Page 35 of The CEO’s Assistant

"Okay," Wren said. She guided Cordelia backward, one hand at her hip, until the backs of Cordelia's knees met the edge of the bed. Cordelia sat. The mattress gave under her weight with a familiar sound, and the familiarity of it was almost unbearable—the same sheets, the same give of the mattress springs, the same angle of lamplight across the comforter. But these were different hands, a different woman, even a different version of herself. Cordelia intentionally didn’t look at the photograph of Eleanor above the bed.

Wren knelt, peeling off Cordelia’s socks one at a time, setting them beside the nightstand with the care of someone who understood that order mattered to Cordelia, that disorder in her physical space was a kind of violence. Her thumbs pressed into the arch of each foot, briefly, and Cordelia's breath caught at how good it was, how stupidly good, such a small thing.

Then Wren stood and unfastened Cordelia's pants, drew the zipper down, and eased the fabric over her hips. Cordelia lifted herself just enough for Wren to pull them free. The underwear went with them. And then Cordelia was naked on the edge of her own bed. It was impossible for her to not notice that Wren was still fully dressed, still in her sweater and soft pants, and the imbalance of it made Cordelia's throat tight.

"You too," Cordelia said. Her voice came out rougher than she expected.

Wren looked at her for a moment, then she undressed, efficiently, without performance or ceremony, and Cordelia saw the lean lines of her: the too-prominent ribs, the clavicles sharper than they should have been, the body that grief had thinned over time. Wren unbuckled her belt and stepped out of her pants. She stood in her fitted briefs, and she was beautiful, the way the light caught her curves. Cordelia wanted to say something about the weight she'd lost but didn’t. She left it for another night.

Wren turned down the comforter and guided Cordelia back against the pillows. The sheets were cool on her skin. Cordelia lay with her head on the pillow and her hair fanned against the white cotton, and Wren was above her, one knee on the mattress, then both, settling over her with a slowness that was deliberate. Wren kissed her. It was different this time from the office and the coastal house. It wasn’t fueled by a sense of urgency or hunger. Wren's mouth moved against hers with a tenderness that made Cordelia's hands come up to Wren's waist, and Wren let her hold on, let her grip the warm skin at the curve of her hip. Wren's tongue touched hers and withdrew and came back, and the rhythm of it was like breathing. Cordelia felt the kiss move across her body. Down her throat, across her collarbones, into the space between her ribs where the ache lived. She kissed back, and she let it consume her. Her world narrowed to just Wren's mouth, Wren's breath, Wren's hand coming up to cradle the back of her skull, her fingers threaded into her hair, holding her like she was someone precious.

Wren's mouth moved to her jaw, then her neck, and landed in the hollow above her clavicle, where the skin was thin and the pulse was visible. Cordelia felt Wren's soft lips press against it. She could feel the beat of her own heart under Wren's mouth, and something in her chest cracked open a little further. Wren kissed down to her breastbone, slow, each press of lips a deliberate thing, and Cordelia lay still and let it happen despite stillness being the hardest thing Cordelia had ever done.

Wren's mouth found her breast. She took the nipple slowly, tongue first, then lips, then a gentle pull that sent an electric current straight down through Cordelia's belly and into the heat that had been building. Cordelia's back arched off the mattress, a small and involuntary lift. Wren held in place there with one hand flat on her ribs. Her mouth was warm and thorough, and her other hand traced a path down Cordelia's side, over the curve of her waist, and along the ridge of her hip.

Cordelia made a sound, low and unguarded, and she heard it leave her mouth and was frightened by how much it revealed and by how little she could do to take it back. Wren didn't react to it. She just moved to the other breast and gave it the same attention, the same slow pull with her tongue, and Cordelia's hand tightened in the sheets. She is going to take me apart piece by piece, and I am going to let her, she thought.

Wren kissed lower, down Cordelia's stomach, her lips pressing the soft skin below her navel. Her hands were on Cordelia's hips, her thumbs tracing the curve. Cordelia's thighs shifted, an opening she couldn't control, and Wren settled between them with a patience that was almost unbearable. She pressed her mouth to the inside of Cordelia's thigh, and the warmth and wetness of it made Cordelia's hips tilt up.

"Wren." It was all she could manage, and it still came out cracked.

Wren looked up at her. The lamplight caught the hazel glint of her eyes. In them, Cordelia saw the tenderness and, beneath it, the wall—the place where Wren was keeping herself, the grief she hadn't spoken about, the hurt she was sealing off so she could give this to her without breaking. Cordelia recognized it because she had built the same wall her whole life. In that moment, it was like looking into a mirror she hadn't known existed.

Wren lowered her mouth instead of answering with words. The first touch was slow. Wren's tongue, flat and warm, traced the length of her pussy, and Cordelia's whole body responded with a shudder that started in her hips and radiated outward, her fingers gripping the sheet, her head pressing back into the pillow. Wren found the rhythm that Cordelia's body asked for without Cordelia choosing it, a slow circling that built and built, and Cordelia felt herself climbing toward something she could not control and the fear of it was enormous, the size of the sky, and she did not close her legs or push Wren away or redirect. She stayed open to her, and Wren kept her hands on Cordelia’s hips to steady them.

Cordelia came with Wren's mouth on her, and the orgasm moved through her in a long, rolling wave that she could not have stopped, even if she wanted to. Her body arched and her breath broke. The sound that came from deep inside her throat was raw, almost formless, and she felt tears on her cheeks before she knew she was crying. And in the moment, Cordelia didn't know what she was crying for, whether it was for Eleanor, for herself, for the fact that someone was holding her body and kissing her through her climax, not asking her to be anything other than wrecked. She didn’t think it really mattered why.

Wren did not pull away. She gentled the rhythm and slowed her tongue, letting Cordelia come down in stages. The aftershocks moved through Cordelia's body in diminishing waves, each one leaving her more bare, more stripped, more unable to pretend she was anything other than a woman who had just been taken apart by someone else.

And then, because it was instinct for her to be the one in control and giving instead of receiving, Cordelia reached for Wren. Her hands found Wren's shoulders and pulled, trying to draw her up to turn her and give back. Her fingers slid down Wren's arms until she grasped her wrists to guide her lower. She had already shifted her weight to sit up so she could take Wren’s face in her hands, but Wren stopped her hands gently but firmly. She laced her fingers through Cordelia's and pressed both of Cordelia's hands back against the pillow, one on each side of her head, and she held them there.

Wren didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to. That was the beauty of such an exquisitely simple gesture. Cordelia's chest heaved, and her eyes burned. She could feel the tears still wet on her face, and she turned her head to the side, a reflex to seek privacy. Wren let her turn but did not let go of her hands.

"I can't," Cordelia said, and she didn't know if she meant she couldn’t take more while just lying there without giving back or if she meant something else.

"You can," Wren said quietly. She released Cordelia's hands, and Cordelia didn’t move them from where Wren had pinned them against the pillow. She kept her palms up, open.

Wren lowered her head again. This time she was slower, if that was possible. She used her fingers, pushing two inside Cordelia’s pussy, curling them up against the front wall where Cordelia was still sensitive and swollen from her first orgasm. Wren’s tongue found the nub of Cordelia’s clit and stayed there. The dual sensation was devastating—the fullness, the pressure, the warm and wet attention—and Cordelia's hips chased the rhythm that Wren had set. She felt herself building again, faster than before, the second wave already forming before the first had fully receded. She tried to hold it back, the familiar, old reflex: control, contain, and manage the experience. And… she couldn't. Wren's fingers pumped inside her, hitting her G-spot in just the right place, and Wren's mouth was on her clit, and Cordelia was fully, devastatingly, in her body too much to observe herself from the outside.

She came again, and this time there was no sound at all, just her body lifting off the bed, her mouth open wide but silent, her hands twisted in the pillowcase. The orgasm was deeper than the first, lasting longer and rolling through her in layers. Wren held her through all of it, her mouth and hand steady. She didn’t stop until Cordelia's body had given everything it had and gone limp against the sheets. Wren withdrew her fingers and mouth from Cordelia’s body slowly, all of it receding with a gentleness that made Cordelia want to weep all over again.

Wren lay down beside her. She pulled the comforter up over both of them, and the weight of it settled across Cordelia's body like a second skin. Then Wren's arm came across Cordelia's chest, and her body curled against Cordelia's side. Wren pressed her face into the curve of Cordelia's neck, and Cordelia could feel Wren's even breathing against her skin, could feel Wren's wrist resting above her heart. Cordelia could feel the salt from tears drying on her cheekbones and the dampness in her hair. She didn't wipe her face. She just lay with the weight of Wren’s arm around her body. She could feel, through the place where Wren's chest pressed against her ribs, the steadiness of Wren's heartbeat. And beneath the steadiness, she knew what Wren was holding for herself. Cordelia wanted to press her mouth against Wren’s skin to let her know it was okay to let her in, that it was safe to tear down the walls Cordelia could sense. But she didn’t. She knew Wren had given her this one gift, the experience of being cared for without needing to reciprocate, and the least she could do was honor it. Cordelia lay still and let the minutes pass without counting them.

"I should have told you,” Cordelia whispered.

For a moment, Wren said nothing at all. Then she moved her hand off Cordelia's chest and found Cordelia's hand where it lay open on the sheet and put her own over it without lacing their fingers together. "Yeah, I know," she said, and her voice was not steady either.

Cordelia had been bracing for Wren’s reaction, for the questions Cordelia deserved and the ones she couldn’t have answered. But none of them came. The lamp on the table next to the bed glowed softly while Cordelia watched the last of the harbor lights flicker out one after another across the water before she closed her eyes.

18

Chapter 18: Wren

By half past six, the tables were set up along the whole length of the atrium and Wren was taking a lap around the room for the third time, counting place settings she had already counted twice before.

The Phoenix Ridge Cultural Foundation put on one large evening event a year, and this was it. Thirty-seven tables with a little over three hundred invited guests, and the entire year's operating budget raised between seven and eleven o'clock. Hale Capital funded the evening, and Cordelia had been a trustee for eleven years, which was why Wren had spent the last week working on a seating chart arrangement and was now spending her Saturday wearing an earpiece.

The sun wouldn't set until nearly nine, which was the trouble with June. Everything in here had been built for candlelight ambience, and there was an hour and a half of daylight to get through first, so Wren had set the lights to come up in stages from eight forty, slowly enough that nobody would catch it happening.