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The natural advantage awarded by his sex, Victor Frankenstein threw away all too carelessly with juvenile theatrics, affronting the academic world with tantrums far beyond his standing and blood-dripping displays that roused bile in even the most seasoned stomachs.
If not for this raging child of a man, she might have never been granted the chance to slot her foot in the door and share this unique field of expertise with him. In the aggravation he left behind, she slipped like balm.
A woman, yes, but oh, wasn't she so sharp and eloquent compared to the rampaging Baron? Wasn't she a pleasure to listen to while her male colleague serenaded his own heretic grandiosity?
Unlike Victor Frankenstein, she considered God, although she too pronounced His name with a spark of irony that went unheard by anyone but him, teeth gnashing whenever she swayed the audience to her female will.
While the scholarly elite of Edinburgh tentatively accepted the woman's wit and talent into their ranks, Victor Frankenstein seethed. At home, he brooded over his papers, locks of tangled hair bunched in his clenched fist as he stared at blurry ink, realizing he hadn't brought a single line to paper for the past hour.
Begrudgingly, he'd come to accept that her theories fascinated him, and if there was truth to them, they might be of greater use to him than she knew. Oh, but he refused to let his creation be built upon a female touch, neither corporeal nor intellectual. The puzzle of life and death was his alone to solve.
But of course, they crossed paths on campus, and often so.
Disdain and admiration followed her like twin shadows, and so did he—her third shadow, creeping along the columns in the courtyard with a burning resolve that was both hatred and envy.
It was at the cusp of autumn when she settled on a bench facing the rustling foliage. A scarf fluttered from her neck, matching the color of Victor's red neckerchief.
"You might as well show yourself, Doctor. I'm tired of your gutless sneaking."
Alas, he had been caught. The beat of his heart quickened at once.
"Do you believe you would have noticed me, Miss, if I had been truly sneaking?"
Victor crept from the shadows and righted his hat, straightened his vest. The bench had been warmed by the sun where he sat beside her. Without meeting his gaze or returning the polite nod that he forced his chin to incline into, the woman spoke again.
"If you're so eager for it, please know that I don't mind a discussion among colleagues outside of the lecture hall. Unless, of course, the only conversation you're capable of is a dispute with an audience."
And soon, Victor Frankenstein found his lunch breaks relocated to that bench in the courtyard and their discussions flowing like the falling leaves in the wind.
Reluctantly, he found a genius in her—in a more womanly and timid way—but a genius nonetheless. The public knew her as precise and cunning, but with a kindness like moist clay to soften the edges of her words. It seemed that all of her arrogance was reserved for him, lashing forth in their private conversations like fiery whips; a layer of truth stripped back from her scholarly facade, and Victor took pride in knowing the heat of her self-assuredness so closely.
Aside from the finer points of morality, they weren't so different at all. Two sides of the same, ingenious coin, he was inclined to think.
And from then on, fascination and envy surged into desire.
She was, after all, a woman, and Victor could not bring himself to see past that fact whenever she spoke to him, shapely lips parting before glinting teeth; the column of her throat moving with disdainful huffs when he sermonized about things that she didn't deem unholy, just unethical.
As November rolled around and steeped the country in the first frost, Victor found himself dressing in finer silks and dabbing aftershave beyond his budget onto the planes of his cheeks before his ventures to the campus, and often he'd be rewarded by her wandering eyes, a tiny smirk before she averted her gaze to whatever papers or scenery she deemed more important than him.
But Victor knew, she held his thread of infatuation from the other end.
***
"Us? Together?" She laughed into the hopeful confidence of his expectant visage. Behind her back, the open spine of Victor's latest specimen seemed to mock him in the wintry candle light. "I could never be with a man so rotten."
"And why not?! You share my madness! I've seen it, we've discussed it—"
"That is not the rot that concerns me. No, but I could never be with a man who dreams to fuck his own mother."
"I beg your pardon?" Whatever butterflies had possessed his anatomy burst into atoms.
The man's frenzied eyes jumped to the divider behind which no doubt his bed awaited, littered with memories of childhood cuddles, perhaps a little diary on the nightstand; one that he feared she'd somehow spied through the screen.
With a mellow smile, she strode towards it.
"Halt your advance, that is my— I sleep behind there!"
"I assumed as much. Isn't that where you want me anyway?"
She disappeared behind the divider and Victor found her at the foot of the four-poster bed— red, rumpled sheets, and an empty milk glass on the table.
"So, it is true then?" His colleague chuckled and stretched her fingers towards the nearest bed post. "For the most part, I was bluffing. Pray, do I remind you of her somehow? I cannot fathom how."
"You and my dear mother have nothing in common, nothing!"
"Mm-hm," she commented with a timbre that ignited his loins and his anger, for she sounded precisely like him. Was this tone mockery, or admiration?
"She— she was motherly and kind. Caring where you are spiteful! Arrogant!" Victor swallowed, eyes glued to the way her hand curled around the thick, wooden post.
"And still you seek out my company. Don't fool yourself into thinking it is for anything more, anything less than sex. Me, you cannot delude. Let that kindle your competitive spirit, Doctor. If you'd like to protest, think again, and consider how you'd humiliate yourself when you inevitably find out I'm right."
Victor gawked, trying to make sense of the oozing, blistering mass that had become of his earlier conviction, his request to let their undeniable connection become something more.
"And would you… award it to me? Sex?"
Again, she laughed, wearing the most incredulous of expressions. If he could bring himself to believe it, he'd think she seemed disappointed, but acceptance settled quickly into her eyes.
"Well, Baron, would you let me witness you in your most pathetic state of being?"
"Pathetic?!" He raged, hands on his hips and a silent tantrum locked behind some emotional impotence that had gripped his tongue.
"Most men prove to be incapable of presenting themselves any other way as soon as they find their thinking hijacked by their cocks. Even when they believe themselves to be in charge, they're little more than animals in the moment. Wouldn't you agree, Doctor?"
"What we can agree on is that you, Miss, are a creature of bitterness. Perhaps tying your hand in marriage would return some sense to you. The act of procreation is pathetic to you?"
"Where is your wife then, for you to rhapsodize about procreation like so? Your very studies defy procreation."
"My studies defy death."
"One and the same, Doctor, one and the same."
"Pray tell, Miss, could it be that you are trying to defy me now because you're afraid it'll be me who renders you pathetic? Hm?" Victor came prowling closer, feeling heat rise from his loins to his neck in a light sheen of sweat. The tie had become too tight around his throat.
"You? Me?" She snorted, and Victor's jaw clenched from the jab it delivered to his stomach. His loins produced a feeling quite similar. "Your unjustified confidence staggers me to no end."
"Unjustified…" He hovered inches before her, close enough for her to gaze upon the pores of his olive skin, the texture of his neck, the color and warmth that had begun to crawl into his cheeks. "I'm a genius, and although it hurts my pride to admit it, so are you. Aren't we allowed to indulge in confidence?"
Seconds stretched into the space between them, a clock ticking somewhere beyond the specimen, concealed behind the screen. A decision had to be made.
"I think it would amuse me enough to see you try, so I'm considering it."
Tenderly, she placed a hand under his freshly-shaven jaw, finding his muscles entirely responsive to her caress, no matter where she subtly angled him, he followed. His limbs and body yielded when she pushed him towards those rumpled sheets, which had undoubtedly borne witness to the Doctor's tossing and turning countless nights, sulking with a hand around his cock, brooding on how to defeat her while she hardly considered them rivals at all.
Even now, when she guided him to sit on the edge, he was fully convinced of his control. To her, he was little else than the cadaver on the table—A man-shaped puppet, powered by the batteries of her momentary attention.
Indeed, she believed him entirely incapable of satisfying a woman's needs. He was the worst kind of maggot, except in finer shoes and equipped with a greater intellect. She was almost tempted to let him try in earnest, if only to let him marinade in the humiliation of her stoic face and her dry nethers, not an ounce of pleasure milked from it by his dick or his tongue and fingers, even if he knew how to use them.
That temptation, however, was a fallacy.
No lack of moans and pleading would ever put a chip in this man's confidence.
"Sit," she plainly ordered, standing between his spread thighs, and stripped the outer layer of her dress, red like dark wine, then loosened the laces of her stays. The fabric fell away from her breasts and with it rose marvel into Victor Frankenstein's candle-lit eyes, rendering them more golden than she'd ever seen them. With his frown lifted, nearly a decade of age had been removed from him.
Truly, she felt she had no motherly inclinations in her mind and body, but tangling her fingers into the thick locks of his hair turned out to be oddly comforting. His parted mouth fell so naturally against her breast under the guidance of her palm, lips closing around her nipple, broad hands settling around her waist.
Pleasure sparked down the column of her spine despite the obscenity of it all, or because of it.
Maybe with enough time, she could bring herself to feel sympathy for the wicked man before her, bereft of his mother and infused with a psychotic need to prove himself. Desolation awaited at the end of that road, and she'd rather their ways parted before she burned herself on this wretched Icarus.
Victor's lips moved in reverie over the hardened peak of her breast, mapping it with teeth and tongue, sampling the feminine taste of her skin. Salt and soap. There would be no milk for him here, but his mouth didn't mind, suckling regardless with a distant muscle memory, fingers clamped possessively into the softest portion of her waist below her ribs.
Greed rolled through him, fingertips twitching to track down her stomach, to push past the obstructing layers of her dress and take what they both desired.
"Your hands will not drop one inch lower, Victor Frankenstein."
Victor.
His name, so seldom used, but it had to mean something from her lips. There was more behind the disdain, and no denying of their kindred nature. He was certain of it. No woman would invite a man to her breasts if not for some kindling of affection. This was a reward for him—it had to be.
His fingers twitched with the need to disobey but he stayed put, circling the bud of her breast with his tongue while her nails sent sparking shocks from his scalp to his loins where his cock strained against the fabric of his slacks.
"Sweet boy," she cooed, wondering if he took her mockery for genuine affection. "It's lonely, being a genius like yourself, isn't it?"
Victor grunted, succumbing to the pull of her fingers when she pried him off her hardened nipple. A string of saliva snapped against her stomach as she urged his spit-damp lips to her other breast. Droplets of semen had begun to bead at the tip of his swollen cock, soaking into the trousers pulled taut over his erection.
"Please," he mouthed against her soft flesh. His dick pulsed with every subtle tug on his curls, and with each aching second that she made him wait, his conviction hardened that she was nothing like mother. If anything ever were to come from her breasts, it would be bloodmilk. Lust-blurred phantoms poured across his tongue, sweet and crimson.
Yes, an almost sinister femininity clung to her scrunching hand, nails latched into his scalp in a way that made it impossible to pull away, even though her grip on him was unquestionably gentle.
Through lowered lashes, Victor regarded the swell of her chest, lapped at her nipple and the surrounding flesh, free of blood, free of milk. How she felt about it, he couldn't tell, aside from the fact that both peaks stood hard and damp before him and her chest rose and fell a little faster than before.
"So you can be polite," the wretched woman purred, locking the crook of her elbow around the back of his neck so that his cheek ended up flush against her sternum.
Reaching down to his lap, she let her palm glide across the shape of his dick. As expected, her pathetic colleague made no attempt to free himself from the headlock of her arm, panting against her chest like a juvenile dog when she freed him from his trousers.
The size of a man said little about anything, but she found that the weight and girth of his erection nicely filled out and exceeded her palm. With his torso hunched over against her chest and her arm wedged between their bodies, there was little opportunity to see him, but perhaps it was better that way. The silky texture of him was pleasant enough and even the lightest touch made him jump. Evidently, his dick was more used to its master's presumptuous daydreams than the delicate attention of a female hand.
Undeniably, her pride swelled from the choir of his huffs and moans when she jerked her palm along the length of his cock, all of these lovely noises slathered across her breasts in growing despair. He was as vocal here as he was in the lecture hall.
From the day that she'd first heard him speak—with such tumultuous conviction—it had been as clear as day to her that he'd end up exactly like this if given the chance. Men like him secretly craved nothing more than to be humbled and scolded.
Victor, groaning into her supple skin, longed to latch onto her nipple once more but couldn't, finding his cheek continuously smothered against her warm sternum. Her hand squeezed and slipped around the length of him in a rhythm that he, if he was any other man, would have considered divine. But he found in it scientific perfection; an unequaled cadence to render him weak from the inside out.
It hardly came as a surprise to her when Victor's pelvis stuttered after a minute or two and the mad genius' fingers tightened themselves around her waist. Knowingly, she angled his dick towards his stomach so he would sully his own garments and not her skirts.
A few more strokes, fingers throttling the tender junction of shaft and head, and shivers rolled up the velvet hardness of his cock, pulsing beneath her palm. His spend came shooting forth in pearly ribbons, painting his vest the color of milk. Unavoidably, it spilled across her hand too, leaving her briefly shuddering from the intimate sensation.
Victor's breath came in rattling huffs against the side of her breast, muscles slackening. His loosened grip slipped down her waist. One last time, her fingers carded through his thick hair before sliding to his chest and pushing him away. Bonelessly, his back collided with the mattress, dick resting on his clothed abdomen.
While Victor laid spent and panting on the blood-red covers, tangled locks sprawled over his glowing face, she wondered for but a moment if there was any other way that she could benefit from him tonight. Despite her better judgment, she might yet straddle his lap to ease the kindling ache that had settled into her sex. Perhaps she'd find joy in tormenting him until he grew hard again.
Unaware of her silent gaze, Victor's trembling hand reached for the empty milk glass on the nightstand, and her musings came to a swift and definite end.
Another decision had been made. She wiped her hand clean on the leg of his dark trousers, finding the hot muscles underneath quivering. His breath rumbled softly in his lungs, but otherwise the wrung-out genius offered no reaction to her touch.
She required no help to swiftly strap herself back into her stays and straighten out her garments.
"Good night, Doctor."
Doctor.
Victor's eyes darkened and at last he swept his hair back from his face with the length of his forearm, facing his disheveled form from the cum-stained vest down. His colleague's skirts disappeared behind the divider, soon followed by the sound of her coat being picked up from the rack.
"Practice a little bit of humility from time to time," she called. "It looks good on you."
"Wait!" Victor demanded, shouting her name. Tossing the empty glass to the mattress, he stumbled away from the bed, hobbling past the specimen and to the door with his slacks still tangled around his thighs, but the staircase below was swept empty of her presence.
Only the hollow breeze of winter air remained, whistling down that drab abyss, and through the lonely corridors of his heart.