A FOOL FOR YOU

Chapter 3

Victor showed up at my office on Wednesday.

I heard him before I saw him ; that particular brand of loud that was really just pressure wearing a voice. My assistant Maya knocked on my glass door with the expression of someone delivering bad news carefully.

“There’s a man at reception,” she said. “He says he knows you. He won’t give a last name.”

I already knew. “Tell him I’m in a meeting.”

“I did. He said he’ll wait.”

I closed my laptop. “Call security in ten minutes if he’s still there. Don’t call me, just handle it.”

I went back to my work and kept my door closed and told myself this was fine. Victor was a chapter I’d already closed. He didn’t have power here. He didn’t have power anywhere near me anymore.

Twenty minutes later my phone buzzed.

I just want to talk. Five minutes. You owe me that.

I owed him nothing. We both knew it. That was exactly why he kept showing up.

I put my phone face-down and went back to work and was almost convinced I’d regained my equilibrium when the door to my office opened and Zach walked in ; unannounced, which was apparently just how he moved through the world ; and stopped.

He looked at my face. Then out through the glass wall at the lobby, where Victor was still visible, standing at reception with the rigid energy of someone holding themselves very carefully in check.

“Who is that?” Zach said.

“No one.”

His jaw tightened. “Glamour.”

“An ex.” I kept my voice flat. “He’s leaving.”

Zach looked at Victor for a long moment. Something shifted in him ; quiet and cold, like a temperature drop. He turned back to me.

“Has he done this before?”

“I said he’s leaving.”

He held my gaze for a moment and I watched him make the decision to let it go, which cost him something, I could see it cost him something. He crossed the room and put a folder on my desk.

“Updated campaign brief,” he said, professional again like switching a switch. “Friday review.”

He walked out. And I watched him stop at reception on the way past and say something brief and low to Victor, who went very still. Then Zach kept walking and Victor left.

I sat at my desk and felt my heart doing something I didn’t have vocabulary for yet.

-----

Two days later we were alone in the elevator at six forty-five PM, the building mostly empty, the kind of quiet that only existed when New York briefly forgot itself.

I don’t know who moved first. I don’t think it matters.

One second there was space between us

. Then his hand was at my jaw, tilted up, and his mouth was on mine ; not soft, not tentative, nothing polite about it

. Like he’d been deciding for weeks and finally stopped deciding.

I kissed him back the same way, one hand in his shirt, and the elevator reached the lobby and neither of us noticed until the doors opened and a security guard pointedly looked at the ceiling.

We stepped apart.

I looked at him. He looked at me. His chest was moving.

“That’s going to change everything,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

“I’m not apologising for it.”

“Neither am I.”

The doors started to close again. He held them open with one hand.

“Dinner,” he said. “Tonight. Now.”

Not a question. I picked up my bag.

“Don’t make it somewhere expensive to impress me,” I said, walking past him out of the elevator. “I’m already impressed. It’ll just annoy me.”

He laughed. Actually laughed.

————

We met at a tiny Italian restaurant in West Village.

Zach was waiting for me there looking more innocent and handsome than he usually looked. When he saw me his eyes lit up and a blush spread across his face. My heart fluttered at his reaction. It was cute.

“You look beautiful,” he said.

“Don’t flatter me. But you look quite handsome too.”

“I do?”

I chuckled and sat down. I noticed the restaurant was a simple one. Far simple than for his status.

I looked at him across the table. “You picked this on purpose.”

“You said don’t impress you.”

“I’m impressed anyway.”

He smiled. “Good.”

We drank and talked.

He was funny. Not performatively funny, not the kind of funny that was really just charm with a punchline, but quick and dry and a little dark at the edges. He made me laugh three times before the food arrived and each time he looked at me like he was collecting something.

By the second glass of wine his hand was on the table between us and mine was two inches away and neither of us closed the gap but both of us knew it was there.

“Tell me something true,” he said.

I looked at him. “About what?”

“Anything. Something you don’t usually say out loud.”

I turned my wine glass. Thought about deflecting. Didn’t.

“I built my entire career so that no one could ever tell me to sit down and be quiet again,” I said. “Every contract, every client, every rate increase. It was never really about the work. It was about never being small again.” I looked up at him. “Your turn.”

“I ruined all my relationships because I was controlling. With…With you I want to try. That terrifies me.”

The table between us felt very small.

“Zach…..”

“I know,” he said. “Too much.”

“No.” I reached across and closed the two inches. Put my hand over his on the table. His fingers turned immediately, wrapped around mine, held on with a pressure that was almost too tight and then eased like he’d caught himself. “Not too much.”

He looked down at our hands. Then up at me. And the expression on his face ; open and undefended in a way I suspected very few people ever got to see ; did something to my chest that I was going to have to deal with later.

We stayed until the restaurant started stacking chairs.

-----

Outside he pushed me against the wall and devoured my lips. The kiss was sudden yet I accepted it wrapping my arms around his neck and letting him invade my mouth with his.

He kissed my lips, my face, my neck. His tongue was hot and feverish, his huge arms wrapping around my waist, and roaming my body. One hand reached over and squeezed my breast. I let out a little moan, getting turned on. I could already feel myself getting wet down there.

I felt something hard pressing my stomach. My eyes widened in shock as I noticed his hard on.

I smirked touching it. He grunted. I laughed, then whispered seductively in his ear;

“Why don’t we take this somewhere else?”

Before we knew it, we were in his apartment kissing wildly.

He drew me closer, grabbed my waist, and drew me towards his body, deepening our kiss.

He ran his hands through my hair as he kissed me, pulling at it a little. I loved it.

I loved the delicious pain I felt from it, the sensation coursing through my veins as our tongues intertwined and played games in each other's mouths.

I could feel my p***y tingling and the gradual wetness between my thigts.