“We agreed?—”
“We lied.”
Her hands stilled. “My break is in twenty minutes.”
“I know.”
Twenty three minutes later, she walked through the staff corridor toward the break room. I waited until she had passed, then followed. She knew I was there, the slight change in her walk, the way she slowed near a supply closet door.
I reached past her, turned the handle, pulled her inside.
Darkness. The smell of cleaning supplies and spare uniforms. Her body pressed against mine in the narrow space.
“We said professional,” she whispered.
“We lied,” I repeated, then kissed her.
This time there was no hesitation. She met me with equal hunger, hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me closer. Last night had broken something open between us. There was no unknown left, just want.
I lifted her onto a shelf, her legs wrapping around my waist. Her uniform jacket hit the floor. My hands found skin, hermouth found my throat, and rational thought evaporated. She bit down where neck met shoulder, not hard enough to break skin, but enough to make me growl. The sound vibrated between us, a low, primal warning.
I understood my brothers now. This instinct. This need. It was not a flaw in the system. It was the whole point of the equation.
“The way you looked at him,” she gasped against my ear. “Like he was an insect.”
“He was an inconvenience.” I pressed her harder against the shelving, feeling her arch into me. “Anyone who touches you?—”
“I am not yours to protect,” she said, but her body said otherwise, pulling me closer, nails scraping down my back.
“Are you not?”
Her response was lost in another kiss, desperate and consuming. Her uniform shirt joined the jacket on the floor. My hands mapped every inch of newly exposed skin while she worked at my belt, both of us beyond caring about consequences.
Then, footsteps. Right outside.
We froze. Her legs still around me, my mouth at her throat, both of us breathing hard. The door handle rattled.
“Third time I have had to check this corridor.” Kreeg's voice, tired and annoyed. “If I find someone sleeping in here again, it is a month of sanitation duty.”
Footsteps moved away. We stayed frozen for another thirty seconds, then slowly separated. She slid down from the shelf, legs unsteady. I steadied her, hands on her waist, neither of us able to look away from each other.
In the dim light, I could see her lips swollen from kissing, marks on her throat from my mouth, her uniform destroyed. I probably looked just as wrecked.
“Tonight,” I said, voice rough. “I will book a private game. Just you dealing. Where we will not be interrupted.”
She nodded, fear and want warring in her expression. “Tonight. Level 19.”
We straightened our clothes as best we could. She left first, returning to her shift. I waited five minutes, then emerged. My mind was already on the private game. There would be no interruptions, and no stopping. The thought should have concerned me. It did not.
SABINE
Level 19, Suite Four. My hands shook as I pressed my palm to the scanner. Not from fear. From anticipation so sharp it cut.
Five years of being furniture, a function, a ghost haunting my own life. Every defense I had built, every wall I had mortared with grief and rage, all of it trembled now, ready to collapse.
He stood by the windows when I entered, his back to me. The tension in his shoulders, the way his hands clenched and released, he was fighting himself. Fighting the thing that had been building between us since that first mathematical flirtation.
“No other players?”
