Chapter 162: Lock it, Please**

"Say that again," Jack said.

"I called them." The form rattled in her fingers. "She was in my room. I called the nurse."

Then Jack took the paper out of her hand. He laid it face down on the desk, turned her chair around by its arm, and knelt.

Now his red eyes were level with hers, and there was nowhere else to look.

"From the beginning," he said. "Slowly."

So she told him. The banging in the hallway at three in the morning. The doors that didn’t open. Her own hand on the knob, and how long she had waited before she turned it. The torn gray uniform. The fever before dawn. The lobby phone at eight, because she had wanted to wait for a decent hour and do it properly.

"Two men and a nurse," she whispered. "All human. They were smiling. They were so nice."

"And the girl?"

"She woke up when they lifted her." Blair looked at her knees. "She grabbed my arm. She said, Don’t let them take me." Her throat closed. "And I took her fingers off. I told her she’d be fine."

"Was that all she said?"

Blair shut her eyes.

"I don’t want to go back there."

"Back," Jack repeated softly.

She opened her eyes. He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was looking past her shoulder at the rows of forms.

"Three in the morning," he said. "The hour every other name on this desk was taken. She wasn’t sick, Ms. Willows. She was running. They had already come for her once, and she got away."

The room went cold.

"Then the fever..."

"Was whatever they’d already done to her." He said it flatly. "And at eight o’clock, a helpful girl in Dormitory G picked up a phone and saved them the trouble of a search."

Blair hadn’t meant to.

Jack looked back at her.

"You had been here a few weeks," he said. "You did exactly what a sensible girl does with a feverish stranger. That’s what they count on. Anything that eats people runs on sensible girls doing the sensible thing." He continued, "Carry the guilt, if you insist. Don’t mistake it for the blame."

Her eyes stung. She looked down and found she was holding his sleeve.

She didn’t remember taking it.

Jack glanced at her fingers twisted in his rolled cuff, then up at her face. He didn’t pull away.

"Would you know the nurse again?" he asked.

Bright teeth. A tidy bun. A syringe already waiting in her pocket, as if she had known she would need it.

"Yes," Blair whispered.

"Good. Then that’s where we start."

He rose, and she let go of his sleeve. He picked up the form. The blue crest. LXRK309, in the same neat hand as all the others, even at eight in the morning, even in a hurry.

Blair’s hand covered the top line before she could stop herself.

The name.

Jack looked at her hand.

"I don’t know her name," Blair whispered. "She was in my room all night, and I never even asked." She swallowed. "I don’t want to read it off a form. Like she’s just one of them."

For a long moment he said nothing. Then he folded the form once, the name on the inside, and pressed it into her palm. His fingers closed hers around it and stayed there.

"Then read it when you can bear to," he said.

He didn’t step back.

His hand was still wrapped around hers, the form crushed between their fingers. She was trembling.

"You’re shaking," Jack said.

"I know."

"You’ll go back to your room and lie awake thinking about what you did, should’ve done and could’ve done." It wasn’t a question.

She didn’t answer. He was right. He was always right, and tonight she couldn’t bear it.

She looked past him at the door.

Jack followed her gaze.

"Ms. Willows."

"I don’t want to think," Blair whispered. "Not tonight. Not about any of it."

"Then ask me," he said.

Her face burned. She stared at the second button of his shirt and made herself say the only thing she could manage.

"Lock it. Please."

For a moment he didn’t move. Then he let go of her hand and locked the door. He took the folded form from her fingers and slid it into the pocket of her skirt, flat against her hip. His hand stayed there.

"Look at me."

She did.

Jack kissed her slowly. His mouth was warm and tasted of smoke and bitter coffee. He drew her lower lip between his, let it go, and kissed her again, deeper, until she opened for him without being asked.

He lifted her out of the chair as if she weighed nothing and set her on the edge of the desk. Paper slid and whispered under her. Forms fluttered to the floor. Jack didn’t look at them once.

"Your files," she breathed.

"They’re only paper." He nudged her knees apart with his thigh and stepped between them.

His mouth moved to her jaw, then the hollow beneath her ear, then lower, slow open-mouthed kisses down the side of her throat. Her head tipped back. Her fingers slid up into his hair.

He took the hem of her sweater and drew it upward, unhurried, and stopped with it bunched beneath her arms. He looked at her. Something in his red eyes went dark and intense.

"Arms."

She raised them. The sweater went somewhere behind him. Cool air touched her skin, and then his hands did, broad and warm, sliding up her ribs. His thumbs brushed the undersides of her breasts through thin cotton until she gasped.

He unhooked her bra with one hand. She crossed her arms out of reflex. He caught her wrists, gently, drew them apart, and set her palms flat on the desk on either side of her hips.

"Leave them there."

She left them there.

He bent his head. His mouth closed over her breast, hot and slow, and his tongue circled her nipple until her back arched off the wood. His hand slid beneath her skirt, up the inside of her thigh, and stopped just short of where she wanted it.

Blair made a sound she would have died of shame over in daylight.

Jack lifted his head.

"Tell me to stop, and I might stop," he said.

Her nails dug into the edge of the desk.

"Don’t," she whispered. "...stop."

His fingers moved.

They slipped smoothly beneath the lace edge of her panties, instantly finding her slick and warm. Jack let out a low, dark chuckle.

"So wet," Jack murmured, his voice a rough, wicked purr. "You didn’t even need me to touch you, did you? You’re already dripping for me."

Blair flushed a brilliant shade of red, squeezing her eyes shut. She bit her lower lip.

"Look at me," he commanded softly. "Tell me what you want."

She slowly opened her eyes, her lashes fluttering as she met his intense crimson gaze. "I want... I want you to help me, Professor."

"Good girl," he praised darkly.

He hummed and hooked his fingers into the waistband of her panties and dragged them down her legs, tossing them to the floor alongside the scattered paperwork.

He slid two long fingers deep inside her. Blair cried out, her hips jerking upward off the desk. He began a slow, perfect rhythm, his thumb circling her clit while his fingers stretched her.

"Is this clearing your head?" Jack taunted, his red eyes focused on her flushed, desperate face. "Are you thinking about anything else besides my fingers inside you?"

"No, Professor," Blair sobbed breathlessly, writhing against his hand. "Please..."

"Please what?" he demanded, pulling his fingers out completely, leaving a glistening trail of her arousal.

Blair opened her glassy eyes. She watched in a dizzying haze of lust as Jack took a step back. The clink of his belt buckle echoed in the quiet office. He unzipped his trousers and freed his thick, pulsing erection. He then reached over to his desk, smoothly pulling open a side drawer to retrieve a small silver packet.

He tore the foil open with his teeth and quickly rolled the protection down his length.

Jack gripped her bare thighs, pulling her all the way to the edge of the desk. He stepped flush against her, the tip of his cock brushing teasingly against her entrance.

"Look at me," Jack commanded.

Blair met his piercing gaze, her chest heaving, a fierce blush painting her cheeks.

Jack drove his hips forward, burying himself deep inside her in one thrust.

Blair threw her head back, a loud, beautiful moan tearing from her throat. The stretch was intense, filling her completely, but she was so wet that he just glided in. Jack paused for only a second, letting her adjust before he started moving.

The desk groaned beneath them, the rhythmic slap of his hips against her bare thighs echoing through the room.

"Show me what a greedy, obedient little student you are," Jack growled, leaning down to bite gently at her collarbone. "Wrap your legs around me."

Blair obediently hooked her legs around his waist, pulling him even deeper. Her fingernails dug into the desk as he ruthlessly pounded into her. Jack’s hands gripped her hips, leaving faint red marks on her pale skin as he held her perfectly in place to take the full force of his thrusts.

"Such a good, desperate girl," Jack praised darkly, his breath hot against her ear. He snapped his hips forward, hitting a spot deep inside her that made her vision white out. "Taking my cock right on my desk. Is this keeping your mind busy?"

"Yes, Professor!" Blair gasped out, unraveling beneath him.

The blinding rush of euphoria crashed over her. Her inner walls clamped down tight around his length as an orgasm ripped through her body, pulling endless, sobbing moans from her lips.

Jack gritted his teeth, a groan slipping past his lips at the sudden tightness of her climax. He drove into her a few more frantic, rapid times, burying himself to the hilt as his own release broke.

Afterward, the lamp was the only thing on the desk still standing up straight.