Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
My hand closes around the back of the chair by the hearth without my noticing it until the leather creaks.
I release it at once.
The physicality of this is intolerable now. The heat under my skin. The way my shirt sits wrong against my chest. The low, restless demand for movement my body has not yet burned through. I feel half-contained, and I hate feeling anything by halves.
I should go downstairs. Work. Run the perimeter myself. Put cold air between me and the study and the door and every trace of her the room insists on keeping.
I don’t move.
That is its own confession.
She is still somewhere in the house.
That knowledge changes the walls. Makes them smaller. Makes every quiet sound matter more than it should. I know which floorboard outside this room would tell me if she came back. I know how quickly I would hear it. I know with humiliating certainty that some part of me is listening for it already.
No.
I turn from the door again and force myself to the desk a final time. This time I do not try the reports. I plant both hands against the wood and lower my head for one hard second, letting the cold polish press into my palms while I drag myself back through the thing that matters most.
Choice.
Her choice.
That is the line.
It has to be.
No matter what I want, no matter how naturally my body tries to turn want into direction, into possession, into command, that line holds or none of this is fit to touch.
I lift my head slowly.
The study is silent.
The fire burns lower.
The maps wait.
And I am still standing in the exact place where I kissed her, keyed up like a man half my age and twice as stupid, knowing I am no longer managing this cleanly and hating that the knowledge changes nothing at all.
At last I move.
Not toward the door.
Toward it only long enough to shut it.
The sound is quiet. Final. Worse than a slam because it does not need force to mean what it means. It seals the room into itself. Makes the study smaller. Hotter. Strips away even the illusion that I am still half in the world beyond it.
Good.
If I am going to get my own body back under control, I do not need the door open to the hallway where she just disappeared.
I stand there with my hand still on the latch for one extra second, dragging in one breath through my nose and forcing the next out through my mouth, and feel exactly how little either of them changes.
Then I shove myself away from the door, the motion sharp and angry.
A raw, restless energy hums under my skin, mean and unspent.
I rake a hand through my hair, leaving it more disordered than before, and cross to the bookshelf, only to catch my own reflection in the mirror set at its center.
I look wrecked.
Not outwardly, not in any way most people would notice. But my eyes give it away. Too bright. Too hard. Haunted by want, sharpened by restraint, like I’ve been holding myself in place by force and am one breath from slipping past it.
The sound of my belt buckle loosening cuts through the room, unnaturally loud in the silence.
Metal against metal. A harsh, graceless sound.
I don’t take my time with any of it. There is no patience left in me for precision, only the blunt need to do something with the tension turning my body hostile from the inside out.
My hands are unsteady as I force the fabric down, every movement rougher than it should be, more frustrated than careful, like even this has become another fight I’m trying not to lose.
I close my eyes and the study dissolves, and I imagine that kiss.
The dim light from the study is softer, shadows deeper.
I can feel the warmth radiating from her.
I can see her face: the slight parting of her lips, her pulse beating rapidly in the hollow of her throat.
I brace one hand against the bookshelf and let my head drop for a second, jaw tight, breath uneven.
My other hand moves with purpose, wrapping around the rigid heat of myself.
Want moves through me in a hard, punishing wave, sharpened by the fact that it has nowhere clean to go.
The initial touch is electric as my grip tightens in a rough, possessive motion.
This is my consequence, the wreckage left by that single maddening kiss.
Each stroke is an agonizing punishment, an attempt to scour her from my system.
It is useless. Each one only burns her image deeper into my mind.
I think only of her. The taste of her. The way she stayed.
The way she didn’t step back until she chose to.
That is the worst part. Not the kiss itself, but the choice in it.
The fact that she gave me just enough to ruin whatever distance I had left.
My pace quickens as I desperately try to claim the pleasure I imagine with her.
My mind provides images, raw and uncensored.
The world narrows into the slick heat of my own fist as my breathing hitches, my movements becoming jerky and losing rhythm.
When my entire body goes rigid, I allow my release to spill over my fingers, hot and sudden, a desperate offering to a phantom goddess.
I sag against the bookshelf, my arm trembling, the strength drained from my limbs, the reality of the situation slowly seeping back in.
I go to the sink by the cabinet, wash my hands too long, then splash cold water over the back of my neck and across my face until the shock of it cuts through enough of what is left to let me stand still again. When I finally look up, the man in the mirror looks as controlled as ever.
That irritates me most of all.
Because I know how much effort that now takes.
I cross back to the desk, pick up the untouched glass of whiskey, and pour it into the hearth instead. The flames gutter, hiss, then settle again, just as contained as before.
I remain standing there, one hand braced on the mantle, until the room feels inhabitable again.
It still does not feel right.
The study knows what happened in it now. The door. The chair. The desk. Every surface seems to remember too much. I remember too much.
I do not move until I can trust myself to.
And even then, when I finally sit, the only thought that stays clean enough to hold is the worst one of all.
I did what I had to do to function.
And I still want more.