Chapter Thirty-Two
Maren did not cry when Willa handed her the pilot letter.
She wanted that noted.
The letter was printed on corrected Arden House stationery, not the curling Lark every slow drag of his cock against her clit sent sharp sparks of pleasure up her spine.
"Fuck," Callum breathed, forehead pressed to hers, hips jerking once before he locked them down. "You feel how much I want you?"
"Yes." She slid her hand down his chest, past his belt, and palmed the thick bulge of his cock, stroking him through the fabric. He throbbed under her touch, leaking enough that she could feel the damp spot spreading. Her own body answered with another rush of slick heat, nipples tight and aching.
Callum's hand tightened on her ass, fingers digging in as he rocked against her palm once, twice, before forcing himself to still.
She drew back first, lips swollen, breathing ragged.
He let her go immediately, though his cock was still visibly hard and his chest heaved.
"Still angry?" he asked, voice wrecked.
"Yes."
"Still yes?"
She smiled, breathless and fierce. "Yes."
"Then I'm going to step back before this alley turns into a scandal Willa cannot invoice."
He did.
Immediately.
Maren hated and loved him for it in equal measure.
The space between them steamed in the cool rain, heavy with unfinished heat.
They stood under the awning until the worst of the wanting became survivable.
"I need you to disagree with me," Maren said.
"I will."
"But not from above me."
"Never from above."
"Do not say never."
He nodded once. "I will watch for it. You can call it out. So can Willa. So can Reena."
Better.
Less pretty.
Easier to believe.
"And I need to learn not to bleed on every hard conversation," she said.
Callum's mouth moved. "That is a vivid management goal."
"Do not make me laugh while I am developing character."
"Apologies."
The rain thickened.
He took off his jacket and held it out.
She looked at it.
"This feels symbolic."
"It is also wool."
"Fine."
She took it because she was cold, not because taking help made her smaller. His jacket smelled like rain, coffee, and the cedar soap he used. It was too warm. Too intimate. Too much like being wrapped in a man she had not yet allowed herself to have fully.
She wore it anyway.
At nine the next morning, she apologized to Priya and Willa for turning a correct principle into a preventable sponsor crisis.
At nine-ten, she called Stephen Bexley and apologized for the delivery, not the line she had drawn.
At nine-thirty, she updated the sponsor playbook with a line she would have found unbearable one month earlier:
Never waste a good no by making it sound like contempt.
Willa read it and said, "Put that on my tombstone."
Callum read it and said nothing.
But when Maren passed him in the corridor, his gaze dropped for one treacherous second to the knot of his own tie.
She smiled first.
The real promotion was not the letter, not the pilot, not the money.
The ability to fail, repair, want, and keep walking without surrendering any of them.