Chapter 4 – Milo #3
"I know what it isn't," I say.
Something shifts in her face. As if she's arrived somewhere she was already heading.
Her dress has a hem I find without looking, my hand skating up the outside of her thigh — bare skin all the way — and she shudders.
"Still here," I say against her throat.
A broken sound escapes her. I take it as direction.
I work the hem higher, my palm flat against the inside of her thigh, and she lets me, her breath already unsteady, her weight shifting toward me.
I stroke her through the fabric first, slow and deliberate, watching her face in the mirror over her shoulder, the flush across her cheekbones, her lip caught between her teeth, her breath going ragged.
She makes a sound low in her throat and I keep the pressure exactly where it is, unhurried, until her hips tilt forward and she stops pretending she isn't asking for more.
"Look at me," I say.
She does. Her eyes are glassy, dark, barely focused.
I hook a finger beneath the narrow strip of her thong and pull it aside, and then I push her open, my fingers finding heat and the specific evidence that this isn't one-sided, has never been one-sided, and something in my chest cracks open at the confirmation of it.
She gasps. Her hips tilt forward, chasing, and I give her what she's asking for, two fingers, steady, working her open while my thumb finds the right pressure and holds it.
She grabs my forearm with both hands like she needs the anchor.
I watch her come undone against me, her whole body caught between holding on and letting go, and it is the most purely compelling thing I have witnessed in years.
"Don't stop," she breathes. "Don't, please—"
I don't stop.
She comes against my hand with a muffled cry, her forehead dropping to my shoulder, her fingers white-knuckled on my arm. I work her through it, slower, softer, until she's shaking and I can feel her pulse hammering against my palm.
She lifts her head from my shoulder. Her eyes find mine, wrecked and entirely certain.
I should say no. The part of me that manages risk and downstream consequences and the careful architecture of arrangements clearly conceived says no with considerable conviction.
Her fingers find my belt.
I say nothing.
She gets my pants open with an efficiency that might, under other circumstances, make me smile.
Her fingers push inside the waistband of my boxers and draw me out, and the capacity for abstract thought evacuates entirely.
I brace my forearm against the mirror above her head, jaw tight, and let her, let her work me in slow, sure strokes, her grip exactly right, her eyes on my face the whole time with an attention that is worse than anything she could have said.
"Elena."
"I know," she says softly.
I last longer than I expect to, given two hours of her beside me, her hand working me with a patience I don't deserve, and then I don't last at all.
I come with my face buried in her neck, her name bitten off against her skin, her hand still moving until there's nothing left.
I stay there for a long moment, forehead to her shoulder, breathing harsh, the mirror cold against my palm.
The elevator has not moved.
There's a handkerchief in my breast pocket.
I use it without comment. She watches me do it, something unreadable moving across her face, and then she straightens her dress and I straighten my jacket and we stand for a moment in the particular silence of two people who have just done something they can't undo.
We return to the reception with the careful distance between us gone.
I keep my expression neutral. My jacket is back in order. Her dress is straight. The evidence is only in the quality of the silence between us. Not uncomfortable, which would be manageable, but something warmer and more difficult.
I don't examine it. I pick up a fresh glass from a passing tray, hand it to her without looking, and she takes it without comment.
I keep my hand at her back. The touch is the same as it was an hour ago.
It is nothing like it was an hour ago.
The evening winds toward its close. Guests begin the careful migration toward the coat check, the low current of departure moving through the room.
I'm deep in a final exchange with David Park, the good kind, the kind where no one is working anymore, when movement at the periphery of my vision stops me.
Veronica. Near the coat check.
And Elena beside her.
I can't hear it from here. I don't need to. I read the angle of Veronica's body — the particular configuration of stillness, the controlled smile gone; something beneath it that she has stopped bothering to conceal — and then I read Elena's face.
She's gone pale.
Something cold moves through me. Not alarm, something more deliberate than that, and colder. The thing that happens when a known threat makes a move I hadn't timed yet. The management response comes a beat behind it, clean and immediate.
I set my glass down.
"Excuse me," I say to Park.
I cross the room.