He makes love to me that night. It’s the only way to describe the way he touches me, the way his lips find every hollow, the way he never once looks away from my face.
When it’s over, he pulls me under the covers and wraps me up, tucking my body against his with a possessiveness that feels more like comfort than conquest.
We drift in and out of sleep, waking sometimes to the noise of the city or to each other’s touch, neither of us willing to let go.
I wake up before him, just barely before sunrise. His arm is heavy over my waist, his breath soft and even. I watch him, the way sleep smooths the hard edge from his jaw, the way one hand twitches slightly, as if chasing after something in a dream.
For a long time, I stay still, greedy for the weight and warmth of him, for the illusion that this could last longer than one perfect week.
Eventually, James shifts awake. His hand flexes on my waist, the tattooed lines on his forearm catching the pearled blue light.
“Staring at me?” he mumbles, voice rough with sleep.
“Trying to memorize you like this,” I admit.
He cracks an eye open, then closes it again, dragging me closer until my skin is flush to his.
“You want coffee?” he offers after a minute.
“Do you have to move to get it?”
“Not if you don’t want me to,” he replies, and we lay there, suspended outside of time, until we absolutely cannot anymore.
Packing is painful.
We alternate showers, folding the week away into zipped suitcases, both pretending not to notice how careful we’ve become in navigating the shared space. But really, we are just avoiding the part where one of us has to say, “I’ll see you at work.”
As we gather the last of our things, James pulls me toward him, his hand at the back of my neck. He kisses me once slowly, almost mournfully, then releases me with a final squeeze.
“Ready?” he asks, and neither of us says what we’re actually ready for.
I nod, and we head for the airport to catch our flight back to reality.
Chapter 24
The memory of James’s hands and what they did to me in that hotel lingers long after the conference. Weeks have passed, but the imprint is still vivid, impossible to ignore.
I know how he sounds in the morning. How he looks without a stitch of clothing. The small involuntary flex of his jaw when I tease him past the point of patience.
But we are back to our routine of office etiquette.
James is nothing if not disciplined. He looks at me in staff meetings exactly as he looks at everyone else: polite and a little distant. I tell myself I like it this way. That I need the distance, the plausible deniability of being just another associate in this office.
Except sometimes late in the day, I’ll catch him standing in his office, thumb pressed to his mouth in thought, gaze flickering to my office. Not every glance is for me, but every so often one is. And when it lands, I feel it everywhere.
I try to throw myself into my work, resetting my focus and priorities where they should be. But I can’t stop thinking about them.
Both of them.
I walk into the employee lounge to grab a breakfast bar and find Nash already there. He doesn’t see me at first, squinting intensely at the drip machine.
“You willing it to brew faster?” I ask, my voice sounding tired.
Nash looks up, and his whole face changes. That’s the thing about him: nothing subtle, every reaction obvious.
“Hey, doll,” he says.
“Hi, trouble.” I move around him, shoulder brushing his, and the energy between us is so different from what James conjures.
