“And you’ve stopped drinking coffee.”
Her chin lifts a fraction. “I didn’t realize my breakfast habits were of strategic interest.”
“Everything is of strategic interest.”
“Even nausea?” she asks, too quickly.
Silence. A single misstep. Small enough to recover. Large enough to mark.
I don’t move. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“No.”
Her hand lifts and settles against the edge of the desk beside me. Close enough to shift the air between us. Close enough that distance becomes intentional rather than incidental.
“Now, Alessandro, why have youreallycalled me here?” she says.
My mouth curves. “You want to know?”
Evie’s eyes flicker away from my mouth to my hands, then to the expanse of the room behind me. Her fingers flex on the edge of the desk. She is trying, in real time, to evaluate whether she wants this conversation to pivot to sex or whether she wants it to stay on neutral, professional ground.
I let the silence carry. I always do, with her. She thinks it’s a contest of will, but I’ve never lost a waiting game in my life.
She blinks, then says, “Show me what you got.”
I rise from the chair slightly, enough to close the space between us. She holds her ground. I place both palms flat on the desk next to her hand, so that she has to either step closer or back away.
She steps forward. Micro inches. Enough that her scent reaches me, clean skin and the trace of her shampoo. And underneath that, heat, the animal warning of her body recalibrating to threat or fuck mode.
Her lips are parted, tongue pressed behind her teeth. “I haven’t figured out why you brought me here. But I know it’s not just to watch me flinch.”
She’s testing. Her challenge tastes different now. Not the brittle bite of our first weeks, but something else. Like she wants to see what breaking apart would actually feel like, as if she’s already tested the bone in private and found the idea of a hairline fracture livable.
“Maybe I did bring you here to see you flinch,” I say. “Have you considered that possibility?”
Evie’s mouth softens. “Then you’ll have to try harder.”
I straighten to my full height, and her eyes track every inch. The room contracts around a single axis: her pulse at the hollow of her throat. The geometric line of her jaw, sharp with intent. I could push her until she yields. Or I could wait one more second, watch her calibrate her next move, hold the knife’s edge of this moment until it bleeds.
She says, “Are you going to fuck me on that desk, Alessandro, or just stare until I dissolve?”
Good distraction.
One I can’t help but fall into.
I consider making her wait, but there is an honesty in her impatience. A dare, a demand. There are more ways than one to fracture someone. Sometimes you press until the grain gives, and sometimes you call the splinter to the surface until it wants to be pried out.
I close the two steps between us. She’s already braced, either to spring or to dig in harder. I tilt her chin, study the dilation of her pupils, the static electricity crackling off her skin.
“You want it rough tonight,” I say, “but not cruel.”
Her lips pucker, swollen by the pressure of all the words she’s not saying. “I really do want to see what you have.”
I’m not sure she could handle all I have, but I guess we’re about to find out.
My mouth finds her throat, just below the jaw. Her pulse is a visible phenomenon, the tension in her carotid a live wire.
“Keep your hands on the desk,” I say softly.
