She dropped her hand, licking her lips, that snarky smirk creeping back despite the flush.
“Well, well. That was amazing,” she whispered before standing up.
She fixed her skirt. Straightened her blouse, checked her buttons. Bent down and scooped the scattered quarterly reports, tapped them into a neat stack on the desk corner, and walked back out to her desk. And she immediately sat down, opened her laptop, and started typing. Like nothing was happening.
I sank back into my chair. Tie crooked, hair wrecked, cock still half-hard as I tucked myself away. Breathing too hard, staring at the mess on my desk. She did that, crossed the floor like she didn’t just pull me apart at the seams, and went back to work while I sat here trying to remember how lungs worked. She caught me looking at her and fucking winked.
A few days later she came in during a client call while I was pacing behind my desk, phone to my ear, talking about quarterly deliverables. She set a document on the corner of the desk. Turned to go. Stopped. Turned back.
She reached up and straightened my tie. Her fingers brushed my collar, smoothing the fabric down my chest. Slow. Her eyes onher own hands. Then she looked up at me, gave me the dimple, and walked out.
I lost my train of thought so completely the client asked if the call dropped.
I finished the call, went to her desk, stood over her. “You did that on purpose.”
“Did what?”
“The tie.”
“It was crooked.”
“It was not crooked.”
She kept typing, didn’t look up. “Go back to your office, Finneas.”
I stood there while she typed, the edge of a smile she was fighting visible from where I stood, and it took everything in me not to pull her out of that chair. Instead I turned around, walked back across the floor, closed my door, sat down, pressed both hands flat on the desk and breathed.
This woman was going to destroy me. I could feel it happening in real time and I didn’t want to stop it. Didn’t even want to slow it down. If this was destruction, then fuck it, let it burn.
The weekend came and Andrea decided I needed to see the shelter. She’d been talking about Bonalisa for as long as I’d known her, to me at the office and to Fin on the porch, and the way her voice changed when she mentioned it, softer, warmer,made me curious about a place that could do that to a woman who was sarcastic about everything.
She was in a sundress, sneakers, practically bouncing on the sidewalk like a kid going to a birthday party. I was in jeans and a shirt she’d picked out because she told me my version of casual was “a suit without the jacket, which is not casual, it’s just less formal.” She wasn’t wrong but I wasn’t going to tell her that.
Bonalisa was smaller than I expected. Tucked between a laundromat and a hardware store, hand-painted sign over the door, a place that clearly ran on love and duct tape and probably not enough funding. Inside it smelled like dog fur and cleaning solution and the barking hit me the second we walked through the door. My wolf’s ears perked, cataloging every animal in the building by instinct.
Andrea introduced me to the owners. Mary was about thirty, dark hair pulled back, some kind of paint smeared on her forearm that she clearly didn’t care about. She looked me up and down slowly, didn’t smile, crossed her arms.
“Finneas,” I said, holding out my hand.
She took it. Firm grip. “Maryjane. Mary’s fine.” She let go and tilted her head at me. “So you’re the one she won’t stop talking about.”
“Hopefully good things.”
“Wouldn’t say that.”
Andrea groaned from behind me. “Mary.”
“What? I’m being honest.” But the corner of her mouth twitched.
Her husband came out carrying a bag of kibble over one shoulder, tall, sandy-haired. He shifted the bag to shake my hand. “Peter. Nice to finally meet the guy.”
“Likewise.”
He nodded at Andrea, smiled, kissed Mary on the head as he passed without breaking stride. She swatted his arm without looking up from the clipboard she’d picked back up. They moved around each other like two people who’d been doing this for years, passing tools and dodging dogs without a word exchanged.
“So this is the boss,” Mary said, looking me up and down. “You clean up different out of the suit.”
“Thank you?”
