Chapter 7
Sin
Owen comes into my office at five. I wait until he closes the door before I say anything.
“What’s up?” he asks.
I motion for him to sit. He does, looking more amused than concerned, which only irritates me more.
When he’s seated, I ask, “Why did Laurel Cross have a meeting with you?”
His dark eyebrows lift. “Not what I was expecting.”
“Owen.”
His expression shifts at my tone. Owen is the Chief Compliance Officer.
He’s over HR and helps guide employees and management through compliance processes and programs. Which means there are a lot of reasons Laurel could have met with him.
Most of them bad. Some of them catastrophic.
The worst of them have been sitting in the back of my mind since I saw her walk out of that conference room this morning with her spine straight and her mouth set like she was trying not to fall apart.
Owen leans back in his chair. “I asked her to look over some policies for her department. We’re trying to update the policies and procedures before the end of the year.”
Relief hits so fast I almost hate it. That makes a hell of a lot more sense than what I feared, which is that Laurel went to my brother to tell him she couldn’t work under me. Or near me. Or alone with me.
I nod once, like I didn’t spend the last forty minutes pretending to review quarterly projections while imagining every way this could blow up in my face.
“Good,” I say. “Anything I need to do?”
Owen snorts. “Tell Wilder to stop living up to his name.”
Despite myself, I huff out something close to a laugh. “I can do that.”
“You won’t.”
“I said I can. I didn’t say I’d succeed.”
“That’s fair.”
For a few seconds, neither of us says anything. Then Owen studies me the way only a brother can. Like he’s looking for the thing I’m trying not to show him. I don’t give him anything. Or I try not to.
He leans back in his chair. “How are things at home?”
“Better,” I lie.
The word tastes bitter. There’s nothing better about home. There’s quiet. Distance. Separate rooms. Polite conversations over dinners neither of us want to eat. Jenna moving through the house like a ghost I married years ago and has been haunting ever since. But better? Not even close.
I start gathering papers I don’t need. “In fact, I need to head home before she wonders where I am.”
It’s a good excuse.
Owen takes the hint and stands. “Good chat, bro. We should get drinks soon.”
I nod as I reach for my jacket. “Sounds good.”
He opens the door, then pauses. “Sin.”
I look up. His expression is different now. Less amused. More Owen.
“You deserve happiness, too.”
My hand tightens around my jacket. For a second, I consider pretending I don’t know what he means. But Owen knows me too well for that.
So I give him nothing instead.
“I’m happy.”
He looks like he wants to argue. Thankfully, he doesn’t. He leaves, shutting the door behind him. I stand there for a long moment, alone in my office, staring at the closed door.
Happiness
That’s what I’ve been telling myself for months.
That staying away was happiness.
That not saying Laurel’s name unless I had to was happiness.
And yet all it took was one prototype, one rain-soaked morning, one moment with her hand under mine, and happiness started to feel like another word for coward.
My phone lights up on my desk. It’s Jenna again. I stare at her name until the screen goes dark. Then I pick up my jacket and leave before I can do something stupid.
Like call Laurel.
Like go find her.
Like admit that the only place I want to go tonight is not home.
It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen Laurel in person.
It’s better this way. Or so I keep telling myself.
It sounds reasonable when I say it in my head.
Responsible, even. The kind of decision a married man makes when he knows he’s standing too close to the edge of something he has no business wanting.
So I avoid her office. I send notes by email. Have Owen route policy questions through the proper channels. Let Jack handle anything that can’t wait, even though putting him anywhere near her still makes something ugly twist in my chest.
Better this way.
I repeat it enough that it almost starts to sound true.
I’m in the lab late, working on a side project that has nothing to do with Laurel Cross, which is exactly why I picked it.
Then I hear something behind me. I glance over my shoulder and make eye contact with the very person I’ve been avoiding.
Laurel stops just inside the lab, one hand still on the door, her expression shifting from surprise to something more guarded.
“Oh,” she says. “I didn’t know you were in here.”
If I had known she was going to walk in with her long, blonde hair in a high ponytail wearing black slacks and a dark red sweater that clings softly to her body and reminds me of cherries, wine, and several other things I have no right to think about, I would have gone home.
Her lips are pink, her cheeks slightly flushed.
She shifts her weight. “I can leave, if you want.”
I should say yes.
“There are plenty of stations,” I hear myself say instead.
Her eyes hold mine for one second too long. Then she nods and steps fully into the room. She crosses the lab, putting two workstations between us. It’s not enough.
“Working late?” I ask.
The question is pointless. Obviously she is. She’s here, carrying a stack of sketches and her laptop bag, looking like she came prepared to spend hours building something from nothing.
Still, I need to hear her voice.
“Yeah. I wanted to get a jump start on the next toy in the Seven Deadly Sins line.” She holds up a sketch. “Meet Envy.”
I take the page from her because she offers it. Not because I need to. Definitely not because it gives me an excuse to close some of the distance.
The design is different from Lust. Where Lust was sleek and direct, Envy is more elegant.
More intricate. A little cruel in the best possible way.
It’s aimed solely at a female audience, with dual stimulators built into a curved frame and a tension system that looks deceptively simple until I realize exactly what she’s done.
“You’ll need to adjust the angle here.” I tap the bottom curve of the sketch. “Otherwise the second stimulator won’t maintain consistent contact.”
She steps closer despite herself, looking down at the page. I feel her beside me before I see her. The soft scent of her perfume. Something sweet and warm beneath it. She leans in, studying where I’m pointing.
My fingers tighten around the paper.
“Not if I make this piece flexible,” she says.
I glance at her. “It’ll weaken the frame.”
“Not if I use the same material we tested on Lust.”
I look back at the sketch. Damn it. She’s right.
“It might work,” I say.
Her mouth curves. “Careful, Mr. Sinclair. That almost sounded like approval.”
“It was.”
Her eyes meet mine, and for a second, the lab disappears around us. The steel tables. The tools. The half-built prototypes. The two weeks I spent pretending distance could fix whatever this is. It didn’t. If anything, it made it worse.
I set the sketch down on the station between us. “You’ve been busy.”
“So have you.”
I need to get away from her, so I reach for the nearest tool and turn back to my station. “Well, I won’t keep you.”
She returns to her station and starts unpacking her materials. I try to focus on the project in front of me, but every sound she makes pulls at my attention. The slide of paper across metal. The click of her laptop opening. The soft scrape of her chair. The soft clearing of her throat.
Two weeks. I lasted two weeks. And all it took was one dark red sweater and a sketch called Envy to remind me that avoiding Laurel Cross was never a solution.
We work in silence for the next hour. Mostly.
Laurel sketches. I test. She mutters to herself when a curve doesn’t sit the way she wants.
I pretend not to listen. She taps her pen against her bottom lip.
I pretend not to notice. I do a lot of pretending around Laurel Cross. It’s becoming a full-time job.
By nine, most of the office lights beyond the lab have gone dark.
By ten someone from facilities pokes his head in, sees both of us working, and immediately decides whatever he came for can wait.
By eleven, Laurel has kicked off her heels and is sitting cross-legged on her stool, sweater sleeves pushed up to her elbows, hair falling loose around her face.
I’ve taken my tie off. That feels like a mistake. Especially when she slides off her stool and wanders toward my station with her mug in hand.
“So,” she says, stopping beside me. “What are you working on?”
“Nothing.”
Her brows lift. “You’re in the lab at nearly midnight working on nothing?”
“Yes.”
“Convincing.”
I don’t look at her. “Go back to Envy.”
“I will after you show me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re annoying.”
“That’s not a reason.” Then she leans one hip against the edge of my station and looks down at the parts spread across the table. Her gaze narrows. “Is that part of the Sins line?”
I don’t answer quickly enough. Her smile grows.
“Oh my god. It is. Which one?”
“It’s not ready.”
“Come on, Mason. You can show me.”
I set down the tool in my hand and finally look at her. Bad idea. The lab light hits the red of her sweater and makes her skin look warmer than it should. Softer. Her mouth is curved, her eyes bright with the kind of curiosity that always gets her into trouble and has been getting me into worse.
“It’s Pride,” I say.
“Pride,” she repeats.
The way she says it shouldn’t do anything to me. It does.
I pick up the casing because I need something in my hands that isn’t her. “It’s still early.”
She reaches for the sketch at my elbow before I can stop her. Her eyes move over the drawing, and for the first time since she walked in, she goes quiet.
“What?” I ask.
She studies the design. “It’s beautiful.”
“It’s basic.”
“It’s not.” She sets her mug down and turns the page slightly. “The shape is simple, but the mechanics aren’t. You’re building variable pressure into the sleeve?”
“Yes.”
“And heat?”
“Controlled warmth, not heat.”
She gives me a look. “That sounds like a legal department sentence.”
“It’s accurate.”
“It’s boring.”
“It’s safe.”
Her eyes lift to mine. “Safe isn’t always memorable.”
The lab goes very still. She realizes what she said a second after I do. Color rises faintly in her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away.
“It is when it keeps you out of trouble,” I say.
Her mouth curves. “Is that what you’re trying to do?”
“Always.” I look back at the prototype. “The pressure needs work.”
She lets me have the subject change.
“How much work?” she asks.
“It’s inconsistent at higher settings.”
She steps closer to the table. “Show me.”
I pull up the results on the screen. She leans in. When her shoulder brushes my arm neither of us moves away. That’s how it keeps happening with us. Not all at once or on purpose. A breath too close. A pause too long. A sentence that should mean one thing and somehow means five.
Laurel studies the graph.
“You’re losing intensity here because the grip is too tight.” She freezes. Then she closes her eyes. “I meant the internal sleeve.”
“I know what you meant.”
I turn my head. She’s close enough that I can count the faint freckles on the bridge of her nose. Close enough that if I lowered my voice, it would feel like a touch. So I lower it.
“The grip is supposed to be tight.”
Her breath catches. Just a little. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Plenty for me.
“Not if it compromises performance,” she says.
I look at her mouth. I shouldn’t.
I do.
“No,” I say. “Not if it does that.”
The silence stretches until the machine beside us clicks off and makes both of us blink. Laurel steps back first. Thank God. Unfortunately, she only steps back to pick up the prototype casing.
She turns it in her hands, examining the inner track. “The problem isn’t the pressure. It’s the release.”
I stare at her.
She doesn’t notice. Or she pretends not to.
“You’re building too much resistance into the return,” she says. “It needs to give a little before it tightens again.”
I close my eyes for one second.
Fuck. This is torture.
When I open them, she’s looking at me. Her cheeks are definitely flushed now.
“You know what I mean,” she says.
“I do.”
“Then stop looking at me like that.”
I take the casing from her hand and set it back on the table. “Then stop saying things like that.”
Her chin lifts. “I’m discussing your design.”
“You’re discussing release and resistance.”
“Because those are the issues with your design.”
I step closer before I can stop myself. She doesn’t move.
“You should go home,” I say.
Her gaze drops briefly to my mouth.
“Probably,” she says.
Neither of us moves.
The lab hums around us, soft and clinical and completely useless.
There are cameras in the hall. Employees who could come in.
A wife at home who hasn’t asked where I am because she stopped caring long before I stopped wanting her to.
That thought should cool me. It doesn’t. It only makes the want feel uglier.
Laurel clears her throat and looks back at the prototype. “You need a softer material along the inner track.”
I laugh once under my breath. Jesus Christ.
She frowns. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, say it.”
“Think about what you just said to me about a sex toy.”
Her lips part. Then she laughs.
“Well, that’s my sign that I need to call it a night.” She puts a safe amount of distance between us and grabs her shoes. “Your design is good, Mason.” She gathers the rest of her things and moves to the door. “Have a good night.”
Cool air from the hall slips into the lab.
Before she leaves, she says, “For what it’s worth, Pride doesn’t need to be safe to be memorable.”
Then she’s gone and the door clicks shut behind her. I stand there for a long time, staring at the prototype on the table as a truth hits me.
Wanting Laurel Cross is not the worst part. The worst part is knowing I should be ashamed. And still wanting her anyway.