Chapter 13 #3
Wren undid them with more care than the kiss warranted.
She wasn’t so much as slow but deliberate.
Each one a small act of attention, each one a layer removed, and Cordelia sat on the edge of the desk and let it happen.
She felt the air of the empty floor reach her bare skin through the gap in the silk.
She let it happen. That was the thing she could not get past. She was not overtaken or surprised.
She was sitting on Wren's desk in the dark, and she was letting Wren unbutton her blouse with her too-steady hands while Wren's mouth moved down her throat while knowing exactly what this was, and yet she did not stop it.
Her blouse fell open. Wren's palm slid across the top of Cordelia's chest, above the line of her bra, and Cordelia heard herself make a sound that she did not recognize.
Not a moan, something more private than that, something that came from behind the composure she had been maintaining since Monday, since March, since she was a child.
Wren stopped. "You're shaking.”
"I know."
"Come here."
Wren pulled her off the desk by the hips and pulled her close.
Cordelia's blouse was open and her jacket was still on.
Wren's arms were around her, and for a moment they were just standing there, Wren holding her and Cordelia's forehead was against Wren's shoulder.
Cordelia could smell her—soap and cotton and something underneath that was just warm skin, just Wren.
"Tell me what you want," Wren said.
Cordelia pulled back and looked at her. Wren's eyes were dark in the low light, and there was nothing careful in them now. There was just want, plain and open, the want that had survived Monday and the week of distance they both tried to maintain.
"You," Cordelia said. "I want you, and I have wanted you all week. I told myself I didn't, and I was just lying to myself.” She paused and took a steadying breath. “And I am done lying about it."
Something moved across Wren's face in the shadows. It wasn’t quite triumph, nor was it relief.
It was something fiercer and quieter than both.
And before Cordelia could figure out exactly what it was, Wren kissed her and walked her backward through the antechamber toward the glass door of Cordelia's office, and Cordelia let herself be led.
The door was already open. Cordelia's office was dark except for the ambient glow from the antechamber lamp and the city through the windows, the scattered lights of buildings where other people were still working, still awake, still doing anything other than this.
Wren turned her at the doorframe and kissed her against it, her mouth hot and certain, her thigh pressing between Cordelia's legs, and Cordelia's head hit the glass and she didn't care.
The pressure was there—Wren's thigh, the ridge of muscle through her slacks against the seam of Cordelia's—and Cordelia rolled her hips into it before she could decide not to, and the sound she made was the sound of a woman who had been holding still for a week and could not hold still anymore.
"Jesus," Wren said, and her voice had changed. Lower now, rougher. The steadiness that once was there was fraying at the edges. "Cordelia."
"I'm here."
"I know you're here." Wren's hand slid up under the open blouse, found the clasp of her bra at the back, and undid it with one hand—quick, practiced, certain—and Cordelia felt the fabric go loose and felt Wren's palm spread flat against her bare back.
The last barrier between them came apart.
"I've been watching you be here all week.
Walking past without looking at me. Dropping off files at my desk like I was just anyone. "
"You're not just anyone," Cordelia said in between kisses.
"I know." Wren's mouth was on her collarbone, on the ridge of it, on the soft dip below where the skin was thin. "I've known that since the first time."
The first time. The same dark office, the door closed, the kiss that had, at once, started everything and ended eight years of distance.
It created a new kind of distance that was much, much worse.
Cordelia remembered it in sensations, the pressure of Wren's mouth and the specific temperature of her skin, the way her hands had felt on Cordelia's waist like they already knew the shape of her body.
Wren's mouth moved lower. She pulled the bra away with her fingers, let it fall, and her mouth found Cordelia's breast in the dark.
Cordelia's hand was in Wren's hair again and her hips were still moving against Wren's thigh.
She could feel herself getting wet through her underwear, through the lining of her pants, the fabric catching and sliding.
She found she did not care about the suit, did not care about the silk, did not care about anything except Wren's mouth on her nipple and Wren's hands on her ribs and the fact that she had come back for this.
She had come back.
Wren pulled her deeper into the office, away from the doorframe, and Cordelia felt the edge of her own desk behind her knees, and Wren pushed her down onto it, the motion inevitable.
One hand on Cordelia's shoulder, a firm touch, and Cordelia's back met the desk.
The cool surface pressed against her bare skin, but she was too warmed up for it to cause gooseflesh to spread.
Wren was standing over her, nestled between her legs, and the window showing the cityscape was behind Wren's head like a field of scattered stars.
"You kept your distance," Wren said, and her hands were on Cordelia's belt buckle, on the clasp. "You looked right through me. You were so good at it I almost believed you didn’t care."
"I was good at it," Cordelia said, and her voice was not her voice exactly. It was lower and rougher, and it came from somewhere vulnerable that she had kept hidden from people. "I was good at it, but I was slowly dying inside."
Wren's hands stopped loosening the belt buckle. She looked down at Cordelia, still on her back on the desk, her blouse open and bra gone, and her chest rising and falling with desire. Cordelia watched her face and saw the moment Wren understood what she had said.
"Dying," Wren repeated.
"Every minute."
Wren undid the belt, more deftly this time, and pulled it free then dropped it.
Her hands found the zipper of Cordelia's pants, and she tugged them down over Cordelia's hips with the same deliberate care she had used on the buttons.
Cordelia lifted her hips slightly and felt the cool air of the office on her thighs, on the damp cotton fabric between her legs, and she was exposed in a way that had nothing to do with clothing or lack thereof.
Wren knelt, maintaining eye contact the whole time.
Cordelia watched her kneel, the way she went down easy, one knee and then the other.
And all of a sudden, Wren's hands were on her knees, pushing them apart, and her mouth was on the tender inside of Cordelia's thigh.
Cordelia's hand found the edge of the desk and gripped it, her knuckles turning ash white.
"You don't have to—"
"I want to." Wren looked up at her again from between her thighs. There was no hesitancy or carefulness in there. "I have wanted to do this every day this week. Every day. While you were not looking at me, while you were being good at keeping your distance and staying professional."
She yanked Cordelia's underwear aside. The cotton was soaked, and Wren's fingers slid through the wetness. Cordelia heard herself inhale sharply and then Wren's mouth was on her, hot and certain.
She didn’t tease, and her tongue was flat against Cordelia's clit.
Cordelia's hips came off the desk, and her hand left the edge and found Wren's hair again and she held on.
Wren clearly knew what she was doing. She knew it the way she knew everything: by taking the time to pay attention.
Her tongue moved in slow circles and her fingers slid lower, two of them pressing into Cordelia.
The glorious stretch and the pressure and the wet heat of Wren's mouth was so much and so exactly right that Cordelia's vision blurred.
"Fuck," she said. She never swore. She was the woman in the tailored suit with the poised look and flawless composure, but now, she was being reduced to someone who swore because a woman, Wren, had her fingers deep inside, curling up to hit the soft G-spot that made Cordelia go feral.
Wren made a sound against her, low and pleased, the sound of someone who had heard that word and liked it.
Her fingers curled again as she pressed against it, and her tongue sped up to match Cordelia’s building orgasm.
It wasn’t a slow build either. It had been building all week, since Monday when she had told Wren under no uncertain terms it couldn’t repeat again, since she felt Wren’s eyes on her back and knew in some deep recess of her body that she had lost touch with that she was lying to herself and Wren.
It had been building since her walk over, the elevator ride up, the hellos they exchanged when she was finally across from Wren.
And it was now reaching its crescendo with Wren’s fingers buried inside her and her soft mouth against her clit, sucking on it hard then softly.
Her heart hammered a beat that Cordelia swore sounded like Wren’s name, and she broke.