It’s not just reputation I’m worried about. It’s safety. My enemies keep their ears to the ground. I can’t put Olivia in their path.
Still, I think about it. The first note, the way her hand would find mine, already familiar. That small turn she does when I guide her with my palm at her back. The line of her throat when she lifts her chin a fraction. The smooth skin of her throat, begging for my lips, tongue, teeth.
I grip my hands into fists and let them loose again, like that will drain all of this out of me. It doesn’t.
Everything, she said.I want everything.
It’s a taste in my mouth I can’t wash away.
She’s at her desk, hair down, sleeves pushed up. A lamp throws a low pool of light over paper and laptop, and the slope of her shoulder. There’s a soft song humming from the tiny speaker in the corner.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be thinking in possessives. I shouldn’t be walking like a thief in a place I own.
I picture the dress again, the way it moved when I put a hand at her waist and guided her. The way her spine fit my palm.The way her mouth parted when I kissed her knuckles, and the hungry look in her eyes.
I think about the elevator because trying not to think about it is useless. It was hot and wild and wrong, and it lives under my skin like a scar.
The sound she made when my teeth found that place where neck becomes shoulder. The way she shivered and gave herself to me completely. The way she asked for more and then still more after that. The way I lost my sense and then threw it back on like a mask and hurt her with it. The look in her eyes before she shuttered it.
I hate that I put that fear in her; that hurt.
I hate that I can’t stop wanting to put everything else in her, too.
I rest my knuckles against the doorjamb and don’t knock. Not yet. The wood is cool. My skin is not. My pulse is a drum I can’t quiet. I breathe once, then again.
I don’t plan this.
I know I shouldn’t do it.
I stand in the thin slice of light like a man who has already made his choice and is not sure he wants to change it, but knows he should.
I tell myself toturn around.
I don’t move.
The song ends. There’s a beat of silence. A soft click. Then she sighs a little, the sort of sigh that says she’s finished for the day, satisfied and tired in the same breath.
I should leave. Let her go home. I shouldn’t be standing here thinking about putting her back against this door and making her sigh for other reasons.
I knock anyway.
She looks up, a question on her face. The door is still mostly closed, only a sliver of a gap between it and the jamb, but she saw the motion.
I push it open and step inside.
Olivia. My hands know her even when they're empty. My body knows the way hers fits. My mind knows every reason this should stop, and my heart doesn’t care.
The world outside this room could be on fire, and I wouldn’t notice. Not now. Not with her looking at me like that, surprised and expectant and not unwelcome at all.
Everything. The word rises in my own mind like a prayer. Like a verdict. Like a sentence.
I close the door behind me.
The lock clicks. A small, final sound in the quiet room. It’s that simple, and it’s that complicated. It’s everything I told myself not to do.
“Roberto,” she breathes.
Itake the last step that brings me into the light. Into the warmth she’s made in this office. She’s in a loose sweater that is more for warmth than style. Her hair is down, loose and dark, and wanting hands in it.
