15. Celine
CELINE
I know better than to ask Roman.
I know this, and I still find myself watching him across the office on Wednesday morning, looking for something in the way he moves and the calls he takes. He gives me nothing. He never gives me anything. That is what Roman is for.
I go back to my screen.
The work helps. It always helps. I’ve been managing on limited resources for long enough that I know how to use a full inbox and a complicated schedule as a wall between myself and the things I cannot control.
I know Zane is handling it. I know because he said he would, and he doesn’t say things he does not mean.
That’s one of the very few things I’m certain of about him.
What I’m not certain of is how it’s handled, what it costs, and what it leaves behind.
I think about this more than I want to.
Wednesday evening, I’m on the couch with my laptop when Zane comes through the penthouse. He doesn’t stop. He goes to his office, and the door closes, and I hear the low sound of a call starting behind it. I look at the door for a moment. Then I look back at my screen.
This is the thing about living in his space. You become attuned to it against your will. The sounds of him moving through rooms. The difference between the penthouse when he’s in it and when he’s not, which I noticed within the first week and haven’t been able to unnotice since.
I don’t examine this.
I close my laptop and go to bed.
On Thursday, I pass him in the corridor outside the conference room, and he looks at me the way he looks at me when there’s something behind it that he’s not going to say. I look back. Neither of us stops walking.
I get to the elevator, press the button, stand there for three seconds thinking about the look, then step in and go downstairs.
The smell of the coffee cart on the ground floor hits me before I reach it, stronger than usual, and my stomach turns in a way I attribute to the fact that I haven’t eaten properly since Wednesday.
I buy a bottle of water instead. I come back up and work.
I’m very good at this—at taking something, putting it in a compartment, and closing the door.
The door has been harder to close lately. I don’t think about why.
Lena calls me on Friday afternoon.
I pick up at my desk, and she says his name before she says hello.
“The man,” she says. “Dario. He hasn’t called.”
I sit very still. “Since when?”
“Wednesday. The calls just stopped.” A pause. “Did you do something?”
I look at the closed door of Zane’s office across the floor. “I told someone,” I say.
“Who?”
“Someone who could help.”
Lena is quiet for a moment. “Is it your boss?”
I don’t answer that.
“Celine.”
“How are you feeling?” I say. “How’s the new dosage?”
She lets me change the subject. She knows when I’ve said everything I’m going to say.
“Better,” she says. “Actually better, not the kind where I’m just tired of complaining.
” A pause, and I can hear her settling into her chair the way she does when she’s about to tell me something good.
“Priya has been dragging me along a canal every morning. It’s freezing, and she complains the entire way.
I look forward to it more than anything else in my day. ”
I close my eyes for a second. She sounds like herself. Not the careful, managed version she uses when she doesn’t want me to worry. Actually, she sounds loose and dry and entirely unbothered.
“Tell Priya she’s a saint,” I say.
“I tell her that every morning. She says saints don’t complain this much about cobblestones.”
When we hang up, I sit at my desk for a moment with my phone in my hand and the sensation of a feeling I can’t name sitting in the center of my chest. Not relief exactly. Relief is clean. This has something else underneath it.
I know what that something else is.
I put my phone in my bag. I stand up. I cross the floor to his office, and I knock once and open the door.
He’s at his desk. Jacket off, the dark shirt underneath, sleeves pushed to the forearm, the way they are when he’s been working for a long time. He looks up when I come in, and there’s something in his face that settles when he sees it’s me. I don’t know what to do with that, so I do nothing.
“Lena called,” I say.
“I know.”
“Dario stopped contacting her on Wednesday.”
“Yes.”
I close the door behind me. Take two steps into the room. “What did you do?”
He looks at me. “It’s handled.”
“I know it’s handled. I’m asking what that looked like.”
“Celine.”
“Don’t say my name like that. Don’t use my name to end a sentence you don’t want to finish.” I take another step. The desk is between us. “I told you about Dario because it was your business. You told me you would handle it. It’s handled. I’m asking you what that means.”
“It means he won’t contact her again.”
“How?”
“The details aren’t something you need.”
The feeling in the center of my chest shifts. The gratitude and the fury sit beside each other the way they’ve been sitting since Wednesday, and I can’t separate them. I’ve been trying to separate them for two days, and they will not come apart.
I’m grateful.
I’m furious that I’m grateful. I’m furious at the man who does something for the person I love most in the world and then will not tell me what he did, as though the information is his to keep.
“It’s my sister,” I say.
“I know whose sister she is.”
“Then you understand why I’m standing here asking you to tell me what you did to fix her problem.”
He stands up. Comes around the desk. Stops close enough that I have to decide whether to hold my ground. I hold it.
“That man is not going to contact her again,” he says. “Whatever you are imagining about what that took, the reality is more straightforward.” He looks at me steadily. “She’s safe. That is what matters.”
“It matters to me how it happened.”
“I know.”
“Then tell me.”
“No.”
I stare at him. He holds it. The office is very quiet. I can hear the city from here, faint, sixty floors of air between us and it.
“You are infuriating,” I say.
“I know that too.”
I laugh. It comes out before I decide to let it, short and real, and his mouth moves in response, not a smile, the beginning of one, and I’m close enough to see it.
I’m close enough to see the exact line of his jaw, the gray at his temples, and the way he looks at me like I’m something he has been patient with for a very long time.
I don’t know who moves first.
I think it’s me. My body makes the decision before my brain can catch up, fingers twisting into the collar of his shirt as I yank him down.
His hand is already at my jaw, gripping hard, tilting my face exactly where he wants it.
Our mouths crash together—angry, starving, and with no hesitation.
The kiss is all teeth and heat, his tongue sliding against mine like he’s claiming every inch I’ve tried to keep from him.
He tastes like coffee and something darker, something that belongs only to him. His scent wraps around me instantly—warm skin, faint cologne, and that unmistakable trace of the man who has taken over every corner of my life. It sinks into my lungs and makes my head spin.
A low sound rumbles out of his chest, half growl, half groan, and I answer it with a sharp breath that breaks into his mouth.
His other hand drops to my waist, pulling me flush against him so fast our bodies collide.
I feel the hard line of him everywhere—chest, thighs, the insistent press of his cock against my stomach.
My fingers tighten harder in his collar, wrinkling the expensive fabric as I kiss him back like I’m furious at how much I need this.
He walks me backward until my ass hits the edge of his desk. Without breaking the kiss he wedges a thick thigh between mine, spreading me open just enough. His hand slides down, possessive and sure, palming over my skirt before slipping beneath it.
I smirk against his mouth. “Naughty,” I whisper.
His fingers tease along the edge of my panties, tracing the soaked fabric with slow, deliberate strokes. He doesn’t push inside. He just rubs, firm and unhurried, right over my clit, pressing the wet lace against my swollen flesh until my hips jerk against his hand.
A sharp gasp leaves me. “Zane.”
His name comes out raw. I drag my hands from his collar, one sliding up to push through his hair, gripping tight as I pull him closer.
He answers by wrapping his other hand around my throat, not squeezing hard but holding me there, thumb pressing lightly under my jaw so I feel claimed, owned, completely at his mercy.
He breaks the kiss only to trail his mouth down my neck, hot and open, sucking at the sensitive skin just below my ear. Then his teeth graze my earlobe, and he sucks it into his mouth while his fingers keep stroking me through my panties in perfect, maddening circles.
The pleasure coils so fast I moan louder than I should, the sound echoing in the quiet office.
“Shhh,” he growls against my ear, voice low and rough, his breath hot on my skin. “Be quiet for me, baby.”
His mouth finds mine again, deeper this time, tongue stroking mine. I tug harder at his hair, nails scraping his scalp, and he rewards me by pressing his palm firmer against my clit, rubbing the drenched lace in tight, possessive strokes that have my thighs shaking around his leg.
I pant into his mouth, small desperate sounds spilling out with every drag of his fingers.
My hips roll against his hand, chasing the friction, my whole body burning.
He groans low in his chest, the sound vibrating against my lips, and tightens his grip on my throat just enough to remind me who’s in control.
The tension builds, sharp and overwhelming, until his phone rings on the desk behind me, sharp and sudden.
We rip apart, both panting hard. My lips feel swollen and wet. My chest heaves. His eyes are dark, pupils blown wide, hair messy from my fingers.
His hand stays under my skirt for one more second, fingers still pressed against the soaked fabric, before he slowly pulls away. His other hand slips from my throat, thumb brushing my lower lip like he can’t quite let go yet.
I step back.
“I still want to know what you did,” I say.
His hand drops. The almost-smile again.
“I know,” he says.
I turn and walk out of his office without looking back.
I press the elevator button and stand there, waiting for it, my heartbeat doing what it’s doing and my hand still feeling the fabric of his shirt, and the absolute certainty that I’m in considerably more trouble than I was when I walked in.
The elevator opens.
I get in.
I let the doors close.