Chapter 23
Céline
I made it halfway down the hallway before I remembered there was blood on my mouth.
Just a small red smear at the corner of my lip, dark against my flushed skin and almost elegant if I looked at it from far enough away.
The kind of thing that could easily be mistaken for lipstick by anyone who hadn’t just been fucked raw over a professor’s desk.
I stopped outside the women’s restroom at the end of the corridor and stared at my reflection in the narrow mirror above the sink.
My hair hung damp from the rain, loose strands clinging to my cheeks like guilty fingerprints.
My coat sat crooked on one shoulder. My lips looked swollen.
They did not look violated. They looked passionately, viciously kissed. Claimed.
I gripped the edge of the sink so hard my knuckles whitened.
For several long seconds, I simply stood there beneath the harsh restroom light while the rain tapped faintly against the frosted window and the entire world narrowed down.
Vincent’s blood. My lips. The memory of his hands holding my face steady while he kissed me like he wanted to devour every lie I had ever told.
The small broken sound I had made against him before I remembered to hate myself for it.
And then the rest crashed over me—vivid, unrelenting, impossible to push away.
The way he had spun me around and bent me over his desk without asking, shoving my skirt up to my waist. The sharp rip of lace as he tore my panties down my thighs and left them tangled around one ankle.
His fingers pushing inside me without warning, two at first, then three, fucking me open with ruthless precision while I gasped and cursed him and still pushed back for more.
The filthy things he had growled against my ear—“Look at this pretty cunt, already dripping for the man you claim to hate. You walked in here knowing I’d ruin you, didn’t you?
”—and the way my own voice had betrayed me, begging harder, deeper, calling him every name I could think of while my walls clenched around him like they never wanted to let go.
I turned on the faucet and scrubbed the blood away with cold water and a rough paper towel until my skin stung. The redness only spread, making my mouth look more obvious instead of less. I laughed once under my breath, sharp and quiet, because even cleaning it up somehow made the evidence worse.
Worse, I could still feel him. The deep, aching soreness between my legs where he had fucked me so hard the desk had scraped across the floor.
The slow, warm trickle of his cum leaking down my inner thigh even now, hidden beneath my skirt, a secret reminder that he had finished inside me while I came apart around him, sobbing his name like a curse.
I pressed my thighs together, and the slick slide of it only made the memory sharper—his thick cock stretching me open, the brutal snap of his hips, the way he had rubbed my clit in tight, merciless circles and demanded I tell him exactly what this greedy little pussy needed.
I had come harder than I ever had in my life.
I dabbed at my mouth again, slower this time, trying to calm my breathing. The paper towel came away faintly pink. I dropped it into the bin, then leaned closer to the mirror and adjusted my expression until I saw the version of myself I needed to show the world.
Grieving Céline. Tired Céline. Perfect Céline.
The one who did not get blackmailed by professors, who did not get bent over and fucked like an enemy she secretly craved, who did not taste someone else’s blood and feel anything but revulsion.
My reflection stared back at me, pale and furious and far too awake. It broke back memories of Katherine.
Katherine, at eighteen, standing in Camila’s upstairs bathroom while Thad’s champagne still tasted warm on my mouth, telling me I never meant for anything to happen and looking at me like she already knew how the story would end.
I turned away from the mirror before the thought could settle any deeper.
By the time I returned to the lab, five minutes late, everyone looked up. Dr. Patel stood at the central bench explaining the day’s protocol with her usual calm precision. Julian clutched his notebook too tightly in one hand. Wendy watched me with open concern.
Christina’s gaze went straight to my mouth and my messy hair. I saw the exact moment she noticed the swelling, the faint redness that no amount of cold water could hide. Then her eyes flicked past me toward Professor Moreau’s office. He had not come out yet.
Thank God.
“Miss Martin,” Dr. Patel said, calm as ever. “We were just beginning.”
“I’m sorry,” I answered, and my voice sounded normal enough to count as a victory. “I got held up.”
I moved to my station and set down my bag with careful hands, thighs still slick with the evidence of what had happened in that office. Every step reminded me of him—deep, possessive thrusts that had left me raw and leaking, his low growl in my ear as he filled me.
Dr. Patel continued speaking, explaining the sample transfer procedure and imaging notes while I forced myself to listen. I understood maybe half of it on the first pass.
The proposal refinement was due Friday and I had no idea how to proceed.
Wendy leaned slightly toward me while Dr. Patel wrote something on the board. “Are you okay?” she whispered.
Christina heard it.
So I smiled. My smile was warm and effortless.
“I’m fine.”
Wendy did not believe me, but she accepted the performance I had perfected over the years. Only Katherine, Vincent, Sophia, and Anya seemed immune to it. Christina, unfortunately, seemed to be making the list too.
“Rough morning?” she asked, just softly enough that Dr. Patel could ignore it if she wanted to.
I looked down at the sample tray in front of me and picked up a marker.
“Not particularly.”
“Could’ve fooled me.” Her gaze touched my mouth again, then dropped meaningfully to my skirt.
Wendy inhaled sharply and looked like she wanted to evaporate.
My fingers tightened around the marker. There were several things I could have said.
I could have cut her down cleanly. I knew exactly where to press.
Christina’s insecurity sat on her like cheap perfume, pungent and unmistakable.
I could have smiled and asked whether she had finished the reading yet, or whether she wanted Professor Moreau to explain that privately too.
I could have made the room laugh against her.
Instead, I thought of Katherine sitting at my mother’s kitchen table, red pen in hand, saying you’re stupid when you’re lazy and looking stricken the moment my mother heard. Cruelty always sounded different depending on who had the power. I set the marker down.
“Christina,” I said quietly, “if you have something to say, say it.”
Her face flushed, but she lifted her chin.
“I just think it’s interesting.”
“What is?”
“How special you are suddenly.”
The words landed exactly where she intended.
Before I could answer, Professor Moreau’s office door opened.
The entire room shifted. He stepped out wearing his lab coat now, his expression composed, his hair still slightly damp from rain.
There was a faint cut on his lower lip—my bite, vivid and unmistakable. My stomach dropped.
Professor Moreau’s gaze moved across the room once and settled briefly on me. “Dr. Patel,” he said pleasantly, “continue without me for a moment.”
Then he looked at Christina.
“Miss Bell, my office.”
Christina’s face changed. For one brief, beautiful second, she looked frightened.
I felt the satisfaction move through me, but hated that I liked him for causing it.
Dr. Patel’s mouth tightened almost imperceptibly, but she said nothing.
Christina followed him into the office with her shoulders stiff.
He did not look at me again before closing the door.
The silence he left behind felt worse than if he had shouted.
Wendy stared determinedly at the board. Julian wrote absolutely nothing while pretending to take notes.
Elias, who had said fewer than twelve words to me all semester, leaned slightly toward my bench and murmured, “Well, that was subtle.”
A laugh almost escaped me. I pressed my lips together until it passed.
The office blinds were still half-open. I could see only shadows through the glass—Vincent standing near his desk, Christina in front of him with arms crossed defensively.
I could not hear what he said, but I saw the moment she stopped arguing.
Her face lost colour. Her shoulders dropped. Then she nodded once.
When Christina returned five minutes later, she apologized to me for making me uncomfortable.
That should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. Because now everyone knew something had happened, even if they did not know what. Something raw and filthy had passed between Professor Moreau and me, and now Christina had been punished for touching it too directly.
* * *
By the end of the lab, my head ached from pretending not to feel watched.
My thighs were still sticky with the slow leak of him.
Professor Moreau stayed in his office afterwards, which was either mercy or strategy.
With him, the difference rarely mattered.
Dr. Patel dismissed us at four-thirty, and everyone left in careful clusters.
Wendy touched my arm lightly before going, her eyes full of questions she was too kind to ask.
“You don’t have to talk about it,” she said.
I looked at her. Her eyes were soft, but not stupid. It made me uncomfortable.
“About what? I have nothing to hide.” I respond with a smile.
She smiled sadly. “Exactly.”
Then she left.
I stood alone at my bench for a moment, listening to the rain and the faint hum of equipment. The office door remained closed. Vincent’s silhouette moved behind the glass. I should have gone straight back to the dorm. Instead, I went to the library.