22. Dojin
TWENTY-TWO
DOJIN
Her back hit the hallway wall. His forearm braced above her—plaster cool under his skin, and some distant rational corner of his brain registered that he was pinning a woman against a wall in his own studio and his HR department would have thoughts about this.
The rest of his brain was occupied with the sound she made when his mouth moved to the corner of her jaw.
A hitch. Half breath, half moan. He wanted to devour it.
This. Her. Always. The only thought his mind could form, and it repeated like a drumbeat, steady and relentless and undeniable.
She pulled back first. Not far—an inch. Her eyes were dark, her breath uneven, her lips flushed. His jacket had slipped off one shoulder and her hair was wrecked and she looked like a woman who’d been kissed by someone who’d been thinking about it for a very long time.
“That was—”
“Overdue.”
She blinked. “I was going to say complicated.”
“Also true.”
“We work together.”
“Aware.”
Her hand was still on his chest. She hadn’t moved it. Her fingers pressed flat against his sternum, right over the vibration.
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what?”
“The chest thing. The humming.”
“Dojin. I am a professional audio engineer’s nightmare. I hear frequencies most people ignore. You are humming. From your chest. Like a space heater with opinions.”
He couldn’t help it. He laughed. With her palm still pressed against him and her back against his wall and her mouth still swollen from his—he laughed, and the sound vibrated through her hand and her fingers curled into his shirt again and she grinned up at him with an expression that leveled him entirely.
“Your phone is buzzing.”
It was. He’d been ignoring it. He pulled it from his pocket without stepping back, because stepping back was a physical impossibility at the moment.
Reo.
Your car’s still in the garage. Either you’re dead or this is about the voice actress.
Second text, twelve seconds later.
Called it.
Dojin locked the screen. Nari was watching him with sharp, assessing eyes that missed nothing—she’d been watching him like that since the first table read, and it still sent a current through his spine every single time.
“Reo?”
“Reo.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing relevant.”
“Your ears are red. He said something relevant.”
His ears were, in fact, red. A bear shifter who could face down an elder council and a corporate rival without flinching, and a five-foot-six voice actress made his ears turn colors. His mother would be thrilled. His mother could never, under any circumstances, find out about this.
“We’re not talking about this yet.” Her voice was steady. Her hands weren’t. “What happened in this hallway. We’re not unpacking it tonight.”
“Okay.”
“We work on the same project. There are professional considerations.”
“There are.”
“And there are other things happening—things I’m not ready to—” She stopped herself. He watched the words reorganize behind her eyes, watched her choose precision over impulse. “Things that need sorting before this gets more complicated.”
She’s investigating the property. The questions about Voidborn’s origins. The late nights in the studio. She’s uncovered a thread, or she’s pulling at one, and she doesn’t trust me enough yet to say what.
The realization landed with a weight that registered as a warning rather than a threat.
Not danger. Uncertainty. She was standing in front of him with swollen lips and careful words and a secret she was carrying alone, and every instinct he possessed screamed to ask.
To press. To fix whatever she was holding that made her eyes go careful in the middle of a conversation that should have been nothing but heat.
He didn’t press. He never pressed. He waited.
“Take the time you need.”
Her shoulders dropped—a fraction, a release she probably didn’t realize was visible. “You’re being extremely reasonable for a man whose shirt I wrecked.”
He glanced down. She had, in fact, wrecked his shirt.
One button dangling by a thread, the collar stretched out of shape, fabric wrinkled where her fists had gripped.
The vibration deepened—the one he refused to name—at the visible evidence that she’d grabbed him hard enough to leave marks on his clothing.
“It’s a good look.”
“Designer shirts with structural damage?”
“Evidence that you find me worth grabbing.”
Her mouth opened. Closed. She pointed at him. “That was good. That was annoyingly good. I’m furious.”
“You’re smiling.”
He walked her to her car. The parking structure under the studio was cold and concrete and lit by the gray-green glow of industrial fluorescents, and she walked close enough that their arms brushed with every other step.
Not holding hands. Not linking arms. Brushing—the physical equivalent of a sentence left unfinished.
At her car, she turned. Looked up at him. The overhead light caught the line of her jaw, the dark sweep of her lashes, the mouth he could still taste. His jacket was back on both shoulders. She pulled the collar up. Breathed in.
“I’m keeping the jacket.”
“I know.”
“And I’m not giving it back because of—” She gestured vaguely at the hallway above them. “That. I was keeping it before that. The jacket predates the hallway incident.”
“The hallway incident.”
“Working title. Don’t read into it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
She got in the car. Started the engine. Rolled down the window. Rain was audible from the garage entrance—the steady percussion of a March night washing the city clean.
“Dojin.”
“Yes.”
“The thing I said. About not unpacking this yet.”
“I remember. It was four minutes ago.”
She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. “I didn’t say I didn’t want to unpack it. I said not yet. Those are different sentences.”
His lungs expanded. The vibration deepened. He leaned down—hands braced on the car door, face level with hers—and pressed his mouth to her forehead. Brief. Warm. The gentlest thing he’d done all night, and it made her eyes close.
“Different sentences,” he confirmed. “Go home. Eat dinner. You didn’t eat tonight—I can tell.”
Her eyes snapped open. “How can you possibly tell?”
He straightened. Stepped back. “Intuition.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Drive safe.”
She narrowed her eyes. Rolled up the window. Drove away. He watched her taillights climb the parking ramp and disappear into the rain-slicked street, and he stood there for a full sixty seconds afterward, breathing, grounding himself, letting the roar in him settle to a steady thrum.
His phone buzzed again. Reo.
You’re still in the garage. I have the security feed. Go home, boss. Smile like that in a parking structure and someone’s going to call the cops.
Dojin pocketed his phone. Smoothed a hand down his shirt—the one she’d wrecked—and walked to his car in the rain.
He was, in fact, smiling.