Her voice cracked on the third sentence. She kept reading anyway—ugly words about empty apartments and the smell of hospital soap, about the way her mother's hand had felt wrong in hers, lighter somehow, already gone. The paragraph was honest in the worst way, bleeding onto the page in broken rhythms she'd never let anyone see. She gripped the paper hard enough to smudge the ink.
His hand found her nape before she finished. Fingers threading through her hair, the same possessive grip as last night—but this time he didn't stop. His thumb pressed into the base of her skull and she lost the thread, the words dissolving on her tongue. She stared at the page and couldn't find a single syllable.
"Keep reading." His voice was low, close to her ear. But his hand was moving, sliding down her spine, pressing each vertebra like he was counting them—seven distinct points of pressure that left trails of heat through her cardigan. Her breath stuttered.
She tried to find her place on the page, but the letters wouldn't hold still. His fingers reached the small of her back, spreading wide, and the paragraph slipped from her fingers. It drifted down beside the chair, settling facedown on the carpet like a confession she couldn't take back. She didn't pick it up.
She turned in the chair. Her knees brushed his thighs—grey wool, warm where she touched. He was standing too close, close enough that she had to tip her head back to see his face. His hand was still on her spine, and she could feel the exact moment his fingers went still, waiting.
This wasn't like last night. She wasn't trembling from collapse, wasn't reaching because she had nothing left. She knew exactly what she wanted—knew it with the same clarity that made her the first to finish every exam, the same precision she'd always used to map her way through every room she entered. It was terrifying in its simplicity.
She leaned in and pressed her lips to his throat.
His pulse jumped against her mouth. A sharp breath left him, not quite steady, and she felt the shudder run through his whole body—a crack in the control she'd never seen him lose. His hands closed around her wrists, but he didn't push her away.
His grip on her wrists tightened, but not to stop her. He pulled her closer—one sharp, desperate motion that slid her off the chair and into the hard line of his body. The kiss came before she could breathe, a rough, immediate claim that stole the air from her lungs and left her dizzy. His stubble scraped her chin, his hand sliding up to cradle her skull, fingers digging into her hair with none of the careful restraint from last night.
She made a sound against his mouth—not protest. Surrender. And he drank it in, tilting her head back, deepening the angle until she was arching into him, pliant and burning. His other hand found her hip, fingers curling into the fabric of her cardigan like he was anchoring himself to something solid.
He broke away, breathing hard. His forehead pressed to hers, his eyes squeezed shut. "I can't—" He didn't finish the sentence. His hands were shaking. She could feel the fine tremor running through his shoulders, the way his chest rose and fell too fast against hers.
"Then don't." Her voice came out steady. Clear. The same clarity that had brought her lips to his throat moments ago. "I'm not."
He opened his eyes. The grey was almost gone, swallowed by dark. He looked at her for a long, trembling moment—then he lifted her easily, setting her on the edge of the desk. Papers scattered under her thighs. She felt the wood solid beneath her, his hands hot on her waist, his body pressing between her knees.
He claimed her mouth again. Slower this time. Deeper. A deliberate unraveling that made her forget where she ended and he began. His hands mapped her: down her ribs, over the curve of her hip, stopping at the hem of her cardigan. His thumb brushed the bare skin of her waist, and she shivered.
He pulled back just enough to meet her eyes. "If I keep going—" His voice was low, rough, barely controlled. A muscle in his jaw jumped.
"Then keep going." She held his gaze, her hands finding his chest, feeling the hard beat of his heart under her palm.
He stilled. His hand was frozen at her hip, his breath ragged. For a long moment, he didn't move. Then he tucked her head under his chin and held her, his arms locked around her back, his body vibrating with the effort of stopping. The clock on the wall ticked. The radiator hissed. She could feel his heart—sharp and fast—pressing through his shirt, through the thin fabric of hers.
"Sophia." Her name, low and shattered, against her hair. He didn't say anything else. He just held her tighter, his fingers curling into the fabric of her cardigan, his breath warm and uneven at her temple. She pressed her palm flat to his chest and felt it—the wild, unsteady rhythm of a man who had just lost a battle with himself and wasn't sure he wanted to win the war.