Page 17 of Ascension

We slid into a corner booth with clean lines and plenty of privacy. She shrugged out of her vest, curls tumbling forward as she stretched, and my eyes caught the ink on her forearm—a line of script curling into her wrist.

I wanted to read it with my mouth, let my tongue trace every letter as I gripped her round ass.

The waitress dropped sleek leather menus, but Amiyah didn’t look at hers. She tilted her head, watching me instead. “You ever been here before?”

I shook my head. “No, but you haven’t opened your menu, so it looks like you have.”

“Yeah, best cornbread in the city,” she said with an easy smile, dimples flashing. “And I’m a cornbread snob.”

That made me laugh, but my pulse was skipping a beat. “You don’t look like the kind of woman who settles foraverage anything.”

Her eyes flicked up to mine, and the way she smiled wasn’t playful anymore; it was knowing, heated. “Neither do you.”

The words hung between us, sticky and heavy. I shifted in my seat, crossing my legs under the table, suddenly too aware of every inch of my body and hers too.

I’d never imagined what it would feel like to be this close to a woman and want to close the distance between us, but Amiyah made it feel like the most natural thing in the world.

She leaned back against the booth, one arm stretched along the top, her fingers drumming idly. “So, Calla Black,” she said, her voice dropping lower, “what do you do for fun when you’re not running empires and making men twice your age sweat in meetings?”

I smirked, but my throat was dry. “Depends. You asking professionally… or personally?”

Her gaze dipped to my lips and back up, slow, deliberate. “Personally.”

The air thickened. My chest rose and fell too fast, and I had to grip my water glass just to ground myself.

Was I imagining this? The pull? The flirtation? The way her eyes traced me like she was already undressing me in her head? Or had I misread entirely what I thought was between her and James?

Because sitting here, now, the buzz of the lunch crowd moving through the diner as gold light radiated off her curls, I couldn’t shake the thought that the real spark wasn’t across the site earlier.

It was across this booth.

And it was about to set me on fire.

I cleared my throat, trying to reel my thoughts back to safer ground. “Actually,” I said, circling back to the question she’d asked earlier at the site, “this project is the first time James and I are working together, but we do know each other, sort of.”

Her brow arched in curiosity.

“James is… uh, good friends with my nephew,” I explained carefully. “And his brother, Maverick? He’s married to Ajaih, who’s, um,” I paused, heat climbing into my cheeks, “in a polycule with my brother Caleb.”

The words tumbled out faster than I wanted them to, like a string of dominoes I couldn’t stop once they started falling. I wasn’t used to saying it out loud in a business context, and I wasn’t used to trying to distill my family’s complicated dynamics into one neat sentence.

Amiyah blinked, then burst out laughing—not mocking, but warm, full, her dimples cutting deep. “Wow, okay, that’s not what I was expecting.”

I tried to wave it off, but my face was hot. “It sounds more complicated than it is.”

“No,” she interrupted, leaning forward, eyes gleaming. “It sounds amazing. Honestly? A polycule sounds like a dream come true.”

I froze, fork halfway to my mouth. My brain hiccupped, and I just stared at her.

A dream come true?

Her words echoed in my head, drowning out the clatter of dishes, the hum of conversation around us.

Because I hadn’t expected that.

And for the first time in a long time, I stopped eating.

Stopped moving.