Chapter 12 - Andrea
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Andrea
Tuesday. Ordinary, nothing Tuesday, except Finneas was wearing a dark shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and I’d been watching the tendon in his forearm flex while he wrote for twenty minutes from my desk. Through the glass. Like a goddamn creep.
I grabbed the file and went in. Stood across from his desk, opened to the summary page. Revenue forecasts, quarterly targets, client retention numbers.
“Page three is where the discrepancy starts.” I turned the file toward him, leaned over the desk to point at the figure. “They reported a 12% increase but when you cross-reference with the original filing it doesn’t add up.”
“You changed your perfume.”
I stopped. “What?”
“You’re wearing a different perfume today.”
“I’m walking you through a quarterly projection and you’re sniffing me?”
“I’m observant.”
“You’re derailing.”
“I can do both.”
I stared at him. He looked back from his chair, chin resting on his hand, eyes moving from my eyes to my mouth to my collar, slow and unhurried, like the Q3 account could burn to the ground and he wouldn’t notice.
“The discrepancy,” I said. “Focus.”
“I’m focused.”
“On my perfume.”
“I said I can do both.”
I leaned further over the desk to point at the next column. “This line doesn’t match the quarterly total.”
He grabbed my wrist.
My brain stopped. His fingers wrapped around my wrist, firm, warm, his thumb pressing right against my pulse point.
He pulled me forward, not hard, just enough that I had to brace my other hand on the desk, and he was looking up at me from his chair with my heartbeat hammering against his thumb and the bastard definitely knew it.
“Let go.” Breathier than I wanted.
He didn’t let go. Instead he stood up, slowly, unfolding from the chair, his hand sliding from my wrist to my jaw.
His thumb traced along my cheekbone and my brain went completely offline because the touch was so gentle it didn’t match anything I knew about this man.
This was the guy who grunted and slammed doors and crushed coffee mugs, and his fingers were on my face like I was made of glass.
He tilted my chin up. I was looking at his mouth when I really should have stepped back. But my feet had their own agenda.
He kissed me.
Soft. Careful. His lips barely pressing against mine, testing, giving me a chance to pull away, hand warm on my jaw, mouth warm on mine. For a second it was just that, just the two of us breathing the same air with his lips barely touching mine.
I didn’t pull away.
His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck, fingers curling into my hair, and the kiss changed.
Deeper, his mouth opening against mine, his tongue, and my hand gripped the edge of the desk because my knees were done.
Just gone. I kissed him back hard enough that he made a low sound in his throat that vibrated through my chest. He pulled me closer, my body pressed against the desk with him against me, my free hand fisting the front of his shirt.
Just when I was about to deepen the kiss, he pulled back, breathing rough, his forehead against mine for half a second.
Then he sat down. Picked up the report. Read it.
“You were saying? About the projections?”
I was still leaning over his desk. Lipstick smudged, breathing too fast, hand white-knuckled on the desk edge. He was reading. Actually reading. Like he hadn’t just kissed me stupid.
“You are the worst person I’ve ever met.”
“Noted. The projections?”
“The projections can go to hell.”
I grabbed the file and walked out. Made it to my desk, sat down, pressed my hands flat on the surface.
My hands were shaking, lips tingling, the taste of him still in my mouth.
I kept touching my lips without meaning to, pressing my fingers where I could still feel the ghost of him, catching myself doing it, putting my hands down, then thirty seconds later my fingers would drift back up.
Couldn’t type my damn password either. Tried twice, failed, gave up.
I wanted to march back in and kiss him again, wanted him to feel as wrecked as I did right now because the fact that he sat back down and picked up a goddamn report while I was out here vibrating in my chair was the most infuriating thing he’d ever done, and the bar was high.
I’d get him back. I didn’t know how yet, but I would.
The next morning I stood in front of my closet and pulled out the dress.
A light blue one I hadn’t worn in over a year, fitted, stopped just above my knee, neckline that walked a very thin line between professional and “HR would like a word.” I did my hair in loose waves, put on the jasmine perfume I only broke out when I meant business, and then, because I was apparently going to war with a wolf king using femininity as ammunition, I put on the good bra.
The eighty-dollar one that I bought during a post-breakup rage shop three years ago and had been saving for exactly this kind of bullshit.
I looked at myself in the mirror and I really did look pretty and hot. Finneas Kingsley was going to have a very bad day.
I walked onto the floor and went straight to his office with the morning briefing. He was at his desk, coffee in hand, and he looked up when I came in. His eyes did the slow drop I was counting on, neckline, hem, back up, and his hand tightened on his mug hard enough that I heard the ceramic creak.
I set the briefing on his desk, leaned down to point at the first item, close enough that my perfume was right under his nose and the neckline did exactly what eighty dollars of structural engineering designed it to do.
His coffee sloshed over the rim of his mug onto his hand. He didn’t flinch, didn’t wipe it off, didn’t move his eyes from me.
I straightened up without acknowledging any of it. “Your 10 am got moved to 10:30. Have a good morning.” I whipped around, feeling his stare burn into my back the whole way. Let him sit in his office and be distracted for a damn change. See how he fucking liked it.
What followed was war. Undeclared, unacknowledged, completely unhinged war that neither of us would have admitted to under oath.
He caught me behind the filing cabinets reaching for a folder.
Fast, before I registered what was happening, his hand on my hip pulling me in, his mouth on mine hard enough that my back hit the cabinet and the metal rattled.
His stubble scraped my chin, his other hand gripped the shelf above my head, and for three seconds I forgot where I was.
Then I pulled away and smacked his chest with the folder.
“We’re at work.”
“I’m aware.”
“Act like it.”
He didn’t. Neither did I. When I brought him his afternoon coffee I leaned in too close setting it down so that my perfume would hit him, my hair brushing his shoulder, my hand resting on his desk with my fingers inches from his.
His jaw clenched, his knuckles going pale around the mug.
I walked back to my desk and sipped my own coffee with a vicious satisfaction.
The next morning I wore a skirt that I knew for a fact did things when I walked, making a point of passing his glass wall to the printer four times before lunch.
On the fourth trip I dropped a pen on purpose, bent to pick it up, smiled sweetly at him over my shoulder when I heard his office door open behind me, and kept walking. His door closed again. Hard.
At a client meeting I sat across from him instead of beside him and crossed my legs slowly while he was mid-sentence. He lost his place. First time I’d ever seen Finneas Kingsley stumble through a sentence in a professional setting and I stored that shit away like a trophy.
However, I didn’t expect to be trapped in the copy room.
I was waiting for the printer when the door clicked shut behind me.
Turned around and he was standing between me and the exit, shoulder against the door, arms crossed, sleeves rolled, biceps straining the fabric, not touching me, not speaking.
Just looking at me from across the small room with dark eyes while the printer hummed behind me and my heart slammed against my ribs.
“Are you going to do anything or just stand there?”
“I’m deciding.”
“Deciding what?”
“Whether to kiss you or let you walk out.”
My pulse hammered. “And?”
He held my eyes for one more beat. Uncrossed his arms, stepped aside, opened the door.
“After you.”
I walked out on rubber legs. Didn’t look back because if I looked back I was dragging him into that room and locking the door and I had a shred of professional dignity left, even if it was the size of a damn Post-It note.
The elevator was the breaking point.
End of the day, just the two of us in the private car. I was running through tomorrow’s meetings because talking about work meant not thinking about the copy room, not thinking about how my whole body was still buzzing from thirty seconds of him looking at me without touching me.
“Henderson pushed the morning call to 10:30, so you’ve got a gap before the board review. I moved the Johannesburg follow-up to fill it.”
He was standing eighteen inches to my left. I could feel his body heat through the air between us, his cologne hitting me every time I breathed in. The elevator hummed, floor numbers ticking past.
I kept going. “After the board review you’re clear until 3, unless the Shanghai office calls back.”
“Andrea.”
“What?”
“Stop talking about meetings.”
I looked at him. He was staring straight ahead at the doors, jaw tight, hands at his sides. But I could see his chest moving too fast, could see his fingers curling and uncurling like he was fighting to keep them still. The air in the elevator was thick, charged, pressing against my skin.
“If I stop talking about the schedule I’m going to think about the copy room,” I said.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about the copy room.”
My breath caught. The floor numbers kept ticking. Twelve. Eleven. Ten. Neither of us looking at each other but I could feel the distance between us like a physical thing, eighteen inches of charged air that was getting harder to maintain with every floor.
“You should have kissed me,” I said, and I didn’t know I was going to say it until it was out.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because if I started I wasn’t going to stop.”
My heart was hammering so loud I could hear it over the elevator hum. Eight. Seven. We were running out of floors. In thirty seconds the doors would open and I’d walk to my car and drive home and this conversation would be over and we’d go back to pretending tomorrow.
Six. Five.
He hit the stop button.
The elevator jolted. Lights flickered once, held. The car hung between floors and the silence that replaced the hum was deafening.
I looked at him. “Did you just stop the elevator?”
He backed me against the wall. His hands came up to frame my face, palms warm against my cheeks, and he kissed me.
Slow this time, deliberate, nothing like the office ambush.
This was thorough. His mouth moved against mine like he was learning me, memorizing the shape of my lips, and his thumb traced my jaw while I grabbed the front of his shirt with both fists and pulled him in because I was so goddamn tired of fighting this.
He pressed against me. Cold wall on my back, him warm on my front, his chest against mine, his thigh between my legs.
One of his hands slid from my face down my neck, over my shoulder, settling on my waist, and the trail of heat his fingers left on my skin made my head tip back against the wall.
He followed, mouth moving to the corner of my jaw, just below my ear, and I made a sound I couldn’t control.
I felt him react instantly, fingers tightening on my hip, his breathing going ragged against my throat.
He pulled back, barely, forehead against mine, both of us breathing hard. His hand was still on my waist, thumb tracing circles against my hip through my blouse, and even that small motion was making it hard to think.
“This is a terrible idea,” I said. My voice was wrecked.
“Yes.”
“If that door opens and someone’s there.”
“No one else uses this elevator.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What’s the point?”
I looked at him. His eyes were dark, lips swollen, hair messed up from my hands.
I did that. Put that look on his face. Good.
Now he looked as ruined as I felt. His chest was heaving, his thumb still moving on my hip, and I could feel his heartbeat through his shirt where my fists were pressed against his chest, hammering just as hard as mine.
I should push him away. Hit the button, restart the elevator, go home.
Instead, I kissed him again. Pulled him in by the shirt, hard, hands going to his hair, his to my hips, the elevator hanging between floors.
His mouth opened against mine and I pressed closer, arching off the wall into him, and I didn’t care anymore.
About the office, the professionalism, any of it.
I just wanted more of his hands on me, more of the sound he made when I pulled his hair, more of his body against mine in this stopped elevator with the world paused around us.
He was the one who pulled back and hit the button immediately. The elevator hummed, started moving.
We stood side by side. Not touching, not speaking. My reflection in the polished doors was flushed, lipstick gone, hair wrecked.
The doors opened. I walked to my car on useless legs, sat in the driver’s seat, gripped the steering wheel.
My lips were swollen, my hair a mess. I could still feel the cold wall on my back, his thigh between my legs, his hands on my waist. Could still hear the sound he made, low and rough, a sound I’d be replaying for the foreseeable future.
Ten minutes before I trusted myself to drive.
I walked through my front door, stood in the hallway, and my legs gave out. Slid down the wall to the floor. Sat there with my face in my hands, body humming, brain screaming that this was a terrible idea while every other part of me told my brain to shut the hell up.
I’d crossed a line today. Not the office kiss, which I could write off as weakness, and not the filing cabinet or the copy room, which technically didn’t count.
But the elevator. I grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him in, kissed him with both hands in his hair while the car hung between floors. On purpose. A choice.
Tomorrow I’d see him at the office, stand on that floor with the glass wall and the filing cabinets and the elevator and try to pretend this hadn’t happened.
I already knew we wouldn’t be able to.