Page 59 of Stranger to Love

Fuck, we did?

She didn’t move, didn’t break our contact, but the implicit command was clear: Wait. You move only when I allow it. The control was fucking maddening, and it made the heat in my core coil tighter.

I swallowed hard, feeling the pressure of her fingers on my bruise—a physical tether keeping me grounded, yet desperate. My hands remained clamped on her waist.

“Patience, Alex.” The words were a soft reprimand, yet the tension didn't snap; it stretched, impossibly thin.

Then, with devastating gentleness, Dr. Carter leaned in just that fraction of an inch more, and instead of taking the kiss I was begging for, she pressed her lips—soft, cool, and fleeting—against my cheek, right next to my ear. The action was agonisingly tender, completely innocent, and utterly lethal.

Then, just like that, she stepped away. The arm pinning me to the counter retreated, and the hand gripping my neck fell away. The sudden loss of pressure and contact made me sway slightly.

She reclaimed her wine glass from the counter, composed and immaculate, as if she hadn't just mentally stripped me bare. She took a sip, her eyes coolly assessing my stunned face.

“Now that dinner is settled, how about we find a film to watch in the lounge?” she suggested, her voice back to that smooth, measured tone. She didn’t wait for an answer. She turned on her heel and glided out of the kitchen, her composure absolute.

“Fuck,” I breathed out, leaning heavily back against the counter, my hands still hovering where her waist had been.

I stared at the immaculate, empty space where she had stood, and the reality of what had just happened—and hadn't happened—slammed into me. I was left a fucking wreck, heart hammering, knees weak, and body buzzing with frustration, while she was calmly deciding on the evening's entertainment. This doesn’t happen to me! I make this happen!

We have all the time in the world for this.

The promise and the control were a fucking potent combination. I wanted to chase after her, demand she finish what she started, but the sheer absurdity of the situation hit me: I had just had an intense, charged moment with my lecturer, was denied a kiss, and was now expected to follow her to the sofa to watch a film like we were on some fucking chaste, pre-teen date.

I pushed off the counter, forcing my legs to work. I had to keep up. For fuck’s sake. I could not be the one collapsing on the kitchen floor right then. I ran a hand over my flushed face, the silk of the leisure suit suddenly feeling too tight.

You’re not collapsing, Alex. You’re better than this. Come on.

With a shaky breath, I made my way out of the kitchen and towards the lounge, ready to face the screen with a woman who had just ensured I would not be sleeping that night for entirely different fucking reasons.

Chapter 14

Dr. Carter

Clack. Clack. Clack.

The sharp, rhythmic snap of my manicured nails against the pristine glass of my office desk was the only sound cutting through the Monday morning stillness of the university. I stared blankly at a half-drafted research proposal on my monitor, the text blurring into an incoherent mess of corporate jargon.

What are you doing? You utter idiot.

A cold, mocking reprimand echoed in the chambers of my own mind. I stopped tapping, my fingers freezing against the glass as my stomach did a slow, violent roll. The memory of Thursday night hit me with the force of a physical blow.

I had been nursing a single glass of neat single-malt whisky for over an hour in my usual seat at the back of that dark, unremarkable bar. It was my sanctuary—a place where I could dismantle the administrative stress of the week, utilising the mundane chatter of strangers as a layer of white noise to anchor my thoughts. But the exact moment my eyes had drifted across the room and landed on Alex, I had nearly laughed out loud. It felt as though the universe was actively mocking me, constructing a bizarre, localised test of my restraint.

And testing me, it did. Watching that pathetic excuse of a man leering over her, crowding her space in the booth, had made my blood turn to ice. When she finally broke away and slid into the seat next to mine—vehemently denying any association with him—a sudden, profound wave of relief had washed through my chest.

Suddenly, the white noise of the bar hadn’t been the thing keeping me settled. It was her. Alex’s proximity, her sharp wit, the effortless way she occupied the space beside me. If that wretched man hadn’t interrupted us, I knew exactly what would have happened. My pride disintegrated at the admission: I would have abandoned every shred of my rigid professional code, remained in that seat all night, and matched her drink for drink just to stay within her gravitational pull.

Sinking my teeth into the skin of her neck had been a primitive, territorial instinct I simply could not—would not—suppress.

I was neither blind nor naive. I saw the way Alex operated on campus. I saw the innate, unbothered flirt she was, the way her eyes never remained anchored, tracking every moving target in my lecture hall. I saw how other women reacted to her, practically dropping into her lap. The memory of that desperate woman scribbling her phone number directly onto the palm of Alex's skin when I arrived to collect her one night made my jaw tighten all over again.

I let out a heavy, fractured sigh, dropping my head into my palms and firmly massaging my temples.

Seeing her injured had been... triggering. A deeply unsettling catalyst. The sight of her bleeding, cracked open by the violent carelessness of some nightclub reject, had caused something ancient and protective to snap inside of my chest. It bypassed my intellect entirely, replacing it with a consuming, feral need to protect an entity I had already decided belonged to me.

My medical directive had been entirely factual—she shouldn't have been left unmonitored with a head injury. But a dark, shameful part of my subconscious was deeply grateful that Alex was the stubborn, theatrical brat she was. Her refusal to let me cross her threshold had played perfectly into my hands. It meant I’d had a flawless, unassailable justification to bring her to mine. It meant I’d secured the entire weekend with her. Tending to her lacerations, washing the dried copper from her skin, had felt profoundly primal—a raw, instinctual frequency I hadn't experienced in years.

I took a deep, steadying breath, my chest expanding against the tailored fabric of my blouse as the trajectory of my thoughts shifted to Saturday afternoon.