Twin Flame Protocol
By: Isla Wilde
“Two worlds. One spark. No rules”
She’s spent her whole life following the rules.
Now she’s breaking every one of them.
Clara Hayes is a brilliant researcher on the verge of a medical breakthrough—
and a breakdown.
Ten years of a “perfect” relationship.
A suffocating job where she hides her body and her brilliance.
A life so routine she could scream.
Then Dr. Elias Vance walks into her life.
Older.
Off-limits.
Terrifyingly perceptive.
He sees what everyone else ignores—
the fire she buries under oversized lab coats and silence.
A charged look becomes a late-night message.
A message becomes a secret addiction.
And one forbidden touch shatters every boundary she thought she had.
Now Clara is caught between two men:
Josh — her steady, safe, loyal partner.
Elias — her dangerous, magnetic twin flame.
But when the truth explodes, Josh doesn’t walk away.
He makes an offer no one expects:
Have him. Touch him.
Just come home to me afterward.
Clara is about to discover there are rules you follow…
…and rules you set on fire.
Perfect for fans of high-heat taboo romance, morally gray heroes, age gap tension, and messy “I know I shouldn’t want this… but I do” energy.
🔥 One man awakens her.
The other sets her free.
Both might destroy her.
TWIN FLAME PROTOCOL CHAPTER ONE
The Rut & The Spark
The blue glow of Clara’s tablet cast shadows across the bedroom ceiling. She’d been reading the same paragraph of her research paper three times now, the words blurring together into meaningless strings of scientific jargon. Somewhere around the fourth attempt, she heard the bathroom door open and the soft pad of bare feet on hardwood.
Josh emerged from his shower wrapped in a towel, water droplets clinging to his shoulders and trailing down the defined muscles of his chest. Even after ten years together, Clara could appreciate the view—the broad shoulders earned from years of carpentry work, the strong hands that could build anything, the military-sharp discipline that still showed in his posture. He was objectively attractive. Safe. Hers.
She should want him.
She did want him. Didn’t she?
“Still working?” Josh’s voice was warm with affection as he dried his hair with a second towel, muscles flexing with the movement.
Clara set the tablet aside with a small smile—the automatic one, the one that had become second nature over a decade together. “Just reviewing data for tomorrow’s presentation.”
“It’s almost midnight.” He dropped the towel and slid into bed beside her, the mattress dipping under his weight. His skin smelled like cedar and mint bodywash, familiar and comforting. “You need sleep more than you need to memorize compound structures.”
“I know, I just—”
His lips found the curve of her neck, cutting off her protest. It was their pattern, as familiar as breathing. The kiss on her neck. Her automatic tilt to give him better access. His hand sliding up her thigh beneath the oversized t-shirt she wore to bed.
Clara’s body responded on autopilot, arousal humming to life in that distant, mechanical way it always did. She turned toward him, let him ease her onto her back, felt his weight settle over her with the practiced ease of ten years of lovemaking. He knew exactly where to touch—the sensitive spot just below her ear, the dip of her waist, the inside of her thigh. His hands were skilled and certain, and her body rewarded him with the appropriate responses.
She loved him. God, she loved him so much it sometimes hurt. Josh was good and loyal and kind, the boy who’d held her hand at seventeen and never let go. He’d built her bookshelves and fixed her car and held her when her father died. He was everything she was supposed to want.
So why did this feel like going through the motions?
“I love you,” Josh murmured against her collarbone, his hips settling between her thighs. The words were automatic too, part of the ritual. True, but routine.
“Love you too,” Clara whispered back, wrapping her legs around his waist as he pushed inside her. The stretch was familiar, comfortable, safe. He set a steady rhythm—not too fast, not too slow, the exact pace he knew she liked. Or the pace she used to like. Or the pace she’d told him she liked years ago and never corrected because it was fine, it was good, it worked.
Her mind wandered as he moved above her. Had she sent that email to Dr. Cho? She needed to remember to feed Schrodinger before she left for work. The presentation tomorrow would go fine, probably. Miranda Chen would probably ask pointed questions, but that was just Miranda being Miranda. The data was solid. Everything was fine.
Josh’s breathing hitched, his rhythm faltering slightly—the tell that meant he was getting close. Clara reached between them, touched herself with practiced efficiency, chased her own orgasm with the mechanical precision of someone checking items off a to-do list. It built slowly, predictably, a pleasant warmth that spread through her lower belly.
She made the sounds he expected. Gasped at the right moments. Let her nails dig into his shoulders when he thrust deeper. The orgasm, when it came, was perfectly adequate—a gentle wave that crested and receded, leaving behind a pleasant buzz of endorphins and the satisfied tiredness that meant she could finally sleep.
“God, you’re beautiful,” Josh groaned, his own climax following seconds later. He collapsed beside her with a contented sigh, one arm draped possessively across her waist. “Best part of my day.”
Clara smiled in the darkness, turning to press a kiss to his shoulder. “Mine too.”
The lie sat bitter on her tongue.
Within minutes, Josh’s breathing evened out into the deep, steady rhythm of sleep. His arm across her waist grew heavy, a familiar weight that should have felt comforting but instead felt like a trap. Clara lay awake, staring at the ceiling, feeling the slow drip of something unnamed in her chest.
She had everything. A good man who loved her. A stable relationship. Financial security. Intellectual work that challenged her. She should be happy.
Instead, she felt like she was slowly suffocating.
The restlessness was formless, impossible to articulate. It wasn’t Josh’s fault—he was wonderful, attentive, everything a partner should be. It wasn’t even about the sex, not really. The sex was fine. Perfectly fine. A little predictable, maybe, but that was normal for long-term relationships, wasn’t it? Everyone said the passion faded. Everyone said this was what love looked like after ten years—comfortable, safe, settled.
So why did “settled” feel like “dying”?
Clara turned her head to watch Josh sleep, his face peaceful and young in the dim light filtering through the curtains. She loved him. She loved him. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was the hungry, restless thing that had taken up residence in her chest over the past year, the thing that whispered Is this all there is? every time they had sex, every time she woke up in this bed, every time she looked at their perfectly pleasant life and felt nothing but a vast, aching emptiness.
She was twenty-six years old and she felt ancient.
Careful not to wake him, Clara slipped out of bed and padded to the bathroom. Her reflection in the mirror looked tired—blonde hair tangled from sex, pale skin flushed, dark circles under her blue eyes from too many late nights in the lab. She splashed cold water on her face and tried to shake the feeling of wrongness that clung to her skin like humidity.
You’re ungrateful, she told her reflection. You have a good life. A good man. Stop wanting more.
But the wanting didn’t stop. It never did.
Clara dried her face and crept back to bed, curling into Josh’s warmth and closing her eyes. Tomorrow would be better. Tomorrow she’d focus on work, lose herself in data and compound structures and the intellectual challenge that was the only thing that made her feel truly alive anymore.
Tomorrow, everything would be fine.
The fluorescent lights of Conference Room 3B hummed overhead, that particular frequency that always gave Clara a headache by mid-afternoon. She sat in her usual spot at the back of the table, laptop open, fingers poised over the keyboard to take notes. Around her, fourteen other researchers settled into their seats with the resigned energy of people facing yet another Monday morning meeting.
Clara had dressed carefully that morning—hair scraped back into a tight bun, minimal makeup, her most oversized lab coat layered over a button-down shirt she’d deliberately bought two sizes too big. The outfit had the desired effect: she was invisible, unremarkable, just another shy researcher drowning in shapeless clothes. No one looked twice at her. No one looked at all.
That was exactly how she wanted it.
She’d learned early in her career that being taken seriously as a woman in STEM meant making certain strategic choices. Hide the curves. Minimize the femininity. Never wear anything that could be construed as attention-seeking. She’d watched brilliant women get dismissed as “trying too hard” or “sleeping their way up” based solely on the crime of being attractive while competent. Clara had decided years ago that she’d rather be invisible than scrutinized.
The fact that she happened to be naturally busty—a genetic gift from her mother’s Scandinavian side—made the camouflage even more necessary. So she hunched slightly, crossed her arms over her chest in meetings, and wore enough layers to successfully disguise her figure. It worked. No one saw her body. Half the time, she suspected people forgot she was in the room at all.
Dr. Marcus Cho strode to the front of the conference room with his usual brisk efficiency, tablet in hand and a grim set to his jaw. “Thank you all for coming. We have a lot to cover, so let’s dive in.”
Clara’s fingers flew across her keyboard as Dr. Cho launched into the agenda—budget updates, trial timelines, staffing changes. Around the table, researchers nodded and scribbled notes. Through the glass wall behind Dr. Cho, Clara could see into the vivarium, where rows of cages housed the mice and rats that were the backbone of their research.
She tried not to think about them too much. It was necessary work. Important work. The compounds they were testing could save thousands of human lives. The sacrifice of animals was an acceptable trade-off in the grand calculus of medical advancement.
That’s what she told herself, anyway.
“Which brings us to the Phase Two expansion,” Dr. Cho said, his voice taking on an edge of enthusiasm that made Clara’s stomach clench. “We’re accelerating the timeline. New protocols go into effect next week—we’ll be doubling the test cohort and implementing more aggressive dosage schedules.”
Clara’s fingers stilled on her keyboard.
“I know there have been some concerns about adverse reactions in the current trials,” Dr. Cho continued, clicking to the next slide. The image showed a graph with mortality rates that made Clara’s throat tighten. “But the data is promising overall, and our investors are eager to see results. We need to push harder. The FDA wants to see scale.”
The words were so clinical. Adverse reactions. Mortality rates. Acceptable sacrifice.
Clara’s eyes drifted past Dr. Cho to the vivarium again, to the rows of small, warm bodies living out their short lives in service of human progress. She’d gone into this field because she wanted to help people, to contribute to the advancement of medicine, to be part of something meaningful. When had it become about investors and timelines and acceptable losses?
Her chest felt tight. She kept her face carefully neutral, her expression the blank professional mask she’d perfected over two years at Vanguard BioPharma. No one could know what she was thinking. Dissent was career suicide. This was a high-stakes, high-pressure environment where results mattered more than ethics, and anyone who couldn’t handle the realities of pharmaceutical research was free to work somewhere else.
But God, she was tired. Tired of the cages. Tired of the clinical language that sanitized suffering. Tired of pretending she didn’t care.
Almost involuntarily, her eyes flicked across the table.
Dr. Elias Vance sat three seats down and across from her, his attention seemingly focused on his own tablet. He was her PI—Principal Investigator—and technically her direct supervisor, though they’d barely spoken beyond professional necessities in the eight months she’d been assigned to his team. He had a reputation as the “grumpy genius” of the R&D department: brilliant, exacting, and utterly intimidating. Mid-forties, with dark hair going silver at the temples and a permanent scowl etched into his sharp features. He wore his lab coat over rumpled button-downs and spoke in curt, efficient sentences that left no room for small talk.
Clara had been terrified of him for the first six months. Now she was just… wary. He barely seemed to notice she existed, which was fine. Preferable, even.
But as her eyes landed on him, something impossible happened.
Dr. Vance looked up from his tablet. His dark eyes met hers across the conference table. And in that split second, Clara saw it—the exact same flicker of disgust and moral discomfort that she was feeling, written plainly across his usually impassive face.
The moment lasted less than a second. Then his expression shuttered, the mask sliding back into place with professional efficiency. He looked back down at his tablet as if nothing had happened.
But Clara had seen it. The crack in his armor. The hidden empathy. The silent dissent.
Her heart hammered in her chest. Her fingers trembled slightly on her keyboard. Around her, the meeting continued—Dr. Cho moving on to budget allocations, someone asking about staffing for night shifts—but Clara heard none of it. Her entire awareness had narrowed to the impossible revelation that Dr. Elias Vance, the stoic, brilliant, untouchable senior researcher, felt the same way she did about the new protocols.
He cared about the animals. He just couldn’t say it any more than she could.
The realization was dizzying. Dangerous. Intimate in a way that had nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with recognition. She’d been so certain she was alone in her moral discomfort, so sure that everyone else had made their peace with the necessary evils of the work. But he hadn’t. He was suffering the same quiet crisis of conscience.
And he’d looked at her. Seen her. Known she understood.
Clara forced herself to breathe, to type something—anything—into her laptop to maintain the appearance of normalcy. But her pulse raced, her skin felt too hot under her layers of protective clothing, and she couldn’t shake the electric awareness that had settled over her like a live wire.
She didn’t look at him again for the rest of the meeting. Didn’t dare risk another glance that might give away the seismic shift that had just occurred in her understanding of the world. But she felt his presence three seats away with an intensity that bordered on physical, as if that single moment of eye contact had created some invisible thread between them.
When Dr. Cho finally dismissed them, Clara gathered her laptop with shaking hands and fled the conference room. She walked quickly through the sterile white corridors of the R&D building, past the cubicles and labs and endless fluorescent lighting, until she reached her own tiny workstation wedged between two filing cabinets.
She collapsed into her desk chair and stared at her blank computer screen, trying to process what had just happened.
Nothing had happened. Not really. It was just a look. A momentary connection. It didn’t mean anything.
Except it did. It did. For eight months, she’d worked in proximity to Dr. Vance and felt nothing but professional intimidation. Now, after thirty seconds of eye contact, she felt like she’d been struck by lightning. Like some essential part of her that had been dormant for years had suddenly woken up and started screaming.
He sees you.
The thought was terrifying and thrilling in equal measure. Clara pulled up her current data set and tried to focus, tried to lose herself in the familiar comfort of numbers and graphs and analytical thinking. But her concentration was shattered. Every few minutes, her mind drifted back to that moment in the conference room, to the dark intensity of Dr. Vance’s eyes, to the shocking intimacy of shared dissent.
She was being ridiculous. He was her boss. He was twenty years older than her. He’d probably forgotten the moment already. It was nothing.
It had to be nothing.
Clara worked through lunch, trying to outrun the restless energy that had taken up residence in her chest. She ran analyses, double-checked calculations, drafted a preliminary report for her section of the Phase Two trial. The work should have grounded her. Usually, the intellectual challenge was enough to quiet the noise in her head.
Today, nothing helped.
By five o’clock, she was exhausted and jittery in equal measure. She packed up her laptop, shrugged into her oversized coat, and headed for the parking garage. The October air was crisp and cool, autumn asserting itself after a lingering summer. Clara took a deep breath and tried to shake off the strange, electric feeling that clung to her skin.
Her phone buzzed as she unlocked her car. A text from Josh: Picking up Thai food on the way home. Your usual?
Clara smiled despite herself. This was her life. This was what mattered. A good man who knew her usual Thai order, a stable job, a comfortable routine. Not some impossible moment of connection with her intimidating boss in a conference room.
She texted back: Perfect. Thank you. Love you.
His reply was instant: Love you too. See you soon.
Clara got in her car and drove home through the familiar streets of their neighborhood, letting the routine comfort of the commute settle her nerves. By the time she pulled into the apartment complex parking lot, she’d almost convinced herself that the day had been perfectly normal. That the moment with Dr. Vance had been a meaningless blip. That tomorrow everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be.
Almost.
Clara sat cross-legged on the couch with her laptop balanced on her knees, reviewing data while Josh watched a documentary about World War II naval battles. The remains of their Thai food sat on the coffee table—her pad thai mostly eaten, his drunken noodles demolished with typical efficiency. This was their routine: dinner, TV, work, bed. Comfortable. Predictable. Fine.
Her phone sat face-up on the couch cushion beside her. When the screen lit up with a notification, Clara glanced at it absently, expecting a promotional email or maybe a text from her mother.
Instead, she saw: Work Chat: Dr. Elias Vance is typing…
Clara’s heart stopped.
She stared at the notification, frozen, as three dots pulsed on her screen. Then a message appeared in the work chat app:
Dr. Vance: I noticed your reaction in the meeting today. I want you to know you’re not alone in your concerns about the new protocols.
Clara’s breath caught. Her fingers hovered over the phone, trembling slightly. Beside her, Josh laughed at something in his documentary, completely oblivious to the small earthquake happening eighteen inches away.
This was her boss. This was a work chat. This was completely inappropriate.
She should close the app. Should respond with something professional and deflecting. Should maintain the careful boundaries that kept her safe and invisible.
Instead, her thumbs moved across the screen almost of their own accord:
Clara: I didn’t think anyone else felt that way.
The three dots appeared immediately. He was waiting for her response. Had been watching for it.
Dr. Vance: I’ve been in this field for twenty years. The ethical compromises never get easier. But the alternative is abandoning the research entirely, and the potential benefits…
Clara: I know. I tell myself that every day. The calculus of suffering. The greater good.
Dr. Vance: Does it help? The telling yourself?
Clara stared at the message, at the unexpected vulnerability in the question. She glanced at Josh, still absorbed in his documentary, then back at her phone.
Clara: Not really. I still think about them. The mice. Especially the ones in the control group who don’t even get the potential benefit of the treatment.
Dr. Vance: So do I.
Two words. Simple. Devastating. Clara felt something crack open in her chest, some locked door she’d been guarding for years suddenly thrown wide. She’d spent eight months maintaining professional distance, keeping her head down, pretending she was fine with everything. And here was her intimidating, brilliant boss, confessing to the same quiet anguish she carried.
Clara: I didn’t know you felt that way. You always seem so… composed.
Dr. Vance: Composed is just another word for good at hiding.
Clara: I know that feeling.
The three dots pulsed for a long moment. Clara held her breath, hyperaware of her racing pulse, of Josh’s steady breathing beside her, of the weight of her laptop on her knees. This was just a conversation. Just a colleague reaching out about shared ethical concerns. It was fine. It was normal.
Except it didn’t feel normal. It felt charged. Electric. Like standing too close to a transformer.
Dr. Vance: I’ve noticed that about you, actually. How carefully you present yourself at work.
Clara’s fingers froze on the screen. What?
Dr. Vance: The lab coat that’s two sizes too big. The way you sit in the back of meetings. You keep your head down, your voice quiet. You wear invisibility like armor.
Clara’s face flushed hot. He’d noticed. He’d been watching her. The realization was equal parts thrilling and terrifying.
Clara: It works, doesn’t it? No one looks twice at me.
Dr. Vance: I didn’t say it was ineffective.
Clara: Then what are you saying?
The three dots appeared and disappeared three times. Clara’s heart hammered in her chest. She should close the app. Should put her phone away and focus on her work, on Josh, on literally anything else.
Instead, she waited.
Finally, the message appeared:
Dr. Vance: I’m saying it’s a shame that brilliant women have to hide themselves to be taken seriously. And I’m saying your armor is very effective. But it’s still armor.
Clara read the message twice, three times, trying to parse the meaning beneath the words. Was he complimenting her? Criticizing her? Neither? Both?
Her thumbs moved before her brain could catch up:
Clara: Armor only works if someone is trying to get in.
She hit send and immediately regretted it. Too flirtatious. Too provocative. Too much. This was her boss. They were having a professional conversation about ethics and workplace dynamics, and she’d just crossed a line she couldn’t uncross.
The three dots appeared instantly. Disappeared. Appeared again. Disappeared.
Clara stared at her screen, her chest tight with anxiety. She’d ruined it. Whatever fragile connection had formed between them in that conference room, she’d just shattered it with one stupid, impulsive message.
Finally, after what felt like an eternity, his response appeared:
Dr. Vance: Are you so sure no one is trying?
Clara stopped breathing.
The words sat on her screen, impossible to misunderstand. This wasn’t about work anymore. This wasn’t about ethics or animal testing or professional dynamics. This was something else entirely. Something dangerous and intoxicating and absolutely inappropriate.
She looked at Josh, still absorbed in his documentary about submarines or whatever, completely unaware that his girlfriend was having some kind of… moment… with her boss via work chat at eleven-thirty on a Monday night.
Guilt crashed over her like a wave. She shouldn’t be feeling this way. Shouldn’t be having this conversation. Shouldn’t be experiencing this electric thrill at the thought that Dr. Elias Vance—brilliant, intimidating, utterly unattainable Dr. Vance—might be interested in her as something more than just another junior researcher on his team.
She should say goodnight. Should close the app. Should pretend this conversation never happened.
Clara: Goodnight, Dr. Vance.
She hit send and closed the app before she could second-guess herself, then shut her laptop with more force than necessary. Josh glanced over, eyebrows raised.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” Clara forced a smile. “Just tired. Long day.”
Josh studied her for a moment, then nodded and turned back to his documentary. “Want to head to bed?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.”
THANK YOU!
We hope you enjoyed chapter one of Twin Flame Protocol!