His rule my sin

Four

I had seventeen perfectly reasonable arguments for why nothing would happen.

I had reviewed all of them. Scholarship. Career. Professional ethics. Basic self-preservation. The fact that this man had stood close enough to feel for two weeks and maintained a self-control so precise it bordered on insulting. I had convinced myself I was manufacturing tension where there was professionalism. That he looked at everyone this way. That I was twenty-two years old and confusing intensity for interest.

Then the elevator stopped between floors and we were alone and the city fell away below us, and every one of my seventeen arguments caught fire and burned.

It started with silence.

Floor 44. Floor 43. Both of us looking forward. Professional. Appropriate.

"You skipped a section today," he said.

"I'll return to it."

"Why did you skip it?"

"I found a name I recognized." I kept my voice even. "I didn't want to make assumptions."

"And yet."

"I haven't opened the file."

"I know." The words were quiet, and something in them made me turn to look at him.

He was already looking at me. He had been, I was certain, since the doors closed.

Up close in the elevator's fluorescent light with nowhere to arrange himself into professional distance, Dominic Russo looked like exactly what he was a man who wanted something he had been meticulously, exhaustingly not allowing himself to take. The tension of it was written in his jaw, his shoulders, the way his eyes moved over my face with that slow, deliberate thoroughness that I felt like a touch.

The elevator lurched. Stopped.

Not on a floor. Between them.

Neither of us reached for the emergency panel.

"Tell me about the file," I said, because talking felt safer than the alternative.

"Monroe-Keller was your father's company." Not a question. Not an evasion. Just the truth, set down plainly. "I know who you are, Isabella. I've known since your application came through."

My name in his mouth. The first time he'd used it. It moved through me like warm water, slow and complete, and I hated how much I felt it.

"Then why "

"Because you deserved to be here. Because your qualifications were exceptional." His voice dropped lower. "And because I have been trying to find a way to tell you the truth since the day you walked into my building."

"What truth?"

He stepped forward.

One step. That was all it took to eliminate the careful professional distance he had maintained for two weeks, and suddenly he was close enough that I had to tilt my head back slightly to hold his gaze, close enough that I could see the exact moment his self-control made its final calculation and came up short.

His hand came up slowly and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingertips grazing the curve of my jaw with a gentleness that was completely at odds with everything hard and controlled about him. My breath caught audibly. His eyes dropped to my mouth.

"That I have been losing the war I've been fighting with myself since the night I met you in Arizona," he said quietly. "And I am tired of pretending otherwise."

"Dominic." His name. Barely a whisper.

"Tell me to stop," he said. "And I will stop. You have my word."

I looked up at him this complicated, dangerous, devastating man and I thought about everything I should say.

I reached up and curled my fingers into his lapel instead.

He kissed me like he'd been starving for it.

Not rushed deep. Thorough and slow and absolutely certain, like a man who had decided something and intended to be complete about it. His hand slid from my jaw to the back of my neck, tilting me into him, and I forgot the elevator and the floors and the file with my father's name and every single reason this was a catastrophic idea. I forgot everything except the specific, devastating way this man kissed like I was something worth being careful with.

When we finally broke apart, my back was against the wall, his forehead pressed to mine, both of us breathing like we'd surfaced from deep water.

"I should not have done that," he said.

"No," I agreed. I didn't let go of his lapel. "Do it again."

He made a low sound that I felt more than heard and kissed me again, softer this time, his thumb tracing slow circles at the nape of my neck, and I melted in a way I was absolutely going to be embarrassed about later.

The elevator shuddered back to life.

We separated. Smoothed ourselves back into presentable shapes. Looked forward.

The doors opened on the lobby.

We walked out separately two feet of space, perfect composure, colleagues, nothing to see.

Except that his hand, passing behind me, pressed once against the small of my back. A secret. A beginning. A promise.

My phone buzzed.

Same unknown number.

My office. Tonight. Don't make me wait.

I walked out into the warm St. Louis evening and the city was exactly as it had been this morning and I was not even slightly the same person who had walked in.