Brad only chuckles around the flaky pastry already stuffing his maw.

“But the strawberry danishes,” he pleads around another bite that consumes more than half the pastry.

I roll my eyes but say nothing in reply, turning with my coffee in hand as the sound of voices pulls my attention to the door. Hugh enters next with Joy following close behind, then a moment later Madeleine with a toss of a grateful smile in my direction. Dr. Sorensen is on her heels, his irritation roiling beneath the smooth veneer of his slate gray eyes and pressed black shirt and perfectly tailored pants. His gaze hooks on mine before darting to the book in my hand. When our eyes meet once more, his narrow.

“Dr. Cannon, I found your textbook,” I say with my most charming smile as I approach our weathered boss with the book extended. “Dr. Sorensen must have left it in the staff room. I found it on top of the microwave.”

Dr. Cannon thanks me while grumbling about his mortal enemy: The Microwave. He swears the innocuous appliance shocked him two months ago when he was heating his cup-a-soup, a feat which has yet to be repeated. General consensus among the department is that he microwaved the metal spoon.

I give Jack a sickly sweet smile. His glacial glare turns lethal.

I’ve decided that he’s much more fun as my nemesis than the friend who refuses to thaw.

I move back just enough from the table for the other faculty members entering the room to file in line for drinks and pastries, the nervous energy crackling within the conversations that flood the space. I say a few words of small talk to those coworkers passing in line and sip my coffee as Jack draws ever nearer. The temperature of the room seems to plummet the closer he comes and yet my skin grows hotter. A lick of heat crawls from my chest, roaming up my neck, latching on to my pulse, skirting over my jaw to creep into the flesh of my cheeks. The first time Jack’s eyes leave mine, it’s to watch my throat bob as I swallow.

“Dr. Sorensen,” I say as he draws to a halt before me. As usual, I don’t think he’s going to respond.

I withdraw my hand from my pocket.

Flick, snap.

Jack’s eyes narrow to thin slits. His jaw tics. The scent of vetiver rises between us.

“Good morning, Dr. Roth.”

Flick, snap.

“You should have a pastry,” I whisper as I lean a little closer, that earthy, woodsy scent of vetiver flooding my nostrils. “You’re being such a good boy. What’s the point of clicker training without a reward?”

With a final snap, I slip the lighter back into the safety of my pocket, my saccharine smile following Jack as he stops next to my shoulder. His eyes scour my face, carving a path through the color still warming my cheeks, dipping down to my lips before they come to rest on the column of my throat. “I’m not very food motivated,” he says, his voice so quiet among the chatter of our colleagues that only I can hear him.

I snort a derisive huff of a laugh. “Is this your weak attempt at seduction, Jack?”

He leans a fraction closer, his arm mere millimeters from my shoulder. “If I wanted to seduce you, I’d have you on your knees right now in the cold room with that treacherous little mouth of yours wrapped around my cock, begging me for more,” he whispers.

For a heartbeat, everything in the room disappears.

Everything except Jack.

All that remains is his cool gaze trapped on my neck, my pulse answering with a surge of blood in my jugular, drumming like Morse code. A cruel smile tips up one corner of Jack’s lips as his shoulder lifts with a disinterested shrug. “Perhaps your throat is just better suited to other carnal pleasures.”

Jack steps away from me, sidling up to the table to pour his coffee.

An ember twists in my chest like it’s burning through wood. I should want to take my drink and pour it down the front of his pants. But I don’t. An entirely different kind of scenario plays out in my head, one where we’re in the cold storage room, where my knees are numbed by the frost on the floor, where my nipples are painfully tight against my bra. One where I own Jack Sorensen’s pleasure, no matter how tightly he grips my hair or how hard he fucks my mouth. One where he bows to me, even though I’m the one on their knees.

I take a long sip of my scalding coffee to burn that imagery right out of my mind.

He’s a dick. He’s a dick he’s a dick he’s a dick. You like dicks but not that kind. So bust out your arsenal and get the fucker back.

“Brad,” I call above the chatter of coworkers. Jack’s presence at the table behind me is as biting and cold as the aura of a glacier. Brad looks up from his favorite spot at the conference table, his second danish suspended at his open mouth. “I hear congratulations are in order.”

Brad’s eyebrows raise in question. I don’t have to turn around to feel the icy kiss of Jack’s gaze land on my skin.

“Your proposal for the joint field research trip on the effects of groundwater recharge on the distribution of skeletal remains for the ICFS grant…? It was accepted, didn’t you know?”

Of course he didn’t know. I know, because my friend Dr. Hargrave is on the review committee and she told me yesterday. I may have also persuaded her to not accept Jack’s much superior proposal on burial depth and decomposition rates.

Words of congratulations flow around the room and Brad looks genuinely delighted by the news. He catches my eye for just a moment and I smile, but it’s only Jack who seems to notice the devious glint in my eye when he stops at my side.

“No trip to Madrid for me this year, I assume,” he whispers.

When I turn my smile toward him, it’s fucking dazzling. “I guess not. Suck my sweet pussy lips, Jack.”

I walk away and take my place at the table just as Hugh calls the department to have a seat. Jack sits across from me, his expression unreadable. If he’s anxious about what’s coming, he gives nothing away.

“Thank you all for meeting on such short notice,” Hugh says as he takes a seat at the head of the table. The ever-present bags under his eyes seem a little puffier, their shadows a little deeper. His brows furrow as he casts his gaze around the table. “We have a serious issue to discuss this morning. One of our master’s students, Mason, has been reported missing.”

Murmurs and gasps rise around the table, my own among them, with Brad’s voice loudest of all. I catch his gaze and mimic his expression. Wide eyes. Open mouth. Touch of fear. I take it one step further and put my hand over my heart. I don’t dare look at Jack, whose presence looms across the table with the gravitational pull of a small planet.

“When was Mason last seen?” Brad asks.

“Thursday afternoon,” Hugh replies. “He’s been working part-time at Louie’s and didn’t show for his lunch shift on the weekend. When he didn’t appear for his shift last night either and no one could reach him, he was reported missing. A public announcement is going out now.” A heavy sigh passes from Hugh’s lips. He leans forward, lacing his fingers, his gaze passing over the room of whispers and worry. “A missing persons search will commence here at the Bass Fields, among other potential locations where Mason frequents. There will be no field research until further notice. I’ve spoken to the police department, and search parties will be arriving any moment. I’ve offered the use of Lecture Hall B as a location for their base of operations.”

“The other students, what should we be telling them?” Joy asks, her eyes glassy beneath the unforgiving lights.

“If they have any information about Mason’s whereabouts, anything, they should alert the police immediately. Two counselors will also be here shortly for mental health support for students and staff.”

Questions and murmurs volley through the room, discussion turning to how to best look after the other students when it becomes clear that Hugh can’t or won’t make further comments on the nature of Mason’s disappearance. The weight of Jack’s gaze beckons me like witchcraft, summoning me to meet his eyes, but I don’t submit. The more I avoid looking at him, the heavier his presence looms, and I relish every delicious moment of his tension. But I’m not the only one aware of his polar aura across the table. Brad darts scrutinous glances in Jack’s direction until some sugar-induced frenetic energy spurs him out of his chair and he starts pacing by the windows. I think he’s about to put a voice to all his suspicions about the discrepancies in the body donation program and Jack’s potential involvement when there’s a knock at the door.

“Come in,” Hugh calls, weariness already creeping into his voice with the stress of this meeting.

The door opens.

My past comes crashing into my present as Eric Hayes enters the room.

And I finally meet Jack’s eyes.