Chapter 21
21
Peter looks wary as he steps inside my apartment at the requested time. He doesn’t say a word as he drops his duffel bag onto the floor while he kicks off his sneakers onto the mat before dropping his keys in the bowl situated in the entryway.
“Would you like to eat first?” I gesture toward the kitchen island where the dinner I procured for us tonight awaits. Chicken Marsala with roasted root vegetables is a much healthier choice than late-night pizza. Bonus—a fancier meal feels more date-like even if we’re consuming it in the comfort of home.
“No.” He shakes his head slowly then puts his hands on his hips. He’s wearing those glorious sweatpants again. “I want to know what the hell Chet Goulding did to you this afternoon.”
“He pissed me off is what he did,” I mutter as I stride into the kitchen.
I’m unsurprised that Peter knows I’ve been angry all afternoon. I didn’t try to hide my emotions when I returned to the office after that awful business lunch. I let them simmer and stew and bubble and boil and propel me to send a follow-up email requesting the security logs and a list of Chet’s enemies. I’m anticipating a rather long list based on my observations from undergrad.
I have a life to live and science to do and a wonderful, brilliant man to relearn all over again. In fact, I’m going to learn far more than the last time.
I sigh wistfully. I do so love learning.
Peter pulls me away from plating our dinners, gently turning me to face him. “I’m really trying to tamp down my ego, but my control is hanging by a thread. At least tell me that he didn’t put his hands on you or hurt you in any way, and I’ll let it go.”
I inhale a deep breath before exhaling my anxiety as I run my hands up Peter’s muscular arms to ground myself. “I don’t want to play his games. I don’t want to lie to you. We’ve been through that already and look where it got us.”
Peter stares at me with his patented frown and a deep furrow in his brow. “What are you saying? How have you been lying to me?”
I find it interesting that he doesn’t put space between us as he asks me these loaded questions. He’s not running. Not the way I did.
I lick my lips then confess, “When I accepted this position at Chester, I had no idea what I was really hired for.”
“What were you really hired for?” Peter questions carefully.
“I was hired to uncover a mole in the department who’s been selling prototype designs to the highest bidder.”
“What?” His eyes bulge. He steps away from me, out of my reach, before giving me his back. When he turns around again, his hand is plastered over his mouth. He removes it only to repeat with more emphasis, “What?”
I continue serving our dinners onto plates as I fill him in on why I was really hired. I scoff as I spill rice onto the countertop. There is absolutely no logical reason for my hands to be shaking. “He’s convinced engineers leave creative fingerprints on their designs. I explained to him that’s not how it works, but he wouldn’t be deterred.”
Peter steps into my personal space so closely that I feel the warmth of his body against my side. His closeness sends shivers of awareness along my skin. “Does he have a primary suspect, or is this an all-encompassing investigation?”
“He had a primary suspect,” I say before meeting Peter’s gaze. “You.”
“Me?” He laces the simple monosyllabic question with so much emotion—shock, anger, disappointment.
I nod, not breaking his swirling gaze.
He swipes at his mouth with a rough hand again. “You said ‘had.’ Past tense. I’m no longer Chet’s primary suspect?”
I shake my head.
“Why?” His gaze bounces around my face at a rapid pace.
“Because I’ve already cleared you.”
I don’t say it with pride. My stomach twists and turns at the admission. If Peter feels even a fraction of the anguish I felt when he betrayed me, then we will be over again before we’ve even truly begun.
“How?” he demands. “How have you cleared me? What was the nature of your investigation?”
I explain what I’ve done. We sit down to dinner at the kitchen island rather than on the couch in front of the TV. I don’t bother explaining why I asked to search his apartment when we were recuperating. I’m not going to insult his intelligence.
Peter pours us each a glass of wine in between asking thoughtful questions about the progress of my investigation and the details of the illicit sales.
I gaze at him in wonder when he slides a glass of Pinot toward me. “You’re not angry. ”
He shakes his head then sips his wine. “Concerned? Yes. Angry? No.”
“Why?” I ask, genuinely flabbergasted at his calm reaction to everything I’m confessing to him.
He nods slightly, opens his mouth, inhales deeply, closes his mouth, then shakes his head. “You think I should react the way you did? At MIT? You expect me to be angry and to storm out of your apartment? To never speak to you again?”
I nod then gulp from my wine glass until he gently pries it away from my lips.
“Stop,” he murmurs. “That won’t ease the discomfort you’re feeling.”
“Should I lift weights instead?”
He smirks. “If you want to, then I can teach you what I’ve learned.”
Peter knows exactly what to say to turn me on. Offers of new knowledge rank very high on my list of aphrodisiacs.
He threads our fingers together on top of the marble island then stares at that spot as he says slowly, “At first, yes. I was angry. I felt betrayed and lied to.” He lifts his gaze to mine. “Then, I realized I was being given an opportunity that most people never get.”
“What was that?”
“To be able to truly experience what you must have felt when you thought I’d betrayed your trust.” He lifts our hands, so he can press a firm kiss to my skin. “I am so sorry, Elise. I never meant to hurt you.”
“Just as you believe I was not following orders to hurt you?” I hope aloud.
A hint of a smile pulls at his mouth. “I genuinely considered you may have taken on this mission as a means of revenge. Then, I realized something else.” A more familiar frown darkens his expression. “I have an advantage that you didn’t in the past. ”
“What’s that?” My voice sounds embarrassingly breathless.
He turns our hands over and back, studying our joining like the most complex spectrograph before meeting my gaze. “You proved your feelings for me in spite of the betrayal. In a way that’s impossible to ignore.”
“I did?” I scrunch my nose in confusion, but nothing leaps out in my mind as irrefutable proof of my feelings for him. “How? When?”
He smiles. It’s soft but genuine. “You didn’t let me die when I was delirious with fever. You rescued me, even knowing I might have been the person you were working to expose.”
“I already knew,” I confess. “I knew it couldn’t have been you.”
He shakes his head. “No, you didn’t.” He tips his head as he considers. “At least, you weren’t certain I wasn’t the sell out.”
“What makes you say that?” I ask.
His smile grows wider. “You didn’t search my apartment until the day before you left it.”
“I told myself that’s why I was going to your apartment,” I admit with a frown that I borrow from him.
He chuckles before kissing my knuckles then my wrist then further up the inside of my arm. “I’m sure you did.”
“Why aren’t you angry about that?”
“Because I spent years learning your language,” he insists softly. “You don’t waste time or energy on meaningless words. You show your true feelings through actions.”
“This is the hypothesis you’ve been testing.”
He nods. “I think…I think maybe those people who hurt you weren’t necessarily assholes as I first assumed. They simply weren’t operating on your wavelength. They were necessarily drawn to you because you’re beautiful and brilliant, but you never reacted in the ways they’ve been conditioned by society to ex pect. So, they did what any self-preserving animal does. They moved on to easier prey.”
I wrinkle my nose with distaste. “I don’t want to be anyone’s prey.”
“No,” he agrees. “You don’t. You want to be someone’s equal.”
“Why do you say that like it’s a bad thing?”
His tone leaves little room for assumptions.
“Because that’s not the way society works,” he says sadly. “Social norms dictate a defined hierarchy. Everyone has to fit in their nice little boxes, whatever those boxes may be labeled as.”
“I hate those labeled boxes.”
“I know you do.” He chuckles. “It’s because you don’t neatly fit into any of them.” He releases my hand only to brush his knuckles softly against my cheek. “That’s why you’ve had such painful experiences in the past.”
“What about you? You’re a freaking genius, too. Why has your experience been so vastly different than mine?”
He tips his head to and fro as he rises from his stool. “It has, and it hasn’t. Would you like more wine?”
“You just told me not to drink to numb my discomfort!”
He grins as he shakes the wine bottle in his grasp. “This is our version of foreplay, darling. Deep, existential conversation fueled by a soft buzz. We’re not drinking to numb ourselves. We’re indulging to allow ourselves to fall further down the rabbit hole without putting up our usual walls.”
I hold out my wine glass, acutely aware that I might actually fit into some of society’s boxes. Big muscly man? Yes, please. The mention of foreplay instead of getting down and dirty with the main act? I’ll take two of those. I soothe my bruised ego by reminding myself that I prefer Peter’s glasses on during intercourse.
The man makes glasses so utterly sexy .
And yes. His idea of foreplay checks all of my sapiosexual boxes.
When he reclaims his seat beside me with an equally full wine glass, I say, “Don’t think you’ve bribed me into forgetting this train of thought. Why has your experience been the same and also different from mine?”
“I hoped you wouldn’t forget that.” He hums as he takes a deep drink from his glass. The sound goes straight to the throbbing space between my thighs. “Do you want the good news first or the bad news?”
Damn him. He’s good. My panties are soaked, and he’s barely touched me. He gets me aroused within an inch of my logical reasoning from wordplay alone.
“The bad news.” Better to get it out of the way now.
He concedes with a demure tip of his chin toward the floor. “I was born with a penis as opposed to your vagina. Society doesn’t expect me to breed other than sowing my wild oats. I have nothing to lose if you get pregnant.”
Ohhhhh. I do not use this phrase lightly—but fuck him. Fuck him very much. I’m more of an animal than I care to admit because all this talk of breeding me has me on the verge of spontaneously combusting. I’m not even certain that I want children, but it doesn’t matter.
It’s not my fault. I’m a genius, and I’m also human. Humans are pre-programmed to be biologically disposed to procreating the species.
In an effort to control my wayward libido, I ask with forced casualness, “And the good news?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t lie when we played Cards Against Humanity. I was a so-called virgin until I slept with you at the outlier age of twenty-five. Wasn’t really in a hurry to get it over with. Didn’t care as much as society says I should care about it. From my perspective, any orgasm from my hand would accomplish the same goal just as well.”
“What changed?” I vividly remember a conversation with Chet in the past where I thought the same exact things that Peter’s confessing.
“Me,” he admits with a self-deprecating smile and a subtle shake of his head. “You changed me. I wanted your pleasure more than I wanted my own. I wanted you to want me for things I couldn’t give you in academic competition.”
A smile spreads across my lips, no matter how hard I fight it.
“Peter,” I admonish. “That’s so misogynistic.”
He barks out a sudden laugh. “I know, but I can’t help myself. You also proved me wrong if it makes you feel any better. I always thought an orgasm was an orgasm, but one provided by you was infinitely better than anything I could do for myself.”
I shake my head, bite back another smile, then push away my plate. I’m not hungry for food anymore. Not in the strictest sense of the word anyway.
I meet his equally hungry gaze as I say, “No more lies. No more social norms. No more attraction phase of mating. I want to experience you, Peter. Without any pretense.”
He strokes his index finger along the line of my jaw in an erotically slow motion. “Be careful what you wish for. We always think we want what we can’t have.”
“Prove me wrong,” I challenge. “You would be the first.”
“I’m dying to be the only,” he promises.