"I'm not going to regret this."
"Good. Neither am I."
He unbuttoned my blouse slowly, one button at a time, his knuckles brushing my skin with each release. When the fabric fell open, he didn't move to take it off. He just looked at me, his gaze traveling from my collarbone to my sternum to the laceedge of my bra, and the look on his face was not hunger. It was recognition.
"His hands stilled on my waist. "I want to say something, and I need you to hear it. You are beautiful. You are the most talented person I have ever worked beside. And I have spent ten years watching you let someone talk you out of both of those things, and I am not going to pretend I didn't."
I kissed him instead of answering. I didn't have words for what he'd just said. I didn't have words for the way it landed in my chest—not as a blow, but as a truth so vital it felt like I'd spent a lifetime holding my breath for it.
He unclasped my bra with one hand, a practiced motion that made me laugh against his mouth. "You've done that before."
"I'm thirty-one years old, Holland. I've done a lot of things before."
"Confidence. I like it."
"Good. I like that you like it."
He lowered his mouth to my collarbone, then lower, tracing a path down my sternum with his lips while his hands cupped my breasts. His thumbs circled my nipples, and I arched into him, my head falling back, my hair brushing his thighs. The sensation wasn't a distant flicker of heat; it was immediate and grounding. Just touch. Just his hands on my skin. Just his mouth on my body. Just the simple, overwhelming fact of being wanted by someone who saw me clearly.
He laid me back on the couch, and the leather was cool against my bare shoulders. He hovered above me, one arm braced beside my head, the other hand still tracing slow circles on my stomach. "Tell me if you want me to stop."
"I don't."
"Tell me anyway. At any point. I mean it."
"I will."
He unbuttoned my jeans and slid them down my hips, and I lifted myself to help him. The denim caught at my ankles, and he worked them free with a patience that made my throat tight. He wasn't rushing. He wasn't performing. He was just present, fully and completely present, in a way Callum had never been present in seven years of marriage.
Callum had always been somewhere else. In his head, in his image, in his next move. Even in bed, even in the dark, even in the moments that were supposed to be just ours, he'd been somewhere else. Finn was here. Finn was looking at me like I was the only thing in the room worth seeing.
He kissed the inside of my knee, then the inside of my thigh, and I made a sound I didn't recognize. His mouth curved against my skin. "I've thought about this. I've thought about you. For longer than I should probably admit," he said, his mouth moving against my skin.
"How long?"
"Since the Cantilever Competition. Since I watched you win a prize you didn't even get to accept and realized you were the best designer in that room and the only person who didn't seem to know it."
He kissed higher. My fingers curled into his hair—black, thick, and soft to the touch. "Finn."
"Yeah."
"I need you to know that this isn't revenge. This isn't me getting back at Callum. This isn't?—"
He lifted his head and met my eyes. "I know. This is you choosing something for yourself. That's all I want it to be."
I believed him. That was the strangest part. I believed him completely, without reservation, without the constant low-grade suspicion that had colored every interaction with Callum for years. Finn had never lied to me. Finn had never made mesmall. Finn had never asked me to disappear so he could shine brighter.
He pulled my underwear down and off, and then there was nothing between us but the warm studio air and the city lights and the sound of our breathing. He knelt between my thighs, and he looked at me, all of me, with an expression that was not hunger or awe or any of the words I'd been taught to expect. It was just attention. Pure, undivided attention.
"You're sure," he said again.
"I'm sure."
He reached for the side table and pulled a condom from the drawer, "I laughed, a short, surprised sound that released something tight in my chest. "You keep those in your drafting table?
"Theo keeps them in the drafting table. He says it's optimistic."
"Theo's a pragmatist."
