Chapter 13 #2
Yasmine tried to walk back, to put an inch of space between them, but the computer table stopped her, and she nearly tripped.
Bella grabbed her by the waist, steadying her.
Even though she knew her family was here ahead of schedule, even though she knew the thing that needed all of her attention was at the bottom of a microscope, Bella couldn’t help but look longingly at Yasmine’s lips, and make stupid promises.
“Don’t be such a downer. It’s going to be fine.
I’m going to help you,” she said breathily.
She tried to wrench her hands off of Yasmine’s waist, but they stubbornly stayed there, digging into her leather belt.
“I have some pretty compelling theories around symbiotic fungi and biological immortality that I’ve wanted to test for years, but I’ve never had the finances or the equipment. ”
At that, Yasmine seemed to free herself from the mental riptide she had been flailing around in. She looked up at Bella and took a shaky breath in, winding her hands around Bella’s waist in a way she tried not to label as possessive.
“And what would you need for that research?” Yasmine whispered.
Thankfully, even the burn of Yasmine’s fingertips couldn’t wipe the script Bella had been rehearsing ever since she arrived on campus.
“A genome sequencer. An electron microscope…”
Yasmine’s eyebrows lifted, but her grip only tightened.
“That already puts the budget into the millions.”
“I know,” Bella said.
Yasmine studied her face thoughtfully.
“Okay,” she said after a beat, like it was nothing. “Whatever resources you need, whatever funding it requires, you can have it.”
Taken aback, Bella whispered, “Really? Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Yasmine threaded her fingers through the belt loops on Bella’s jeans, and pulled her slightly closer. Bella wasn’t sure she was even aware she was doing it.
“But,” Yasmine said, her nails scratching around Bella’s waist. “There is a condition.”
Bella inhaled. “Yes?”
Yasmine took a moment, bit her lip. The sea urchin behind her head bobbed around in its watery cage.
“You have to be right."
Bella narrowed her eyes, lost. "I have to be... right?"
"Yes. If I waste my time and money on your ideas, and they don’t produce an actual resolution, I will drop you from my lab,” Yasmine said, in a completely measured tone. “If you try to undermine my goal or work for your own end in any way, you will never see the inside of a lab again.”
That shocked Bella like a slap across the face. Not one that hurt, though. On the contrary, she was almost delighted.
How nice it was to finally see under the charitable mask.
Still, given those extreme terms, it would have been a much smarter call to tell her no.
Bella had offers waiting for her at Harvard and at Yale.
She wouldn’t be able to access the scale of funding that Yasmine was offering elsewhere, but she could probably work her way up to acquiring it over several years.
But after what she saw last night, the conservative approach was no longer an option.
Her family was here, in New York City, four years ahead of schedule. She probably had a week at most before they found her, and a month before they figured out that she was trying to rid herself of the one thing that made her valuable to them.
“Counter-offer,” Bella said, adrenaline edging her on. “If I deliver you the results you’re looking for in less than a month, you wire eighty million dollars into my bank account.”
When Yasmine’s eyebrows flew up, Bella immediately wished she’d demanded less. But then again, if she wanted to stay off the radar, she needed the money to do so. It was very expensive to stay completely anonymous, and her family was annoyingly good at turning up unasked. See: right now.
“Less than a month,” Yasmine said, her breath falling cold on Bella’s lips. “That’s impossible. It undermines my opinion of you to even offer it.”
Bella would have believed that—but Yasmine’s fingers were digging even deeper into her back, and her eyes were colored faintly red.
This Russian roulette game they were playing was… turning her on.
And fuck, it was turning Bella on, too. It really shouldn’t have, given she was the one with a gun to her forehead and Yasmine was the one holding it. But still.
Bella reached up, tucking a hair behind Yasmine’s ear. “Yes or no, Yasmine.”
“Well—let me just clarify the terms,” Yasmine breathed. “Eighty million dollars if you give me a way to extend human life in under a month. Zero dollars and no career if you’re fucking with me.”
Bella smiled, the white noise of the pipes and the filters and the tanks vibrating like hard bass around them. She nudged her nose against Yasmine’s and nodded.
“I find I work better under pressure,” she joked. “If you’d actually read the application I submitted, you would have known that.”
For a moment, Yasmine didn’t move. Her lips just lingered open a centimeter away from Bella’s own.
“You are a really strange human being,” Yasmine said slowly, raising her hand to cup Bella’s face. “And it’s definitely a liability that I like you so much.”
Bella’s chest tightened.
“So, you have a deal,” Yasmine finished.
She leaned in, placing a soft, gentle kiss to Bella’s lips, one that was so much worse than if she’d just fucked her.
Bella had expected something hard and quick, a messy culmination, not that.
“Now, let’s talk about this whole fungi thing.
Because I’m going to be honest with you, I fail to see the connection between immortality and mold.
But eighty million dollars says otherwise, so. ”
Yasmine pushed against Bella’s chest lightly, slipping out of the embrace and back towards her computer.
Bella just stared after her, watching as Yasmine opened Google Scholar, as if she hadn’t just kissed her, or threatened her career, or done anything strange at all.
And all Bella could do was sit next to her, direct her towards a better search engine, and pretend like the guillotine blade wasn’t closing in.
Because if they were actually going to do this, then Bella was going to have to tell her everything.