17. Shayla #2
His hands find my waist like oxygen after drowning.
Not grabbing—landing. Settling. Fingers spread wide across the curve of my hips, thumbs pressing into the soft give above my waistband.
He holds me like I'm the last structural support in a building that's already half-collapsed, and his breath shudders out in a sound I've never heard him make in public.
A sound that belongs to dark rooms and silk and my hand in his hair.
I grip the front of his undershirt. The cotton is thin and warm and I can feel every ridge of his abdomen through it, the tension he carries in his core like a man bracing for a hit that never stops coming. I pull.
He folds.
That's the only word. Six-three, two-twenty, silver-templed titan of American venture capital—folds.
His forehead drops to mine. The tips of our noses brush.
His breath is hot and unsteady against my upper lip and his eyes are closed and the lines carved around them look softer up close, like the architecture of his exhaustion is finally relaxing.
"Shayla." My name in his mouth like a prayer he's been holding behind his teeth for fourteen days.
I kiss him.
Not soft. Not tentative. Not the kind of kiss that asks permission or builds slow.
I take his mouth the way I take everything from this man—completely, on my terms, with both hands fisted in cheap cotton.
My tongue finds his and he groans, low and guttural and loud enough that the mopping woman drops her mop handle.
It clatters against the tile like a gunshot. Neither of us flinch.
He tastes like black coffee and something desperate.
His hands slide up my back, pulling me flush, and I let him because this isn't about control right now.
This is about staking a flag. This is about the glass doors of Cox Capital at my back and the night beyond them where I already know a photographer is camped out because the financial media has been circling this building like vultures since the leaked article.
So I kiss him harder.
I rise on my toes to change the angle and his arm locks around my lower back, lifting me that last inch so I don't have to strain.
Even now. Even mid-combustion, some part of his brain is calibrating for my comfort, my access, my ease.
Service runs in this man's blood like a second circulatory system.
His bottom lip catches between my teeth and I bite.
Not gentle. The sound he makes vibrates through his ribs and into mine.
His hand cradles the back of my head—and then stops.
Hovers. Because my braids are fresh, two-day-old knotless box braids that took Keisha four hours and cost me three hundred dollars, and he remembers.
He always remembers. His fingers hover a centimeter from my scalp, cupping air instead of hair, protecting the style even while I'm devouring his mouth in a corporate lobby.
I grab his wrist and push his hand against my braids.
The kiss goes nuclear. His fingers close carefully around the braids at my nape, firm but never pulling, never twisting, holding like he's been taught—because he was, by me, on a Tuesday night in his penthouse while I sat between his knees and showed him exactly how much pressure was allowed.
He learned in one lesson. Remembered every detail.
When I pull back, his lips are swollen and his eyes are blown wide and black and the lobby is dead silent. Dennis has his hand frozen over his radio like he's observing a nature documentary he's not sure he should interrupt. The maintenance guys have stopped moving entirely.
Behind me, through the glass doors, a camera flash pops. Then another.
Let them.
I smooth the front of Tyler's ruined undershirt. Run my hand over his heart one more time—still hammering, still wild, still mine.
"Let's go."
He follows me across the lobby. Doesn't ask where. Doesn't check his phone. Doesn't reach for the cardboard box on the bench. His stride adjusts to match mine without thought, long legs shortening to keep pace beside me rather than ahead.
We push through the glass doors into the warm night. Three photographers, just like I guessed. The flashes strobe white and frantic. Questions volley—"Tyler! Tyler, is it true about the buyout?" "Shayla, are you returning to the company?" "Can you comment on the board restructuring?"
I don't look at them. Neither does he. We walk straight to the curb where a yellow cab idles, its driver scrolling through his phone.
I open the back door myself. Slide across the cracked vinyl seat.
Tyler folds his frame in beside me, knees leaned against the partition, pulling the door shut and sealing out the shutter-clicks.
The cab smells like pine air freshener and the driver glances in the rearview.
"Where to?"
"Harlem," I say. "135th and Malcolm X."
The cab pulls away from the curb. The photographers shrink in the rear window.
I lean across the center divide. My lips brush the shell of Tyler's ear, the fine hair at his temple stands up. My hand settles high on his thigh.
"When we get home," I murmur, "you're going to kneel on my bathroom floor and draw me a bath. And when it's ready, you're going to undress me. Slowly. And if your hands shake even once—" my fingers tighten, "—you start over from the beginning."
Every muscle in his body locks. A full-body tremor rolls through him, shoulders to spine to the leg tensing under my grip. His head tips back against the headrest. His throat bobs on a hard swallow.
"Yes, ma'am."
The cab merges onto the bridge.