Page 52 of Laced in Longing

“And?”

“You are the only one.” That part, at least, I do not need to invent.

She accepts it with a small nod as she mutters something under her breath. The words must be for her alone, but I hear them all the same.

“Doesn’t matter. I like it better when it’s just us anyway.”

Us.

During her first life, when her soul was full to bursting and she laughed like the world was perfect, she used to say it constantly: just us, just the two of us, the rest can wait. She loved me then. Those words have not crossed her lips in eight hundred years. Not once.

Just us.

I am still reeling from it, admiring every syllable, when she grabs my hand and hauls me across the office with startling force for someone so small.

* * *

MAVEN

What the hell am I doing? My body operates on its own, the way it does most things I’ll regret later, and I grab his hand—so warm and nice. His fingers curl around mine as if they were waiting, and I tug him to the little supply closet at the far end of the office that nobody uses because the light flickers in a creepy way and it smells like old toner.

I shove the door open and drag him in before clicking it closed.

It’s cramped in here. Shelves of printer paper and a mop bucket and the two of us, chest to chest almost, because there’s nowhere else to be, and now that we’re here I have exactly no plan, which is so on brand for me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask, the sentence breathier than I want. “At my work. You realize this is crazy, right? Following someone to their job is like—I don’t know, like restraining-order behavior.”

“You brought me into a closet.” His head tilts. “Who is following whom.”

My jaw drops. “That’s—” I lose the train of thought when he moves.

He doesn’t grab me. He just leans in, slow, giving me every second to shove him off, and I don’t. God help me, I don’t want to. I haven’t felt this many emotions my entire life, and I’m not sure I hate it.

His head lowers to the side of my neck before he inhales, his jaw grazing mine, and a full-body wave of goosebumps rolls down my arms so hard it stings.

“You smell like snow,” he murmurs against my skin. “And that awful candy you keep at your desk. And under it—” his nose drags along the line of my throat and my breath stutters, “—under it, you smell like mine.”

“That’s a deranged thing to say.” My voice has no weight behind it at all. A shelf slams into my back as my hands jump to fist the front of his coat. I didn’t tell them to do that.

He finds a spot just below my ear, a soft press of his mouth that isn’t even really a kiss, causing my knees and eyelids to flutter at the same time. An embarrassing sound escapes me when he does it again. His hands haven’t moved from where they hover at my waist, not touching, and somehow that restraint is worse than if he just took what we both clearly want.

And, fuck, do I want. That’s a horrifying realization…I want him to hike me up on this shelf and ruin me between the reams of copy paper. What does all that patience feel like unleashed? Every inch of me is vibrating in a foreign frequency, screaming yes, please.

Then he pulls back.

Just an inch. Enough to breathe each other’s air.

“Not here,” he says, rough. “Not like this.”

I blink at the white drape where his eyes hide, dazed and stinging from the rejection until I catch the strain in his voice. His body tenses more with each second. I realize this is costing him more than it’s costing me.

“I forgot your flower last night,” he breathes. “That was not—I meant only to give you space. I am sorry, Maven. I have never once failed to leave you one, and I will not fail again.”

Two small petals scrape my chest as I squeeze them close, and I don’t even wish to acknowledge the sudden burn in my eyes.

“Why do you keep giving me flowers,” I whisper. “You never answer that.”

He watches me and says nothing. And I know he won’t—this is one more thing I’ll have to wait for.