Chapter 9 Antimatter #3
She hesitates, and I read everything I need to know in that single pause. “No, it’s not. Because I understand sexually intrusive thoughts are a symptom of the disorder. And while these thoughts are typically obsessional and rarely acted on, they can still be debilitating.”
The falling dark does little to hinder her sharp gaze from slicing right through me. Twice now, my little archer has slinked past the weakest area of my defenses to sink her arrow.
“Maybe it would be less painful if you did punch me,” I mutter sullenly. Still, I can’t take my eyes off her, even as she peers right down to the sick core of me.
Her delicate brows knit together, a frown touching her lips. “Therapy can be painful, but with psychoanalysis and the right medication—”
“I have it under control.” I bite off each word as I mentally chew hers, an echo banging through my mind like crashing piano chords. Control control control.
I tap in sequence—one, one, two, three, five, one—each beat timed with the blink of my eyes, my left foot striking the ground in count. And because there is always the need for symmetry, I repeat the ritual with the right.
Her smile tries for consoling, but she assesses me in that way doctors do.
Sympathetic. Pitying.
“I have no doubt you’ve researched the condition thoroughly,” she says. “But it’s never as simple as one symptom or one obsession. I fear a mind like yours is being tortured.”
“Jesus,” I whisper harshly, letting a low chuckle escape. What hearing that word on her lips rouses to the surface, torture doesn’t come close.
She arches an eyebrow. “Did I say something amusing?”
“No at all,” I say, though keeping my impulses leashed around her is becoming exhausting. My muscles feel stretched, strained too tight over my bones.
If she could only hear the chorus of dark thoughts right now. All I can think about is grabbing that infuriating scarf and dragging her closer, sealing my mouth over hers. Shoving my hand up her skirt to feel how tight she can grip my fingers as she moans softly into my mouth.
I blink hard, fighting the aggressive imagery back into the shadowy trenches of my mind. Frustration liquifies beneath my skin, molten.
“It’s been reported your outbursts have been happening more frequently.”
“By whom?”
“Everyone,” she says, fucking relentless. “Even before the incident with Dr. Prescott and the rumors involving the particle accelerator, you were making your colleagues uncomfortable.”
“Working alone remedies that, doesn’t it?” I say, teeth gritted against the heat flaring under my clothes.
“Yes, isolating yourself can work…for a time,” she says, pressing the matter. “But it will likely only result in increased obsessive thoughts. Ruminating more on fears. Reinforcing compulsive behaviors. Maybe even lead to a detachment from reality.”
I smile at this, grabbing the knot at my collar to loosen my tie. “The study of space itself is bleak, lonely. Isolating.” I meet and hold her gaze a measure too long before shifting my attention to the fountain.
“Care to elaborate?”
I watch water trickle over Urania, allowing the guiding muse to steer my thoughts.
“On the ocean, lonely sailors swore they saw mermaids. Forced to observe in solitude, early astronomers believed they saw angels in space. Whether adrift at sea or the vast cosmic ocean, our obsessions have a tendency to make us a little detached.”
She tilts her head. “Do you see hallucinations in space, Orion?”
I look at her, stoic. “As of today, I’ve only ever seen one angel.”
She drops her gaze, her hair falling alongside her face to shield her profile. The urgency to grasp her neck and force those gleaming eyes back on me is a hostile demand slamming through my veins.
“Besides,” I say, “can’t really blame them for losing their shit. A woman can tempt the sanest man mad.”
Her lips curve into the slightest smile. “Sexual deprivation can make a man lose his shit for sure,” she retorts, less than clinical.
I run my tongue over my teeth, watching her. “Careful, little archer, that fiery nature of yours is showing.” I grin with smug satisfaction.
Her mouth presses into a tight line, those pretty eyes losing some of their spark. “Look,” she says. “Banner mentioned you’ve suffered some loss. I don’t know the details, but I do know isolating yourself won’t protect you from that pain. If anything, it only prolongs the healing process.”
My jaw tightens, anger crashing through me in a fierce wave. “Fucking Leo. He’s always so helpful,” I say, sarcasm thick.
Collins frowns. “I overstepped,” she says apologetically.
I ease out a tense breath. From the start, she’s been an anomaly. Being here with her now was supposed to satisfy my curiosity—not allow her to probe my wounds.
“This is why beautiful things are admired from afar,” I mutter beneath my breath.
Confusion draws her brows together, regret flickering beneath the defiant fire in her eyes. Though it may burn bright, I recognize a sadness in her fury—delicate hairline fractures where dark filaments slither into the light.
And I decide that it’s better if I learn nothing else about her.
“My point is, any great discovery is made alone, Dr. Holbrook. Working in isolation is not only practical, it’s necessary.” My point effectively made, I stand to leave.
“Wait—we’re not done.”
“We’re done.”
“You’re angry,” she says, stopping me.
“I’m bored.”
“You’re lying.”
Forced to face her, I stare down, a flame licking through my viscera. “You should understand the nature of my intrusive thoughts enough to know that’s unlikely,” I seethe the words at her.
She sits forward. “I have a theory about what you want, Orion.”
“Not to sound crass, Collins, but you have no fucking idea what—”
“You want to touch me.”
It’s not framed in a suggestive manner, though the sliver of atmosphere separating us sparks all the same. I swallow, my hand clenching at the idea until it burns. I reach out and grip her scarf, my eyes devouring her as I let the words trapped at the base of my throat scorch: Alarmingly so.
The slightest tremble rolls through her, and I can sense an unstable current vibrating just beneath.
“Out there on the shore, you said you can’t touch me. Not won’t. That’s a decisive difference,” she says, her voice gentle. “You thought I was worried you might try. But you read me wrong.” She swallows. “In fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
I release her scarf.
“My approach might be a bit frightening,” she continues, “but exposure therapy is highly effective for touch aversion. Gradually exposing you to what triggers obsessions. Helping to resist compulsions used to cope.”
As I stare down, I’m caught in her blink pattern, and a knot tightens beneath my sternum as I fight to resist her.
Fuck, she’s like the very embodiment of poena aeterna sent to torment me.
I could lean over her, and I do. I could trap her against the bench, and I do. I could collar my hand around her throat, taste her lips…
My jaw clenches until the pressure aches. “It’s not that I can’t touch you. It’s that I shouldn’t.”
Saying the words aloud flays my chest wide open. Collins should be terrified of me getting my hands on her.
I lean in, my mouth within an inch of hers, and snag the length of her scarf. I bring it to my nose and inhale her seductive scent, then gently unwind the soft material from around her neck. “Just try not to be so damn tempting, angel.”
I deliver the warning with a wink as I stuff the garment into my jacket. Before I pull away, my gaze lands on a tender bruise along the warm column of her neck. A dark note pulses through my vessels, and something feral and possessive snaps taut.
The demand to know who put those marks on her claws at my throat. My vision darkens as the savage urge to rip a spine from a body seizes me.
Collins adjusts the collar of her blouse, effectively breaking me free of my violent thoughts. “The only way to overcome touch aversion is to touch.” Her voice lowers to a breathy cadence as she adds, “Intimately.”
A vicious craving whispers from the shadowy corner of my mind, thrumming painfully against my skull. Blood rushes to my groin, thoughts darkening beyond pitch at the deviant things I could do to her in the dark right now.
The way she slightly draws back, her lips parting, she senses the dangerous shift.
“Did you get what you need from me?” I say, my voice a gruff demand.
She swallows, her bright gaze locked with mine. “Not even close.”
A callous smile curls my mouth. Summoning just enough willpower to cage the ruthless urges, I break away, stalking toward my bike with quick strides.
I don’t have to look back to know she’s still sitting on that bench. Thinking. Breathing. Tearing my structured world apart just by existing.
Sometimes, the anomalies can really fuck with your head.
There’s another word for obsession:
Crush.
The unknown is so goddamn beautiful and alluring until you’re being annihilated in the wake of an antimatter collision.
Once it’s begun, the process is violent and unstoppable.
I shove my helmet on and start the engine with a roar, drowning out the lingering notes of her haunting melody.
If I could keep her at a distance, maybe I could do this.
But after holding her close, knowing how right her body feels against mine, breathing in her addictive scent that burns my throat with the hunger to taste her…
Fuck, I won’t survive the next six weeks. Every second I’m forced to be near her, craving her until the moment the sun goes dark, will be goddamn agony.
I twist the throttle hard, and my bike lurches forward.
Maybe it makes me weak, but Collins can’t remain at Stonehurst until then. She’s giving me no choice.
And yet, stubbornly, even defiantly, the scientist in me wants to test her theory—to see if it’s as simple as combing through my mind with a little therapy and a hot fuck.
“Christ,” I mutter, gunning the engine harder to escape my thoughts.
Honestly, the outcome would be simple enough to reach. Either I’m on the brink of discovery—
Or I’m nothing more than a killer.