Chapter Sixteen
Roberto
I don’t plan this.
I tell myself that twice between the garage and the elevator, and a third time when the doors open on the admin floor and the hall is quiet like a church after hours. I should go home, spend some time in the gym. Work off whatever it is that’s building up inside me.
I should do anything but this.
The building is mostly dark. Emergency strips glow low along the baseboards. Exit signs float orange above doors. Offices sit with their glass panes blacked out, a neat row of empty fish tanks. One light is on at the end of the corridor. A square of warm gold spilling into the hall.
Hers.
I knew it would be. She said she was finishing the last-minute pieces for opening night. A week. Seven days and this place will open its doors to the world. I could list the items that need my hand. I could leave and start on my own list, be useful.
I set off down the hall.
I shouldn’t. I know that in my bones the way I know where every camera will go when the system is live. I keep moving anyway. I could stop. I don’t. Each step shortens the distance and feeds the thing I keep trying to starve.
She was a picture I can’t shake. I haven’t been able to think of anything else since that day I took her in my arms and danced with her under the bright lights of a formal wear shop.
In a dress of a color that made her eyes look like an endless pool you could fall into and not mind drowning. The bare skin at her back rose in little prickles that made her shiver when I ran my fingers over it. The way the fabric fluttered and settled around her legs like they were one.
Those legs around my hips in an elevator caught between floors.
I close my jaw before my mouth betrays me and say it again: stop. Turn around. Be a man with sense.
I keep walking.
The light from her office cuts across the carpet like a path put there for me. Moth, flame. Child, bonfire. I feel ridiculous thinking it, and still I keep moving because the truth is not pretty, but it is still the truth—I want her.
Want as verb, not idea. Want as memory. Want as prophecy. My body remembers the way she said my name with desire in it and the way she said it with fear in it. Both live in me now.
I can’t dance with her at the ball. I know it. The right people might pretend to be blind. The wrong people would sit up and pay attention. Roberto Conti dancing with the new woman in town.
It’s not just reputation I’m worried about. It’s safety. My enemies keep their ears to the ground. I can’t put Olivia in their path.
Still, I think about it. The first note, the way her hand would find mine, already familiar. That small turn she does when I guide her with my palm at her back. The line of her throat when she lifts her chin a fraction. The smooth skin of her throat, begging for my lips, tongue, teeth.
I grip my hands into fists and let them loose again, like that will drain all of this out of me. It doesn’t.
Everything, she said. I want everything.
It’s a taste in my mouth I can’t wash away.
She’s at her desk, hair down, sleeves pushed up. A lamp throws a low pool of light over paper and laptop, and the slope of her shoulder. There’s a soft song humming from the tiny speaker in the corner.
I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be thinking in possessives. I shouldn’t be walking like a thief in a place I own.
I picture the dress again, the way it moved when I put a hand at her waist and guided her. The way her spine fit my palm. The way her mouth parted when I kissed her knuckles, and the hungry look in her eyes.
I think about the elevator because trying not to think about it is useless. It was hot and wild and wrong, and it lives under my skin like a scar.
The sound she made when my teeth found that place where neck becomes shoulder.
The way she shivered and gave herself to me completely.
The way she asked for more and then still more after that.
The way I lost my sense and then threw it back on like a mask and hurt her with it.
The look in her eyes before she shuttered it.
I hate that I put that fear in her; that hurt.
I hate that I can’t stop wanting to put everything else in her, too.
I rest my knuckles against the doorjamb and don’t knock. Not yet. The wood is cool. My skin is not. My pulse is a drum I can’t quiet. I breathe once, then again.
I don’t plan this.
I know I shouldn’t do it.
I stand in the thin slice of light like a man who has already made his choice and is not sure he wants to change it, but knows he should.
I tell myself to turn around.
I don’t move.
The song ends. There’s a beat of silence. A soft click. Then she sighs a little, the sort of sigh that says she’s finished for the day, satisfied and tired in the same breath.
I should leave. Let her go home. I shouldn’t be standing here thinking about putting her back against this door and making her sigh for other reasons.
I knock anyway.
She looks up, a question on her face. The door is still mostly closed, only a sliver of a gap between it and the jamb, but she saw the motion.
I push it open and step inside.
Olivia. My hands know her even when they're empty. My body knows the way hers fits. My mind knows every reason this should stop, and my heart doesn’t care.
The world outside this room could be on fire, and I wouldn’t notice. Not now. Not with her looking at me like that, surprised and expectant and not unwelcome at all.
Everything. The word rises in my own mind like a prayer. Like a verdict. Like a sentence.
I close the door behind me.
The lock clicks. A small, final sound in the quiet room. It’s that simple, and it’s that complicated. It’s everything I told myself not to do.
“Roberto,” she breathes.
I take the last step that brings me into the light. Into the warmth she’s made in this office. She’s in a loose sweater that is more for warmth than style. Her hair is down, loose and dark, and wanting hands in it.
I am a man with no sense at all.
“What are you doing here so late?” Olivia asks. Her voice is soft, and her eyes hold no alarm. That’s the trouble. She’s too good for this place. Too good for me.
I could lie. I could say I had to check something. I could say I forgot a file. I could say a dozen things that would turn me around and take me out of her orbit.
I am not that man tonight.
She stands, pushing her desk chair back. It rolls a few inches and stops. Her hands are on her desk, one of them still curled around a pen.
She's looking at my face, awareness alive in her expression.
I am a man of decisions. I make them, and I live with them. I decide now. I take another step. And then another. I don't stop until I'm standing directly in front of her, close enough that the hem of her sweater brushes against my jacket.
Close enough that if I just lifted my hands, I could touch her.
Her breath catches a little. A tiny, inaudible sound that tells me everything I need to know. Her lips part slightly. The skin of her throat, I remember it.
I lift a hand. Slowly. Letting her see it coming.
Her eyes never leave mine.
My fingers trace the line of her jaw. Her skin is soft. Softer than the memory of it. I feel her pulse flutter under my thumb. It beats as fast as mine. She doesn't pull away.
I slide my hand down to her throat, my thumb resting over the pulse point. She swallows, a nervous little motion against my palm. It sends a jolt of fire through my blood.
Her breath comes faster now, a soft, uneven rhythm. Her eyelids droop, just a fraction. She leans into the touch without realizing she's doing it, a small, instinctual surrender that says more than words could.
I let my other hand find her waist, the way I did in that shop. My thumb rests just above the curve of her hip, right where the bone pushes against skin. I can feel the heat of her through the sweater, feel the slight tremor that runs through her.
She smells of clean soap and something uniquely hers that drives the thoughts right out of my head.
I tilt her head up with my hand at her throat. Just enough. Just to see her eyes better, to see what's in them. It's all there. The desire. The fear. The same battle I've been fighting in myself all the way here. She's fighting it, too. But her hands are loose at her sides.
She's not pushing me away.
She wants this.
I lower my head.
My lips brush hers. Just a taste. A question. A test.
Her answer is a soft sigh that I feel as much as hear. Her hands come up to rest on my chest. The pressure is light. More of a plea than a protest. Her lips are soft, so soft. The kiss is gentle, but it doesn't stay that way.
The next kiss is not the soft kiss of a gentleman. It's not the careful, respectful kiss I should give her. It's the kiss of the man in the elevator. A hungry, desperate kiss that says I have been waiting for this.
I taste her. I devour her. My hand at her throat keeps her exactly where I want her. Her hands slide up to my shoulders, her fingers curling into the fabric of my jacket. She returns the kiss with the same fire, the same need.
The pen falls from her desk, clattering onto the floor. Neither of us notices.
Her hands leave my shoulders. I think she's going to push me away. I brace for it. But instead, her fingers find the knot of my tie. She pulls it loose, her movements clumsy with urgency.
My hands are not clumsy. My hands know exactly what they're doing.
One slides from her throat to the back of her neck, tangling in her hair.
The other moves from her waist to the small of her back, pulling her flush against me.
There is no space between us now. Only heat and the frantic beat of two hearts.
She makes a sound against my mouth, a small, needy whimper that is my undoing.
I break the kiss.
Her eyes are dark, wide. Her lips are swollen, parted. She's breathing hard, her chest rising and falling against mine.
She doesn't say my name this time. She just tips her head back in invitation.