Chapter 13 Stephan #2
“We were, but I just wanted to check on you after last night. To make sure you are alright. And some new information has come to light.” The concern is genuine, and there is the case of the anonymous note, but it’s all a cover for the shameful, sudden need to see her undone.
“Oh,” her shoulders relax visibly under the plush robe. “Thank you. I’m okay.” She cocks her head, remembering the latter half of my statement. “What new information? About the case?”
“It’s… uh… delicate…” I rub the back of my neck with my hand, and she reads what I’m not saying.
“Perhaps it's better discussed inside and not in the hall.” She opens her door a bit wider to allow me in.
The note gives me an excuse, but not a reason. I take it anyway.
I pause for a single, terrible breath. If I go into her room, there’s no going back. This will tear down everything. I take a deep, useless breath—it does nothing to steady the pounding in my chest—and step through the doorway.
The air in the room is thick with the faint, clean scent of her soap and something sweet and muskier that is purely her.
Katie sits on her bed, her clothes neatly folded beside her.
Her hands twist with a frantic energy that pulls my gaze, and I see the simple gold cross glinting against the white terrycloth.
I take a seat in the chair nearest to her. My muscles are tight, ready to spring. I pull the note from my pocket and hand it to her. “This was waiting for me in my room the other night when we got back, before dinner.”
Her eyes scan the note. “You think someone from Halcyon left this for you?”
“Who else?”
Her mouth twists as she considers the options. “Perhaps the family member of a deceased patient?”
“They’d have to be in the meeting with us.”
She nods. “Well, that narrows it down to everyone who was at the meeting earlier. Maybe even some scientists who saw us there or heard about it through the grapevine.”
I lean back in the chair. “Someone in that meeting is the leak. That’s my conclusion.”
She folds the paper back into its original shape and hands it back to me. Electricity sparks as our fingers brush against one another. “So, what do we do with that information?”
“We ask for everyone’s emails, and we dig for the leaker.”
She nods, but doesn’t look at me. I can tell something is weighing heavily on her. So I lean in closer. “Katie…” I want to reach out and touch her, but I still my hand. “If something else happened with Carlyle, you can tell me. It won’t affect your job. We take things like this very seriously.”
“It’s not that,” she whispers almost to herself. Her hands lay folded in her lap, but I can see her digging her thumb into her palm as if pain could keep the words inside.
I move to sit next to her on the bed. I know I shouldn’t, but my body cannot help itself. “Katie…if he hurt you or said something uncouth… I will…”
“Can I confess something?” she asks, cutting me off mid-sentence.
Fuck, anything. The thought is a roar in my skull. You have no idea how long I have wanted to hear those words come out of your mouth.
“You may,” I say. My voice is too low, too controlled. I lean over, resting my elbows on my knees, my attention a predatory weight.
“I am struggling with something, but it wasn’t Carlyle. Men like him… well, they’re just a part of reality for women. What I am struggling with is you.” Her voice catches on the last word, as if saying it might cost her something irreversible.
I cock my head at her. The move is automatic, calculating. “Me?”
She nods, and I can feel the shame radiating from her like a physical heat.
“My attraction to you.”
My throat thickens. Every defense I erected this morning—the contract, the professional distance, the lie about the meeting—all shatters in the face of her terrible, beautiful honesty.
I grip her jaw with my thumb and forefinger, forcing her chin up, forcing her to meet my gaze. Her eyes are wide, the fear now mixed with a thrilling anticipation.
“You have no idea what you do to me.”
I lean my forehead against hers.
“So you feel it too?” Her voice is barely a whisper.
“I have felt it every moment since we met.”
We stay locked like this, two pieces of a terrible magnet, breathing in each other’s air—raw, musky lust. Her chest heaves, the cotton robe doing nothing to mask the ragged rhythm of her desire.
My fingers ache with the proximity of her soft skin; it takes everything in me not to shove my hands into her thick terrycloth belt and rip the knot loose.
“We can’t do this, Katie.” The lie tastes bitter on my tongue. “As much as I want to. It would ruin us both, and besides that, I am not what you think I am. Beneath this polished exterior is something much darker. Something I don’t want you to see.”
She doesn't flinch. Her eyes, still wide with anticipation, now hold a fierce, almost terrifying conviction. She presses forward, closing the millimeter of distance I tried to keep between our foreheads.
“You don’t think I have darkness in me?” Her voice is no longer a whisper; it's a defiant murmur that scorches my skin. “I spent six years praying for discipline. I know the darkness in my own heart. I know the terrifying joy of wanting something forbidden.”
She uses her free hand to grab the lapels of my suit jacket, pulling my head down an inch further. The move is entirely hers, and it steals my breath.
“Tell me what you think you can show me that I haven’t already confessed to my God a thousand times over.
Every day, I pray to God to take my feelings for you away.
To make this ache I have for you disappear.
And every day I want you more and more.” There’s devotion in her voice—and I’m enough of a coward to mistake it for consent.
Her challenge is a direct assault on my carefully constructed walls. It is raw, stunning, and a glorious surrender of her own supposed purity. She is giving me permission and throwing herself into the fire.
The restraint that defined my entire life snaps like a brittle bone. I release her jaw, my hands immediately flying to her hips, hard and demanding, twisting the soft terrycloth between my palms. I drive my tongue into her mouth, a fierce, desperate plunge that silences her argument and her guilt.
I mistake the silence for control. Then I realize it’s surrender—and I don’t know whose.
Her lips part instantly, and she moans into my mouth, a deep, guttural sound that vibrates through my entire chest. She is consuming the space I fought so hard to protect. I taste the panic under the sweetness, the part of her that still knows this is wrong—and I almost stop. Almost.
My hands are still clamped on her hips—a perfect, terrifying fit. The urge to lay her back onto the bed and finish the destruction is a white-hot claw in my gut.
But the sight of her face, the pure, unmasked desire replacing the composure, is a terrifying mirror. It’s the very chaos I pay to avoid.
She reaches for the lapels of her robe and slowly pulls them apart, revealing just a hint of her ample breasts and my cock strains against my pants.
I want to tear it all away, and make her mine. I want to brand her for the whole world to see.
But I don’t.
Everything in me screams to stop, and I rip myself away—a physical wrenching that tears my focus from her mouth.
I take a desperate, stumbling step backward, my own ragged breaths tearing through my chest. For a moment, we just stare at each other, the air between us thick with the metallic scent of adrenaline and spent heat.
We are two people who have just survived a wreck, and neither of us knows how to navigate this uncharted territory.
One stray image—Carlyle’s hand on her thigh—flashes through my mind, and the shame is instantaneous.
I’m no better than him. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the part that still knows what time sheets and conflict memos are, I realize: There’s probably a camera on this floor.
Even if it didn’t see the kiss, it saw me enter, and the timestamp will be enough.
I run my hand through my hair, clutching the strands tight, trying to anchor myself in the room.
The worst part isn’t the kiss—it’s knowing she’ll haunt me now, like a witness to my undoing.
My voice is harsh, strained, barely a whisper of my usual command: “That can’t happen again.
” The words are a desperate plea to myself as much as they are a warning to her.
“I know,” she finally whispers. Her voice is rough, hollowed out by the denied release. She doesn't argue; she doesn't pretend she didn't want it. Her agreement is a cold, painful acknowledgment of the reality of the situation.
My phone buzzes in my pocket. It’s the driver. We're late for the Halcyon breakfast. The mechanical vibration cuts through the dense silence, a professional anchor dropped into the chaos.
I answer, and my mask of polished professionalism snaps back into place. The voice I use is entirely unfamiliar to the man standing nakedly before her. “Yes, this is Mr. Marek. We will be down shortly.”
By the time I hang up, the moment is already dead. Katie is fully dressed in her dark suit, slipping her feet into her heels. Her transformation is complete—the nun, the desperate woman, and the passionate counter-challenge are gone, replaced by the cool, meticulous associate.
There is a quiet sadness surrounding her, a lingering residue of the raw desire we both abandoned. Or it’s shame. A specific, heavy shame that I recognize too well: the kind you feel when you discover your discipline is just a facade and your deepest needs are ugly.
We ride the elevator down in utter silence, the tension between us thick enough to suffocate.
Every floor we pass feels like another layer sealing us inside our lie.
The polished steel walls reflect our images side-by-side—two perfectly composed lawyers, a flawless lie.
Every professional gesture she makes—the stiff set of her shoulders, the way she avoids my reflection—is a deliberate act of erasure. I do the same.
But the silence is deceptive. I can still smell the clean scent of her soap and the musky heat we just generated.
My mind immediately floats to the contract on my laptop.
It is the only thing that makes the forced stillness bearable, the only framework that can justify what just happened.
The raw, desperate craving I felt for her upstairs has been neatly replaced by a cold, brilliant obsession written in legal terms. Even unwritten, it’s already between us—the invisible signature in her silence.
Article II: Reciprocal Obligations. Total obedience to my commands.
We cannot get back to Chicago soon enough.
I text Cass.
ME: I need you to review a contract, and you cannot tell anyone about it
Three dots.
CASS: Jesus. I said not to do anything stupid. Send it tonight, and I’ll review it tomorrow. DO NOT DO ANYTHING ELSE UNTIL I REVIEW.
I darken the phone just as the elevator stops.
The lobby doors hiss open, and we are hit by a wall of Pacific heat and the blinding, unapologetic glare of the California sun.
After the feverish shadows of room 412, the light feels like an indictment.
It catches the sharp crease of my trousers and the flawless line of Katie’s blazer, illuminating the lie we’ve become.
I put on my sunglasses. The world turns a cool, detached grey, but I can still feel the phantom heat of her hips beneath my palms. If Cass knew what we did, he’d pull me off the case. And he’d be right. Twenty years of spotless record—gone in a headline.
Beside me, Katie is a statue of professional poise.
She doesn't squint. She doesn't falter. She walks toward the waiting car with a stride that suggests she spent the morning reviewing case law rather than confessing her soul to her superior.
The “ex-nun” has been buried under a layer of Chicago steel, but I know the truth: her blood is still singing the same dark song as mine.
She has just unleashed a forbidden hunger, and I am the monster patient enough to take what remains.