Thanks for all the reviews and follows/favourites! I wasn't expecting such a great reaction.
To answer a question from a couple of reviewers, 'freshers' are first year undergrads, the equivalent of freshmen in the USA.
Once upon a time, I almost became a neuroscientist, but it's been eleven years since I took my career in a different direction. As I'm a bit rusty, my friend Elodie, who's a bona fide clinical neuroscientist, is pre-reading this story to help make sure I've got things right. SunflowerFran is my beta and both she and Elodie are amazing!
CC xxx
Chapter 2: 25th October
Edward
An irritating calypso ringtone, assigned only to my best friend Tanya, woke me up with a startle. Groaning, I rolled over, and instead of meeting duvet and pillow, my face made contact with the tacky, faded carpet on the coffee room floor. I looked at the time. Five fucking AM.
Damn. Fell asleep in the lab again.
"Hey, Tan," I mumbled eventually. "Why are you calling me so early?"
"To tell you to get your butt home and go to bed." She retorted. "Seriously, Ed, another all-nighter?"
"What makes you think I'm in the lab?"
"Honey, you only seem to be in one of two places these days … home or lab. I rang your home phone to tell you some fantastic news and you didn't answer."
"What good news?"
"Leah and I are moving in together!"
Oh, Tan, that's great."
A shot of envy pierced me. I was thrilled for her and her girlfriend, but it just emphasised my own aching loneliness.
"I know, right!" There was a pause, and I knew she was going to attempt to suggest something … helpful. "Look Edward, why don't you come out here for a break? It's been ages since you came over to the Big Apple. Surely you can leave the brain cells alone for just a week to see us?"
"Um, uh … I don't know. We're in a crucial phase of the research now and …" the excuses tumbled out of me. My work was the only thing I had to define my life, and I didn't want to be reminded by seeing Tanya's happiness, of what I was missing.
Tanya sighed down the phone, and I immediately felt guilty.
"Look, let me think about it, okay?"
"OK. Go home, Ed. Get some proper rest."
"Will do."
As I put the phone down, the loneliness engulfed me again.
I had dated and slept around a lot in my twenties, but once I hit my thirties I found that I could no longer tolerate spending time with vapid women just for the sake of sex. Especially the ones whose only attribute was physical beauty.
I started dating women with more substance, but as my research career took off and I began spending all my time in the lab, the women moved on to men more attentive to their needs. I had hit forty in the summer, and had been single for nearly five years, apart from a few one-night stands at conferences or on holiday. Considering that the only girl I wanted was out of my league and young enough to be my daughter, my situation was unlikely to change anytime soon.
For once, I decided to listen to Tanya's advice. I was home twenty minutes later and fell asleep in my giant bed. For a while, my sleep was dreamless and blissful, but then the images began. The dark eyes, the peachy cheeks, the hair, the small, delicate hands. They assaulted my slumbering mind, which conjured up a dream involving Isabella Swan naked, her lovely hair swaying over my abdomen as she wrapped her lips around my hard … I woke up suddenly, my head and my cock both throbbing. You'd have thought that I would be used to it by now since it had happened almost every night since Isabella Swan crashed into my life.
I wanted to hate Isabella for affecting me so much. I wanted to be able to hate her for being a crap student and wasting my time. I wanted her to be a complete little madam so I could hate her for being a brat. The truth was, of course, that Isabella Swan was an angel. The entire lab loved her. She baked cookies, and went out of her way to get to know everyone from the cleaners to the professors. She was witty, bitingly so at times, and conversed easily with everyone, except me.
Thanks to her internship in the Harvard-based lab of Carlisle Cullen, she handled all the equipment like a pro. She was in the lab at eight every morning until six at night, according to Emmett McCarty, my best friend in the lab along with Jasper Hale, only leaving to go to lectures or seminars. The project she had put forward to do with John Gerandy before his departure had been planned to a standard I'd expect from a doctoral student.
The faculty insisted that students and their research supervisors meet every week to monitor the student's progress and to document research developments. This was something I wholeheartedly agreed with in principle, but in practice, meetings with Isabella Swan were utter, fucking torture. She would sit across from me in my office, holding her folder in front of her as a shield, almost as if she were fully aware that I had been having all sorts of dirty thoughts about her.
I kept the meetings as brief as possible. I'd ask her how things were and she would always answer 'okay.' I would then check her research logbook. Her results were mediocre, but her documentation and reasoning was meticulous. When I asked her about any problems with equipment or data collection, she always said 'no.' Then I would thank her for coming by way of a dismissal, and promptly run to the loo to sort out my poor, over-excited cock. It was like being seventeen again.
I had planned to stop in on Friday night, and not go into work at all, but then I realised that I needed to pick up a couple of old neurosciences textbooks from the Radcliffe Science Library for a paper I was writing on historical research methods, so I cycled back in that evening. At least the library would be quiet. Even the most dedicated doctoral students usually spent Friday night having some semblance of a social life, and as for the undergrads, most of them were usually pissed from Thursday night to Monday morning.
As predicted, the library was dead as a dodo.
I went up to the Neurosciences section, retrieved the books I needed and was about to go back downstairs when I saw a study desk covered in papers, notes and books. It stood out because all the others were empty. I wandered over and was surprised to see that virtually all of it related to my lab's particular area of research, and there were some really intriguing ideas emerging.
Interesting.
Before I could think of which one of our doctoral students could be in the library on a Friday night, I was surrounded by a cloud of the most heavenly, strawberry ice-cream tinted scent. My brain barely had time to compute that it belonged to Isabella Swan before she tripped over my rather large feet and fell, landing on her tummy, her absolutely delectable ass high in the air.
"Miss Swan?" I asked tentatively before offering a hand to help her up.
"Good evening," she replied before accepting. Immediately my skin felt aflame and enlivened as her hand touched mine. I could feel the urge to either run or pull her into my embrace creeping over me, and decided to deflect it with a quip.
"Do you fall over in front of all the staff here or am I just special?"
Utter fail. She turned pink and didn't acknowledge it.
"What brings you here on a Friday night, sir?" She asked instead.
"I could ask you the same thing. Is this all your work?" I answered her question with a question, keen to find out what she was planning.
"It is."
"You're looking to alter your research protocol? Expand your project?" She nodded eagerly, her big brown eyes dancing with enthusiasm. I knew that look. I'd seen it on my own face when I was doing my undergraduate project, even with that fucker Aro Volturi as my supervisor.
"Well, yes. I know that my results so far have been okay, but I can't help thinking that I'm missing something, something which could lead to a real breakthrough if I could just ... I don't know ... think a bit laterally."
"Impressive," I told her, genuinely. She was truly amazing.
Nobody expected undergraduate research to make any real impact. Hell, we professors were just happy if they could master how to use a micropipette and collect existing research into a dissertation. However, the fire and determination in her expression made me see that Isabella Swan was a true scientist at heart and that she was determined that her work would make a difference to millions of lives.
"Thank you." Her response was humble. Her cheeks had turned pink, and she was doing that lip-biting thing again. My groin stirred.
Sexy and smart.
She was bloody perfect.
"Miss Swan, your project already has some potential to support the work that I'm already doing in this area, but the chances of success for both your dissertation and my lab's work are much more magnified if you're prepared to expand it as this brainstorming suggests. I think you're on to something."
We both sat down. I no longer just wanted her physically, I wanted her mind too.
"I fear I've underestimated you so far. If you're serious about this, perhaps you would consider joining my research team a paid researcher. It's a lot more work than we'd usually expect of an undergrad, so I'd be prepared to pay you a small stipend, but I would need your complete commitment. You could write your dissertation based on the work we do as a team, which would give it a lot more weight academically."
"Of course, Professor. I know I'm just an undergrad, but if you take a chance on me, I promise, I'll do whatever it takes to help you find that breakthrough," she enthused. God, this girl was going to go all the way to the top. I could tell.
"Today's undergrad, tomorrow's Professor," I commented, enjoying the way she smiled slightly. "'Whatever it takes?'"
"Whatever it takes, sir."
I watched her for a few moments, waiting eagerly for my next words. Eventually, after I had perused her to my liking, I held out my hand so we could shake on it.
"Welcome to my research team, Isabella. Let's see what you're made of."
-cc-
Bella
Friday night.
Science Library.
Necessary.
My research project was going absolutely nowhere.
The Fox could barely tolerate me. I'd seen him a grand total of five times in four weeks of working in his lab. He seemed to be nocturnal like his namesake creature; I could tell when he'd been in the lab late because of the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup wrappers in the coffee room bin. His favourite apparently, according to Professor Hale, who teased him for being addicted to them.
The faculty made us have weekly supervision meetings, but seeing as he couldn't stand me and I turned into a blushing, ducking schoolgirl in his presence, involuntarily imagining what he looked like under his fitted jeans, dark t-shirt and lab coat, our meetings descended into little more than the exchange of a few, brief pleasantries. He only made sure that I was following the research protocols and documenting everything correctly. Other than that, he seemed unfazed by my unremarkable results.
I was serious about becoming a neuroscientist, and mediocre wasn't going to cut it. I decided that I needed to dedicate some time to looking at ways to take my project in a different direction if I was serious about doing research that was worth something more than just my degree grade.
Before long, I had covered an entire study table with diagrams and lists, pulling out journal articles and books to supplement my ideas with knowledge and evidence. Soon, my work led me to need more articles and I left my desk to find them. As I walked back to my study area, I began reading the first one, and became so engrossed that I didn't notice where I was going, or who was standing by my desk until I tripped over his feet, landing on my front.
In the next few minutes came a conversation that totally and utterly surprised me. The Fox had read my work while I was off article-hunting, and he liked it. So much so, he offered me a spot on his research team.
It didn't actually sink in until he said, in his low, sexy, melt-my-black-lace-boyshorts voice,
"Welcome to my research team, Isabella. Let's see what you're made of."
Holy shit.
He was giving me a paid position as a researcher.
He called me by my first name.
He offered his hand for me to shake. Initiation of physical contact ... I never thought I'd see the day.
Inside I was squealing, almost fangirling. On the outside, I just smiled at him and shook his hand, sending the delicious goose-pimply tingles up my arm again.
"Thank you sir," I murmured.
"You're welcome," he replied, letting go of my hand when I didn't. "Good night."
"Good night."
I sat back down at my desk and watched him walk away before getting back to work. He hadn't said it, but I knew that his offer was a way of him throwing down the gauntlet, testing me to see whether I actually could follow through with my ideas. I was determined to prove that hiring me was the best damn thing he'd ever done for his team.
Before I knew it, it was closing time, and the librarian was kicking me out. I cycled back to my college, Lady Margaret Hall and changed into my pyjamas. My flatmates were out for the night, so the place was peaceful.
I put on some music, in the mood for some Nina Simone, although that was a bad idea because my iPod chose Sinnerman, followed by Turn Me On, leaving me feeling a little naughty and a lot horny. That wasn't such a great idea when the Fox consumed my thoughts. I found myself entering a daydream with him as the star.
"Miss Swan?" He towers over me, and I am embarrassed at my less-than-graceful tumble.
"Good evening," I reply, taking his hand. He helps me up, but I don't let him go once I am upright.
"Do you fall over in front of all the staff here or am I just special?"
"You're special, sir. Very, very ..." I step closer to him, and he encircles my waist with his large hands. "... special."
"Isabella, I'm struggling to resist you, baby."
"So don't."
I lean up and kiss his jaw, and lick along the delicious angles until I reach his ear. He growls and cups my face, and then plunders my mouth with his talented, experienced tongue. Suddenly I find that he has lifted me up and placed me on my back atop a study desk.
"I want you so badly," he murmurs, hovering over me. "I can't wait any longer. I have to have you, right here."
He rips open my shirt. "Right now."
The sudden, shrill ring of my mobile phone broke into my thoughts. Irritated, I picked it up.
Unknown number
At quarter to midnight on a Friday night? My parents, undoubtedly. Their timing always sucked ass.
"Hello," I said, trying not to let annoyance colour my voice and let on that my fantasy had been interrupted.
"Hello, darling," came my mother's snippety voice. "We can't chat for long. We're about to head out to Houston."
They never could chat for long. I think the last time we chatted for more than ten minutes was in 1999 when I fell off my pony at the Wiltshire Young Riders Club and broke my radius in three places. Needless to say, I've hated horses ever since.
"Oh, right. Where are you now?"
"Singapore. Your father and I just closed a massive deal with Pei-Jong Tan, the industrialist. He .."
"Mother, it's late here. I'm about to fall asleep. Was there a reason for this phone call other than to update me on your travel plans?"
"Yes, well, we wanted to talk about Christmas."
"What about it?" I asked warily.
Last year, I had spent the holidays in Saudi Arabia, where I wasn't allowed to go anywhere without a chaperone, while my parents did a deal with some members of the Saudi Royal family. The only person I talked to on Christmas Day was Rubina, the hotel maid, who barely spoke English. She felt so sorry for me that she brought me a bag of dates and an orange.
"We think we'll be in Kuwait, but there's an outside chance we'll be in Dubai ..."
Great. The Middle East again. Sweltering heat. Isolation. No Christmas trees.
I fucking daydreamed of a picture-book Christmas Day. I wanted woolly jumpers, corny TV shows, snow, log fires, and a plateful juicy chipolatas wrapped in salty bacon, consumed while cuddling up to a hunky man, who lately looked a lot like The Fox, and a drooling dog.
"Mum, just once, I want to be home for Christmas. Isn't there any way that …"
"Isabella, you know the answer to that question," my mother interrupted with a huff. "Our work is very important, and I don't understand why you object to spending your holiday in the sun, in a luxury hotel …"
Because it was so bloody, hellishly boring. Not to mention that I would be absolutely alone. And, if I had to be alone, I'd rather just remain in England. I wouldn't have the man or the dog, but at least I'd have cold weather and the yummy Christmas food.
"Look, the truth is Mum, I've just accepted a post as a paid researcher in my supervisor's lab, which is a real honour. I don't think I'll be able to spare a whole week away, and a few friends have invited me along for their celebrations."
That last bit was a lie, although I did always have an open invitation to my best friend Emily's family home; however, if I visited them at Christmas, I would be left feeling overwhelmingly envious at their storybook-perfect, loving family life.
"Oh, that's fine, darling. You do that."
She sounded relieved. My mother was relieved I wasn't coming for Christmas.
Fuck My Life.
"We have to go. They're calling our flight. Bye!"
And just like that, my good mood evaporated.
-cc-
*Micropipette: A calibrated dropper that uses air displacement to measure out miniscule amounts of fluid, as small as 1 nanolitre (0.001 millilitres). Used extensively in biomedical research. Often called Gilson pipettes after a well-known pipette manufacturer.
Thank you for reading.
CC xxx