Page 65 of For the Plot

“So you haven’t had a one-night stand since your wife died?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t like being touched by people who don’t fucking know me.”

I nod slowly. I can feel the tension building like a storm cloud between us. It’s in the air. The silence. The throb low in my belly that won’t go away no matter how deep I breathe. I want to ask him if I fucking know him. If I’ll be allowed to touch him.

He shifts in his chair, leg brushing mine beneath the table. It’s not an accident. “What about you?” he asks. “You miss it?”

“Yes,” I quickly confess. “I miss being kissed like I’m about to be undone.”

His lips part. Just a breath.

“I miss teeth on my neck. Hands gripping my hips. Someone who knows how to use their mouth without asking for directions.”

Reece adjusts in his seat like he’s too aware of his own body now.

“I miss not having to pretend I don’t want it,” I add. “I miss someone looking at me like they’ve waited all damn day to get inside me.”

His hand clenches around his glass. I know I’m pushing. I want to push.

“You ever think about?—”

“Yes.”

I blink. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

He leans forward, elbows on his knees, his voice low and thick. “You were going to ask if I’ve thought about fucking you.” He studies me. His voice drops to something darker. “The answer is yes.”

I swallow. Hard.

“I think about it when you walk past my office and I see the gentle sway of your hips. When you wear your hair up, leaving your neck exposed. When you sit across from me in meetingsand pretend you don’t know every man in the room is staring at your mouth.”

He pauses, his eyes settling on me like he’s waiting for me to break. “But I stare at your throat. Because that’s where I want to put my hand when you come.”

The air’s gone. Evaporated. I can't move. I can't even fake a comeback. He casually leans back in his seat, like he didn’t just rip the breath from my lungs.

“And you?” he asks calmly. “Do you ever think about what my hands would feel like between your thighs?”

“Yes.”

He exhales like the sound of my answer pulls the breath from his lungs.

I rest my hands on the table. “I think about your voice. What it would sound like when you’re close. I think about what you’d say when I’m begging you to come inside me.”

His jaw flexes. His breath comes slower now. Tighter.

“I think,” I add, my voice a whisper, “about what it would feel like to be completely at the mercy of a powerful man who never loses control… until me.”

“And I think, that if we don’t leave this room right now,” he says, standing up in a rush, “I’m going fuck you so thoroughly this entire restaurant is going to hear you scream my name.”

I stare at him as I stand up and take a step toward him. “And what happens if we leave?” I whisper.

His eyes drag up my body like a hungry wolf, his body towering, looming, the barely leashed hunger in his gaze burning hotter than anything he’s said all night. He reaches his hand out, brushing my hair away from my face.

“Then I’m going to ruin you so thoroughly, so deeply for any other man, my name will be burned into the back of your throat with how loud you scream it.”