Page 43 of Wells

My chest pulls tight. Heat moves through me without logic, without sex anywhere near the surface. It's her voice, the cadence, the way she tilts her head when she greets me.

"You couldn't shake me if you tried." There's more truth to that than I want to admit.

"You okay?"

Her tone is careful now, guarded without going cold. She's reading me, trying to figure out what changed between us. She'll never know that I fucked my employee and imagined it was her.

"I'm fine." My voice stays steady. "I've just got a lot going on."

She relaxes. I watch it happen in real time, her shoulders dropping, her hands coming to rest in her lap. Tonight she's wearing the black camisole again, not the oversized T-shirt she had on the other night. She looks good in it. She looks good in anything.

"What can I do for you tonight? Do you want me to run my hand up my thigh, like this?" Her finger slowly traces up the inside of her thigh. She licks her red lips.

Goddammit.

I lean back in my chair and let my eyes close for a second. I came here to cut the line. I am doing the opposite, pulling her closer. Whatever this is, it's supposed to stay on this screen. Lately it doesn't. It follows me into the office and settles next to a woman who has nothing to do with it.

"Let's wait," I say. "I want to apologize for Sunday first."

"You don't have to apologize to me, Midnight. I'm here for your pleasure."

"I do. I cut it short because of a work meeting I couldn't get out of, and some personal shit came up. I didn't handle it well."

None of it is a lie. All of it skips the truth.

She doesn't push. That's part of what hooks me. She doesn't demand explanations or reassurance. She just meets me where I am.

"I get it. But thank you for saying that."

We talk, not about sex or fantasies. She tells me about her week, a customer who tried to haggle her down to nothing, and how she talked him back up without him noticing.

I catch myself smiling at the screen like an idiot.

"You're good," I tell her.

"I have to be." She pauses, the kind of pause where she's deciding whether to hand me something real. "Nobody ever gave me anything I didn't fight for."

It lands somewhere I keep walled off. I want to ask who made her fight that hard. I don't, because things are getting too deep, too personal, as it is. And because I already know I'd remember the answer. Nothing good would come from me knowing who hurt her. I carry grudges.

"What about you? You ever fight for anything, or does it all fall in your lap?"

I huff a laugh. "Nothing falls in my lap. I work for all of it. I fight. But I fight quietly. You wouldn't know until it's already cost you."

"Ah. The silent assassin, huh?"

"Something like that."

''And now?"

I let the silence answer. She lets me.

I want this more than I wanted her body. That's the part I can't get past. I built a whole arrangement to keep a woman at arm's length, and here I am at one in the morning, not wanting to hang up.

And tonight I finally let myself name the thing I've been circling for weeks. It isn't the show, and it isn't even her. It's who I get to be with her.

With Peoria, the armor comes off, and I don't miss it. I'm softer with her than I have let myself be with anyone in my entire adult life, and the soft version isn't the weak one I always assumed he'd be. He's the one I would choose, if choosing were ever safe. That's why I keep logging on, not for the orgasm I could buy from anyone, but for the one hour I get to set the whole thing down.

That scares me more than the wanting does. Wanting her body fits inside the frame I built. Wanting to be unguarded fits nowhere, because unguarded is the exact thing that has cost me every time I've allowed it.