I liked all of it and that terrified me.
Two days later I was at the filing cabinet near the far wall, stretching for a folder on the top shelf. The shelf was too damn high because everything in this building was designed for people a foot taller than me. I got on my toes, fingertips grazing the edge, couldn’t quite get a grip, so I braced my foot on the bottom drawer and stretched further.
I didn’t hear him. One second I was alone and the next his chest was inches from my back, warm, blocking out the rest of the room. He reached over me and pulled the file down with zero effort, his arm passing close enough to my head that I felt the warmth of it. His cologne hit me and his breath landed on the back of my neck and every hair on my body stood up.
He set the file on the cabinet beside me. His hand brushed my shoulder on the way down.
“Here.”
I turned around and he was right there. Way too close, my back pressed against the cabinet, him looking down at me, close enough that I could see the stubble on his jaw, how his eyes weredarker at this distance, a small scar on his eyebrow I’d never noticed. My heart slammed against my ribs so hard I was sure he could hear it.
“I could have gotten it.”
“You were climbing the shelf.”
“I was not climbing the shelf.”
“Your foot was on the bottom drawer.”
“That’s called resourcefulness.”
He didn’t move back. I didn’t move sideways. Six inches between our faces, heat coming off his body, my brain fully offline. If either of us leaned forward we’d be kissing and I needed to get out of this corner before I did what every nerve in my body was screaming at me to do.
“You going to move?” My voice came out breathier than I wanted.
“Are you going to ask me to?”
Shit.
I grabbed the file off the cabinet, ducked under his arm, and made it back to my desk on rubber legs. Dropped into my chair and my whole body buzzed, from my neck where his breath had landed to my shoulder where his hand grazed to my back where his chest had been so goddamn close I could still feel the phantom heat of it.
He went back to his office like nothing happened. Just sat down, started reading his screen. How? How was he just sitting there? I couldn’t even remember what file I’d originally been looking for.
The rest of the afternoon was a loss. I opened the same spreadsheet four times without changing a single cell. Typed an email to accounting, read it back, realized I’d addressed it to “Dear Finneas” instead of “Dear Finance Team,” and deleted the whole thing so fast my keyboard rattled. At some point he walked past my desk to refill his coffee, closer than necessary, and I caught a wave of his cologne. My pen slipped out of my fingers, rolled across the floor, and I just left it there because bending down felt like too much to ask of my body right now.
Everything was too much. His proximity, his cologne, the memory of six inches of air between our faces and his voice askingare you going to ask me to.I was losing my shit over a filing cabinet encounter and we hadn’t even touched and that was the most fucked up part of all of it.
I was packing up my bag when he came out of his office. Jacket on. He fell into step beside me and we waited for the elevator in silence.
The doors opened and I stepped in.
He caught my wrist.
My pulse went through the roof. His fingers wrapped around my wrist, loose enough to pull free, firm enough that I felt it everywhere. He tugged me back one step until I was facing him at the elevator threshold.
He leaned down. His mouth stopped next to my ear, close enough that his breath hit my neck in warm slow waves, and every muscle in my body locked. Cologne everywhere, jaw right there inches from my cheek, heat from his skin radiating into mine without touching.
“For the record,” he said, low, barely a murmur, “the shirtless dream was mutual.”
He let go of my wrist, stepped back, and the elevator doors closed between us.
I stood there. Face on fire, wrist burning, brain gone. He dreamed about me, just whispered that into my ear with his mouth close enough that I felt every word on my skin, and then he let the doors close like a man who knew exactly what he’d done and was content to let me suffer with it.
The elevator hit the lobby, the doors opened, and I just stood there until they started closing again. Had to jam my hand in to stop them. A woman in the lobby gave me a look. I walked past her without making eye contact because if I opened my mouth right now the only thing coming out was a scream.
I drove home on autopilot, walked through my front door, dropped my bag in the hallway, grabbed a pillow off the couch, and screamed into it for a solid five seconds. Threw it across the room and stood there breathing hard with my hair in my face.
“I’m going to kill him,” I mumbled aloud and I didn’t care. “He can’t just whisper that and let the doors close like some goddamn romance novel villain.”
