Chapter 9
Igo to Holden because I want to.
Not because Aaron is out of the house with his anger packed into a garment bag. Not because CairnWard has opened a review. Not because Portman might choose my work in daylight and I need a powerful man to make the night feel less empty.
I go because I ended my marriage.
I go because Holden waited.
I go because all day, through procurement questions and retention maps and Aaron's unanswered texts, I have felt the place where his hand did not touch my wrist.
By nine-thirty, I am standing outside his apartment door in a black wrap dress I bought three years ago for an anniversary dinner Aaron canceled for a client emergency that turned out to be drinks with two sales reps and a man who wanted box seats.
The dress still fits.
So does the anger, but tonight I am not wearing it for warmth.
Holden opens the door before I knock a second time.
He has taken off his jacket. His shirtsleeves are rolled to his forearms, and the plain steel watch is still on his wrist. The sight of him like that, less armored and somehow more controlled, moves through me low and immediate.
"Melanie," he says.
My name in his voice is becoming a problem.
"I ended it," I say. "You know that."
"I know."
"I am not here for comfort."
His gaze drops to my mouth, then returns to my eyes.
"What are you here for?"
There is a correct answer. Something careful. Something about dinner or talking or not being alone.
I am tired of translating desire into acceptable expenses.
"You," I say.
Holden's hand tightens on the edge of the door.
"Come in."
His apartment is not showy. Dark wood, clean lines, a wall of books, a kitchen that looks used but not abandoned. A glass of water sits on the counter beside a file folder. No wine waiting to soften the night. No staged seduction.
"Before this goes anywhere," he says, "you need to know one thing."
The carefulness in his voice cools the air enough for me to hear the danger in wanting him this much.
"What?"
"I sent Adele and Mae a conflict note before I left Portman. Tomorrow's vendor recommendation is theirs. I can speak to the false use of my name and I can ask questions in the room, but I cannot award you the contract."
I look at the file folder on the counter.
"That is what that is?"
"A copy for you if you wanted it."
"And if I don't?"
"Then it stays closed."
Something in my chest eases. Not because I need another document. Because he made the boundary before desire could make it convenient to forget.
"I did not come here for a contract," I say.
"I know."
"I came here for you."
The carefulness breaks at the edge of his mouth.
"Then come in."
He closes the door behind me and locks it.
The sound moves through my body.
"I need to ask plainly," he says.
"Ask."
"Are you here because you want me, or because he made you feel unwanted?"
I step closer.
"Both can be true, but only one brought me to your door."
His breath changes.
"Which one?"
"Want."
Holden reaches for me slowly enough that I can step away. I do not.
His hands settle at my waist over the wrap dress. Warm. Careful. There. The first real touch is not dramatic. It is almost unbearable because he lets it be simple.
"Tell me yes," he says.
"Yes."
He kisses me.
No display. No polite testing. His mouth covers mine with the restraint of a man who has been holding back for too many hours and the attention of one who refuses to make that my problem.
I feel the controlled pressure of his fingers at my waist, the heat of his body, the mint taste of him.
I open for him and he makes a rough sound that goes straight through me.
My hands find his shirt. The fabric is warm from his skin. I drag him closer and feel him hard against me, and the shock of being wanted so clearly almost buckles my knees.
Holden breaks the kiss.
"Too fast?"
"No."
"Melanie."
"I spent years with a man who only asked questions when he needed a better defense. I promise I know the difference." I slide my hands up his chest. "Do not treat me like I am breakable."
His eyes darken.
"I don't think you are breakable."
"Good."
"I think you are owed care."
That almost undoes me.
I kiss him because I do not have words that can handle the size of that. He takes the kiss harder this time, backing me with measured steps until my hips meet the kitchen island. His hands stay at my waist until I catch one and put it on the tie of my dress.
"Open it," I say.
His thumb moves once against the knot.
"You are sure."
"I am done being charged for other people's choices."
His mouth curves, not into humor, into heat.
"Then this one is yours."
He pulls the tie loose.
The dress opens. I am wearing a black bra and panties I bought for myself after Aaron called practical underwear "married-life beige" like he had not been the one making married life feel beige.
Holden looks.
He does not rush to make the moment easy. He lets me see the effect I have on him: the tension in his jaw, the rise and fall of his chest, the hand that flexes once before he touches me.
"Beautiful," he says.
Specific would be safer. Strategic. Useful.
Beautiful is not safe at all.
His fingers slide beneath the dress, over my ribs, then up to cup my breast through black lace. I gasp, and he watches my face as his thumb finds my nipple. The pressure is slow, exact, enough to make my hips lift against the island.
"There," he murmurs.
"Yes."
He lowers his mouth to my neck. Not a decorative kiss. Teeth, tongue, heat. My head falls back, and the ceiling blurs while his hand learns the fullness of me, the places that make my breath catch, the difference between patience and delay.
I work his shirt buttons open with clumsy fingers. He helps only when I mutter at the third one.
"Finance should have fewer buttons," I say.
His laugh is low against my throat.
"I will note that for procurement."
Then the shirt is gone, and I forget how to be funny.
Holden is broad and solid under my hands, chest warm, stomach tight, skin marked by nothing ornamental. I press my mouth to his collarbone because I can. Because he is real. Because I chose this door and this man and this heat.
He lifts me onto the island.
The move is easy for him, and my body registers that before my mind can dress it in language. My dress falls open around my thighs. He steps between them and kisses me again, one hand at the back of my neck, the other sliding up my bare thigh.
Not hidden. Not rushed. Not taken in the spare minutes around a lie.
Attended to.
His fingers reach the edge of my panties and stop.
"Yes," I say before he can ask again.
"I like hearing it."
"Then yes."
He touches me through the fabric first, and the first stroke makes my hands grip the island edge. I am already wet, already aching, and the sound that leaves me would embarrass me if he did not answer it with a kiss under my jaw.
"You respond so honestly," he says.
"That sounds like a CFO compliment."
"It is a man trying not to lose control on a kitchen island."
The words tear a laugh out of me, then his fingers slip beneath the lace and the laugh breaks into a moan.
He touches me like he listened to the model: noticing response, adjusting pressure, never assuming the first correct answer is the final one. I spread my thighs wider. He watches my face as his fingers circle, press, slide lower. When one finger enters me, my whole body clenches around it.
"Holden."
"I have you."
He does.
Not as property. As attention.
He works me slowly at first, then firmer when I ask, his thumb steady where I need it. I come with my face pressed against his shoulder, my body shaking around his fingers, his free hand holding the back of my neck like he can keep the whole world outside the room until I finish.
When the last wave leaves me trembling, he does not move away.
He kisses my temple.
"I've got you," he says.
My eyes sting.
"I know."
"I do too." His mouth rests against my hair. "And I think parts of you got sent out to do unpaid work."
I laugh against his skin, and it turns into something too close to a sob.
He holds me through it. No panic. No demand that I explain. Just his chest under my cheek and his hand moving slow along my spine.
When I can breathe again, I reach between us and find him through his trousers.
He goes still.
"Melanie."
"I want you inside me."
His control slips for one second. I see it in his face. The flash of hunger, raw and male and grateful in a way that makes me ache again.
"Let's go to my room," he says.
He lifts me down, and I follow him down the hall with my dress loose, my pulse loud, and his hand wrapped around mine.
In his bedroom, he lets me undress him.
Not because he cannot do it faster. Because I want the buttons, the belt, the slow reveal of him. He removes my bra with the same focused patience he brings to everything else, then kneels to slide my panties down my legs.
The sight of Holden Reece on his knees in front of me makes the last of the old married shame burn away.
He kisses my hip.
Then lower.
I catch his shoulders.
"You do not have to."
He looks up.
"I know."
Then his mouth is on me.
I stop thinking in anything as clean as sentences.
He uses his tongue with the same terrible precision as his hands, slow until I am begging without words, then firmer, deeper, his hands gripping my thighs when I try to close around the sensation.
I come again with one hand in his hair and the other pressed to my own mouth because the sound is too much, too naked, too mine.
He rises over me on the bed, and this time there is no mistaking what he wants.
I want it too.
He opens the nightstand and takes out a condom.
"Are we good?" he asks.
"We are good."
"Any reason to stop?"
I touch his face. "No."
He rolls the condom on, then comes over me, braced on one forearm. He kisses me as he enters, slow enough to make me feel every inch, careful enough that pleasure has room to build around the stretch.
My nails dig into his back.
"Okay?" he asks against my mouth.
"More."
He gives it to me.
Holden moves inside me like he is learning a language he wants to speak well. Deep, steady strokes that make the bed shift beneath us. My legs wrap around his hips. He watches me until I cannot stand the intimacy of it and pull his mouth down to mine.
The kiss gets rougher. So does he.
I meet him there.
Every sound, every thrust, every held breath feels like reclaiming a room in myself where Aaron used to store his neglect. Holden's hand slides between us, and when his fingers find me again, I am already close.
"Let me feel it," he says.
I do.
I come around him calling for him, body tight and shaking, and the sound he makes as he follows me is the least controlled sound I have ever heard from him.
Afterward, he does not roll away.
He cleans us up with warm cloths and practical tenderness that somehow feels more intimate than the sex. He brings water. He pulls the sheet over us. He lets me tuck my cold feet against his calf without making a joke about it.
When I turn my face into his chest, he wraps one arm around me.
"Tomorrow may be ugly," he says.
"Probably."
"Tonight is not."
I close my eyes.
Aaron spent money around me.
Holden spends attention on me.
The difference is not soft. It is not gentle. It is so sharp it cuts the last thread of longing for the woman I was yesterday.
"Holden?"
"Yes."
"I do not regret coming here."
His arm tightens.
"Neither do I."
I sleep for four hours, which is more than I expected.
In the morning, my phone has one new email from Portman procurement.
Subject: Vendor Continuity Meeting.
Daylight has arrived.
The night is still mine.