A flush crawls up my neck. My knuckles ache around the glass.
I count to ten. Finish the rye. Stand.
This is where containment ends. Once the door opens, whatever this is won't stay clean.
By the time the elevator opens on the fifteenth floor, I've told myself three times this is a bad idea. Nothing about the way she watches doors and wraps herself around that fake name says casual hookup. She smells like cheap hotel soap and adrenaline. My hands won't unclench.
Yet my body is already half hard imagining her saying my name.
Every instinct says walk. She feels like a fault line, and my own mess isn't cold yet. Wanting her doesn't change that. It just makes the choice louder.
I knock anyway.
The door opens a crack with the security chain still latched. One eye. Half her face. Then the chain rattles, metal sliding, and the door swings wider.
She's still dressed. Boots off, toes bare against the ugly carpet. Sweater sleeves shoved up her forearms. Her hair’s come loose, falling in dark waves, wilder than downstairs.
Softer this way.
We stare at each other. The air feels thick, threaded with whatever we started in the bar and haven't decided whether to finish.
"You hesitated," she murmurs.
"How do you know?"
She steps back, giving me room to enter. "I heard your footsteps stop. Then start again."
She was listening. Waiting. Maybe as uncertain as I was.
"I was deciding."
"About what?"
"Whether I was going to be careful with you." The threshold passes beneath my feet. "Or honest."
Her knuckles whiten on the doorframe. "And?"
The door closes behind me with a soft, final click.
"Still deciding." I turn to face her. She won't look away. "But I came in, didn't I?"
Her breath catches high in her chest. She looks at me as if I'm the storm she's chosen to walk into. Swallowing, she steps closer, then stops. Her fingers toy with the hem of her sweater. She's shaking.
My knuckles tilt her chin up. Her chest hitches. Pulse skitters under my fingertips, wild and unsteady.
"You're wound up," I murmur. "Been holding yourself together all damn night."
Her lashes flutter. "I'm not—"
"You are." My thumb drags along her jaw. "You're looking at me like you want something you're afraid to ask for."
Her knees give. One hand slides up my chest, tentative, testing. Her palm scorches through my shirt.
I close the space, press her back against the door, cage her in with my body and weight, nothing but my thumb on her jaw.
"You tell me to leave," I say, low and absolute, "and I'm gone."
She shakes her head so fast it blurs. "No."
