her panties and making herself come would’ve done the trick, but something had stopped her.
The final question stared her in the face, black letters on white paper. Bold as anything. Straightforward and simple, no harder to answer than any of the others had been.
Would you, after the preceding four sessions, proceed to sexual intercourse with your assigned partner?
Just because she answered yes didn’t mean she had to do it. Melissa knew that. They couldn’t make her fuck Matt, and so long as she’d filled in all the paperwork, they’d have to pay her, too. Suddenly the money didn’t seem quite as important as finding out just how he’d feel inside her. What he’d sound like when he came. How it would feel when he shuddered into climax.
She wasn’t going to think about it anymore. She scribbled her answer and stuck the entire folder of papers into the assigned envelope, then licked it shut and stuck it on top of her bag. She’d drop it off at Randy and Ada’s office today on her way to lunch.
And then…tonight. Oh, tonight. Her clit pulsed at the thought, and she laughed, because it was all so ridiculous, all so contrived…and yet all so delicious and perfect and sexy.
She couldn’t stop thinking about it—and Matt, all day.
He was there already when she got to the lab that night. She saw him from all the way down the hall. Those broad shoulders, the sandy hair that wasn’t dark and rakish. When he turned, the hazel eyes in which she’d seen her own face reflected. He was frowning.
“Matt?”
He pointed at the door to the lab. There was a sign on it. The same black letters on white paper, just like the questionnaire, but this time, there was no question. Just a statement.
EXPERIMENT CONCLUDED.
“Oh, no.” Melissa swallowed disappointment.
“Yeah. Can you believe that?” Matt punched a fist lightly against the sign. “What the hell?”
“I guess they got all the data they needed,” Melissa said. “Sometimes they do stop experiments early.”
“Well, that just sucks,” Matt said.
It did, indeed, suck. Melissa sighed. She read the sign again, but there was no changing it.
Matt was looking at her when she looked up. “So…I guess you wrote yes. To the final question.”
Melissa nodded. “Yes. I did. So did you, huh? Or else you wouldn’t be here?”
“Of course I did,” Matt said. “I just wasn’t sure you would.”
“Why not?”
“I just wasn’t sure.”
Together, they started walking down the hall the way they had so many other nights. Only this time, when they pushed through the doors to the outside, they didn’t part ways. Matt bounced a little on this toes, then rocked onto his heels.
He was…nervous?
Well, so was she. The heat that had been building up inside her all day long was cooling rapidly. Melissa put her face up to the soft spring breeze wafting through the university commons. This was it, the end of another experiment. Nothing to fret about.
“Can I walk you home?” Matt asked.
Sensation uncurled inside her, fluttering. “Sure.”
They fell into step beside each other as they walked through the university commons. And when Matt took her hand, it felt so natural and right that Melissa knew she shouldn’t think anything of it…but she did.
They’d spent hours talking but it seemed different outside the lab. Matt was still funny and genuine; he still seemed to enjoy her stories about her family and friends. Yet now there was an undercurrent of tension that hadn’t been there during their sessions, when they knew exactly what was expected of them and what could or would not happen.
Here on her doorstep, though, there was no list of rules. No checklist. Nothing but her and Matt and the memory of the past four nights.
“Thanks for walking me home. This was nice,” Melissa offered, and Matt nodded.
“Yeah. It always felt sort of stupid to have to pretend we didn’t know each other after we left. This was better.”
Melissa put her key in