“I’m not sure I can hear about teenagers fighting over meaningless prizes right now, but thanks,” I say, and Silas snorts.
“The dancers are seven,” he says. “The parents are the ones backstabbing.”
“Oh, God, that’s even worse,” I say, eyes closed. “Tell me about… fishing or something.”
“The most boring thing in the world?”
I sigh, half-distracted because I can still practically feel his thumb on my inner thigh and I’d much rather go back to that instead of talking about fish or going to this goddamn meeting in ten minutes.
“It can’t be the most boring,” I hear myself say.
“It’s close.”
God, we could go fuck in the stairwell right now. It’s the worst idea in the world but it’s technically possible, and right now I’m the kind of anxious so desperate for an outlet that I’m… kind of into it.
Then I get the second-worst idea in the world. It’s an all-time great in the Kat Nakamura Hall of Fame of Bad Ideas, but I’m ten minutes away from possibly getting fired and I’m not sure I give a fuck.
“If we went… somewhere else,” I say, my mouth suddenly dry. “Tell me what we’d do.”
“Somewhere else,” he says, words careful, one eyebrow lifting. “Like where?”
“Like the stairwell.”
His face changes, from teasing to heated, in half a second and he gives me a long, slow, assessing look. Like he’s wondering if he should talk me out of this but mostly thinking of what to say.
“If we were in the stairwell right now, nine minutes before your big meeting,” he says, slowly. “We wouldn’t have much time to waste.”
Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Silas glances at the door again. Pushes a hand through his hair. Swallows hard. Grips the desk next to his hips. Thinks for a moment, and I swear there’s a faint blush on his cheekbones that makes his eyes look even sharper and bluer.
“So, I’d push you against the railing, right inside the door,” he says. “And you’d gasp the way you do when you’re surprised and turned on at the same time.”
“We wouldn’t go down to the landing?”
“No time,” he says.
“Someone could come in,” I point out, heart racing.
Silas raises one eyebrow.
“I’d kiss you first,” he says. “Find that spot on your neck you like, and I’d suck on it until I left a mark.”
“You liked that, huh?” I ask. My fingers are on the spot where the bruise was, and I swear it tingles.
“I did,” he says. “I liked how you let me. I liked how it looked after.”
“Is that all you’d do?”
We’re so quiet it’s a miracle we can hear each other, but I’ve never listened harder in my life.
“Of course not,” he says. “Next I’d push your skirt over your hips and spin you around, and you’d lean over the railing and grip it until your knuckles turned white.”
He swallows.
“And you’d try not to make a noise, but you would, and it would echo. Anyone in the stairwell would be able to hear you, trying not to moan.”
I am bright red and very, very still in my office chair, embarrassed and turned on and terrified that someone will walk through the door all at once. Even though there’s nothing to see here.
“I’d want to tease you,” he goes on. “I’d want to draw it out. I’d want to get on my knees and lick you slowly until you begged me to make you come, but there’s probably not enough time for that, is there?”