Page 20 of The CEO’s Assistant

She went back out to the antechamber. Wren looked up. For a moment neither of them said anything, and the quiet in the room got very loud. Cordelia had the sudden, unsteady sense that Wren already knew exactly why she had come back.

"I'd like to see the document set," she said, because it was the only sentence available to her that was safe.

Wren reached for the binder at the edge of the desk and passed it up to her. Cordelia took it. She meant to carry it back to her office; she had every intention of it, right up until the moment came to turn. She didn’t turn. She opened the binder there instead, at the side of Wren's desk, in the lamplight, and looked down at the open page.

Wren went back to her own work or at least made the motions of it. The typing had a false sound now, too even, too careful, and after a few seconds it stopped altogether. Neither of them said anything about that.

They were close. Neither of them had planned it; it was only what came of two people working late over the same desk, bent into the same small pool of lamplight. But it left Cordelia standing nearer to Wren than she had let herself stand to anyone in eight years, and every part of her had come awake to it. It was like standing at the edge of a picturesque cliff, the body pulling back and leaning out in the same breath.

She was aware of all of it at once. Wren's breathing, gone shallow and even, the breathing of a person holding very still. The loose hair fallen forward off one shoulder, and the bare nape of her neck beneath it, the place Cordelia had looked at once, a long time ago, across a doorway, and made herself stop looking at. The warmth of her, close in the cool room. The faint clean smell of her, soap and the long day under it. Cordelia read the top line of the page four times and took in none of it, and felt her own pulse going in her throat, and understood that she had stopped, some while ago, being the one in charge of this.

"Is something wrong with it?" Wren asked. She meant the document set. Her voice had dropped, though, gone quieter and more careful than the question needed, and she did not look up from her screen.

"No," Cordelia said. "It's good work." It was the truest and most useless thing she could have said. Neither of them moved.

She looked down at the bent head beside her and let herself understand, all the way, what she was about to do. She was going to reach across eight years of keeping her life deliberately unchanged and change it. She was going to do it here, to a woman who worked for her, in the building she had raised up to be the one safe and finished thing she owned. She knew every reason it was a mistake; she had built a career on knowing the reasons things were mistakes. And none of it weighed anything against how badly she wanted to be nearer to Wren than the desk would let her be.

Whatever she had carried up here had left her chest a while ago. It was in her mouth now, and all down the front of her, and it had quietly taken over the work of moving her.

I am going to do this.

The thought arrived, and it did not frighten her, which was the strangest thing about an already strange night. The rule had held for thirty years because she had needed it to. Now that it was going, she felt no fear at all. Only relief, enormous and very quiet, and the relief was the one part of the night that frightened her.

She closed the binder and set it down without looking at it. She came around the corner of the desk. Wren was already rising to meet her, already turning, as if she had waited out the whole long pretense of the document set for just this, and Cordelia understood that the waiting had not started tonight for her either. It had started a long time ago. Wren had only been better at hiding it than Cordelia had believed a person could be.

A little distance was left between them, the last of it, and Cordelia was the one who closed it. The kiss was not soft. Wren’s mouth opened under hers without hesitation, their tongues sliding against each other, wet and urgent, their teeth catching on each other’s lips in a scrape that pulled a raw sound from Cordelia’s throat. The taste of her—coffee and something sharper, like the end of a long day—flooded in, and Cordelia's hands fisted into the fabric of Wren's blouse, yanking it free from her waistband. Several buttons popped loose, scattering across the floorboards, and Cordelia shoved the material aside to palm the heat of Wren's skin, her thumbs dragging over the lace edge of her bra.

They stumbled the short distance through the doorway, their bodies locked and hips knocking against the frame. Cordelia's desk caught Wren's thighs from behind, and Cordelia pushed, hard, until Wren's ass hit the polished wood and her legs spread to pull Cordelia between them. The desk lamp from the antechamber cast a narrow beam across the surface, catching on the delicate curve of Wren's collarbone as Cordelia's mouth left hers to softly bite down the line of her neck. Fabric snagged under their impatient fingers. Wren's skirt was shoved up and panties were dragged sideways, and Cordelia's own jacket got shrugged off one shoulder without ceremony. Cordelia’s need clawed too deep within her to take off all of hers or Wren’s clothes.

Wren's hands found Cordelia's breasts through her shirt, squeezing them, her thumbs circling the peaks of her nipples until they stiffened against the cotton. Cordelia ground forward, rocking her pelvis against Wren's exposed core, the friction through her pants sending sparks up her spine. Eight years without physical intimacy had left her raw, and now every brush of skin against her skin lit like dry tinder. She felt Wren's wetness seeping through, hot and slick, and the realization that this want matched her own, raw and unfiltered and feral, made her pulse hammer against her ribs. Cordelia's fingers worked Wren's bra clasp free, tugging the cups down to bare her breasts, and she sucked one nipple into her mouth, her tongue lashing while her hand slipped lower.

Wren arched, breath hitching, as Cordelia's fingers slipped beneath the fabric of Wren’s panties and parted her folds. Cordelia found the swollen clit already throbbing with desire. She started rubbing the sensitive nub softly, then she added more pressure as she pushed her middle finger inside her. She added her ring finger and stroked inward and upward, hitting her swollen G-spot. Two more strokes and Wren bucked, her pussy clenching around Cordelia’s fingers deep inside her, sticky juices coating Cordelia's knuckles. The scent hit sharp and musky, driving Cordelia lower. She dropped to her knees on the rug, dragging Wren's hips to the desk edge and shoved the panties aside again. She buried her face between Wren’s spread thighs. Her tongue dragged flat over Wren's slit, lapping from entrance to clit in one long pull, then spearing inside. Wren's hands tangled in Cordelia's hair, pulling her closer, and Cordelia fucked her with it, deep, relentless thrusts interspersed with pressured sucks that made Wren's thighs tremble around her ears.

"Fuck," Wren gasped, the single word fracturing into a moan as Cordelia added fingers again, two pumping in rhythm with her tongue's assault on that tight bundle of nerves. Wren's pussy fluttered, the walls gripping, and thick come coated Cordelia's chin as she orgasmed hard. Wren’s hips jerked, and a gush of wetness flooded Cordelia's mouth. Cordelia didn't ease off just yet, licking through the aftershocks and drawing it out until Wren's grip on her shoulder loosened and her name slipped out low and broken against the air. "Cordelia."

Cordelia rose, mouth slick, and she swiped at it with the back of her hand. She shoved her own pants down just enough to free her hips. Wren's hand found her immediately, fingers sliding through the soaked curls to press her thumb against her clit. She circled it, alternating pressure, driving Cordelia wild. Before Cordelia could adjust, Wren pushed two fingers inside without preamble, then added a third. The stretch burned sweet after so long being untouched, and Cordelia's head dropped forward, her forehead resting against Wren's shoulder as those fingers curled and pumped. Wren's thumb worked her clit in tight circles, relentless, and the pressure built fast—too fast, her body betraying every wall she'd built to guard her against this kind of thing. She ground down hard on Wren's hand, her pussy clenching and inner muscles fluttering around the intrusion as an orgasm ripped through her. It hit in waves that shook her thighs, a low cry escaping her throat as she flooded Wren's palm, the release so sharp it bordered on pain before it melted into liquid relief.

They stayed locked together a moment longer, Wren's fingers still buried deep inside her. Cordelia's mouth found Wren’s again for a slower, softer kiss, and Cordelia relished the thought of Wren tasting herself on Cordelia’s tongue. Wren pulled back first, just enough to meet Cordelia's eyes in the half-illuminated space, and the shared hunger lingered like static. Cordelia pulled up her pants and straightened her clothes with unsteady hands, the desk surface still warm beneath them. She would need much longer to put back her composure.

Wren pushed herself off the corner of the desk and set about putting herself back together, quick and careful, the same as she did everything, though tonight her movements had a tremor under it, and she did not look up while she worked. A button was gone from her blouse. She found the gap, considered it a second, and skipped to the next button without a word. Cordelia understood that she was being given space. That Wren had decided to leave it to her to say what this had been and why it had happened, and that Wren would take whatever she was offered without questioning for more.

The truth was that Cordelia had no idea what it had been. She knew only that she had breached the one boundary she had promised herself for thirty years she would never do. And she felt no regrets or desire at all to take it back.

"You should go home," Cordelia said. It came out too low and too gentle, the wrong words in the wrong tone for the moment, and she watched them land on Wren and answer nothing.

Wren lifted her bag from the floor and slung it over her shoulder, then straightened her shirt. "Goodnight, Cordelia."

Not ma'am, not Ms. Hale. She said her name the same way she'd said it a few minutes before with her mouth against Cordelia's skin, just less frenzied, and then she crossed to the elevator bay and was gone. Cordelia was left behind, alone, in the quiet, with the hum of the air conditioning her only company.

She should have felt herself closing back up, felt her emotional fortress rebuilding itself. That was how it always went. Give her a few minutes alone after any hard thing and the composure came back on its own, steady as a tide returning to a line it knew, and she'd be herself again by the time she reached the street. She stood at the window and waited for the familiar feeling. It did not come.

Below her, a layer of fog hung over the harbor. The sky and water were the same ash gray color, the cranes and the far shore scrubbed out of view, and only the nearest pilings still showed, black and wet at the foot of the building. A ferry was crossing the channel, certain of its route where she could see nothing, its running lights swollen into soft rings by the fog. She watched it the whole way over and lost it at the end, where the far shore should have been visible.

The thing that frightened her was not what she had done. It was that some buried part of herself had wanted this for weeks and had only waited, patient as stone, for the rest of her to catch up and give permission. She felt lighter than she had in years, and that was worse. For eight years, she had been building herself into a woman who needed no one, because needing was the thing that had once nearly finished her. Tonight, she had let a woman touch her and she had only wanted more of it. And most telling, no catastrophe had come. She had always believed the wall was the one thing holding her upright. She had believed that the day it failed, she would go down under it. But she hadn’t.

Underneath all of that was the thing she thought about last because it was the hardest to look at. Wren had needed nothing from her tonight. Cordelia had spent thirty years being the one who was needed. She had made a whole life out of being the person others could not manage without because being the one who was needed had always kept her safe but being wanted was a thing she had no protection from. Wren had wanted her, and not for any of the reasons people usually wanted Cordelia Hale. Wren just wanted her. A tired woman in a dark office who'd had nothing to give that night but herself. She had built no defense against that. It had never once occurred to her that she might need one.

There was the matter of the morning, too, and she made herself look at it, uncomfortable as it was. Wren worked for her. She would be sitting at that desk on Monday and every day after, and Cordelia had no notion of how she was meant to walk past her with a cup of coffee and a schedule as if the night had happened to two other women in some other building. She had watched careers come apart over less. She had no plan for this, none, and she was a woman who had a plan for everything. For the first time in longer than she could remember, she was going to wake in the morning and not know what she would do.