Working in the lab with Bishop was a dream come true for Pen. They settled into a routine as if they’d been partners forever. Bishop was more relaxed in the lab than he was anywhere else, and they actually joked around some, but still got a lot of work done.
He was impressed with her, though he didn’t come right out and say it. She could tell, though, and it nearly made her burst with pride. But the best part was that it was healing. They were doing the work of her father, and there was something very cathartic about that. As she felt more and more valued as part of the Sullivan team, she found herself feeling lighter, as if that chip she carried around about her dad was slowly eroding, grain by grain.
She bounced down the stairs to the lab fifteen minutes earlier than she would normally show up. The fall semester at Cooper College would start in a few days, and she wanted to finish transcribing a particularly large data set for Bishop before she got bogged down with schoolwork.
Once her classes began, she’d still be able to help in the lab, though not nearly as much. Bishop had made it clear that classes, studying and homework came first. She’d rolled her eyes and drawled, “Fine, Daaad.” It annoyed the hell out of him when she said that, so naturally she said it as often as she could.
Bishop had no active study underway, and instead had been working on analyzing and writing up data from prior studies he’d completed with her father, so the door that led to the laboratory observation room had always been closed and the windows dark.
Until that day.
She came to almost a comical halt when she trotted into the lab and found that door open and the room flooded with light. Though she’d always wanted to see into that space, she’d never dared to ask. That was the room where Bishop observed women masturbating. Up until that moment, she’d been sure she would never see it.
“Hey, Pen,” Bishop called, his tone happy, something that never failed to give her a small thrill. “I’ve got the data pulled up to where you left off…” His sentence trailed off as Penelope walked into the observation room. He was immediately at the door. “You shouldn’t be in here. I had to check some equipment and I forgot to shut it.”
Pen drifted over to where something that looked like a gynecological examining table sat. “This is where the women do it?” she asked, studying the clinical looking stirrups that were set wide apart.
“Pen, c’mon. We’ve got a lot of work to do. Come out of there.” Bishop hovered at the door, his tone firm. He didn’t sound so happy anymore.
She stood between the stirrups and turned around, where a bank of frosted windows flanked the wall directly in front of the table. “So, they’re spread wide, right in front of this giant window, and you’re…” She turned wide eyes to her guardian. “You sit right out there and watch them get off?”
“Penelope, please.” Bishop gestured out the door like an annoyed usher.
“You and my father?” She giggled. “That must’ve been awkward.”
His face flushed pink. “Not at all,” he protested. “It’s not like we were watching porn together.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stood straighter. “It was all very clinical. Scientific. We…took a lot of notes.” His face reddened further.
Looking from one stirrup to the other, she moved her feet apart, not able to come close to the width of the contraption while standing. She looked down at her legs, her thighs spread ridiculously wide, and then leveled a look at Bishop.
He broke. “Okay.” He chuckled. “It was a little awkward.” Though he ducked his head, Pen didn’t miss the shy smile that followed, and an emotion that felt a little too much like love washed through her, causing her breath to catch.
Turning away to hide her reaction, she tapped the frosted glass. “Is this like a one-way mirror? You can see in but no one can see out?”
He nodded. “Sort of. It has two settings. This one,” he gestured toward the opaque glass, “where anyone on the outside can see in, but the person in this room can’t see out.” He picked a small remote up off a table and clicked. “Or this one.”
Pen gasped when the glass went instantly clear. “Whoa, so cool!”
“Yeah, it’s kinda cool,” he agreed. “Now, let’s get back to work.”
But Pen had moved on to the wires scattered across a table nearby. “What are you measuring here? Sexual excitement?”
He sighed. “We measure a lot of different things, internally and out. Heart rate, blood pressure, areas of brain stimulation, moisture levels.”
She turned her face to him. “Moisture levels?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
His mouth flattened into a thin line. “Don’t you have a freshman social tonight?” he asked. “We’d better get to work so you aren’t late.”
She made a noise between a scoff and a laugh. “I’m not going to that. I don’t know anyone.”
“Penelope.” His voice had that fatherly tone that bugged the hell out of her. “Lots of people don’t know anyone. That’s the point of the event, to make some friends. I’ve told you before, you’re a beautiful, young woman. You can’t spend your youth reading dusty, old books in the library with your guardian.” His tone got even worse, moving into the you’ll-do-as-your-told category. “I would prefer that you go.”
Suddenly Pen had a wicked idea. An idea as practical as it was naughty. “Hook me up,” she said quickly. “I want you to watch me masturbate.”
Bishop made some noise between a sputter and a choke, but she wasn’t listening. She’d pulled off her shirt and was unbuttoning her shorts by the time Bishop had made it across the room to grab her arm.
“Penelope,” he scolded. “Put your clothes back on. We’ve talked about this.”
She froze, blinking. “Oh, no,” she laughed. “I didn’t mean, like…that. Like this was a sexual thing.”
He frowned down at her, his lips pressed into a thin line.
She picked her shirt up off the table and held it to her chest to cover her bra. “Remember that night in your room?”
His eyelids dropped closed and his fingers tightened on her arm. She wanted to reach out and touch his pectorals when his chest expanded and contracted at her eye level. It didn’t look like the response of an annoyed man. It looked like the response of a man tormented with lust. She could practically read his mind, and it was saying, “Fuck yes, how could I ever forget that night?”
Her heart beat a little faster, and she plowed on. “Remember how I told you I couldn’t masturbate?”
His eyes opened, and he nodded hesitantly. A spark of concern lit in his eyes.
“I meant it. I’ve tried, you know, since that night.” She looked down, suddenly feeling shy herself. “I’ve tried to touch myself the way you did, that made me feel so good, but I’m just not doing it right, or something.” She shrugged and raised her eyes to his. “You wanted me to stop fixating on you, and I’ve been good, but I get horny. It would help me focus on other things if you could teach me how to relieve myself.”
“Honey.” His voice had dropped to that gravelly timbre that crawled right up her thighs and into her panties. “That’s not a good idea.”
She was pretty sure, from the lust that heated his charcoal irises into shiny obsidian, that his refusal didn’t come with much conviction.
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t you think this is an important thing for a young woman to know, for her own empowerment?”
He frowned, and she knew she was on the right track.
“Or should I just count on college boys to show me what I should enjoy, sexually?”
Her guardian let go of her arm and seized the shirt in her hands, practically ripping it away from her. “Get undressed,” he growled, and turned to the table holding scientific implements. He grabbed a handful of wires, but then threw them down and whirled back around to face her. “Penelope, don’t ever let a man tell you what you should enjoy sexually, what you should want.” He jabbed a finger at her. “Your body is your body, and it’s perfect. And if some selfish, frat-boy asshole won’t take the time to learn how to get you off, that’s his shortcoming, not yours. Do you understand me?”
Pen blinked, and realized she was leaning practically back onto the table in an effort to move away from his anger. He froze and dropped his hand.
“Sorry. I’m sorry.” He pulled her toward him and enveloped her in his arms. “Just the thought of you in bed with some drunken college douchebag, Pen.” He kissed the top of her head. “He wouldn’t do it right. He wouldn’t take the time and treat you the way you deserve.”
One of his hands slid down to her bare lower back, and he inhaled deeply into her hair. He shifted, and there was no mistaking his mood, then. The thick rod pressing against her belly made it clear that anger was no longer his driving emotion.
He pushed her back and, only then, seemed to realize she was wearing just shorts and a bra. For a moment, he stared at her chest, and her nipples puckered tight in the white, sheer bralette she thanked the stars she’d chosen to wear that day. When his gaze licked slowly up her neck to her eyes, she and Bishop simply stared at each other for a dozen heartbeats, both of them breathing hard.
It was as if they were communicating without speaking, both of them saying, “And here we are again,” as if they knew it was inevitable. As if they knew they were both lost without the other.
“You’re so small,” he whispered, as he lowered his head and, to her utter surprise, captured her lips in his. “How are you so small, Pen, when you take up so much space in a room?” He was murmuring against her mouth. “I can’t breathe when you’re around. I can’t breathe.”
Her heart swelled, and she wondered if she could survive him. If they could survive each other.
At first, he nuzzled her lips gently, as if savoring her, but when she couldn’t help but make a sound of need, he reacted immediately, crushing her to him. He pinned her between his solid mass and the table, rocking his erection against her pelvis with quick, small thrusts of his hips.
He plundered her mouth with his, and when they came up for air, Penelope nearly felt like she was drowning. Drowning in her need for this man. Her love for him. Was that true? She couldn’t think. She gasped like she’d finally broken the surface for air, and he palmed her ass, scooping her up like she was a doll and dropping her onto the table between the wide stirrups.
She pulled her stretchy bralette over her head, baring her chest, and he groaned as if he couldn’t take anymore from her. Leaning away, she threw her head back and arched while he sucked her tits, teasing and nibbling each one in turn until she was nearly screaming with desire.
Pen had on tiny, white jean shorts, and every shove of Bishop’s hips dragged the thick knot of fabric at her crotch up over her clit in a satisfying rhythm. Pleasure she hadn’t felt in weeks built in her core, doubling and focusing, then doubling again, as her guardian dry-fucked her.
With shock, she realized she was going to orgasm just from this. She didn’t climax easily. She couldn’t even make herself come, and yet this man could command her body like it was a finely-tuned machine, custom-made for him.
He moved his mouth up to bite her collarbone, and she nearly came undone. “Just like that,” she gasped. “Feels so good. Don’t stop.”
But there was nothing else needed. He pulled his head back, locking his eyes on hers, and his commanding glare asserted what she already knew. You’re mine, little one. Mine. Making her climax under his touch was just the punctuation and the proof at the end of that claim.
Her eyes fluttered, losing that connection with his gaze, and she shattered against him, the orgasm ripping through her with so much pleasure that she shook under its power. Bishop kissed her mouth, swallowing her cries until all of the toe-curling aftershocks subsided.
“Yes, I know how to make you come, little one.” His husky words declared the undeniable truth. “And I’ll teach you, so that—” He blinked, frowning, before untangling his arms from her and making space between them while her chest heaved, and she stared at him, open-mouthed and coming down from her high.
He turned back to the side table and began picking out tools. “I’ll have to teach you,” he began more evenly, “so that you can teach them.”
“Them?” Pen asked to his back, her voice still breathy.
He cleared his throat. “The other men you’re going to be with. Boys your age.”
Though it hurt her to hear him say those words, what hurt her more was the pained resignation she heard in his voice. “Bishop,” she pleaded. “Don’t say those things. Listen, you didn’t come. Let me at least—”
“No,” he barked, turning back to her. “This isn’t about me.” He raked a hand through his hair, making it stand out in a crazy, somehow still gorgeous, mess. He took a deep breath, and his voice was controlled now. “You did come, though, honey. Are you still interested in doing this?”
She nodded. “If it’s okay with you. I really want to learn.”