Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Elliot
I should be celebrating. The Harrison contract is signed, the deal secured, my path to partnership essentially guaranteed. Everything I've worked toward for the past five years, achieved with a signature and a handshake. Yet as I drive us back to the city, the leather portfolio containing the precious documents sits forgotten on the backseat, and all I can focus on is the woman beside me. Josie stares out the passenger window, uncharacteristically silent, the memory of our closet confrontation hanging between us like storm clouds. I should feel satisfied. Instead, I feel like a man balanced on a razor's edge, one wrong move away from falling.
Her profile is outlined against the passing landscape—the stubborn tilt of her chin, the curve of her lips that I now know the taste of, the wild curls she's attempted to tame into a ponytail. Barney sleeps in his carrier on the backseat, leaving us without even his occasional whines to break the weighted silence.
"The money will be transferred to your account by tomorrow morning," I say finally, desperate to establish some normalcy, some boundary.
Her head turns, eyes narrowing slightly. "That's what you want to talk about right now? The payment?"
"I assumed you'd want confirmation of when to expect it."
"Right." She turns back to the window. "Because this is all about the money. Just a transaction."
"That was our agreement," I remind her, though the words taste hollow.
"Our agreement didn't include what happened in that closet. Or in your bed." Her voice is calm but carries an undercurrent of steel I've come to recognize. "But then, we seem to be making a habit of breaking that agreement, don't we?"
I maintain my focus on the road, knuckles whitening on the steering wheel. "Extenuating circumstances."
"Extenuating circumstances," she repeats, a bitter laugh escaping her. "Is that what you call it when you pin me against a wall and tell me I'm yours? An extenuating circumstance?"
The memory of it—her body pressed between mine and the shelves, her legs wrapped around my waist, the taste of her gasp—sends a rush of heat through me that I refuse to acknowledge.
"I was…overly possessive. It won't happen again."
"And if I want it to happen again?"
Her direct question leaves me momentarily speechless. This is Josie—unfiltered, uncompromising, refusing to let me hide behind careful phrasing and professional distance.
"Do you?" I ask, the question emerging rougher than intended.
She shrugs, the casual gesture belied by the intensity in her eyes when I risk a glance at her. "I don't play games, Elliot. Not about this. Yes, I want it to happen again. I wanted it to happen right there in that closet, contract signing be damned."
The stark honesty of her admission makes something twist in my chest. I've spent my career—my life—navigating half-truths and strategic omissions, yet here she is, laying her desires bare without hesitation.
"That would have been inappropriate," I manage, falling back on propriety like a shield.
"God forbid we be inappropriate," she mutters. "Heaven knows that's never happened before."
We lapse back into silence as the city skyline appears on the horizon. I should be taking her back to her apartment in Greenwich Village. Our arrangement is complete. The weekend is over. There is no logical reason to prolong our association.
Yet when I reach the exit that would take us toward her neighborhood, I drive past it.
"Um, you missed the turn," she points out, straightening in her seat.
"I know."
"Then where are we going?"
"My apartment."
I don't elaborate. Don't explain the decision that feels less like a choice and more like an inevitability. Don't tell her that the thought of ending this now—of dropping her off with a handshake and a professional goodbye—feels physically painful.
"Okay," she says simply, settling back into her seat. The single word holds neither triumph nor surprise, just quiet acceptance.
Traffic thickens as we approach the city center, forcing me to focus on navigation rather than the implications of my decision. Beside me, Josie fidgets with the radio, eventually settling on a station playing something low and jazzy that fills the car with sound but requires no conversation.
By the time we reach my building, the tension between us has built to an almost unbearable pitch. The doorman greets us with the same polite deference as always, showing no reaction to Josie's presence despite the fact that I never bring women to my home. Never allow my personal and professional spaces to overlap.
Yet here we are, Josie with Barney's carrier in one hand and her battered duffel in the other, riding the elevator to my penthouse in a silence thick enough to cut.
Inside, she sets the dog carrier down, letting Barney out to explore. He immediately trots around the perimeter of the living room, sniffing baseboards with intense concentration. I should be concerned about dog hair on my Italian leather, about the chaos of another being in my carefully ordered space. Instead, I'm entirely focused on Josie as she stands in my entryway, looking simultaneously out of place and exactly where she belongs.
"Nice place," she says, glancing around. "Very…you."
"Thank you."
Another pause, another moment balanced on the edge of something neither of us is naming.
"So..." She drops her bag, crosses her arms. "Why am I here, Elliot? What is this?"
"I don't know." The admission costs me, truth always more difficult than careful misdirection.
"Yes, you do." She steps closer, fearless as always. "You just don't want to say it."
"What do you want me to say?" I counter, my own frustration rising to match hers. "That I can't stop thinking about you? That watching you with Sullivan made me want to put my fist through a wall? That I've never lost control like this before, and it terrifies me?"
"Yes!" Her eyes flash with triumph and something deeper, more vulnerable. "Yes, exactly that. The truth, for once. Not lawyer-speak or contractual terms. Just the truth."
"Fine." I close the distance between us in two long strides. "The truth is I want you. Still. Again. Despite every logical reason I shouldn't."
Her breath catches, her pupils dilating visibly. "Then take me."
The simple permission—demand—shatters what remains of my restraint. I reach for her, hands framing her face as I capture her mouth with mine. There's nothing gentle about this kiss, nothing measured or controlled. It's possession, pure and simple, every ounce of the frustration and desire I've been fighting laid bare.
She responds with equal fervor, fingers tangling in my hair, body pressing against mine with an urgency that matches my own. I walk her backward until she hits the wall, pinning her there with my body, needing to feel her contained, captured. Mine.
"Bedroom," she gasps when we break for air, her lips already swollen from my attention. "Now."
I lift her, hands gripping her thighs as she wraps her legs around my waist—a mirror of our position in the closet, but with very different intentions. I carry her down the hallway, her mouth finding my neck, my ear, anywhere she can reach, leaving a trail of fire across my skin.
In my bedroom—a space no woman has entered before—I deposit her on the bed, the sight of her sprawled across my perfectly arranged comforter sending a surge of possessiveness through me that should be alarming but only feeds the fire.
"Too many clothes," she declares, already pulling at her shirt. I agree, helping to strip away layers until she's naked beneath me, all soft curves and flushed skin.
My own clothes follow, tossed aside with none of my usual care for organization and order. All that matters is getting to her, being skin to skin, claiming her as thoroughly as I've been imagining since that first night.
"You're mine," I growl against her neck, the declaration escaping before I can analyze its implications. "Say it."
She arches beneath me, eyes challenging even as her body responds to my touch. "Make me."
The dare ignites something primal in me. I capture her hands, pinning them above her head with one of mine, using the other to trace a path down her body that makes her shiver and strain against my grip.
"Say it," I repeat, my fingers finding the wetness between her thighs, stroking with deliberate pressure that makes her gasp. "Tell me who you belong to."
"Elliot..." My name is half plea, half warning.
"Tell me." I circle the sensitive bundle of nerves, watching her face as pleasure wars with stubborn pride.
"Yours," she finally gasps as I slide a finger inside her, her body clenching around the intrusion. "I'm yours. God, Elliot, please..."
The admission of ownership—temporary as it may be—satisfies something deep and primitive in me. I release her hands, which immediately find my shoulders, nails digging into skin as I work her toward the edge with fingers and mouth.
When she comes the first time, it's with my name on her lips, her body bowing like a perfect arc beneath me. The sight of her—abandoned to pleasure, walls down, completely real—nearly undoes me.
"Now," she demands, still trembling from her release. "Inside me. Now."
I reach for protection in the nightstand—placed there in a moment of hope or preparation before we left for the weekend—and she watches with hungry eyes as I roll it on, her hands never leaving my skin, as if she needs the constant contact as much as I do.
When I finally push inside her, we both groan at the sensation. She's tight, perfect, her body accepting mine like we were made for this. For each other. I try to start slow, to maintain some semblance of control, but she's having none of it.
"Harder," she urges, legs wrapping around my waist, heels digging into my lower back. "I won't break."
The permission—the demand—unleashes whatever restraint I've been clinging to. I drive into her with a force that would worry me if not for her enthusiastic response, her nails scoring paths down my back that I'll feel tomorrow. Good. I want the reminder. Want the physical evidence of this connection that defies every logical parameter of my carefully ordered life.
"Mine," I repeat with each thrust, the word a litany, a prayer, a truth I can no longer deny. "Mine, mine, mine."
"Yes," she agrees, meeting me movement for movement, taking everything I give and demanding more. "Yours. God, Elliot, just like that..."
Her second climax triggers my own, her body clenching around me, drawing me deeper as wave after wave of pleasure crashes over us both. For a timeless moment, there's nothing but sensation—her body beneath mine, around mine, her breath mingling with mine as we fall together.
Afterward, I roll to the side to avoid crushing her, but keep her close, unwilling to break contact even for a moment. She curls against me, head on my chest, fingers tracing idle patterns across my skin. The intimacy of it—this quiet aftermath—is almost more overwhelming than the act itself.
"I think I'm falling for you," she whispers after several minutes of silence, the words muffled against my skin. "And it terrifies me."
The confession steals my breath. I should reciprocate. Should tell her about the strange ache in my chest when I think of her leaving, about how she's infiltrated every corner of my carefully constructed life, about how the thought of returning to existence without her seems impossibly bleak.
Instead, I tighten my arm around her, press a kiss to her forehead, and say nothing.
She sighs, the small sound carrying a weight of understanding and disappointment. "It's okay. I didn't expect you to say it back."
"Josie—"
"No, really. It's fine." She props herself up on an elbow, looking down at me with a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes. "I know this is complicated. I know you need time to process all this…feeling stuff. I just…I needed you to know where I stand."
Her honesty humbles me. Shames me, even. This woman who has nothing to her name but boundless courage offers her heart without guarantee, while I, with all my supposed advantages, can't find the words to match her bravery.
"I'm not good at this," I admit finally.
"I know," she says, brushing hair from my forehead with gentle fingers. "You're good at contracts and clauses and finding the perfect loophole. Feelings are messier. Don't have clear parameters."
"But they're real," I acknowledge, the closest I can come to reciprocating her declaration. "What I feel for you is real, Josie. Even if I can't…articulate it properly."
Her smile turns more genuine. "That's a start."
She settles back against me, her body fitting perfectly against mine, and I hold her close, wondering when exactly this woman with her chaos and her candor became essential to my existence.
And wondering, with mounting dread, what happens when our worlds inevitably collide.