The Work-Life Balance Disruption
Chapter 26
Contradictions
She pulled away from him and stared at him with what she could only assume was shock in her eyes.
Doctor Cooper moved into her and kissed her mouth roughly.
"I need to get my dick out for me to take you, Amy," he spoke condescendingly. "Or are you ready to stop lying to me now?"
Amy blinked at him in shock. "N-no," she muttered, pushing at his shoulders. She was trembling in panic at his lewd suggestions. He wouldn't, would he?
"No? What do you mean, no? 'No, please stop' or 'no, I'm not ready to stop lying'?" Doctor Cooper questioned, his eyes narrowing at her slightly.
Heat gripped around her heart. She didn't know how to respond. Couldn't respond.
"No," Amy just repeated, slightly breathless.
"No, you are ready to stop lying to me?" Doctor Cooper raised an eyebrow.
Amy could only look at him. No words came out still. She didn't know what to do now, or say. Her earlier arguments had been rendered moot after his easy dismissal of the whole "this-student-teacher-relationship-is-probably-illegal"-argument.
But her mother had been right, hadn't she? The age difference between the two of them was not as easy to dismiss after all. Plus, there were her mother's threats of stopping to pay her tuition. Amy could never pay that herself now.
She swallowed thickly. Trying to get the words out. She didn't need to explain herself to him, she reasoned. No means no, and he should just accept that.
But her stomach constricted almost painfully with nerves and arousal under his heated gaze.
"If you want to keep denying that you want me, Miss Fowler, then be my guest," Doctor Cooper mumbled, moving into her again, and Amy's arms fell down from his shoulders without much prompting from his part.
"But you're not that good an actress, and you were begging me to have my way with you only two days ago," he whispered in her ear now. "Now, it seems you don't want to tell me what made you suddenly change your mind, and that's fine."
His eyes looked into hers again, and Amy had the feeling he could look straight through her.
"Just don't expect me to believe these blatant lies of yours," he ended, his face close to hers now.
His mouth was on hers again, just softly, like a kiss goodbye. Amy whimpered as he moved away from her.
He turned around and fastened the buckle of his belt again. He cleared his throat. "Figure out what you want, Amy. I'll leave you be," he spoke with his back to her. "You know where to find me."
He grabbed his bag and walked out of the door.
It took Amy a couple of minutes to calm down her racing heart, before she was able to leave the classroom with shaking legs.
She tried – really, she did – to forget about Doctor Cooper or Sheldon or whatever she was calling him in her head these days. But almost everything reminded her of him in some way or another. Her apartment where he had made her tea, where he had done some wicked things to her. He had visited her in her lab once as well, to apologize for leaving her alone after 'taking care of her', as Bernadette liked to call it. Even her work with the monkeys reminded her of showering to get rid of the smell of smoke and then walking around barelegged – and then Doctor Cooper's head between her legs covered by just her plaid skirt.
And if all the reminders of Doctor Cooper himself weren't enough, there was the fact that Penny and Bernadette kept texting her to go have drinks with her to 'talk'.
Amy was too busy for the girls though. She only had a couple of days to complete her final paper for Doctor Cooper's class. She still didn't understand much of the Hamiltonian equations and their workings in both classical mechanics and quantum mechanics.
Time was running out.
It was already Wednesday when she finally managed to open up her schedule enough to lock herself up in the university's library to work on her final paper. There was no way in hell she was going to be one of the students who needed to be seen privately in his office to discuss her work. She just needed to apply herself with the limited time she had.
Except every Hamiltonian equation she looked at, had her flashing back to Doctor Cooper with his hand down her pants, getting her off in front of a white board filled with mistakes.
"You gonna come for your professor, Amy?"
Amy felt warm all over and looked around guiltily from her table in the library. Could people see how she was slowly but surely getting aroused with nothing but books on quantum mechanics in front of her? She hoped they couldn't.
She moved around anxiously in her seat.
Amy managed to focus again for some time, but after a couple of hours, when she was reading the same article twice and still not understanding it, she decided to call it quits. She packed up her books and walked out of the library. Maybe she would be able to go out for drinks with the girls after all.
She pulled out her phone as she traversed the corridors of the University, it was almost deserted now. Amy was busy pulling up the chat with the girls, and only managed to evade an opening door in front of her.
Doctor Cooper and another dark-haired man stepped out of the room, still discussing something.
Amy stopped in her tracks.
Both men turned to look at her. Doctor Cooper blinked, but otherwise looked at her indifferently. The other man eyed her from top to bottom in a leering way and Amy felt uncomfortable under his approving gaze.
"Miss Fowler," Doctor Cooper nodded, emotionless. He looked at her intensely.
"Good evening, Doctor Cooper," she answered, hoping she didn't sound too breathless. She was pretty sure she was blushing. Having him look at her like this made her body respond instantly, her heartrate quickened and her palms were sweaty.
"One of your students, Cooper?" the other man lisped, throwing Amy a grin that made her feel really uncomfortable.
Doctor Cooper rolled his eyes. "As a matter of fact, she is, Kripke," he said, sounding tired.
Amy tried to figure out why his name sounded familiar. It suddenly came back to her; he was a physicist as well. She had read some of his work, and Leonard had mentioned him. If worse comes to worst, I'll ask Kripke, Leonard had said. That didn't sound too positive.
"You're here pretty late… Miss Fowler, is it?" the man, Kripke, asked.
"Uhm, yes," she answered, trying not to look at him too much. The way he looked at her made her skin crawl. "I have a deadline this Friday, and I'm afraid I won't able to make it, since I'm having a really hard time understanding the subject of my paper."
Doctor Cooper's eyebrows rose just a little bit.
Kripke gave her a smile that Amy's supposed should look enticing, but really made her only more uncomfortable.
"If it's for Cooper's class, I'll be happy to help you out," Kripke said, and Amy had a hard time understanding what he was saying due to his speech impediment, "I am a theoretical physicist at this university too."
"I highly doubt it's for my class, Kripke," Doctor Cooper interjected, "Miss Fowler is one of my most promising students."
"A promising student, hm?" Kripke repeated, lifting his eyebrows approvingly. "I can certainly see some… potential in her, yes."
Doctor Cooper's head swivelled towards his fast. Kripke didn't see the angry look he was throwing him.
"And also," Doctor Cooper continued, raising his voice, "the paper for my class is on Hamiltonian equations. A subject I have tutored Miss Fowler in privately myself. If she were to need more help on that subject, it would be more logical for her to come to me."
Amy could only look between the two of them quickly. What was happening? Doctor Cooper hadn't tutored her privately on physics at all. The things he had tutored her on had been physical, not physics. If she didn't know any better, she would think that he was trying to get Kripke to back off.
And thank God, really. That Kripke was really freaking her out.
She really didn't want to do this, but everything was better than spending another second in the proximity of this slimy man.
"As a matter of fact, Doctor Cooper," Amy said, looking at her teacher, "I did have a question I wanted to ask you. You mentioned an article by Polyanin and Zaitsev the other day. I wanted to use it for my paper, but I couldn't find the one you mentioned in the online catalogue."
She was lying her ass off. The last time he had mentioned those two scientists had been when right before everything had started to escalate between them. Before his confessions, before they had even kissed. Amy was sure he knew what she was doing. Didn't he say he had an eidetic memory?
If he noticed her blatant cry for help, it didn't show on his face.
"I certainly remember," Doctor Cooper said, "their articles are listed under the magazines that publish them, not their surnames. I should have mentioned that in class."
Amy was impressed by his quick thinking. She nodded along.
"I'll accompany you to the library right now to help you look them up," he continued, "if it's not too late for you, Miss Fowler."
Amy swallowed away the dryness in her throat. "No, that'd be great. I'll be able to continue first thing tomorrow," she said.
Kripke looked between the two of them. "Well, I must admire your tenacious attitude into helping your students, Cooper," he said, with a hint of suspicion in his voice.
Doctor Cooper nodded. "It's really no trouble, and I do like it when my class has a high grade-average. Alright, we'll continue the math on the guidance system tomorrow then, Kripke."
And with that he stalked past Amy quickly, making his way towards the library. Amy quickly followed him. With his long legs, he was able to take much bigger steps. And his pace wasn't exactly slow either. Amy jogged after him.
"Doctor Cooper!" she called, "wait up!"
He stopped suddenly, and Amy almost ran into him, where it not for his hold on her arm.
Amy panted slightly. "I can't keep up with you walking this fast," she heaved slightly.
"I apologize," he mumbled, looking behind her in a now empty hallway, probably trying to see if Kripke was still there. "It's bad enough I have to collaborate with that man professionally, but seeing him undress you with his eyes really ticked me off."
Amy blushed. She could feel her heart start to beat out of control instantly.
Him saying things like this made her rethink her earlier determination to end this. She really couldn't deal with all these doubt right now. "So," she cleared her throat, "the library then?"
Doctor Cooper looked surprised. "I thought that was just a ruse," he said after a beat, "but I'll help you find some literature you could use for your final paper."
Amy didn't know if any kind of literature would help her with this paper, because she could barely understand the section on Hamiltonian equations in the syllabus. But for some reason she didn't want them to part ways this soon.
A horrible realisation came to her; she had missed him.
She tried to swallow down the sudden lump in her throat and looked away.
"That would be really kind," she said softly. Doctor Cooper looked at her and simply nodded.
"It's really no problem," he mumbled, the volume of her voice matching hers. "I am your teacher in the first place, Miss Fowler. When one of my students asks for my help in relation to my class, I should always adhere to my duties as a professor of this university."
His voice was melodious, and its low timbre reminded her of whispered words between the sheets of his bed.
He was trying to create some sort of distance between them - he was giving her time to think and decide what she wanted after all - she knew that. But that didn't stop the thrill from going through her.
Their eyes met and Amy could practically feel the electricity between them.
She wasn't sure who looked away first, but after a few of tension-filled beats, they were both looking in different directions. Doctor Cooper cleared his throat. "The articles," he stated, as if he was reminding them both of the reason they were here at the library.
Amy nodded, and hoped the extreme blush on her face would disappear quickly. If just a look between the two of them was enough to make her almost jump him, it was probably the best if they would get on with looking up those articles as quickly as possible.
Doctor Cooper walked ahead of her, into the library and moving towards one of the back rows quickly.
There was still a hand full of students scattered throughout the library, sitting at tables, bend over books or staring into space, or behind computers, typing furiously.
Doctor Cooper turned around to look if she was still following him, and Amy caught his heated stare. Her blush returned immediately.
Her mouth suddenly felt dry and her lips felt chapped. Her tongue brushed over them, wetting them.
She saw Doctor Cooper's eyes dilate.
He halted for a split-second, and made a sudden turn right instead of continuing on towards the rack of magazines at the far end of the atrium. He kept walking further and further towards the back of the library.
Amy followed him as quietly as possible. The library had a sort of eerie vibe at this time of night. The fluorescent lights made the darkness outside feel surreal. Amy felt strange now anyway; with Doctor Cooper walking ahead of her, putting aside whatever was going on between the two of them right now and helping her pass his class like this.
Doctor Cooper made a turn left at the end of the corridor they were traversing. She had never been to this section of the library, it was almost deserted here. The row of books ended a couple of steps ahead of her, and Doctor Cooper appeared to be waiting for her at the end of it.
Amy looked to the books next to her, and was surprised to see the titles of them only mentioned words like 'palaeontology', 'Jurassic' and 'sedimentation'. Were they even in the physics section right now? She stopped in her place to look at the titles more closely. There were no magazines around here either.
Amy looked at Doctor Cooper questioningly, intending to ask him if they were in the right place. The look in his eyes made the words die in her throat. His eyes moved over her body approvingly, not unlike Kripke had done, but this time it didn't make her recoil.
Amy inhaled sharply and turned around quickly, her eyes scanning the titles in front of her. She closed her eyes and tried to take a calming breath.
She must have been imagining things.
Two days ago he had said he would leave her alone so she could make up her mind. He was just being a good professor now, helping her with her paper. The heated looks he threw her way were just a figment of her imagination.
Weren't they?
But she felt his proximity behind her. His hand closed around the edge of the shelf in front of her, caging her in. His body wasn't touching hers, but if she just moved a little bit, her back would surely touch his chest. She inhaled sharply.
They weren't here to go over physics at all.
"I know I said I was going to leave you be," Doctor Cooper whispered in her ear, "but how can I with you looking good enough to eat?"
Amy felt her blood run hot. She didn't think she looked any differently from any other day. She certainly wasn't wearing anything special, was she?
He moved into her fully from behind her. His other hand grasped her hip and Amy gasped when she felt the bulge in his pants press against her.
"Fuck, Amy," he swore quietly in her ear. Amy's heart soared. "You can't go licking your lips when you're around me, cause it makes me want to do unspeakable things to you…"
Amy felt arousal course through her. His face was in her neck, and his lips kissed her underneath her ear. She moaned inadvertently.
"Ssshh," Doctor Cooper shushed her softly. "We're in a library, Miss Fowler. You'll have to keep quiet."
Amy couldn't take it anymore. This rollercoaster of emotions she had been going through for days now. Her rationality versus her desires. Deep down she knew it was a bad idea to give in to her urges, but really; her earlier arguments on why this relationship was a bad idea were starting to sound silly to even her own ears when she thought about the way he had made her feel. And still did.
Her logical thinking was losing, and losing quickly. And somehow, she was completely fine with that.
She turned around slowly. Her hands moved to the lapels of his jacket, pulling him closer. She looked at him from her beneath her eyelashes and bit her lip. Her heart was almost beating out of her chest by now.
His eyes were nearly black as he stared her down. "Biting your lip has the same effect," he muttered. His hand moved from her hip to her face. Amy tilted her head up, ready to meet his descending lips.
"Please, Amy," he mumbled against her lips almost desperately, "stop me."
She didn't.
To be continued
