Page 36 of Dose

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“Correct. I have literature, one trial, and no idea what comes after it. My nervous system panics over dessert.” Her voice remains steady. Her hands do not. She lets me see the tremor instead of hiding it. “But I know what wanting feels like now. You gave me the baseline. And I want⁠—”

She stops.

Then she abandons the sentence and closes the distance herself.

She kisses me.

It is a disaster. Her aim is off by a centimeter. Her nose collides with mine, and her mouth lands too hard at the wrong angle—closed, desperate, shaking. It is the kiss of a woman who has done this once and never initiated it, clumsy and overcommitted and entirely hers.

The last of my restraint tears loose.

The sound I make is rough and animal. Then one fist is in her hair, correcting the angle, while my other arm bands around her waist and pulls her away from the bench. Her body hits mine. I take over the kiss. Her gasp opens her mouth, and I taste chamomile and heat, swallow the broken sound she gives me, and go back for the next one.

She learns fast. She fists both hands in my shirt and kisses me harder while I walk her backward. I turn us before we reach the shelving and put her against the bare wall beside the secured reagent cabinet.

Fifteen years of discipline and five cold showers in two days burn away. I kiss her deep and graceless, my hand tightening in her hair until she moans into my mouth.

She pulls back half an inch, breathing hard, lips wet and swollen.

“Data point,” she whispers, shaking against me but still holding on. “The reaction is exothermic.”

The joke should loosen my grip. It does not.

“Isla.” My voice is rough enough that she goes still. “The controlled rate is over.”

15

ISLA

The controlled rate is over.

Then his mouth is on mine again, and the words become the whole climate of the room.

His hands drop from my hair to the hem of my shirt—his shirt. There are clothes of my own folded upstairs now, but I chose this one—and he pulls it over my head in a single motion that scatters my ponytail and my composure.

Cold air. His eyes on me.

No one has ever looked at my body like this. Examined it, yes. Assessed it, weighed it, logged its vitals on a form. But Theon looks at me as though he has spent years wanting something he never expected to have. His breath leaves him rough and uneven, and I stand beneath the annex light with my heart trying to escape through my ribs.

“Theon—”

His mouth finds my throat, and the sentence dies there. He kisses the line of my neck, my collarbone, the slope of my shoulder. There is nothing careful about his hunger now. His teeth graze my skin. His hands span my waist and grip, walking me backward out of the annex and toward the bed.

The backs of my knees meet the mattress. He follows me down.

His weight settles over me. He pulls at the drawstring of my trousers, drags them down my legs, and kisses his way from my sternum to the soft skin beneath my navel. I am moving toward something I have never done, and he does not know that.

Or perhaps he does.

I cannot leave that unreported.

“Theon.” My voice comes out breathless and small. “Point of order.”

He lifts his head. His hair has fallen over his forehead, his eyes nearly black beneath it. He goes still at once. All that hunger, suspended because I spoke.

“I’ve never done this.” I say it before my face can close. “Any of it beyond kissing. I have no practical experience, and you should know your co-investigator’s qualifications before⁠—”