Chapter 11 – Elena #2
He walks me backward until my thighs meet the edge of the desk, and then he lifts me onto it in one clean motion, hands at my hips, no effort, like I weigh nothing, and steps between my knees and looks at me again. My skirt has ridden up. He doesn't fix it.
He kisses me slowly, one hand at my jaw tilting my head back exactly where he wants it, and works his way down my throat with his mouth while his other hand moves up the inside of my thigh.
Not rushed. Not asking. Just moving with the unhurried certainty of a man who has already decided how this ends and sees no reason to hurry past the parts in between.
When his fingers reach the fabric of my underwear I make a sound I'm not proud of and grip the edge of the desk.
"Look at me," he says.
I do. He holds my gaze while his hand moves, precise, patient, finding the rhythm that makes my breath come out in short broken intervals.
It's worse somehow, the looking, more exposed than anything physical.
He watches my face the whole time. He works me like a problem he's been given sufficient time to solve.
I come apart faster than I expected to with his name in my mouth and my knuckles white on the desk edge.
He doesn't give me long to recover.
He pulls me to the edge, turns me by the hip, that same quiet authority that isn't rough but leaves no room for interpretation.
I'm facing the window, the city laid out far below in the flat gray Wednesday light, and his hands push my skirt up over my hips with a thoroughness that makes me shiver.
He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my underwear and draws it down slowly, letting me feel every inch of it, and then his hands are back at my hips and he holds me in place.
"Hands on the desk," he says.
I put my hands on the desk.
His jacket is still on. That registers somewhere in the part of my brain still running inventory — his jacket still on, my blouse hanging open, the city outside indifferent and enormous — and then he presses into me and I stop registering anything except him.
He sets a pace that is controlled and deep and absolutely merciless.
One hand stays at my hip, fingers pressing in, keeping me exactly where he wants me.
The other traces up my spine, between my shoulder blades, finds the back of my neck, not gripping, just present, just the warm weight of his hand telling me he knows exactly where I am.
The sounds I make fill the room and I am past caring about them. I am past caring about anything except the solid reality of him behind me and the way every unhurried inch of movement strips another layer off whatever composed version of myself I was trying to maintain twenty minutes ago.
"Milo." His name comes out wrecked.
"I know." His voice is rough at the edges, the control fraying in the best possible way. "I've got you."
He reaches around and his hand finds me again, both things at once, and I drop my head and say something that isn't a word. He drives forward and the morning light and the city and the note on the desk all go white at the edges and I stop thinking entirely.
When I come back to myself I'm gripping the desk hard enough to hurt and breathing like I've been running. His forehead is between my shoulder blades, his hands gentle now at my hips, his breathing not entirely even either.
For a long moment neither of us moves.
Afterward I sit on the edge of the desk. He stands in front of me and we don't say anything for a long moment. My blouse is open. His breathing is not entirely even. The note is to my right, lying flat where it was when I walked in.
He reaches up and pulls my blouse closed, gently, the way someone handles something they're being careful with. He doesn't button it. He just holds the fabric together with one hand and looks at me.
"I should have told you about the note," he says.
"Yes," I say.
"I'll do better."
"I know."
It isn't resolution. The argument is still there, underneath this, around the edges of it.
Veronica's envelope is in my bag and I still haven't told him the full truth about Marcus.
None of the things that were true before are less true now.
But his hand is holding my blouse closed and he's still looking at me like I'm the thing in the room that matters most, and I let myself have thirty more seconds of that before I reach up and take the fabric from his hands, button it myself, and go.
I lie in the dark later and think about the envelope in my bag.
I have been carrying Veronica's note for twelve days.
I have been deciding what to do with it for eleven of them.
I told myself I was waiting for the right moment.
I told myself I needed to understand it better first, what it meant, what she wanted from it, whether it was a threat or something more complicated.
Milo held his note for six weeks because by the time it started to matter I had become someone he didn't want to worry unnecessarily.
I stare at the ceiling.
Seven across. Four down.
I know exactly what he did. I know exactly why. I have been doing the same thing from the other side of the same arrangement, and the only difference I can find, the only one, is that I am still doing it.
I'm not sure what to do with that at all.