"Long enough that this conversation is the most intimate interaction I've had with another person in longer than I want to calculate."
"And I want it understood that this doesn't change the operational dynamic."
"You don't compartmentalize. You told me so yourself. You measure everything."
"I'm capable of making exceptions."
"You're capable of lying to yourself. That's a different skill set."
I close the distance.
My hands land on his chest, flat-palmed, fingers spread over the cotton of his shirt, and the heat of him is a shock against my perpetually cold skin.
His breath catches, involuntary, pulled from somewhere behind the humor and the glasses and every controlled performance he's ever given. The involuntary quality of it sends a pulse of satisfaction through me that has nothing to do withtenderness and everything to do with the power of making Tommy react before he can curate the response.
His hands come up, one on my hip with fingers pressing into the denim harder than a man who types for a living should be capable of, the firmness a reminder of the pull-up bar and the dead lifts and the body he hides.
The other hand goes to the back of my neck, fingers threading into the short hair at my nape, and his palm is warm and his grip is certain and my knees nearly buckle, which is a physiological response I have never had and do not appreciate.
I push him backward, one step, then two. His thighs hit the edge of his desk and the monitors rattle and he catches himself with one hand on the surface while the other tightens on my neck.
The balance of power is mine for a breath before he turns me around and presses his body again mine—the advantage disappears into the collision.
His mouth finds mine. The kiss is the physical continuation of the argument, confrontational and raw, and neither of us yields.
I bite his lower lip, and he makes a sound against my mouth that is low and rough and travels through every point of contact between us, and the sound bypasses every analytical process I have and arrives somewhere primal.
"Tell me your rules." He says it between breaths, his mouth still against mine, and the fact that he's asking, that even now he's requesting parameters, makes me want to destroy his entire workstation.
"Don't stop unless I say stop. Don't assume what I want. Ask or figure it out."
"I figure things out for a living."
"Then prove it."
His hands go to the hem of my hoodie. He pulls it off in one motion, efficient, no fumbling, and the cool air hits my arms and shoulders and the tank top underneath. He pauses, looks at my gloves, and his fingers close around my right wrist. He lifts my hand between us, and the deliberateness of the gesture, the way he studies the fingerless glove with the same attention he'd give a piece of code he's about to decrypt, makes something clench low in my belly.
He pulls the glove off slowly. The exposure of my bare hand in this workspace, this space where everything I touch is interface, feels more intimate than the kiss. He does the same with the left, sets both gloves on the desk beside his glasses, which are already off, and my hands are bare and his face is bare and the barriers are gone.
"My turn," I say, and my hands find the buttons of his shirt. I've been thinking about the body underneath since the gym, and the thinking has been corrosive, eating through my operational focus at intervals I can't predict.
The reality of his skin under my cold fingers is better than the projection. Lean muscle over solid bone. The kind of strength that doesn't announce itself.
I push the shirt off his shoulders and he lets me, and the confidence in the letting, the lack of self-consciousness from a man who hides this body from his entire team, tells me that whatever we are right now is something he doesn't hide from.
He lifts me onto the desk. My back hits the monitors and a keyboard slides and something beeps a protest that neither of us acknowledges.
His hips are between my knees, and his hands are on my thighs, and his mouth is on my neck, three points of deliberate contact that create a sensory map my brain attempts to process and fails because the data input is exceeding capacity.
I pull his mouth back to mine, fingers in his hair, gripping, and the grip is a claim. He responds by pressing closer, one hand sliding up my thigh while the other finds bare skin at my waist where my tank top has ridden up.
His palm on my skin is warm and precise, and I can feel the calluses from the pull-up bar, rough against my hip bone. The texture is a reminder that his hands are not what I expected and nothing about this is what I expected.
We fight for control and neither of us wins and the fighting is the point.
Every time I gain leverage, shifting my weight, pulling him closer by the waistband of his jeans, he recalibrates, adjusting his angle, finding a new point of contact that makes my breath stutter. Every time he presses an advantage, his mouth on my collarbone, his thumb tracing a line that makes my hips move against my will, I counter with teeth on his shoulder, nails down his back, a sound whispered in his ear that makes his rhythm falter.
"You're testing me." His voice is rough, his breath hot against my throat. "The way you test systems."
