A soft sound slips out of her—agreement, relief, arousal braided into one note. “And you?” she asks. “Your rules?”
“I’ll ask for what I want,” I say. “And if you say no, I’ll thank you for the answer.”
She takes one step toward me. I take one toward her. The room gets smaller; the world gets simpler.
“Good,” she whispers. “Then ask.”
“Kiss me,” I say, and her laughter is a little broken as she closes the last inch.
The first touch is not a collision. It’s a recognition—mouth to mouth, breath to breath, the kind of kiss that teaches both of us our tempers. She tastes like December and champagne and a woman who decided she was done apologizing. I keep one hand at my side and put the other where her ribbon used to sit, just above her pulse, my thumb remembering that hallway. I don’t squeeze. I press enough that my warmth meets her blood and saysI’m here.
She tilts her head and lets out a sound that electrocutes my knees. Her fingers find my lapel and hold, not to pull me closer—yet—but to feel the shape of me under something she can wrinkle. I kiss her deeper. Careful doesn’t mean cold; all it means is I’m checking she has a way to breathe that isn’t me. When she breaks for air, we both laugh quietly, foreheads touching.
“You’re very bad for my balance,” she murmurs.
“I’m good for your center,” I answer, and her smile flashes, quick and involuntary, the kind that saysyou hit the right wire.
I step back just enough to see her fully. “Turn around,” I ask.
“Why?” Coy, but the kind that comes after yes.
“So I can take off your coat without making it a wrestling match,” I say, and she huffs like I disappointed her in exactly the way she hoped.
She turns. I slip the coat from her shoulders the way you move a painting—no rough edges, no jostle, nothing to make a frame wobble. The dress bares more of her spine than I’ve earned but exactly enough to ruin me. I hang the coat on the chair like I’m civilized. If this is a performance, it’s for an audience of one and she wrote the show.
When I face her again, she’s watching me like she’s trying to decide which version of me is true: the man with a keycard and a plan, or the one with his hands in his pockets in a hallway waiting for permission. I let her see both. I am both.
“Your turn,” she says, and her fingers go to my tie. I stand there and let her loosen the knot, the slide of fabric against my throat a small thrill I file away underthings I didn’t know would feel like surrender.She drops the tie on the desk, then looks at me like she’s surprised by her own calm.
“You okay?” I ask, quiet.
“Scared,” she says, not hiding it. “And not.”
I nod. “Me too.”
She blinks. “You?”
“I haven’t wanted anyone the way I want you and stayed decent,” I admit. “Turns out I can.”
Something in her posture shifts—less braced, more aligned. She steps into me again and this time her hands find my jaw, my mouth, and we stop pretending we came here to talk.
The kiss isn’t slow anymore. It’s thorough. We learn each other’s tells: the way she sighs when I edge my tongue against her bottom lip, the way my body lights when she drags her nails once, lightly, up the back of my neck. I keep one palm at her ribs, counting breaths. The other slides to her hip and stays there, anchoring, asking. Her answer is in the way she rises onto her toes and finds the angle that lets us fit without rushing.
When I finally let my hands map the dress—its seams, the velvet’s nap, the heat underneath—she shivers. The sound it pulls from me is not a word. It’s close. It saysgood?She nods. I do it again, slower, because repetition teaches the body it’s safe.
“Tell me if the pace is wrong,” I say against her mouth.
“It’s right,” she breathes. “It’s so right.”
I haven’t earned the zipper. Not yet. I move us backward until her calves brush the bed and then pause, giving her the choice to sit, to refuse, to redirect. She curls her fingers in my shirt and pulls me forward instead, and the small, ungracious groan that escapes me is a reminder that restraint is an active verb.
We don’t fall. We fold—two people who can’t afford to be clumsy in public are finally allowed to be messy and still kind. I brace one hand beside her shoulder, the other still at her waist. The dress creases; she doesn’t seem to care. I kiss her jaw, her throat—open, open, and then still. I wait for the hand on the back of my head that meansthereor the palm to my chest that meansnot there.I get the first one, and the pulse under my mouth knocks into my lower lip like it wants to write something there.
“Triston,” she says, a quiet plea and a warning housed in a name. “I need—”
“What?”
“To stop being the girl who acts fine,” she says. “With you I want to be… honest.”
