Noah’s hand comes down over hers. His palm is warm, his fingers long enough to swallow her paint-stained knuckles, pinning her hand and the pen flat to the scarred wood of the desk.
The contact is a live wire. It travels up his arm, seizes his breath in his chest. Her skin is cool from the rain outside, but underneath, a furnace pulse beats against his own.
Ava doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t move at all. Her sea-green eyes widen, just a fraction, the challenge in them deepening into something else—a shock of recognition, a silent, yielding question.
The office is utterly still. The hum of the fluorescent light overhead becomes a roar. He can smell the damp wool of his own cardigan, the old paper, and beneath it, the clean, rain-fresh scent of her skin.
“You…” he starts, but his voice is gravel. He has no next word.
“I what?” Her voice is softer than he’s ever heard it. It isn’t a challenge. It’s an invitation.
His thumb shifts, a millimeter, tracing the ridge of her thumb ring. The silver is cool, the band snug against her skin. He feels the hard line of every one of her knuckles beneath his palm. This is the confession. Not in the margins of a book, but here: his hand claiming what it has wanted since she first looked at him in that lecture hall.
Heat pools, low and urgent, in his gut. His cock, already half-hard from her proximity, thickens fully against the constraint of his jeans. It’s a blunt, aching pressure he cannot hide. The wool of his cardigan feels suddenly stifling, a costume that no longer fits.
Ava’s gaze drops from his eyes to his mouth, then lower, to the tense line of his shoulders, the white-knuckled grip of his other hand on the desk edge. A faint, pink flush blooms across her fair skin, starting at the hollow of her throat and rising. Her lips part on a silent inhale.
She turns her hand, slowly, under his. Not to break the contact, but to change it. Her palm comes up to meet his, her fingers sliding between his, lacing them together. The pen is trapped between their joined palms, a metal spine.
“See?” she whispers. The word is almost soundless. “You’re not just a ghost.”
Noah leans forward. It’s not a decision. It’s a gravitational pull. The worn wood of the desk presses into his hips. His glasses slip down his nose, and he doesn’t push them back. Her face is inches from his now. He can see the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose, the darker ring of green around her pupils, the damp catch of her lower lip between her teeth.
“What are you doing to me?” The words are a raw whisper against her lips, a confession breathed into the space between them.
Ava’s exhale shudders out, warm over his mouth. Her sea-green eyes hold his, unblinking. “Finding you,” she whispers back.
Her free hand comes up, her paint-stained fingers brushing the frame of his glasses, pushing them gently up the bridge of his nose. The touch is deliberate, intimate. It steadies the world and tilts it at the same time.
Noah’s other hand is still a white-knuckled fist on the desk edge. He makes himself release it. His palm lands flat on the wood, an inch from the open book of his own marginalia. The surrender is absolute.
He dips his head, his forehead coming to rest against hers. The wire rims of his glasses press cool between them. He can feel the frantic beat of her pulse where their temples meet. His own heart is a deep, heavy drum in his chest.
“This is…” he starts, but the sentence has no end. Professional. Wrong. Inevitable.
“I know,” she says, and her nose brushes his as she speaks. Her lips are so close the movement is almost a kiss. Almost.
The trapped pen is a hard line of reality between their joined palms. His cock aches, a thick, urgent pressure against his zipper. He shifts his hips back, a fraction, to relieve it, and the movement presses him harder into the desk’s edge. The bite of pain is clarifying.
Ava’s lashes flutter closed. She turns her face, just enough that her mouth grazes the corner of his. The contact is electric, a spark that arcs straight down his spine. Her lower lip is soft, slightly chapped.
“Ava.” Her name is a plea and a warning.
She pulls back, just enough to look at him. Her gaze travels over his face—his mouth, his jaw, the tension in his throat. “You’re thinking,” she says, her voice low. “Stop thinking.”
She leans in again. This time, her lips meet his fully.