Chapter 15
Laurel
Monday morning comes. And so do I. In the shower.
With Sin behind me, one hand braced against the tile beside my head, the other between my thighs, his mouth at my ear whispering filthy, impossible things while the hot water beats down over both of us.
By the time we shatter, I’m shaking so hard he has to hold me upright.
For one blissful second, I let myself pretend this is just how mornings are now. His body behind mine. His breath against my neck. His hand splayed over my stomach like he has some right to keep me close.
Then reality finds me. It always does.
We finish showering in silence, but it isn’t comfortable.
It’s thick. Heavy. Full of all the things neither of us wants to say.
He dries off at the sink while I wrap myself in a towel and avoid looking at him because if I do, I’ll want him again.
Which is ridiculous. I just had him. Twice.
Apparently, my body has no concept of scarcity.
We get dressed side by side like this is normal. Like he didn’t spend the weekend in my bed. Like his ring isn’t back on his finger. Like I didn’t watch him put it there ten minutes ago and feel something inside me crack.
Outside, it’s raining. The sky is heavy and gray, which feels fitting because it matches my mood.
Sin carries my laptop bag down to the street without asking, and I let him because fighting over it would take energy I don’t have. His truck is parked at the curb, dark and waiting, looking like the scene of at least three crimes we committed together.
He stops beside the passenger door and opens it for me.
“I think the board will be happy with the results from Amsterdam,” he says.
I look at the open door. And somehow, I find the courage to meet his gaze.
“I think I need to take the L into work.”
His expression stills.
“Like normal,” I add.
For one second, he doesn’t say anything. Then I see it. A spark of pain. Then panic.
“Laurel—”
“And I think it’s best if we end things here before it gets too messy.”
I’m proud of myself for not crying. Deeply proud. Because my throat burns, and my chest feels like someone has put both hands inside it and pulled.
Sin stares at me in the rain, the open passenger door between us, his jaw tight enough to hurt.
“This is already messy,” he says.
“I know.”
His eyes search mine. “Then don’t pretend this is simple.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
The words snap a little. So does something in me.
“I’m trying to do the right thing.”
His mouth tightens. We both hear it. The right thing. As if either of us has been doing that. Rain dots his hair and darkens the shoulders of his coat. He looks exhausted. Beautiful. Wrecked in a way that makes me want to step into him instead of away from him.
He glances down at his ring. So do I. There it is. The proof that whatever we are, whatever this weekend was, it does not belong to me.
When he looks back up, his voice is quieter. “Is that what you want?”
No. The answer is immediate and violent. No, I want to crawl into his truck. I want him to drive us somewhere that isn’t the office. I want another day. Another hour. Another morning where I don’t have to watch him become Mason Sinclair again.
But wanting is what got us here.
So I lie.
“Yes.”
He flinches. Then his expression closes.
“Okay.”
That one word hurts more than if he argued. Okay.
Like he’s agreeing.
Like he’s letting me go.
He closes the passenger door softly. Then he hands me my laptop bag. Our fingers brush around the strap. A tiny touch. Pathetic, really. Still, it makes my breath catch.
His does too.
We both pretend it doesn’t.
“I’ll see you at the office,” he says.
I nod. “At the office.”
For one terrible second, we stand there in the rain like two people waiting for the other to make the wrong choice first. Then I turn. Every step toward the L feels like tearing skin. I don’t look back. Not once. Because if I did, and he was still watching me, I might run straight back to him.
The office is its own kind of torture. Amsterdam followed us home.
I feel it in every hallway, every email, every professional sentence that lands wrong because my brain remembers his mouth saying my name against my skin.
By nine, I’ve answered twelve emails and retained absolutely none of them.
By eleven, I’ve changed my mind about ending things approximately forty-seven times.
By noon, I see Sin across the conference room during the board recap, and my entire body goes still.
He’s Mason again. Expression calm and unreadable as he talks through international retailer interest, presentation results, projected launch timelines, and next steps for the Sins line.
No one would look at him and see the man who spent Sunday in my kitchen washing dishes with his shirt half-buttoned.
No one would know he knows the sound I make when I’m trying to stay quiet.
No one would know he kissed the inside of my wrist this morning before putting his ring back on.
No one but me.
He doesn’t look at me during the meeting. After the meeting, he walks out with Tate and two board members. I stay behind to gather my notes. Really, I stay behind so he can’t see that I’m crying.
The rest of the day crawls. Sin stays away. Completely. No emails that aren’t copied to three other people. No passing comments. No sudden appearances in my doorway. No looking for me in the lab. He gives me exactly what I asked for.
It’s awful.
By four-thirty, I am so restless I reorganize an entire drawer of product samples by color and then hate myself for it. By five, the office begins to empty.
Opal leaves at five-fifteen with one last concerned look over her shoulder.
“Go home,” she tells me. “You look like hell.”
The floor goes quiet in stages. Phones stop ringing.
Doors close. Voices fade. The rain keeps tapping against the windows, the same dull rhythm that has followed me all day.
I stay at my desk, pretending to review post-show analytics.
Really, I’m staring at the same spreadsheet and thinking about Sin saying okay in the rain.
Letting me go. Respecting the line I drew.
At six-thirty, there’s a knock on my office door. My heart stops. Then starts too fast. I know who it is before I look up.
“Come in,” I say.
Sin opens the door and steps inside. He closes it behind him.
Then locks it.
The sound clicks through the room like a trigger and my entire body goes hot.
“Don’t,” I say.
He turns to face me. His suit jacket is gone. His sleeves are rolled up. His tie is loose. He looks like he has spent the entire day holding himself together with both hands and is finally done pretending he can.
“Don’t what?” he asks.
“Lock my door.”
“It’s already locked.”
“Unlock it.”
“No.”
My pulse jumps.
I stand behind my desk, because sitting feels impossible. “Mason.”
His jaw tightens. Wrong name. Or maybe right name.
“I stayed away all day,” he says.
“I know.”
“I gave you what you asked for.”
“I know.”
“I let you walk away from my truck this morning.”
My throat tightens. “You agreed it was better.”
“I agreed because you were shaking in the rain and trying not to cry.” He takes a step closer. “I agreed because I thought maybe one of us should be strong.”
“And now?”
His laugh is quiet.
“Now I’m done pretending I am.”
My heart slams. He comes around my desk slowly and I stand there with my hands braced behind me on the edge of the desk as he stops in front of me, close enough that I can smell rain on his coat and the faint trace of his cologne beneath it.
“I spent the whole day trying to do what you asked,” he says. His voice is low. “I didn’t look at you in the board meeting.”
“I noticed.”
“I didn’t come to your office.”
“Until now.”
“Until now.” His gaze drops to my mouth. Then back to my eyes. “And all I could think about was coming here, locking that door, and telling you the truth.”
My breath catches. “What truth?”
His fingers brush my jaw. The touch is too much after a whole day of nothing.
“The truth is,” he says, “I don’t want normal with you.”
My eyes open. His are dark. Unsteady. Hungry.
“I don’t want polite emails. I don’t want distance. I don’t want to sit across a conference table and pretend I don’t know what you feel like when you come.”
My knees almost give.
“Sin… you’re married.”
His hand falls away. For one second, the room goes cold. His gaze drops to the ring on his finger. Then he slides it off and sets it on my desk beside my keyboard.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
His eyes lift to mine. “I can’t touch you with it on.”
“You shouldn’t touch me at all.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you here?”
He steps closer. So close my body brushes his.
“Because fuck it.”
Then his mouth is on mine. I grab his shirt at the same time he catches my waist, and the kiss turns wild instantly.
Like the whole day of staying away only made this worse.
Like we tried the right thing and hated it.
He lifts me onto the desk, sweeping papers aside with one arm.
My laptop slides dangerously close to the edge.
I break the kiss. “My computer.”
He catches it without looking, sets it safely on the chair, then returns to my mouth.
“Show-off,” I breathe.
“Brat.”
The word hits exactly where it shouldn’t.
I pull him closer by his tie. He groans.
That sound. God. I missed that sound, which is ridiculous because I heard it this morning.
His hands slide under my skirt, gripping my thighs, spreading them enough for him to step between them.
I gasp against his mouth when he presses close, hard and obvious and done pretending.
“Tell me to stop,” he says.
“I don’t want you to stop.”
His control snaps. He kisses down my throat, one hand braced on the desk, the other moving beneath my skirt with the same ruthless focus he brings to everything. When his fingers find me, I bite his shoulder through his shirt to keep from crying out.
“You’re soaked,” he says against my neck.
Then he slides one finger inside me, and I forget every word I’ve ever known. Every sound feels enormous. My breath. His belt. The creak of my desk under my weight. The soft, obscene sound of his hand working between my thighs.
“Sin,” I gasp.
His eyes lift to mine.
There he is. Not Mason. Not Mr. Sinclair. Sin.
My Sin.
His mouth crashes into mine again, swallowing my next sound as his fingers move harder, deeper, dragging me right to the edge with infuriating precision.
I come hard enough that my hands shake around his shoulders and my thighs clamp against his hips. He holds me through it, his mouth at my ear.
“That’s it,” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”
That nearly breaks me more than the orgasm. When I come down, he’s breathing hard, forehead pressed to mine. For one second, I think maybe that’s all. Maybe this was the slip. The moment we’ll regret and then stop.
Then I reach between us and undo his belt. Then he’s inside me. Right there on my office desk. Slow at first. A reminder that we are no longer in Amsterdam, or on a jet, or in my apartment where the rest of the world can’t see us. We’re at work. And neither of us stops.
He moves deeper, and my head falls back. He catches the back of my neck with one hand, keeping me close.
“No,” he says, voice low. “Look at me.”
His eyes are dark and guilty and desperate. Every thrust feels like he is trying to bury the day between us. Every breath feels stolen. Every touch feels worse because I know he tried to leave me alone. And I know I wanted him not to.
The desk knocks softly against the wall, and I clamp a hand over my mouth. He pulls it away.
“Don’t hide from me,” he says.
“We’re in my office.”
“I locked the door.”
“That’s not soundproofing.”
His mouth curves against mine. “Then be quiet.”
I glare at him. Or try to. He changes the angle, and the glare dies immediately.
“Unfair,” I whisper.
“Yes.”
He gives me that angle again.
Again.
Again.
Until I’m shaking, until my fingers dig into his shoulders, until his name breaks out of me in a sound barely louder than a breath.
He follows right after, burying his face against my neck, his body locking around mine as he comes with a low, broken groan.
Eventually, Sin pulls back enough to look at me. My skirt is around my hips. His shirt is wrinkled. His tie is half undone. There are papers on the floor, my lipstick on his mouth, and his wedding ring sitting beside my keyboard like a witness neither of us can cross-examine.
He touches my face, thumb brushing my cheek. “I tried.”
“I know.”
“I was going to let you go.”
“I know.”
His eyes search mine. “Tell me to leave now, and I will.”
My throat tightens.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
His expression breaks. Just slightly. Enough that I know he was hoping I’d say that and hates himself for it.
He kisses me again. Soft this time. Too soft. The kind of kiss that will hurt later. When he finally steps back, he fixes his clothes in silence. I slide off the desk on unsteady legs and smooth my skirt down. We both look almost normal within a minute.
Almost.
He picks up his ring. Pauses. Then puts it back on.
I look away.
That part is becoming harder. He notices, but he doesn’t apologize. Maybe we’re past apologies.
At the door, he stops with his hand on the lock.
“Laurel.”
I look at him. His face is back under control, but his eyes aren’t.
“We need rules.”
I laugh once. “We had rules.”
His mouth tightens.
“Then we need better ones.”
I look at the mess on my desk. The papers on the floor. The chair turned sideways. The place where his ring had sat.
Then back at him.
“Good luck with that.”
For the first time all day, his mouth almost smiles. Almost. Then he unlocks the door and leaves.
I stand alone in my office, breathing in the aftermath of him, with rain streaking the windows and my body still humming.
Normal lasted less than one business day.
Honestly, I should have known.