Free Something's Come Up by Michelle Pace, Andrea Randall Page B

new girls.”
    He sat up on his elbows. “I haven’t used one of those in years, Steph, and only with one other girl.”
    I tilted my head. “Why?”
    “Why what?”
    “Everything,” I huffed, rolling my eyes. “You obviously love it. What made you think I’d be into it?” I sat up and sat cross-legged, still unclothed.
    He sat up, too, leaning against his superfluous headboard. Seriously, it was basically his entire wall. And padded. “Well,” he sighed in apparent amusement, “you let me spank you.”
    I shrugged. “It’s hot.”
    I hadn’t let anyone do that before him, but he wasn’t about to know that.
    “I know!” He smiled broadly, holding his hands out like he was wondering why the hell more women wouldn’t participate.
    “So. Why are you so old?”
    “ Excuse me? ” He looked offended for a split second. “Why are you so young?”
    I slapped his leg. “Come on.”
    There were several theories I’d come up with about why he was so much older than his classmates. Though, I didn’t know exactly how much older he was, he carried himself as if decades covered the space between him and his friends.
    He took a deep breath. “We’ve slept together for a semester and you’re just asking this now?”
    “Well,” I ignored his question, “you’re not in the military…right?”
    “Right.”
    “And you weren’t in jail?”
    “Ha! No. I’m not an ex-con.”
    “Hmm.” I tapped my lip with the tip of my index finger. “I’ve got nothing. You are one cryptic son of a bitch.”
    He reached down to the floor for his boxers, sliding them on as his face looked like he was carefully choosing his response. “That’s…by design.”
    Adrenaline began to bubble in my stomach. “Intriguing. Lots of skeletons in your closet?”
    “Just one.” His smile faltered as he said the words, and I wasn’t sure what to say.
    He interjected before I had to fumble for filler. “I graduated from Princeton undergrad in 2006.”
    I felt a juicy story coming on. “I was just a wide-eyed freshman in college then.”
    He laughed. “I know.”
    “So from Princeton to Colombia, huh? Not too shabby, Carrington.”
    “Well, I had a two-year detour in Cornell’s medical school.”
    I sat up and assessed his face for tells that he was fucking with me. When it was plain that he was dead serious, my eyes bugged out and my lips parted.
    “ You got into Cornell’s Med School.”
    He nodded as he flopped back onto the bed, a cocky smile twitching on his lips. “I did.”
    “And then...you just...left?”
    He kissed my temple and lazily pushed a lock of hair off of my cheek. “Mmm hmm.”
    I sat up. “Why? Too much of a pussy to take the sight of blood? Or were you afraid you wouldn’t look fierce in scrubs?” It made no sense. From the odd hours he kept, I figured he was a workaholic, and by the way he performed in the bedroom he was obsessively focused. Pace seemed like the last person who would just leave medical school.
    “The family business didn’t suit me the way I’d hoped.”
    “One of your parents is a doctor?” I moved up the bed so I was next to him, shimmying under the covers.
    “They both are. My dad’s in research at a massive pharmaceutical company and my mom’s an OB-GYN.”
    I cackled loudly at that. “Gynecology! How did that not suit you? Afraid you’d mix business and pleasure?”
    “Fuck off,” he teased. “OB/GYN never interested me. Medical research did, though. So for the first two years of medical school, I got to work right next to my dad during breaks and over the summer.”
    “Wow. Impressive for someone with no medical training.” I could just picture a 22-year-old Pace strutting into a research lab like he owned the place. And people believing he did.
    He shrugged. “Nepotism. Surely you have some…expertise in that area?” He grinned, obviously baiting me.
    “Point taken. So, you didn’t like the research? Too boring?”
    “The exact opposite.”
    I scrunched