Page 110 of Saint Céline
“I still hate you.” she said, exhausted.
I smiled against her skin, pulling out slowly so I could watch my cum drip down her thighs. “Good. Hate me all you want. Just keep coming back for more.”
She straightened on unsteady legs, smoothing her skirt down with trembling hands. Her eyes met mine—furious, sated, already calculating the next move in whatever game this was.
She turned and left without another word, the door clicking shut behind her.
I stood there in the ruined quiet of my office, tasting copper and her and the sharp, undeniable truth that she would be back.
The rain drummed against the glass like applause.
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 frostedwindow 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, mercilesscircles 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.
