We're two feet apart. I can see his pulse in his throat, hammering. The gold in his eyes has gone dark — not cold, not calculated, something else entirely. His chest rises and falls harder than it should for a man standing still.
He reaches for my wrist. Not hard, not rough, just firm. I go still. Look at his hand on my skin. Then at his face. I could pull free. He'd let me. I know that with absolute certainty — if I pulled, he'd release me, and the argument would continue on different ground.
I don't pull free.
He places my hand flat on his chest. His heart is hammering fast, hard, and undeniable.
"Whatever this is between us, you feel it too."
It's not a command. It's not a performance of dominance. It's an admission. This man who controls everything is standing in front of me with my hand on his racing heart telling me he can't control this.
He kisses me.
Not like the wedding — that kiss was a question, gentle, giving me room to retreat. This kiss has no room in it. This is weeks of wanting, of hallways and zippers and 3am kitchens and the almost that never quite became a yes. His mouth covers mine and the anger in my chest converts to heat so fast I lose my breath.
I kiss him back. Fist his shirt. Pull him closer. His hands — God, his hands. My waist. My back. Gripping my ass through the dress and pressing me against him and the sound I make into his mouth is involuntary and undignified and I don't care.
He lifts me onto the desk. Papers scatter. A glass tips and neither of us flinches at the sound of it hitting the floor. He steps between my legs and I wrap them around him and I can feel him — hard against me, straining, the evidence of what this is doing to him pressed exactly where I need it.
"Nico —"
"Tell me to stop."
"Don't you dare."
His mouth finds my neck. My head falls back. His teeth graze the spot below my ear and my hips rock forward against him without permission from my brain. His hands slide up my thighs, pushing the dress, and I'm reaching for his belt —
A knock on the door.
Lex's voice, flat and professional. "We have a problem."
Nico freezes. Forehead against mine. Eyes closed. Both of us breathing hard enough to hear it, tangled on his desk with scattered papers and a broken glass and the taste of each other on our lips.
"This isn't over," he says.
"No," I say. "It isn't."
He pulls back. Straightens his shirt. His eyes are still dark, still burning, but the boss is reassembling over the man like armor clicking into place. I slide off the desk. Smooth my dress. Walk past Lex in the doorway with my face flushed and my lips swollen and my thighs still feeling the ghost of his hands.
Lex's expression doesn't change. Professional. But his eyes flick to the desk — the scattered papers, the broken glass — then back to me. He knows. Of course he knows. Lex knows everything.
I make it to the bathroom down the hall before I stop walking. Lock the door. Press my palms flat on the marble counter and stare at myself in the mirror. My reflection is a mess: flushed cheeks, swollen mouth, hair where his hands were. I look like a woman who was just kissed within an inch of her life on a desk in a crime boss's office.
I am that woman. And the terrifying part isn't that it happened — it's that if Lex hadn't knocked, I wouldn't have stopped it. I would have let him push the dress further. I wouldhave reached for his belt. I would have let him take me right there on the mahogany with the door unlocked and the empire five feet away and I wouldn't have cared.
I splash water on my face. Straighten my hair. Put myself back together the way I've been putting myself together since I was sixteen — efficiently, ruthlessly, piece by piece. By the time I walk out, I look like a woman who had a heated argument with her husband.
Only my pulse knows the truth.
* * *
My room. Door locked. Back against the wood.
I can still feel him. His mouth on my neck. His hands gripping my thighs. The hard press of him between my legs and the sound he made when I rocked against him — low, rough, a sound that came from a place he doesn't show anyone.
I'm shaking. Not from the argument. Not from the interruption. From the wanting that didn't resolve, that has nowhere to go, that is filling every cell of my body with the specific torture of almost having what you need.
I close my eyes. Press my head back against the door. My hand slides down my stomach. I know what I'm doing. I'm choosing this, not because I can't help it but because I want to. Because the memory of his hands is still on my skin and I need to follow it to its conclusion even if he's not here to take me there.