Page 119 of Love Sick

I’ve never experienced this…this breathlessness. This obsession. This all-consuming need to be closer. When she’s not there, my skin remembers her. If I’m alone in my bed at night, I can taste her.

I want to breathe her into me, and a primitive desire has woken inside me. It tells me to claim her. Possess her. Absolutely destroy her for anyone else.

It’s barbaric. Chaotic.

I’m a physician. I understand human physiology. I know the chemical changes that occur when a human falls in love—the early rush of dopamine, the euphoria, the blindness to consequences.

This high will fade eventually. The unhealthy fixation will ease, but Grace will still exist inside me, her fist curled tight about my heart.

Her laugh. Her kindness. Her incessant need to study. How easy she is to rile up. The shy smile any time she catches me staring. The sound she makes when she comes. That tender question in her eyes the first time she wrapped those red lips around me, silently begging for approval.

She owns me.

And she still hasn’t said it back.

* * *

She waits in my apartment when I arrive home, books and printed PowerPoints spread over my coffee table. Highlighter in hand, she scans the page before her, brows furrowed in concentration.

A female singer trills through my sound bar.

Is that Dua Lipa?

No.

Lana Del Rey.

Wait…

They sound nothing alike.

“Who is this?” I ask.

She doesn’t look up from her book. “Halsey.”

Ah. Wrong on all accounts.

I kiss the top of her head. “Why are you already studying again?”

She greets me with a quick kiss when I sit beside her. It misses my cheek and lands at the corner of my eye. “My CREOG score didn’t improve as much as I wanted.”

“Oh no. We need fresh flashcards stat.”

She nods. “I know. I already started—” She turns to me and narrows her eyes. “You’re teasing me, aren’t you?”

I nudge her cheek with my nose. “What gave it away?”

That scent beneath her ear is intoxicating. A strategic chemical adulterant created only for me. It pierces through my body’s defenses and spreads a buzzing electricity. I turn her head to catch her lips with mine.

A hitch in her breath gives me clearance to take more. The kiss escalates and I maneuver her on top of me. Straddling my lap, she presses all those soft curves against me.

This is so much better than studying.

She stiffens. “Oh! I forgot to ask. How did you do?”

Nope. Don’t need that bucket of cold water right now. I grip her legs and stand.

She giggles, wrapping her legs tight around me. “Julian! Where are you taking me?”

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