Chapter 13
T he glass was cool under my palms, but my skin burned everywhere else.
He stepped behind me, quiet, inevitable. His heat reached me before his hands did, a tide rolling up my back. I could see him in the reflection—broad shoulders, the dark cut of his shirt. I could see myself, too, mouth parted, dress skimming my hips, eyes a little wild.
“Look at the city,” he said.
The bridge arched pale against a watercolor sky. Boats stitched white wakes across the water. A gull hung in the air like a pinned note. None of it mattered. All I could feel was the line of his body aligning with mine, not touching, close enough to make my lungs forget their job.
Finally, he touched me like he had all day to do it.
A slow slide of fingers along my forearm.
A pause at my wrist. His palm tracing the inside of my elbow.
The softest curl over my shoulder, then down.
My breath hitched. His hand settled on my hip, claiming without crowding, and his mouth found the shell of my ear, without kissing.
“Hands on the glass,” he murmured. “Leave them there.”
I did. I could feel my pulse in my fingers. I could see it in the reflection, the tiny tremor I couldn’t hide. He eased my hips forward, a patient press that tilted me until the silk drew tight over the curve of my ass and the city came closer.
A thought struck—I was no different than a cat in heat, hoisting her rump for the alley to judge. The thought should have burned. It didn’t. It broke something open. I didn’t care who was watching. I cared that he did.
His other hand found my throat. Not a grip. A warm weight. His thumb rested under my chin, a quiet order: keep your eyes open. Keep looking.
My breath bounced off the glass and came back hotter.
“You’re begging already,” he said.
“I’m not?—”
“You are.” The words kissed the back of my neck.
He rocked his hips forward just enough for me to feel him.
His cock was hard. Certain. Big and thick in a way I hadn’t known was possible, a heavy promise. The thick pressure of him slid over the curve of me and my knees almost gave. Heat punched low. I made a sound I didn’t recognize, hunger and panic married in one short breath.
“Please,” I whispered, and there went my pride, falling like a coin into a well.
He liked that. I felt the approval in the way his hand flexed on my hip. I felt it in the way the air around us changed shape, tighter, darker.
“Say what you want,” he said.
The words lodged behind my lips. There were so many ways to say the same thing. Touch me. Take me. Don’t be gentle . I picked none of them. I pushed my hips into the glass and hated myself for it. Loved myself for it.
“More,” I managed.
His mouth brushed my jaw. “Good.”
His hand on my throat dropped away. The other slid lower, under the hem.
Knuckles grazing the back of my thigh. Heat and silk and skin.
I jolted like he’d found a live wire—and he had, because my whole body fired at once.
He traced the inside of my leg with maddening care, inch by inch, up and in, until?—
I sucked in a breath so fast I swayed. His touch was the lightest brush of my pussy. I trembled so hard my palms squeaked on the glass. He didn’t push. He didn’t give. He drew the outline of my desperation and then took his hand away.
“No,” I said, raw, before I could call it by a calmer name. “Don’t?—”
The absence was a slap. He smoothed my skirt before it fell. He set my hips exactly where he wanted them again, a correction as precise as anything I’d seen him do all day.
“You’ll keep standing,” he said, voice easy, as if he’d asked me to hold a door. “You’ll remember how this feels when you sit across from me and try to chew.”
I hated him. I wanted to cry. I wanted to turn and bite him. I wanted to press my forehead to the glass and beg. I did the weakest thing of all. I nodded because my mouth refused to make any sound that didn’t give me away.
He leaned in, and for a second I thought he’d put me out of my misery. He kissed the place where my shoulder met my neck. A single, soft press. It undid me more than anything else he’d done.
“We’re going out,” he said.
I turned too fast, the room tilting around me. “Now?”
He was already taking his phone from his pocket.
His tone shifted, crisp and cold, a man slotting himself into a language built for efficiency.
A yes. A time. A name I didn’t recognize.
Someone on the other end scrambled. He ended the call, slid the phone away, and looked at me like nothing about me could surprise him.
“Ten minutes.”
It took a beat for my pride to catch up. “You just?—”
“Ten,” he repeated.
I could have said no. I could have told him he didn’t get to wind me tight and then walk me out the door like I was an errand.
I could have, and some version of me might have, if his palm hadn’t still been a ghost at my throat.
If the glass hadn’t held the shape of my hands like a prayer.
If the silk didn’t cling to the places he’d warmed.
I pushed away from the window. My knees remembered themselves. I glanced in the mirror, and I told the woman there to hold her line.
In the car, Charleston slid past in blades of light. The harbor flashed and hid and flashed again between buildings until the road opened and the water took over the frame.
Our destination rose up like a ship morphed into a cathedral. Glass walls curving toward the river. Black steel and pale stone. The roofline pitched into the sky like a sail about to catch wind. Bronze letters arched over the entrance in a clean, spare font that knew it was expensive.
The Mariner’s Table.
I’d driven by before, always from a distance that let me pretend I didn’t care about what happened inside. Power lunches. Anniversary dinners. Deals disguised as toasts. The kind of view you had to reserve with a favor. The kind of menu that replaced vowels for effect.
Atticus didn’t slow. He stepped out as if the building had been waiting for him.
The host looked up. Something went through his face, quick and bright, like a switch being thrown.
Words were exchanged that I didn’t catch.
The host nodded once, twice, already backing up, already waving a server over.
Like choreography. Like a tide that understood gravity.
A small room to the right of the main dining floor emptied like someone had lifted and poured it out.
Couples rose with apologies already on their lips.
Wine glasses were carried. Napkins were folded without glances exchanged.
No one sat there when we stepped in. The door sighed shut. The harbor filled every pane.
There was a table in the center, round and white. There were a few smaller tables near the glass. Candles set low, flames mirrored a hundred ways. The Ravenel Bridge wore a thin chain of light now. The water had deepened to bruise and ink.
“Sit,” he said, and somehow it sounded like care.
The chair was heavy under my hands and then obedient under my weight. A server appeared. He poured champagne without being asked and disappeared again like he’d been made of smoke.
“You didn’t ask for the room,” I said, because my mouth needed work to do if my body was going to survive the evening.
“I never do,” he said.
“You like people to move.”
“I like quiet when I need it.”
“And when you don’t?”
His mouth did that almost-smile. “You’ve seen me in both.”
It was true. I’d seen him on the lawn at Stephen’s party, still and watchful, fully inside a party he wasn’t part of. I’d seen him in the suite, leaning in a doorway like restraint was a sport. I was seeing him now, king in a glass kingdom, letting the city swivel under him.
The server returned with a salad that looked like it had been painted and dark bread that smelled like some better version of home. He set everything down and vanished.
I held the cool shape of the coupe in my fingers. The bubbles snapped on my tongue and dropped all the way down my chest. Atticus watched my mouth like it was the only thing in the room.
“You’re flushed,” he said, mild, almost amused.
“You put your hand up my dress and then told me to get in the car,” I said, very evenly, because I wanted to sound like a woman with a backbone. “So, yes. I’m flushed.”
“You like being left wanting,” he said, as if the topic were weather.
“I like not being toyed with.”
“Noted,” he said. “And untrue.”
I should have bristled. The bigger truth was heavier than pride. He was right. Wanting like this felt like an organ I didn’t know I had suddenly waking up. It throbbed. It hurt a little. It made everything brighter. It made me dangerous to myself.
He tore a piece of the dark bread, dragged it through olive oil, and offered it across the table. I held his eyes as I took it from his fingers. Warm, salty, clean. I swallowed. His gaze dropped to my throat. That was almost enough to undo me.
“Open your knees,” he said softly.
My fork paused in the salad. Heat shot through me. I glanced at the door. It was closed. The glass was glass, but the room was ours.
I didn’t move.
He lowered his voice until it lived in my bones. “Open.”
I did. A breath at a time. Slow. Controlled. The dress allowed very little, then a little more.
His eyes darkened. “Good.”
He didn’t reach across the table. He didn’t move his chair closer. He rested his hand on the table near mine, just a few inches of clean space between us, and kept talking like he hadn’t just knotted me tighter.
He dragged one finger along the stem of his glass, not touching me at all. “You’ll finish every bite,” he said. “You’ll drink your champagne. You’ll keep your knees exactly where I told you.”
My pulse hammered in my throat. “And after?”
His eyes held mine like a hand at my jaw. “After, I stop being patient.”