Chapter One
The lot of them were up to no good, and if Felice
Larson could read her friends right, they were about to drop the trouble into
her lap. What the zoology department laughingly called the graduate student
lounge couldn’t hold more than five or six people in addition to the ratty
couch and the Steelcase table with the ancient microwave on top. With Ben’s
height and broad shoulders, which he at present was using to block the doorway,
her buds from Professor Marc Fanley’s lab created quite a crush as they circled
in on her. As they came forward, she backed up. And backed and backed until her
legs hit the couch and she plopped down. “Okay, what’s up?”
Crystal took the opportunity to sit next to Felice,
almost on top of her, actually. “We’ve come to a decision.”
“Why do I get the feeling it involves me?” Felice
said. “And why are the butterflies in my stomach telling me I won’t like it?”
“Oh, you’ll like it.” Sandra sat on Felice’s other
side, bookending her. Both women appeared ready to pounce if Felice so much as
tried to stand up.
Alex nodded toward Ben. “Better close that door.”
Ben did and rested against it. For heaven’s sake, this
was starting to look like a parody of a gangster movie. Next thing, they’d be
threatening her with cement overshoes and speaking out of the sides of their
mouths, even the women.
“Are you going to tell me what all this is about, or
do I have to figure out what you’ve decided on my own?” she said.
Crystal dug her index finger into her hair and twisted
a blonde curl tightly around it—a nervous habit of hers that manifested itself
every time she didn’t have an answer to a question and had to stall for time.
Felice glanced to Alex but got no more than a view of his faded jeans and
university sweatshirt. His brown eyes gave nothing away. Ben wasn’t any more
help. He simply crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the opposite
wall.
Finally, Sandra took charge. She grabbed Felice’s
hands and leaned forward. “You owe us. You said so yourself, remember?”
“Owe?” Felice searched her memory. She’d used that
expression lately. Though she couldn’t recall what debt she’d incurred, she had
a pretty solid feeling she’d paid it off.
“The research trip,” Sandra said. Though she was the
smallest of all of them, her red hair made her stand out. She joked that no one
should cross her because of her temper, but after getting to know her, you
didn’t dare laugh.
“I can see I’m not getting through to you,” Sandra
said. “Kangaroo rats.”
A shudder went through Felice at the mention of the
word “rats.” Ever since reading the novel 1984, she’d had a terror of
the miserable creatures.
“The trip we were all supposed to make to the desert,”
Crystal tossed in. “The one we let you skip out on. The one when it rained for
three solid days and we all came home covered in mud.”
“It’s not my fault you got stuck with the one week the
desert got rain,” Felice said.
“We all ended up with colds,” Alex said.
“And I sat on a cactus,” Ben added.
Of course. Her mind hadn’t quite managed to block out
the fact that she’d bailed on the rest of them and had stayed in her warm, dry
apartment while they’d chased over half of the Sonoran desert counting the
population of kangaroo rats. Awful, nasty creatures.
“She’s got it now,” Alex said.
“We’re connecting,” Ben said from his station at the
door. A man of few words, but every one was important.
“I’m writing half the paper,” Felice protested.
“And you’re first author,” Alex said. “Not enough.”
“All right, all right. What do you want from me?”
“Well-ll.” Crystal let the blond curl loose for a
moment, and then went back to twirling it. “You know Dev.”
“Of course I know Dev.” The new grad student was kind
of an odd bird. A few years older than the rest of them, Dev came from a tiny
European country, Latstonia or Bardstokia or something like that. He always
mumbled the name when people asked. But then, he swallowed most of his words,
making it difficult to know for sure if he was speaking English some of the
time.
“He’s really nice,” Crystal said.
“How can you tell?” Maybe Crystal knew him better than
Felice did. He glanced away whenever she looked at him. Poor guy. It had to
suck to be that shy.
“I’ve talked to him,” Crystal said.
“We all have,” Alex added. “We spent six days in the
rain with him, remember? If you’d come along on that trip, you’d know him,
too.”
“I shared a tent with him. He’s a good guy,” Alex
said.
“Well, I don’t know him,” Felice said. “He hasn’t said
more than ten words to me, and he’s swallowed six of those.”
“He only clams up around you,” Sandra said. “Which
makes you perfect.”
“None of you are making any sense,” Felice said. “Perfect
for what?”
Crystal’s finger gave her hair a work-out, twisting
and twisting. “You tell her, Alex.”
“Not me.” Alex glanced at Ben, whose face turned a
bright pink.
“Oh, for crissake,” Sandra said. “You’re perfect to
sleep with Dev, that’s what.”
“Sleep? Dev?” If Felice thought for a minute, she
could probably put those two words into a sentence that would make sense – as
long as they didn’t have “with” between them. Sleep with Dev. “As in have sex
with him?”
“Why not?” Sandra said. “He’s a good looking guy.”
Maybe he was behind the glasses with the huge rims. If
he combed his hair out of his face. And burned the corduroy pants. Lord, did he
shop at Dorks R Us?
“Look, Dev’s been here for months, and he hasn’t
interacted with a woman except for the ones in Marc’s lab,” Alex said.
“Heck, he might never have been with a woman,” Ben
said. “In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s a virgin.”
“How in heaven’s name could you know a thing like that
about him?” Felice demanded. This whole conversation had gone from weird to bizarre
to insane within less than five minutes. What man Dev’s age would be a virgin?
“We didn’t have much to do but talk at night in that
tent,” Ben said. “I asked about women, and he shut right up.”
“I’ve tried to draw him out on the subject, too,” Ben
said. “He won’t talk.”
“Think about it. You could be his first.” Ben nodded
as if that settled the matter.
If Ben thought that made the whole thing better, he’d
missed by a mile. “You want me to take a guy’s virginity?”
“Believe me, that’s one thing a man never misses.” Ben
stood there, an immovable tower of certainty, and no one else in the room
seemed eager to contradict him. True, the first time meant different things for
men than women, but still…Dev ought to share that special moment with someone
he cared about.
“It just doesn‘t seem right,” Felice said finally.
“We’re his friends,” Alex said. “We should do this for
him.”
“Fine. If you all think that’s such a great idea,
Crystal or Sandra can sleep with him,” Felice said.
“I’m taken,” Sandra said.
“So’s Crystal,” Ben added. The two of them had
obviously paired off. They’d been giving off signs for weeks. That only left
Felice, or the sane and logical choice, which was to let Dev find a woman on
his own.
“Besides, he doesn’t look at us the way he does at
you,” Sandra said.
Felice glared at Sandra. “And how is that?”
Sandra opened her eyes wide and imitated a kind of
puppy-dog face. “Like he wants to follow you home.”
Good God Almighty. Felice rose and paced to the other
side of the room. Her hip bumped the table, rattling the microwave. “You all
must be out of your minds.”
“He’s thousands of miles from home. He only knows us,”
Crystal said.
“He really needs to get laid,” Alex said. Always
helpful, Alex.
Crystal’s expression brightened. “You could make him
feel welcome.”
“It’s your patriotic duty,” Sandra concluded.
“Now, I know you’re kidding.”
Sandra gave Felice her best menacing stare. “Try me.”
“You mean this. You really mean this.” Felice glanced
at each of her friends in turn, from Ben’s stern features, to Alex’s open
expression, Crystal’s smile, and the look on Sandra’s face that said she knew
she had Felice trapped.
“A little action might do you some good, too,” Sandra
said.
Felice couldn’t stop the gasp from escaping, and she
charged across the room to Sandra. “I told you that in confidence.”
“Everyone knows you’ve been…” Alex cleared his throat.
“…lonely since whatsizname left on his post-doc.”
James. It had been three months, two weeks, and a day,
not that she was counting. Even the e-mails were getting short and seldom as
James slipped off into the ether of her past.
“Give Dev a shot,” Crystal chirped. “He might be
good.”
“A virgin? Good? The first time?”
“Well…you could teach him,” Crystal said. “Show him
all the things that turn you on.”
“I am not giving Dev VonRamsberg a crash course in the
Kama Sutra.”
Sandra rolled her eyes. “Do it any way you want. Just
do it.”
“Right.“ Felice planted her hands on her hips. “What
am I supposed to do? Walk up to him and ask, ‘If you don’t have anything
scheduled between seminars, want a pity fuck?’”
“Of course not. You’d scare him to death,” Alex said.
“Well, then?”
Alex reached into his pocket and produced a key tied
to a loop of string. “He gave me this when I took care of his pet iguana when
he was out of town. Sneak in in the middle of the night and ambush him.”
“That’s just great.” Felice threw her hands into the
air. “You want me to assault him.”
“It’s not assault if he likes it,” Alex said.
“How do you know what he likes?” Damn, they had her
shouting now.
“He’s a guy.” Ben counted off the points on his
fingers. “He’s horny. He wants you.”
She turned to the two women for some logic. “You
couldn’t ask me to do something so stupid.”
“We not only ask it, we expect it,” Sandra answered.
“You owe us,” Crystal said.
Well, shit, they meant it. She paced the room again,
what little of it there was. She did owe them. She’d meant it as an expression,
but they had her. Technically, she didn’t have to have collected the data to
write the paper and be first author. But what would Marc think if he found out
she hadn’t gone on that trip? He prided himself on putting out PhDs who’d had
hands-on training. How could she explain to him that what he thought of as
cute, little rodents were to her disease-ridden, blood-thirsty vermin just
dying for the opportunity to put their fangs into her face? She stopped pacing
for a moment. “If I do this, I don’t owe you anything more, right?”
“That’s it,” Sandra said. “Paid in full.”
“I only have to do it once?”
“Unless, of course, you want more.” Crystal smirked at
her. Actually smirked. She could smirk easily enough. She didn’t have to skulk
her way into a near-stranger’s apartment, get naked, and do the nasty with him.
But then, she’d only have to do it once, and Dev was a
sweet person, except for his fascination with side winding rattlesnakes. If
he’d never made love before, he might finish quickly, and she could go home to
her own bed. Women had put up with worse in their sex lives. In fact, she
herself had. She could face a few minutes in the sack with Dev a hell of a lot
easier than she could face Marc’s disappointment in her.
“Okay,” she said. “Give me the damned key.”
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