Page 4 of The Omega Project

“I can wait until tonight.” Derek says, proving once again that I’ve traded up in every way. He nuzzles the top of my head, navigating his way back to my cubicle and placing me gently on my chair. I’m still buzzing with my afterglow, but when he checks his messages on his phone, a familiar knot forms between his brows. “Damn. I’ll have to raincheck lunch. Gary’s called me into the office.”

I bite my tongue, since Derek already knows I think he’s overworked and criminally underpaid. While his boss, Gary, recognises his talent, he definitely doesn’t reward him for it.

“I do have something I want to give you first, though,” he tells me, digging into his messenger bag. “It can keep you company while you’re all alone up here.”

I snort. “Can it also give me mind-scrambling orgasms?”

His ears pinken at the tips, and there’s a shy edge to his smile as he takes something from his backpack and places it on the desk. “Not quite.”

“Derek!” I gasp in delight as I peer down at the black and gold origami bee. The detail is spot-on, and I should know, since my thesis is on the feeding practices of honeybees and whether we can manipulate their diet to make them more disease resistant. “It’s perfect! When did you do this?”

“Last night. I’ve been practicing while I run backups.”

I smile at the idea of Derek patiently folding tiny bits of paper in the dim glow of his computer empire. “Well, I love it. And hopefully, if I attach it to the front of my thesis, the review panel will think it’s so cute they ignore the lack of a coherent argument.”

He smirks indulgently at my weak joke, but another glance at his screen has him shifting uneasily on his feet. “Crap. Gary is really blowing up my phone.”

“Come on,” I tell him, linking my arm through his. “Time for you to buzz off and earn us the honey.”

We chat about my latest family antics as we wind our way through the library. I share the Spiderman story, although I leave out the part about Mum letting Rick in for breakfast, and the fact he’s bought the apartment block as some kind of sexual leverage. Every time I mention my ex, Derek gets a feral gleam in his eyes, and as much as I want to get Rick out of my life for good, I won’t let it happen at the expense of the people I love.

“I told Claudia that I might be moving in with you,” I blurt as we reach the bottom of the ground floor stairs. “If you’re still offering me Clark’s room, I mean.”

Clark is Derek’s former housemate and landlord, since he owns the two-bedroom duplex they were sharing. He’s recently bonded with a very wealthy pack and moved to a glamorous beachside mansion, freeing up his room. It’s great timing for me, if I can swing the rent that comes with living in such a trendy neighborhood. Close to all the amenities, including a direct bus route to the university, it would be a far cry from my sister’s couch on the outskirts of the city.

“It’s all yours!” Derek grins, his big hands encircling my waist. I’m a couple of steps up from him, almost putting us on eye level, and there’s no mistaking his ecstatic expression as he leans in for a kiss. “It’s going to be perfect for us, Em. Not to mention Clarkwill be over the moon that I’ll have company. He thinks I’m one step away from mind melding with my microwave.”

I giggle, because Derek likes it when I get his Trekkie jokes. But it also makes my heart flutter with excitement, because if Clark is giving me the green light, there’s nothing stopping me from moving in. I’ll have to rework my budget, but I know Derek will give me a little leeway until I can find a job that pays better than the university bookstore and my weekend shifts at a pub downtown.

I can almost taste Derek’s excitement as hegives me a deep, filthy goodbye kiss, and by the time we break apart, I’m so close to a swoon, I have to grip the polished banister. Once he’s gone, it’s a slow and reluctant climb back towards my study cubicle, and I’m only halfway there when my mobile pings with an incoming text. I fish my phone out of my pocket, my stomach dipping at the message on the screen:

Back in town.

Meet me in Room 5.05 at noon to pick up where we left off.

Don’t beeee late, mentee.

Lang x

I grip the banister for a whole different reason now.

Because this is a summons from the infamous Langston Fall, a professor who took me under his wing, injected new life into my thesis, kissed me breathless in a ballroom… and then disappeared without a trace.

Emily

The university’s anthropology department was kind of an afterthought before Langston Fall joined the faculty a year ago. According to the school grapevine, he blazed onto the scene astride a Ducati superbike, striding around campus like a leather-clad pied piper and gathering eager students in his wake. The administration had to scramble to find lecture halls big enough to cater to his classes, and rumour has it, he’ll be poaching some extra classrooms from the biological sciences wing next year.Mywing, since interest in the field of entomology is dropping like flies.

Uh. It seems bad jokes are catching.

God only knows why he agreed to be my mentor. We have nothing in common, and it’s not like he has a lot of time, since he also runs a successful forensic anthropology firm. But with so few jobs for PhDs in academia, the university assigns us career mentors in different fields and somehow, we were paired up. I worked with Langston for a thrilling three months - until he took an abrupt leave of absence and disappeared to parts unknown.

It disturbs me how much I missed him. I only really saw him once a week for our mentoring sessions, but for a while there, I thought he might return a little of my interest. He always encouraged my bee-related ramblings, gazing at me like I was sharing the secrets of the universe and not the everyday goings-on of a hive. It didn’t matter how busy he was, whenever I turnedup at his door he gave me every ounce of his attention, and I ate it up like a pint of silky Manuka honey.

There’s no denying I had a massive crush on him, and when I got the chance to track him down at a fundraiser one night, I grabbed it. We danced together a couple of times, before he dragged me into a shadowy hallway and gave me a kiss that left me weak in the knees. I was panting for him – literally – and so ready for him to ravish me all night long. But half an hour later he was dropping me home, and a couple of days after that he was packed up and gone.

I try to ignore the lingering sting of rejection as I reach his door. It’s cracked open a little, and as always, an amazing scent wafts into the hallway and rocks me back on my heels. It reminds me of honey toast, but with a muskier tone, like fresh hay laid in a warm barn.

Now who’s getting all poetic?

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