Page 41 of The Devils in the Details

The ceiling did not respond. It had seen worse.

I stayed anyway.

Then Ari moved.

Not a gradual waking. A single, decisive motion—his weight shifting, his arm tightening around my waist, and then I was on my back, and he was over me, and the universe had just narrowed its focus to a single, catastrophic point of contact.

Two hundred and twenty-five pounds. All of it muscle, all of it arranged with the deliberate, unhurried confidence of a man who knew exactly how much space he occupied and was in no hurry to vacate it.

I opened my mouth. Something protest-shaped was assembling itself behind my teeth, something about boundaries and professional standards and the general concept of not waking up in your boss’s bed regardless of how many caramels had been involved.

It evaporated. Completely. The way dew does when the sun hits it, which was ironic because the sun was hitting the shutters and I was currently evaporating for entirely different reasons.

Then Ari kissed me.

Like he’d been thinking about it since the interview. Which he had. I knew this with the absolute certainty of someone who had spent ten days cataloguing every look, every shift, every time those black eyes had dropped to my mouth and then away like the looking itself was a transgression.

I kissed him back.

Like I’d been thinking about it since the interview. Which I absolutely had and would deny under oath in any court that had jurisdiction over the matter, which fortunately was none, because the only court currently in session was the one happening between my ribs and it was delivering a unanimous verdict that sounded suspiciously like the word yes.

His mouth was warm. His beard scraped my chin in a way that registered somewhere below my sternum with the enthusiasm of something that had been waiting for permission and had just received it in triplicate.

One of his hands found the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair, and the pressure of it was specific—not guiding, not suggesting, anchoring, like he was worried I might try to leave and had decided to remove that option from the menu.

I made a sound. Low, involuntary, the kind of sound that my throat produced without consulting my brain, and Ari’s response was immediate—his grip tightened, his mouth opened against mine, and whatever was happening between us crossed a threshold that had no reverse gear.

Then his hands were everywhere.

He undressed us with the efficiency of a man who treated obstacles as problems to be solved rather than inconveniences to be negotiated. My T-shirt went first, pulled over my head with a single motion that left me bare from the waist up. My stretch pants quickly followed.

Then it was chest against naked chest, skin against skin, the heat of him pressing me into the mattress with the weight of something that was not going to be moved anytime soon.

I reached for his pants. My fingers fumbled. Coordination issues. Entirely the fault of the man currently mapping the line of my collarbone with his mouth, because collarbones are structural components, not sensory organs, and yet the way his lips traced the ridge of bone sent a signal to my nervous system that bypassed every filter I had installed.

Ari’s hand caught my wrist. Gentle. Firm. The kind of grip that said I see what you’re doing and I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I’m running this operation and you will sit tight until I say otherwise.

I sat tight.

He slid his lounge pants off and kicked them away, and then gave me his full attention. He worked his way down my chest, his mouth finding my nipple.

The sound I made was not dignified. It was, however, enthusiastic, and Ari’s response was to suck harder, his tongue flat against my sensitive skin, his teeth grazing just enough to register.

His hand slid lower. Down my stomach, over my hip, and then his fingers wrapped around my cock and my brain did that thing where it temporarily suspended all higher functions.

“You’re—” I started, and then his thumb rubbed over the head, spreading the wetness there, and the sentence abandoned ship entirely.

He stroked me. Slow. Thorough. The kind of thorough that suggested he had been thinking about this exact motion for considerably longer than was professionally appropriate, and the realization of that fact did something to my chest that had nothing to do with his hand and everything to do with the way his eyes watched my face.

Black. Dark. Giving away everything now—all the heat, all the obsession, all the things he had been keeping behind a wall for weeks, and that wall was gone and what was left was warm and direct and entirely focused on the way my lower lip trembled when he tightened his grip.

“Fuck,” I said, because language was a construct and constructs were failing.

Ari’s mouth curved against my skin.

Then he was moving, reaching for the nightstand. The drawer opened, closed, and he came back with a bottle of lube and a condom, and my heart started a tempo like it wanted to climb out of my chest.

He coated his fingers. Warm. Slick. His hand pressed between my legs, and the first touch of his finger against my ass made my hips jerk off the mattress.