6. Kieran

Chapter 6

Kieran

D espite my best attempts over the last four days to talk myself out of this appointment, at 6:59 p.m. on Wednesday, I knock on Dr. Stirling’s office door. When there’s no answer, Sven and I exchange a glance. Her car is in the parking lot. She even reminded me via an impersonal text service of the date and time.

Like I could have forgotten.

I’m about to knock again when the door opens. Slightly mollified that she didn’t summon me from inside again like I’m mutt begging for scraps, I open my mouth to make a sarcastic remark.

But no words come out.

“Mr. Hayes,” she says, nodding. “Hello, Sven.”

“Doctor,” he rumbles.

Honeyed eyes return to me. She’s so tall in her sky-high heels, we’re almost at eye level. A dark brow cocks. “Are you feeling all right?”

I clear my throat. I never clear my throat unless I have a fucking cold.

“Fine,” I bite out.

Her eyes narrow at my tone, but she steps aside slightly and waves me in. I force my suddenly leaden feet to move past her. For exactly two seconds, I feel the heat of her body all the way through my suit. Her perfume coils around me, the fragrance notes like dancing snakes born to hypnotize men. The scent clings to me as I cross the office. I want to shower immediately.

My blood boiling, I unbutton my jacket and drop into the too-small chair. I think I might hate her. Especially when the soft snick of the door closing makes my cock stir. Fucking idiot body part doesn’t know any better. Not when Stirling looks like every horny teenager’s illicit wet dream about a naughty schoolteacher.

The top half of her shiny dark hair is clipped back, the lower half falling in long waves that form parenthesis around her breasts. Completing the honeytrap is a pseudo-conservative white blouse—silky and thin enough to hint at lace beneath—a skintight black skirt that skims the top of her calves, and heels so tall they could double as spears. Oh, and red lipstick. Because everything else wasn’t obvious enough.

The worst of it is she pulls it off. Some-fucking-how none of it looks contrived. Even though I damned well know everything this woman wields—her mind, her words, her body, her clothes—is a weapon.

“Is something wrong?” she asks, floating to her chair like a dancer, then sinking onto it like it’s a throne.

“No.”

Her blood-red lips don’t move. Her face is a static painting. Only her eyes are alive, studying me like I’m an equation she already knows the answer to. A queer feeling takes hold of me—that odd wave of familiarity I felt the first time I saw her. I must have met someone with eyes the same color before, but I have no idea when or where.

“How was returning to work?” she asks.

“Fine.”

It’s been better than fine. Returning was surprisingly easy thanks to Alistair’s efforts the last month. As far as anyone at Lumitech knows, I stepped away to work on an ultra-private project at home. I’m not even mad I’ll need to pull something out of my ass to support the lie. It doesn’t matter whether or not I bring forward something actionable. My project leaders know full well that half my ideas are science fiction, anyway, either wildly impractical or downright implausible. They’re used to my eccentricities.

For the last three days, I’ve felt stirrings of the same excitement I had in the early years. A sense of possibility and purpose. Even the never-ending project meetings that had become painfully monotonous felt less so.

“Close your eyes, Mr. Hayes.”

I glare at her. “Why? ”

She tilts her head. Her hair swings forward, hugging the curve of one full breast. Lamplight makes her skin unnaturally luminous. Polished alabaster.

I need to get laid. That’s obviously the reason my eyes keep straying. I can’t be attracted to her. I like women who are soft, warm, and compliant. Who have nothing to hide—unlike the woman across from me, who more and more reminds me of a Japanese puzzle box. With spikes that take blood at every wrong move.

“Because I asked you to,” she answers.

“You didn’t ask .” I sound deranged. Mean and angry. I feel a pinch of shame.

“Correct,” she says. “Do you know why?”

Blowing out a breath, I swipe a hand down my face. I knew this was a mistake. “I bet you’re gonna fucking tell me, huh?”

“Because when I ask you a question, you rarely answer. When I give you an order, it irritates you, which at least leads to an honest response. Now close your fucking eyes.”

Startled, I laugh. Her lips curve.

“Jesus. Fine. ”

I close my eyes.

“I want you to think about the last time you were happy. Don’t focus on details like where you were, who you were with… that’s background noise. I want you to isolate the feeling of happiness. Let me know when you have.”

My first thought is of my wife, but I shut it down before I even picture her face. My mind goes blank .

“This is impossible,” I mutter.

“Did you have a pet as a child?”

I immediately envision the ugliest dog in the world. A small, geriatric mutt with the foulest breath who followed me home from the river one day and inserted himself into our family. But he loved me first and most, rarely straying from my side.

“Aye. Dilly.” A genuine smile spreads on my face. I fucking loved that dog.

“Good. Hold onto that feeling as you take an internal step back from it. Think of it as a ball of light that you can walk around and observe. Now take one more step back until you can feel where that happiness is. Where it lives in your body. Once you find it, tell me.”

It’s surprisingly easy to follow her instructions.

“My shoulders,” I say softly. “The front side of them. And, ehm, the bottom of my chest around my ribs.”

I feel like an absolute fool, but she says, “Good,” with a warmth in her voice I haven’t heard before. “Take a deep breath and open your eyes.”

I open my eyes to her smile and that annoyingly charming eyetooth.

“Now,” she says lightly, “how was returning to work?”

My lips tug into a begrudging smile. “You win, Doc.”

Once I start talking, it’s like a dam breaks. More and more pours out, and at some point I forget that she’s… her . I talk to her like I would a colleague, outlining a few of the more exciting ventures in the works. Advancements and new applications for current technologies, all the expected impacts on the market over the next few years.

Stirling listens with her whole body. Legs crossed, she leans forward with an elbow on a knee and her chin on a fist. Her eyes stay pinned to mine, slightly widened. She looks like I’m giving her proof that fairies are real. It’s a heady feeling and likely to blame for what comes out of my mouth next.

I tell her what I’ve been personally working on for the last five years with a specialized team of ethicists, neuroscientists, nanotechnologists, and biomedical and robotics engineers. Information so privileged even Alistair doesn’t know all the details. Beyond the initial press release years ago—that I’d argued vehemently against—we’ve kept the project behind literal vault doors.

“Neural nanorobotics,” she echoes in an awed tone. “I vaguely remember there being a media splash years ago when Lumitech announced funding research on it, but I haven’t seen anything since.”

“That’s intentional.”

After the first round of death threats, I’d put my foot down with the board. Given that some of the threats weren’t specific to me but rather promises to bomb our headquarters, I hadn’t needed to push too hard.

She frowns. “There were protests for a while, right?”

I nod. “People hear ‘artificially intelligent robots’ and ‘brain,’ and assume nefarious intent. Then fear-mongers spread more misinformation that, unfortunately, is far more palatable to the masses than scientific research.”

“I can’t remember if you released the intended application. Is there one?”

I smile wryly. “We’re not developing mind-control, that’s for sure. Our goal is nanorobots that repair damaged neurons and remove amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease.”

Stirling blinks and sits back, a softness in her expression that makes my skin itch and my fingers twitch. My tongue swells with another detail—how close we are to a working prototype. But I’ve already said too much.

“That’s amazing,” she says. “I’m assuming you haven’t publicized your ongoing research because of competition?”

“We have no competitors,” I tell her with a small smile. It’s not arrogance—it’s fact. No one has the team I do. Other companies are working on similar technologies, but they’re light years behind us. “It’s for security reasons.”

She nods. “What you’ve told me won’t leave this room.”

“I’m not worried about that.” Oddly, it’s true.

“Then what are you worried about?”

My mind ices over, the spreading numbness a welcome buffer between me and this new, mystifying urge to confide in her. I shouldn’t have told her about the project to begin with.

There is no project. Not anymore.

Not since a phone call in the middle of the night accomplished what two assassination attempts hadn’t.

“Did something change five weeks ago?”

I loathe how easily she can read me—a feat even those closest to me have never managed.

Sharing time is over.

“I’ve been working my ass off since I was eighteen. I was bound to crash eventually.” I shrug. “I’m feeling back to normal now.”

Her eyes sharpen. Lion eyes . The second my mind makes the connection, something in me relaxes. There’s now a valid explanation for that niggling familiarity I feel around her. Dilly was the single canine exception to my lifelong love of big cats. When I was little, my parents used to have to drag me away from the lion enclosure at the Dublin Zoo.

“So that’s what over a month of daily drinking and isolation were? A vacation?”

“Apparently so.”

Stirling stares at me for another beat. “I think we should stop here for today.”

Music to my ears.

Standing smoothly, I button my jacket. She rises as well, gliding past me to the door. My eyes have a mind of their own, skating over the dark mass of her hair, lingering on the curve of her ass, trailing down her legs. Her bare calves are works of art.

“Mr. Hayes.”

Shit.

Stirling stands at the door, hand on the knob, her expression reproachful. For a shocking second, I wonder what she looks like when she comes .

I’m so rattled by the thought, I snap, “You’re not my type, but I’m not dead. Out of curiosity, what did you hope to accomplish by wearing that getup? Did you think I’d fall to my knees and ask to be spanked?”

Shock blankets her expression, swiftly encompassed by anger. Shame floods me like toxic waste. Why the fuck did I say that? She’s really done nothing except try to help me.

“Stirling, I?—”

“No,” she snaps.

She crosses to me and gets right in my face, so tall I barely have to dip my head to maintain eye contact. And I do—I deserve whatever she’s about to unleash.

“Listen very carefully because I’m not going to repeat myself. That’s the last time you’ll reference my past, which you know less than nothing about. Moreover, our sessions are outside my normal working hours—which, as I mentioned to Gail, are booked solid for the next two months. If I’d had time to change between my last appointment of the day and this one, believe me, I would have.”

My voice bypasses my brain entirely, emerging hoarse. “You wore that for another client?”

Her eyes flare. She takes an abrupt step back, then swivels and opens the door. Not looking at me, she says in a frosty tone, “Good night, Mr. Hayes. If you’d like to book another session, you have my phone number.”

I clear my throat and walk past her into the hallway. The door doesn’t slam, but the sound is jarringly final. I acted like a fool, and I don’t blame her for putting me in my place.

Sven’s gaze shifts from the door to me, then flickers down before snapping back to my face. His brows lift.

“Don’t say a fucking word,” I growl.

He grunts—the equivalent of a gleeful howl.

I stalk past him toward the exit, refusing to acknowledge or adjust my rock-hard cock.