"You don't need to reward me," I say, but the words come out too quiet, too uncertain.
"I disagree." He shifts, and his other hand comes up to brace on the door, fully caging me now, his body a wall of heat and muscle and barely restrained energy. "You saved Chad. You saved me. You are always saving things, Little Manager. But who saves you?"
"I don't need saving," I manage, though my voice wavers traitorously on the last word, undermining the professional detachment I'm desperately trying to maintain.
"Everyone needs saving sometimes," he counters, his tone maddeningly gentle, almost tender, a stark contrast to the barely leashed power radiating from his frame.
"Not me." If I admit weakness, if I acknowledge the hairline fractures spiderwebbing through my facade, the whole structure might collapse entirely.
"Especially you," Thraka says, and there's such quiet certainty in those two words, such absolute conviction, that it steals the breath from my lungs.
And the way he says it, gentle and certain, like he sees straight through all my armor to the exhausted, anxious, perpetually caffeinated person underneath.
I should push him away.
I should remind him about professional boundaries and workplace ethics and the seventeen-page sexual harassment policy I helped draft.
I should be the responsible one here, the voice of reason, the adult in the room who puts a stop to this madness before it spirals into a full-blown HR incident that would require its own dedicated filing system.
I'm always the responsible one, the person who remembers to submit expense reports on time, who actually reads the terms and conditions, who carries backup phone chargers and emergency granola bars and a laminated copy of the building's evacuation procedures. The one who stays late to finish everyone else's work, who takes the fall when projects go sideways, who sends the difficult emails and makes the uncomfortable decisions and maintains professional boundaries even when every fiber of my being is screaming otherwise.
But Thraka is looking at me like I'm not a problem to solve or a resource to manage or a competitor to undermine. He's looking at me like I'm valuable. Worthy. Like my stress and my rules and my three-ring binders full of contingency plans are not weaknesses but strengths.
Like I'm not too much or too rigid or too cold, not the Ice Queen everyone whispers about in the break room, not the taskmaster who sends emails at 2 AM with subject lines written in all caps.
Like I'm exactly right, exactly enough, exactly what he wants without modification or optimization or a single goddamn revision.
"Thraka," I start, his name rough and unfamiliar on my tongue, catching somewhere between my teeth and my better judgment, but I don't know how to finish the sentence because my brain, my beautiful, efficient, spreadsheet-loving brain, has apparently short-circuited entirely.
Stop?
Don't stop?
Please continue but also I need you to sign this liability waiver first?
This is wildly inappropriate and also I haven't stopped thinking about you since you cracked the boardroom table?
His gaze drops to my mouth.
My breathing stutters.
The closet feels impossibly small, impossibly hot, and I'm hyperaware of every point where we're almost touching. His chest six inches from mine. His arms bracketing my shoulders. His breath warm against my forehead.
"Tell me to leave," he says quietly. "Tell me this is against protocol. Tell me to go back to my desk and never speak of this again."
I should tell him to leave.
I absolutely should tell him to leave.
I should invoke Section 4.7 of the employee handbook, cite precedent from the 2019 HR summit, and remind him that this closet has security camera coverage (it doesn't, but he doesn't know that). I should be professional. Appropriate. The model of corporate decorum.
I should do a lot of things.
"Orla."
My name in his voice sounds different. Not clipped or professional or dismissive. It sounds like a question. Like a promise. Like something I didn't know I wanted to hear until this exact moment.
"We're in a supply closet," I say weakly, and even to my own ears it sounds less like a protest and more like I'm just... narrating our current situation. Stating facts. Establishing context.
