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Ira shrugs. So lackadaisical. Devil may care. It shouldn’t be so attractive. “The Anderssens want to sell. If the council isn’t happy, we make changes. The worst that happens is this gets dragged out until we’ve bent over backward so many times our spines permanently curl. I’ve got a good chiropractor, though.” She dumps the last of the bottle into her cup.

“Seems like we should be able to do whatever we want to the property we own.”

She snorts. “We?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

We’re silent again. This happens every time we start to talk. It’s gotten worse these past few days, too. Used to be that she would give me a backhanded compliment, I would throw one back at her, and we went on our merry ways. Now that we’re forced together, however, we’re discovering that it’s difficult to talk about anything but the work at hand.

There are only two things we have in common. The first is that we’re both Dommes, but that’s inappropriate to talk about.

And then there’s that huge elephant in the room that’s been destroying the furniture and shitting all over the desk for about a week now.

She catches a look from me. Does she know what I’m thinking about? “Kathleen…”

“Yeah?”

Ira flicks a pencil against the table, occasionally tapping the edge of her laptop. “Are we ever gonna talk about it?”

I feign ignorance, although my cheeks redden and my throat goes dry. “About what?” Shit. My smile is too fake.

Her eyes narrow at me. “You know what.”

My smile fades. “Ira…”

“I know. It’s embarrassing.”

I sit back in my seat and try not to flinch. “Why would you bring that up?”

She doesn’t respond. No look. No shrug. Nothing but that pencil tapping. Faster now. Ritta-ritta-ritta. Smacking me right on my nerves.

Teeth chomp my lip before I speak again. “Hey, that was a long time ago. We were kids.”

One eyebrow goes up. I hate it when she does that.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Ira.”

Sighing, she sits up in her seat, hand rubbing her jaw and sending out a new wave of cologne in my direction. Fuck me, it’s so musky. Bit spicy. Every time I’ve smelled it this week, I’ve gotten tingles. Asshole.

“You’re right. We were kids. End of story.”

Yeah, kids who instantly started boning after five minutes. Kids get horny, but sheesh. That’s fast even for me. Probably for her, too.

That pencil is flicking against the table again. Ritta. Tatta. Ritta-tatta. Before I know it, I snatch my hand across the table and stifle her hand with mine.

It’s warm.

The tapping stops, but now we’re looking at each other, my heart stilling in my chest and her breath snapping through her nostrils. Just now, I feel something. Like a crack of static electricity piercing us both.

Is that what they call a spark?

Fuck, I’m drunk. Except I’m not. I had three small cups of wine. I’m relaxed, but I’m barely tipsy. I have complete cognitive control. I have no right to blame anything on alcohol. I could drive home. Or I could keep my hand on Ira’s, fingers pressing into her stiff knuckles.

I had no idea her hands were so strong and sturdy. They don’t really look it. The big picture of “Ira Mathison” is a woman whom you’re not entirely sure identifies as a woman. She often binds, I have deduced. I hear she packs every other day, and evidence from the club says as much. She’s always in men’s clothing, be they tailored suits or jeans and a collared suit. She makes the media call her they/them, but people she knows, like me, continue to use feminine pronouns and she’s fine with it. Her father calls her “him” in front of others. She hangs out with her father’s buddies in their exclusive fraternity club. Even as close as I am to Ira now, I still don’t understand entirely what’s going on. But I want to. I have a million questions, all in a quest to get to know her better.

Yet is that how I see it? The female parts of her that she continues to embrace, even when she’s confusing the rest of the world? Because she’s certainly not confused.