life that he lived for,” he says.
“If you’re trying to frighten me, I promise that it’s not working.”
His lips twist in the corner. “You have stared into the darkness too. It was one of the first things I saw about you.”
“When did you see me?”
“I always watch you,” he says simply.
“The camera. The one over my desk.”
He inclines his head.
I knew it. “I have to say, that doesn’t feel like a romantic gesture. I’d actually argue it’s questionable behavior.”
“You do not know how much of my day I’ve spent, staring at you, at your desk, your hands on the keyboards, your brows furrowed in concentration. I’d wonder, ‘What is she thinking? What is happening in her day that gives her that strange little smile or frown?’ Yes. I wondered about you. And that is most unusual seeing as I don’t wonder about anyone.”
“Kiss me,” I challenge him. He twists around words and dances from truths. But he can’t evade body language.
He gazes at me as if I’m something he’s never seen. “I tell you how I did a terrible thing, an act akin to patricide, and you offer a kiss.”
“There is much you aren’t saying, so maybe we need to streamline the conversation. Your lips touching mine. What could be simpler?”
For once, I have taken him by total surprise.
“Or more destructive,” he says.
“You kiss me with your eyes every time you look at me.”
“Ah.” He goes utterly still. “Very well, then. Yes. I think I understand.”
“I want you to do it,” I say softly, reaching out my hand. “Please. What can I call you? Aleksander?”
“No, that’s what he used to call me, the bastard who was my father. At boarding school, I was Sander and that, too, never felt right, not exactly.”
“So what do you prefer?”
“Call me whatever you like. You are the exception to my rule. The exception to all my rules.”
“Why?” My voice is breathless, more than a little unsteady.
“If I knew that, I’d be a wiser man than I am now.” His eyes close and his next breath is long, slow, and shuddering. “If I kiss you, will you hold still?”
Hold still if he actually kisses me? The idea of his full lips slanting on mine, his hard chest pushing insistent against my breasts is enough to make me writhe all on its own. “No.”
His gaze snaps to mine.
“How can I promise such a thing? After all, a kiss isn’t one-sided, at least not a good kiss.”
He stands, wiping his hands on his suit pants, his shirt a little wrinkled.
He walks to the window and looks out at nothing but night, seeing only his own ghost face reflection, and my own behind him. He places a hand on the glass and the heat from his skin heats the pane. When he turns, it remains, a foggy imprint.
I move to the end of the bed, hang my feet off, the robe slipping off one shoulder.
He is there then. I don’t even have time to register movement. He braces his hands on either side of the mattress, on the outside of my thighs, and there is no more oxygen in the room. The flame in his expression has sucked it all out.
His lips crush mine as if time has run out. We don’t have the night, or the hours left to the weekend. There is only and ever this moment. No play-acting or showing off. No coy moves. It’s need, pure and raw, urgent and fierce. His lips are cooler than I imagined. A distant place in me registers that thought. Cool except there is his tongue, easing against mine, and the contrast makes me sigh.
The moments when I realize I exist are infrequent. Flashes of realization that I am alive, and this is an actual life that I am living and for those few precious moments I’m on the outside, looking at my whole world and seeing it not for what it normally feels like, an all-consuming crushing adventure rather than a spider’s web tangling me.
And that’s what this is. His lips. My lips. Nothing else is touching. Not hands or bodies. Not even our faces. Only our hungry mouths.
What will happen if I reach out, cradle his cheek with my palm? This man who in so many ways is powerful beyond imagining, in control, who plans everything down to a meticulous degree and yet seems to have no idea that it’s all too much. That everyone needs a moment of letting go.
I don’t think. If I do,