7. Kiara
— ? —
Kiara
“You know you can’t put this off any longer?” Deborah sighs from beside me. And I simply nod. God, she’s right, but I don’t want to do it.
The papers need his signature.
I’ve been putting this off for days now. Every time I schedule a courier, I find a reason to cancel. Every time I consider sending Theo, I remember that the contract requires witnessed signatures and I’m the designated witness.
I can’t avoid this anymore.
The elevator rises to the penthouse floor. My reflection stares back at me from the polished brass doors. Professional blazer. Hair pinned back. Neutral expression. I look like a woman who has never been pressed against a corridor wall, half an inch from a kiss she wanted more than oxygen.
The doors open. I walk to the suite. I knock.
“Come in.”
I push the door open and stop.
Jensen stands in the center of the living area, towel slung low around his hips, water still beading on his shoulders. His hair is dark and wet, pushed back from his face. His chest is bare.
“Kiara.” He doesn’t move to cover himself. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
“I called ahead.”
“My phone is charging in the bedroom. I didn’t hear it.”
I should do anything other than stand in this doorway, staring at the body I used to know as well as my own.
“I need your signature,” I say. My voice sounds strange. Too high.
“On what?”
“The amended vendor contracts. The ones we discussed.”
“Right.” He gestures toward the couch. “Give me a moment to dress.”
“Of course.”
He disappears into the bedroom. I cross to the couch and sit. My hands are steady as I arrange the papers on the coffee table. My pulse isn’t.
The suite smells of him. I remember pressing my face against his neck and breathing in his scent. I remember the sound he made when I kissed the hollow of his throat.
I close my eyes. Stop. Focus.
He returns in jeans, still shirtless. He’s toweling his hair, which does nothing to make him more presentable.
And here’s the problem. Here’s the entire, whole problem.
The night he drove me home from the grocery store, he buckled me into his car with his knuckles at my hip and his mouth an inch from mine, and then he pulled up outside my building and said goodnight like a gentleman.
And I went inside and lasted maybe four minutes before I was in my own bed with the vibrator I keep in the back of the drawer and not one shred of shame, getting myself off to the memory of his hands and his voice and that half inch in the corridor.
Twice.
Biting the pillow so I wouldn’t wake Kieran. And I told myself in the dark that it meant nothing, that a body has needs and mine could be dealt with quietly and privately, and that would be the end of it.
It wasn’t the end of it. It was the opposite of the end of it.
Because now he’s three feet away with water sliding down a bare chest I spent a good part of that night imagining in detail, and every shameful, private thing I did to the thought of him is right there behind my eyes, and I’m supposed to sign four pages of vendor amendments like a functioning adult.
“Put on a shirt,” I say.
“I’m in my own suite.”
“I’m here on business.”
“Then look at the paperwork.” He drops onto the couch beside me. Not across. Beside. Close enough that the heat comes off his skin in a way I feel down my whole side. “Not at me.”
Heat climbs my face. He caught where I was looking. Of course he did. He catches everything.
“Where do I sign?”
I point at the first tab. He leans in to see it, and his bare shoulder drags warm and damp against my arm, and I lose the thread of the sentence I was reading entirely.
“Jensen.”
“Yes?”
“You’re doing this on purpose.”
“Doing what?” All innocence. The corner of his mouth isn’t innocent at all.
“Sitting half naked. Sitting too close. Making it impossible to...” I wave a hand at the papers, at him, at the whole disaster.
“To think?” He says it low and pleased. “You do seem to be having some trouble thinking. Interesting. I’m just sitting here.”
“You’re making this difficult.”
“I’m making this difficult.” He sets the pen down and turns to face me, and now his knee’s against my thigh and there’s water beading in the hollow of his throat and I want to put my mouth there so badly it takes real effort not to.
“You’ve been avoiding me for days. You sent Theo with the drafts.
You canceled two meetings. I’ve barely caught a glimpse of you since the corridor. ”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’ve been running.”
“I’m keeping a professional distance.”
“Is that the word for it? Taking the service elevator so you won’t share a lobby with me? Crossing the street when you spot my car?” He tilts his head, unhurried. “That’s an awful lot of effort to dodge a man you feel nothing for.”
“You noticed that?”
“I notice everything you do. I always have.”
His eyes hold mine, dark and patient, and I should look at the papers, I should look anywhere else on earth, and I can’t make myself do it.
“Sign the papers.” It comes out embarrassingly unsteady.
“Why did you really come up here, Kiara?” He shifts closer. His knee presses in. His voice drops until it belongs to no one but me. “You could’ve had Deborah witness them. You didn’t have to walk into my suite yourself, and you did it anyway. Why?”
I don’t have an answer I can say out loud.
Because I got myself off to you twice in one night and it didn’t take the edge off at all.
Because that half inch in the corridor has moved into my head and won’t leave.
Because I lie awake reliving the moment I fisted your shirt and pulled, wondering what would have happened if the door hadn’t slammed, if I’d just let it, if I’d quit pretending for one single minute that I don’t still want you like something I never got clean of.
“I don’t know,” I say.
“You do.”
“Jensen.”
“Tell me you haven’t thought about it.” He’s so close now. I can see the water droplets still clinging to his collarbone. “Tell me you haven’t replayed that moment in the corridor. Tell me you don’t wonder what would have happened.”
“It doesn’t matter what I wonder.”
“It matters to me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been wondering too.” His hand rises.
His fingers brush my jaw, featherlight. “I’ve been wondering what you taste like now.
Whether you still make that sound when someone touches the back of your neck.
Whether you still arch into a kiss or whether you’ve learned to hold yourself still. ”
My breath catches. His thumb traces my lower lip.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
I should tell him to stop. I should stand up and walk out and never come back to this suite.
“I can’t,” I whisper.
He kisses me.
His mouth presses against mine, warm and certain. I taste mint on his tongue. I taste the salt of his skin. My body remembers this. My body has never forgotten.
I kiss him back.
My fingers dig into his shoulders, feeling the muscle beneath his bare skin. I slide my hands up to his neck, then into his hair. The strands are wet and cool between my fingers. I grip them and pull him closer.
He groans against my mouth and hauls me toward him. I climb into his lap, my knees bracketing his hips. The movement is graceless. I don’t care. I can’t think clearly enough to care. I can only feel.
His hands push under my blazer and find my blouse. He tugs it free from my waistband. His palms press flat against my lower back, hot and certain, his fingers spreading wide to cover as much of my skin as he can reach.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he says against my mouth.
“Don’t you dare stop.”
He groans again, low and rough, and the sound travels through his chest into mine. It pools hot and heavy in my belly.
His mouth drops to my throat. I tip my head back and give it to him. He drags his lips down the column of my neck, his breath warm on my skin, and finds the spot beneath my ear. The exact spot. The one that used to take me apart completely.
His tongue presses against it. His teeth graze it.
I gasp. My hips roll down against him, and I feel exactly how much he wants this too. He’s hard beneath me, straining against the towel.
“I’ve missed you,” he says into my skin. His voice is wrecked. “You have no idea. I’ve missed this so much it’s made me stupid.”
“Jensen.”
“Let me.” He lifts his head to look at me. His eyes are dark, the gray nearly swallowed by black. “Please. Let me make you feel good.”
He has no idea. He can’t know that I’ve spent nights alone with my hand between my legs, trying to recreate this. Trying to remember the exact pressure of his touch. It was never enough. The memory was never once enough.
His hands move to my blouse. He works the buttons open, pressing his lips to each inch of skin as it appears. My collarbone. The curve of my breast. The soft skin of my stomach. When the blouse falls open, he sits back and stares at me with an expression that makes my chest ache.
“Beautiful,” he says. “You’re so beautiful.”
“Stop teasing me.”
“You’re so much more than just this.” He reaches behind me and unclasps my bra. It falls away. His thumbs brush across my nipples, and I shudder. “More real. More present. More everything.”
He lowers his mouth to my breast.
I stop thinking entirely.
His lips close around my nipple. His tongue circles it, flicks across the peak, then sucks gently. I arch into him, pressing myself closer, a wordless sound escaping my throat.
He switches to the other side, his mouth closing around my right nipple while his hand continues to work the left. His fingers roll and pinch while his tongue teases.
His free hand slides down my stomach. His fingers trace the waistband of my trousers, then press flat against me through the fabric. Right where I need him most.
“Jensen.” His name is a plea.
“Tell me what you want.”
“I want...” The words stick in my throat. My face burns. But I force them out. “I want your hands. I want you to touch me. Now.”
He unfastens my trousers. His hand slides inside, beneath my underwear, and his fingers slip through my folds.
I’m soaked. I’ve been soaked since he first touched me.