He hit the stop button.
The elevator jolted. Lights flickered once, held. The car hung between floors and the silence that replaced the hum was deafening.
I looked at him. “Did you just stop the elevator?”
He backed me against the wall. His hands came up to frame my face, palms warm against my cheeks, and he kissed me. Slow this time, deliberate, nothing like the office ambush. This wasthorough. His mouth moved against mine like he was learning me, memorizing the shape of my lips, and his thumb traced my jaw while I grabbed the front of his shirt with both fists and pulled him in because I was so goddamn tired of fighting this.
He pressed against me. Cold wall on my back, him warm on my front, his chest against mine, his thigh between my legs. One of his hands slid from my face down my neck, over my shoulder, settling on my waist, and the trail of heat his fingers left on my skin made my head tip back against the wall. He followed, mouth moving to the corner of my jaw, just below my ear, and I made a sound I couldn’t control. I felt him react instantly, fingers tightening on my hip, his breathing going ragged against my throat.
He pulled back, barely, forehead against mine, both of us breathing hard. His hand was still on my waist, thumb tracing circles against my hip through my blouse, and even that small motion was making it hard to think.
“This is a terrible idea,” I said. My voice was wrecked.
“Yes.”
“If that door opens and someone’s there.”
“No one else uses this elevator.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What’s the point?”
I looked at him. His eyes were dark, lips swollen, hair messed up from my hands. I did that. Put that look on his face. Good. Nowhe looked as ruined as I felt. His chest was heaving, his thumb still moving on my hip, and I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt where my fists were pressed against his chest, hammering just as hard as mine.
I should push him away. Hit the button, restart the elevator, go home.
Instead, I kissed him again. Pulled him in by the shirt, hard, hands going to his hair, his to my hips, the elevator hanging between floors. His mouth opened against mine and I pressed closer, arching off the wall into him, and I didn’t care anymore. About the office, the professionalism, any of it. I just wanted more of his hands on me, more of the sound he made when I pulled his hair, more of his body against mine in this stopped elevator with the world paused around us.
He was the one who pulled back and hit the button immediately. The elevator hummed, started moving.
We stood side by side. Not touching, not speaking. My reflection in the polished doors was flushed, lipstick gone, hair wrecked.
The doors opened. I walked to my car on useless legs, sat in the driver’s seat, gripped the steering wheel. My lips were swollen, my hair a mess. I could still feel the cold wall on my back, his thigh between my legs, his hands on my waist. Could still hear the sound he made, low and rough, a sound I’d be replaying for the foreseeable future.
Ten minutes before I trusted myself to drive.
I walked through my front door, stood in the hallway, and my legs gave out. Slid down the wall to the floor. Sat there with myface in my hands, body humming, brain screaming that this was a terrible idea while every other part of me told my brain to shut the hell up.
I’d crossed a line today. Not the office kiss, which I could write off as weakness, and not the filing cabinet or the copy room, which technically didn’t count. But the elevator. I grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him in, kissed him with both hands in his hair while the car hung between floors. On purpose. A choice.
Tomorrow I’d see him at the office, stand on that floor with the glass wall and the filing cabinets and the elevator and try to pretend this hadn’t happened.
I already knew we wouldn’t be able to.
13
— • —
Andrea
He drove me home. Neither of us said a word.
Fifteen minutes of silence with my pulse still going too fast, his cologne filling the car, the memory of his mouth on mine in a stopped elevator sitting between us like a third passenger. I stared out the window and pressed my thumbnail into my index finger to keep my hands from shaking.
He pulled up outside my house, put it in park, and the engine idled between us while I looked at my porch through the windshield. Empty steps, bare wood, the light on for nobody.
I should get out. Say goodnight. Go inside alone and process the fact that I made out with my boss in a stopped elevator and liked it and wanted to do it again and had completely lost control of my life.
