Another pass and I’m going for broke, all the way as it were, this time, and he must sense it so he leans up and presses his lips to mine. Kisses me in a way I have never been kissed before. Kissed to my soul.

I sit up and slide him in to the hilt, until there is no more, until I have run out of me and he’s run out of him.

Eyes locked and faces facing. It’s intense and burrowing and connected, and I want to look away and but not as much as I want to feel this ribbon unspool between him, me, us, and see. Really see.

Forearms on his shoulders, hands behind his head, and feet held down at his sides. I move. He moves.

Tandem. Tense. Together.

Noise flows from him, the cadence alters when I do. Shift, he hums. Rock, he moans.

Full and hot and perfect and show me what you want, what you like.

Slick skin. Breath rasps.

Seems another shirt is ruined. His hand clamps down on me, splays across my back, pulling me down to him, and I keep moving, and he tastes my shoulders, my neck, holds me there, saying something. Low. I can’t hear.

God, I want to hear.

I want to taste his secrets and feel his sounds and listen to his mouth on me.

Lick his jawline. Sweat and sweet.

Break away and sit up straight and he arches back as he thrusts up into my down. I bend back, my hands flat along his chest. I can feel his thighs tense under me, he is straining and feeling and hitting inside me and rubbing against me in the best oh-please-don’t-let-this-end-too-soon-but-maybe-it-should-because-I’m-exhausted way. Because I’m nearly there.

Hell, I would be there and back again if I weren’t over-thinking this whole thing, if I weren’t determined to see him undone, to do the undoing.

His free hand is at my hip, helping and holding. I have grown so accustomed to the light that every change in his face shows. The blinks. The lip bites. How he watches me, more than looks, like he is studying.

Alarm flickers in me. Then, an idea. I move off him, and his hand holds fast. God, he is breathing so hard; his chest crashes, nostrils flare.

“No…please.” He swallows. He snaps his hand away and looks at it likes it’s done something offensive.

I take his hand and press my lips to it, reassure him.

Nothing is wrong. So much is right.

I spin over him—pausing mentally for a moment to congratulate myself on clearing my three-inch heel over his torso while I’m a hair’s breadth from orgasm and teetering on a panic attack from the enormity of all the things I have not been letting myself think about, the thoughts scratching at the peripherals—keeping his hand in mine, to steady, to tether, together.

Backward, facing away, hiding somewhat, I can admit it, I reach between my legs with one hand and align him with me. It is wet, wetter than I anticipated, and I almost think I should be apologizing to him for some crazy reason—for what, him turning me on?—and I turn my head over my shoulder and watch him as he watches me sink back onto him. It’s sneaky. I don’t think he even knows I have observed. Pretty sure actually, because he didn’t look cool about it at all. Mouth open, eyes rolling back, might’ve bitten his tongue.

I’m still holding his hand, and I bring it to my waist as I roll back onto him. His fingers entwine with mine, and he moves to meet me again and again, and I run my nails up his thigh while he moans and rocks, and then my hand smooths down to below where we join and cups him, plays at his base…and he is frozen.

“Oh…goddamn…” he breathes. My dear, has no one done this for you before?

Well, not that I have done this for anyone before…but I’m me and you are you and, well, I would think people would tend to roll out the red carpet and pull out all the stops…

I keep moving, his breathing changes and suddenly he’s pressed against me, breathing into my hair, my ear, warm on my back I hadn’t even realized was cold. His hand leaves mine and snakes down to touch me so near where I touch him, and then I hear myself, hoarse and breathy and burning, and I’m over the edge, complete. Our rhythm finally falters.

He swells. Curses. Drives into me at least as hard as I have pressed onto him and then throbs and pulses and pushes. Murmurs against my back. Whispers into my spine one of those secrets I want to know.

Time passes. I don’t know how much. Our breathing slows. Finally, eventually, matches.

And I need to move. For many reasons.

I’m boneless, and my knees are numb. If I shift wrongly, I will tear into his skin with my heels. Wiggling, test my strength. It is lacking.

Then I feel him pull away a shoe and run a thumb up my arch. He leans and shifts and uses what was his trapped hand to remove the other. He rubs that foot too.

He pulls me up the bed. I’m spent, and it seems perfectly okay when he’s wrapped around me. I’m tucked into him, and his arm is my pillow, and the shirt still hanging from his wrist is our blanket.

Day of Employment:

384

10:00 a.m.

*

Rudolph

: Changing the old nose bulb. Christmas Eve.

*

Little White Box

: Haunting me.

*

Business

: Not mine.

THIS BOX IS MY Plight Before Christmas. I want to throw back the sash and chuck it out the window. Right after I accidentally back over it with a forklift three times.

It’s not the box that has offended me really. It was just sitting there on her desk.

No, no. It’s the tag on the little white box.

The little box that I have seen once before. The one that came yesterday with my dress, but left with the delivery person.

I lift the flap again, ever so carefully, as if I might trigger a remote spy cam installed to catch nosy assistants.

And, yes, again. I have already looked. I just want it to be different. To say something different.

But there, in perfect, pointed script was the source of my problems.

To: Diana Fralin

No “From.” Just her name.

Not blank, but no signature. Do the same rules apply to her? He doesn’t know what sort of sentiment to use when signing a card for her either?

I know what he said. I really believe him. I do. But the gift…Why?

The card is staring back at me. Mocking me. Making me want to take that damn box and wing it at her so it falls down into her abyss-cup bra and possibly aligns with Aslan in the battle for Narnia.

I can hear Ms. Fralin make her way toward her office. I picture her sauntering and laughing and adjusting and touching up her lipstick all at the same time.

I jump up and away from the box…but not before moving it a fraction of an inch, trying to imitate its exact position pre-nosy fingers.

“Oh, hello, Emma,” she says, stepping into her office. “I had nearly forgotten about our little meeting.”

I gathered as much since you’re nearly thirty minute late for it.

“Do tell. What sort of illicit dealings are you here to meticulously detail for me today? A dinner meeting in Portugal? Free Post-its in Luxembourg?”

My jaw clenches. “Actually, I have generated reports of several now-questionable practices and cross-referenced them with companies who have been on the line for doing similar activities. The results are everything from heavy fines to disgorgement of profits. Some also result in jail time.”

“For steak dinners with officials and palm money to set up phone lines? Please. You make it sound positively salacious.” She rolls her eyes back so far I would expect she might have hit gray matter. Seeing as how eye rolling is about the fastest way to torque me off, I may crack a bicuspid. “We are hardly arms dealers, Emma.”