The Sextet - Entanglements [The Sextet Anthology, Volume 4] (Siren Publishing Everlasting Classic) (22 page)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Growing up surrounded by military men, it's no wonder Annie likes to feature them in her writing. There is just something about those self-assured alpha males, and the equally strong women who can walk beside them that makes for a wonderful story. Their influence was a big part of her decision to serve as a Dept. of Army Civilian Nurse, where she spent three years living in Europe. Her circle of friends include Army and Marine Corps Snipers, Rangers, SEALs and Green Berets who help give her military characters the realism readers expect. 

As a part of an 18th century living history group, Annie is also a part of an all-female cannon crew. She'll shoot anything from the field piece to her modern firearms and recently got to fire a .50 cal. military-style sniper rifle. In contrast, she is a self-professed "foodie" and would love to sit next to Paula
Deen
at dinner. Annie and her husband live in central Indiana.

Also by The Sextet

Siren Ménage Everlasting: The Sextet Anthology, Volume 1:
Sharing

Available at

BOOKSTRAND.COM

STRING THEORY

Mellanie Szereto

DEDICATION

For all the nerds and geeks in the world. Smart is sexy!

Chapter 1

Andromeda Fetter checked her watch as she followed the sidewalk to the front entrance of the building housing Section B. Twenty-eight minutes to complete two laps around the complex, and she’d worked through a possible explanation for the discrepancy in the winding and momentum numbers of her assistant’s topological duality study. A hike in the brisk October breeze had done wonders for her brain cells. Her ritual late afternoon walk done, she entered the double doors to sign back in at the security desk.

Brita, dressed in her usual olive-green uniform, greeted her from behind the counter, video monitors to the left and right. “You just missed Dr. Keyes. He left about five minutes ago.”

Andromeda’s stomach fluttered, and a rush of frustration flooded her already tattered nerves. “Darn.”

Shaking his head, the other security guard on duty, Winston, rolled his eyes. “One of these days, you should ask him to dinner. He likes you, and there’s nothing wrong with a woman doing the inviting. This is the twenty-first century, after all.”

Brita’s nod came as no surprise, considering how often she told Andromeda to spend less time logged into the complex and more time working on her social life. “He’s probably just shy, maybe afraid you’ll say no if he does the asking. He seemed disappointed that he’d missed you when he signed out for the night.”

Now Andromeda would have to call him if she expected to go through with the experiment this evening without the watchful eyes of some colleagues with high ambitions. Leaving a message might be easier than asking for his help face-to-face, especially after the…
interesting
ideas that had popped into her head several days ago. “I’ve been thinking about it. I just always get so…flustered when I try to talk him about anything other than a project.”

Setting down his
World’s Best Grandpa
coffee mug, Winston sighed. “You’re an intelligent, pretty young woman. The man would have to be a fool to say no. What if he’s waiting for you to make the first move?”

“Yeah.” Not unexpectedly, Brita wasted no time backing up her partner. “By the way, the new surveillance equipment for your lab will be installed over the weekend. We have video at the clearance checkpoint, but the feed beyond that is off-line until sometime tomorrow afternoon.”

They’re making me take a day off.
“I know you won’t let anything happen to my lab—not that anyone would try to steal my work with all the other higher profile projects on the complex. Branes and strings don’t interest people the way black holes and dark matter do. I’ll be finished working in a few hours.” Andromeda hurried to the bank of elevators before they made her commit to asking her hunky coworker on a date. She’d decided yesterday to take the initiative and end the anxiety of patiently waiting for an invitation.

Exiting the elevator on the third floor, she passed through the security doors, waving to the camera mounted on the ceiling. Was she saying good-bye to Brita, Winston, and her job?
I don’t have any other choice. I can be a woman or I can become a hermit.
She’d made an honest effort to increase her feminine appeal over the last two weeks. Perfume. Painted toenails. No more utilitarian white cotton underwear. Those baby steps had brought her to this moment.

With a slow exhale, she tried to calm her rapidly increasing pulse as she picked up the phone on her desk to call Gunnar Keyes.
Dial. Speak. I can do this!
She waited for the beep. “Dr. Keyes, this is Dr. Fetter. I’m sorry to bother you at home, but…” Her gaze fell to a red and yellow package tied with a pink bow on top of her keyboard. For the fifth time this week, he’d left a bag of her favorite candy on her desk. Fear vanished, replaced by hope. “I need your help with an experiment.”

* * * *

Striding down the deserted hallway toward the secure lab, Gunnar absently fussed with a loose thread in his pants pocket with one hand and jingled his keys in the other. The clinking and jangling echoed off the walls of the nearly sterile corridor. The smell of disinfectant tickled his nose. After almost five months, he still hadn’t gotten used to the germ-free environment.

As he approached the outer doors of the lab, he sorted through his keys. Silver-colored, square-headed, and imprinted with Do Not Copy. The “By Penalty of Black Hole Incarceration” was implied. At least one had existed for several seconds in the lab on the other side of the complex, so the threat was plausible. Pausing at the entrance, he swiped his ID card and punched in his security clearance code. MESSIER31.
The Andromeda Galaxy.
The light on the keypad turned green. Next, he placed his thumb on the print pad and leaned down to the retinal scanner.

“You are cleared for entrance.” He shook his head and chuckled at the automated female voice. Someone in security was a Trekkie. But, then again, so was he. Could he get so lucky as to have fallen in love with a
Star Trek
fan?

Finally, he inserted the key in the lock and gave a twist to the right. The tumbler clicked to release the bolt. He hoped he never had to get into the lab as a matter of life or death. The five-step entrance meant certain death.

Tonight was a matter of professional courtesy. He’d been summoned after hours by his colleague to bear witness to her latest discovery. She spent enough time in the lab to have discovered everything from the meaning of life to how to cheat death. Not that he was jealous, he wasn’t. He only preferred to make a few discoveries of his own—like what Andromeda Fetter looked like without her hair pulled tight in a ball at the back of her head. Did she wear cotton, satin, or lace beneath those baggy black, brown, and blue suits? Was the flowery perfume he’d smelled while leaning over her shoulder yesterday his imagination? His poor, lonely libido had reacted to
something
. It always stood at attention around the prim, all-business physicist. Her pheromones had been driving him crazy for months—since their first meeting actually.

With a frustrated shake of his head, he rounded the corner that led to her workspace. A dark flurry came barreling toward him, head down and arms swinging. He braced himself.

“Oof!” The collision set the brown-suited Dr. Fetter off-balance.

He reached out to steady her, pulling her against his chest. Perhaps not the best idea, considering his attraction to this Playboy Bunny in elephant’s clothing. Enough of these traffic accidents had occurred for him to know she hid a deliciously curvy body beneath her blocky jacket and trousers. Her glasses, more often than not, tumbled to the floor, exposing her shocking blue eyes.
Hmm.
Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation strikes again.
The closer their proximity, the stronger the force attracting his body to hers.

What would she do if he started removing the pins or whatever the hell bound her jet-black hair? How would she react if he buried his fingers in those locks of silk and kissed her? Did he possess the boldness to finally act on the fantasies that had plagued him from day one of his new job?

“Oh, Dr. Keyes, you’re here.” The words came out with breathy gasps—the post-orgasmic kind he recalled from his nightly dreams.

Maybe someday he’d muster the courage to invite her to join him for coffee or lunch.
Decaf green tea with honey. A veggie wrap, strawberry yogurt, and a yellow and red bag of Sugar Babies.
She probably thought no one noticed the candy snack she discreetly ate after lunch. Hell, he’d noted
everything
about her. He was a scientist. Making observations paid the bills. Too bad it hadn’t improved his sex life.

Forget coffee or lunch, he needed the bravery to invite her to his bed, especially since he couldn’t seem to focus on anything but her. Giving her a bag of candy every day wasn’t enough to soothe his aching cock. One tiny strand of encouragement and he’d work up the guts to issue the invitation. “I just arrived, Dr. Fetter. Your message said you need my assistance with an experiment.”

She nodded, that fist-sized ball of hair not moving a millimeter. Reaching up to her face, she adjusted her glasses and toyed with the pearl earring in her right lobe. Why did she seem nervous? Problems in the lab? “Yes, yes. Come with me please.”

She hurried back toward the lab, her hips swishing in time with her steps. He would go anywhere she led him, and he’d love to come with her.

Now or never.
His blood pressure couldn’t take another day.

* * * *

Her low-heeled pumps clicked on the tile floor as Andromeda rushed to her lab, trying to breathe through a bout of lightheadedness. She’d run into Gunnar Keyes. Again. At least the twelfth time in the last four and a half months. Since the first day he’d started working at Labyrinth Universal String Theory Laboratories. What a mouthful. Although, the lab’s alternative acronym wasn’t much better, even if it did fit the state of her body.

She struggled to ignore the roughness of her lace bra against her suddenly hard nipples. Dr. Keyes always triggered physical and chemical responses in her body. If she gave in to her base animal attraction, would she finally be able to check him off her to-do list and concentrate on her work? The birds and bees did it. Why couldn’t PhDs?
Because the attraction is more than physical.
Besides dreams of sharing a bed with him, she also thought about love, marriage, and babies.

Behind her, Gunnar’s shoes squeaked, letting her know he took long, even steps on the freshly mopped floor. Steps that reminded her of his long, athletic legs. Sometimes he removed his jacket, rolling up his shirtsleeves to reveal muscular forearms. When luck was with her, he also bent over to retrieve a file from his bottom drawer, treating her to a view of his tight, fantasy-inspiring backside. What she wouldn’t give for a chance to touch or nibble his incredible butt.

“What are you working on, Dr. Fetter?” His voice came from near her ear, close enough for his warm breath to tease the skin on her neck.

She suppressed a shiver.
Fetter’s Theory of Relativity. Whenever you are relatively close, I am relatively turned on.
“I, ahem, I’m testing the S-dualities of strong coupling constants. I want to prove that an increased amount of applied force amplifies the dilation field.”

Why did explaining her purely scientific experiment to Gunnar make her panties damp? Maybe because her experiment involved
unconventional
variables.

“So the closed strings become more resistant to breakage with increased force? Almost as if the swelling force causes the elasticity to reverse, without becoming so rigid as to shatter?”

“Yes.”
Swelling. Rigid. Shatter.
Her cheeks flamed at his inadvertent sexual innuendo. She resisted the need to fan her face and stopped in front of her computer. Tapping the space bar, she woke the screen from its sleep mode. “I’ve composed a model showing how this should work. A closed string with a strong coupling constant resists breaking into an open string. If the string is placed over an expanding cylinder, it becomes more resistant—almost shrinking to fit the cylinder as the cylinder increases in diameter. The band should also tighten against uneven pressure—say to one side, but not the other. In order to test this, I had one of the technicians make several strong elastic-type bands of different sizes from an experimental compound I created.”

“How do you plan to test these bands? And how strong is strong? The bands will break under
some
amount of force. How will you measure the force?” He leaned over her shoulder, seeming to study the animation on the screen.

Would he hear her intake of breath if she filled her lungs with the woodsy scent of his aftershave? Slow, slow, slow inhale.
Yummm
. If she turned her head to watch him read her notes, she could rest her cheek on his lightly stubbled jaw and get high. Who needed caustic substances to sniff when she had Gunnar? Well, not exactly
had
. Not yet anyway.

Couplings, strings, bands. Her naughty mind reminded her of the wicked things she wanted to do with him. If only he’d show her some sign he was interested.

The screen dimmed, reflecting his faint smile. He shifted. “You smell like my grandmother’s garden. Lilies of the valley are her favorite. Perfume? Or shampoo?”

She was no expert in biology, but weren’t humans attracted to mates by scenting?

His nose skimmed her neck. “Ah, perfume. I like it.”

Her heart skipped then set off on a rapidly accelerating beat. Heat crawled up from her toes to the top of her head. Was he flirting? Men never flirted with nerdy Dr. Fetter. For that matter, boys had never flirted with nerdy Andromeda. She wouldn’t know sensual teasing if it passed her in the corridor. Had the sign she’d been waiting for finally appeared?
Please…

“Do you wear it anywhere other than behind your ears?”

“Between my breasts and on my inner thighs.”
Filter, Andromeda. Think before you speak.
One of these days she needed to take a class on male-female social interaction. Her brain lost all control over her mouth when her hormones engaged—and her heart.