Chapter 6
Patrick
I return to the office at four-thirty, exhausted from back-to-back client meetings and a site visit that ran an hour too long.
The elevator ride up feels longer than usual.
My shoulders ache. My jaw hurts from smiling through bullshit small talk with investors who understand nothing about design and everything about profit margins.
The elevator doors open directly into the reception area.
And the first thing I see is Elena, asleep on the couch.
Not sitting. Fully unconscious, sprawled across the cushions like she’s in her own bed.
Her head is tilted back, one arm draped across her stomach, the other hanging off the edge.
Her mouth is slightly open. Dark hair has come loose from whatever she attempted this morning and falls across her face, strands caught on her full lips.
I stop in the doorway.
She is beautiful. Unreasonably, inconveniently beautiful, and absolutely out of place. What the hell?
She’s been here five days. Five. I’ve barely given her anything to do beyond answering phones and sitting at her desk. And she’s passed out in the middle of the afternoon like she hasn’t slept in a week.
Maybe she hasn’t.
Maybe she has another job. A night shift somewhere. A second gig she didn’t mention because she needs the money.
Or maybe she’s just lazy.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything about her.
I should wake her up. Tell her this isn’t acceptable. That my office isn’t a bedroom.
But I don’t move.
Because I notice something I have no business noticing.
Her dress has ridden up.
Not obscenely. But enough to see her legs. The length of them. Smooth skin. The curve of her thigh. And at the edge of the fabric, barely visible, black lace.
My brain registers it before I can stop it.
Jesus Christ.
I drag my gaze away. Focus on the paintings. The bookshelves. Anything else.
It doesn’t work.
My mouth goes dry. My pulse kicks up. And I’m half hard before I can manage it.
No.
This can’t happen.
But my body doesn’t care. It responds anyway, tightening, hardening, and the realization hits me like a punch to the gut.
I thought I was done with this. I thought that part of me died with Sarah. That I’d go through the rest of my life numb, untouchable, immune.
I was wrong.
And I’m furious about it. At her, for being here. At myself, for standing here like an idiot, staring at my assistant’s legs like a goddamn teenager.
This is a problem.
I turn and walk down the corridor into my office. Close the door. Sit at my desk and press my hands flat against the wood, feeling the grain beneath my palms.
She’s an employee. A stranger.
And I’m standing there getting hard because her dress rode up.
I scrub a hand over my face.
I need to wake her up. Tell her to get back to work. But I can’t walk out there like this.
So, I pick up the phone on my desk and dial the extension for the front desk. The phone out there will ring loud enough to wake her.
It rings.
And rings.
And rings.
No answer.
She doesn’t even stir.
I hang up. Try again.
Still nothing.
Christ. She sleeps like the dead.
I wait. Give myself a minute. Think about spreadsheets and tax codes and anything that will kill the arousal still humming under my skin. God, she’s so fucking beautiful.
Finally, I stand and walk back out into the reception area.
She hasn’t moved and still sprawled across the couch. Her dress has shifted even more. I can see the lace clearly now. Black. Delicate.
Stop looking.
I force my gaze to her face. That doesn’t help. She looks different in sleep. Softer. Younger. The nervous energy and sharp humor that radiate off her when she’s awake are gone. She’s just a woman, exhausted, vulnerable.
I clear my throat. “Elena.”
Nothing.
“Elena.”
Still nothing.
I step closer, crouch down next to the couch so I’m at her level. “Elena. Wake up.”
I reach out and touch her shoulder. Lightly. Just enough to—
She jerks awake with a gasp.
Her eyes fly open, wide and completely somewhere else—not here, not this room, not me. She sits up too fast and makes a sound I don’t have a category for, something raw and frightened, her hands flying up like she’s trying to hold something back or push something away. Her whole body is rigid.
“Hey.” I pull my hand back immediately. “It’s me. You’re in the office.”
She blinks. Once, twice. The room comes back to her slowly—I can see it happening, the terrible place she just was receding, the present reasserting itself. Her breath is ragged. There are tears on her face that she doesn’t seem to know about yet.
Then she does. She swipes at them fast, almost angry.
“Sorry,” she says. Her voice is wrecked. “Sorry. Bad dream.”
She doesn’t look at me. She’s staring at the middle distance, her hands pressed flat against her thighs, visibly trying to pull herself back together.
I don’t ask what it was. Whatever she just woke up from, it wasn’t something she’s going to explain, and it isn’t mine to ask for.
Screw it.
I sit down on the couch next to her and put my arm around her.
She goes stiff for exactly one second, like she might argue with it, and then she doesn’t. Her face presses into my shoulder. Her hands fist in my shirt. She’s still breathing too fast, but she doesn’t pull away.
I don’t know what else to do. So I just hold her.
“You’re okay,” I say. “You’re here.”
I hold her while her breathing slowly evens out. While the tension in her body loosens degree by degree. While she stops fighting whatever she woke up from and just leans into me, spent.
And while I’m holding her, I notice things I shouldn’t.
The warmth of her body against mine. The way she’s still gripping my shirt, like letting go might pull her back under.
And something else I wasn’t expecting, I want to put myself between her and whatever she just woke up from.
Hold still enough, stay close enough, make sure it can’t get back to her.
After a long moment, she pulls back. Her face is blotchy. Her eyes are red. She won’t look at me.
“I’m sorry,” she says quietly. “I shouldn’t have been sleeping. I don’t know what—”
“It’s fine,” I say. “Do you need anything?”
A beat. “I’m fine. I’ll get back to work. I’m sorry.”
I stand and walk back to my office without another word.
Once inside, I close the door and lean against it.
What the hell just happened?
I don’t know her. I don’t know anything about her.
But I know what I felt.
And that’s the problem.
I convinced myself I was done. That I’d spend the rest of my life going through the motions, taking care of Erick, running the business, and feeling nothing.
And then she shows up, and suddenly I’m hard just from looking at her. I’m holding her while she falls apart, and part of me doesn’t want to let go.
This can’t happen.
I won’t let it.
I get home late. I stop at Erick’s door and look at him from the hallway. He’s sprawled across the bed the way he always is, taking up more space than seems physically possible for someone his size. I watch him for a moment, then go to bed.
I should be tired enough to drop. I am. But every time I close my eyes, she’s there, not a thought I’m choosing, just something that won’t stand down. I open my eyes. Wait. Close them again. Same result. I do this until eventually sleep takes the decision away from me.
She’s in my office.
Standing by the window in nothing but black lace, the city lit up behind her, the light catching the curve of her waist. I don’t know how we got here. I don’t care.
I cross the room. She doesn’t say anything. Neither do I. My hands find her waist, and she’s warm, the kind of warm that gets into your palms. The look on her face says yes, and now, and nothing else.
I kiss her. Her mouth opens immediately, this small sound against me that I feel in my spine. Her fingers twist into my shirt. I reach back, unhook the bra, and drop it. Don’t look where it lands.
Jesus.
She’s perfect. The kind of perfect that makes you stand there for half a second like an idiot. I pick her up, she wraps her legs around me, and I put her down on the desk without clearing it first. Papers go sideways. I don’t look at any of it.
She’s sitting there in nothing but black lace, hands braced behind her, watching me like she wants to be wrecked.
I pull her underwear off. Go to my knees.
Her thighs part. I press my mouth to the inside of her thigh first, and kiss up slowly.
Her fingers twist into my hair. Then I put my mouth on her, and she makes this long, unguarded, completely undone sound that shuts my brain off.
I find the right rhythm and stay there. Her thighs start to shake.
She says my name once—Patrick—with that particular edge of desperation, and I don’t let up until she falls apart on my mouth, gasping, my name breaking up in her throat.
I stand. She reaches for me before I’m upright, her hand wrapping around me, and I have to stop her because I’m not eighteen years old and I would like this to last more than thirty seconds.
I pull her to the edge of the desk. Drag the head of my cock through her once just to hear her breath catch—it does—then push in.
Slow. Inch by inch.
Her nails dig into my back, her breath goes sharp, and I grit my teeth as I push until I’m fully there. She adjusts around me, shifting her hips slightly, and even that small movement, I feel it everywhere.
I start to move.
Slow at first. Long, full strokes, pulling back until I almost slip out and then pushing all the way back in, feeling every inch of it, watching her face.
Her mouth is open. Her eyes are half-shut.
She looks completely wrecked already. We’ve barely started, something about that, the fact that I did that, kicks something loose in me, and I stop being slow.
Papers are everywhere. I couldn’t care less. I’m not thinking about anything. Not one thing. My brain is completely, mercifully, blissfully empty.
She looks up.
And it’s Sarah.
I wake up.
Gasping, sitting up, no warning, just awake, heart hammering so hard I can feel it in my throat, in my teeth. The room is dark. I’m alone. The sheets are soaked through with sweat, and I’m breathing like I just ran a mile.
I sit there.
Just sit there for a second with my hands in my hair, trying to figure out which way is up.
What the hell.
I get up. Go to the bathroom. The floor is cold. I run the tap and lean over the sink and splash cold water on my face and just stand there dripping, not moving, staring at the drain.
Then I straighten and look at myself in the mirror.
I barely recognize him.
Sarah’s dead.
I killed her.
I grip the edge of the sink. My knuckles go white. The porcelain is cold and solid and real, and I just hold on to it and breathe.
I have no right