He stands. The movement is unhurried, but it changes everything. The room shifts around him, recalibrates its center. He comes around the desk, closing the distance without asking if he should.
Now there’s nothing between us but intention.
“You’re testing limits,” he says.
“Yes.”
“You came here to test one.”
My breath balls up at the base of my throat. “Yes.”
“And what do you think will happen?”
I should move.
I don’t.
“That depends,” I say, “on whether you intend to stop me.”
“I could.”
“I know.”
“Should I?”
That’s not a question he’s asking for himself. It’s for me. The realization lands somewhere low and dangerous.
“No,” I say.
He steps closer. Now there’s nothing between us but space I haven’t decided whether to keep.
“You’re very certain,” he says.
“I have to be.”
“Why?”
I scoff. “Because hesitation gets noticed.”
“And certainty doesn’t?”
“It depends on who’s watching.”
His eyes flicker with flames. “I’mwatching.”
“I know.”
The last inch disappears without permission. The tension snaps before either of us chooses it.
Our lips collide at the juncture of calculation and hunger.
I hear the scrape of the desk behind us as he presses me against it, the clean wood searing through the cotton of my nightdress. My hands go to his shirt, tunneling between buttons without meaning to, seeking skin, heat, confirmation that what I’ve been flirting with in the abstract is alive and immediate.
He kisses like a blueprint set on fire: logic under every movement, structure behind the way his tongue presses into my mouth, the way his hand cups the back of my skull instead of my waist, aligning me to him as though I’m a theory he intends to prove or break.
One hand holds me there, anchored by the base of my head. The other brackets my hip and draws me flush against his body. He parts my thighs by sheer force of intent, his leg wedging into the soft place between them, pressure calculated and deliberate.
The desk edge is a line across the backs of my thighs, a knife of sensation. I almost want to let it hurt. A warning that this is real.
