Chapter 5: The Office Seduction
The morning light came through the bedroom windows like a blade, thin and gray and unforgiving.
Rose woke first. Her body was a map of the night before—aches in her thighs, a tenderness between her legs that pulsed with every heartbeat, the faintest sting on her ass where Marcus had gripped her too hard on the floor. She lay still for a moment, listening to his breathing, watching the way his chest rose and fell beneath the tangled sheets.
He looked younger when he slept. Softer. The lines around his eyes seemed less like cracks and more like the natural geography of a face that had learned to smile.
She slipped out of bed and padded to the bathroom. The mirror showed her everything she'd been trying to hide: bruised lips, mascara smeared into dark crescents beneath her eyes, a red mark on her collarbone that she didn't remember him making. She looked like a woman who had been thoroughly fucked and thoroughly forgiven.
Her phone was still in the pocket of her trench coat, abandoned by the front door. She retrieved it and found seventeen messages from Tom.
She didn't read them. She deleted the thread and blocked his number.
When she returned to the bedroom, Marcus was awake, propped against the headboard, watching her with an expression she couldn't read.
"You're still here," he said.
"Where else would I be?"
He didn't answer. He just reached for her, and she went to him, crawling onto the bed and settling against his chest. His hand found her hair, stroking slowly, and for a long time neither of them spoke.
"We need to talk about what happened," she finally said.
"I know."
"Not just last night. Everything. Tom. The way we got here. What happens next."
He kissed the top of her head. "I know."
"So talk."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he shifted beneath her, sitting up straighter, and she felt the change in his body—the tension, the focus, the man who closed deals and commanded rooms. But his voice, when he spoke, was soft.
"I got comfortable," he said. "I stopped seeing you as a person and started seeing you as... part of the furniture. Something that was always there. Something I didn't have to work for."
"That's a shitty way to put it."
"It's the truth."
She tilted her head to look at him. "Go on."
"I didn't notice you were unhappy because I didn't want to notice. If I noticed, I'd have to change something. And changing something meant admitting I'd fucked up." He ran a hand over his face. "I'm not good at admitting I've fucked up."
"You're doing okay right now."
"Because I almost lost you." His voice cracked. "Because I watched another man put his hands on you and all I could think was—that should be me. That should have been me, every night, for years. I should have been touching you like that. I should have been looking at you like that. Instead I was—"
"Signing reports."
"Signing reports. Going to meetings. Coming home exhausted. Falling asleep on the couch." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I built a whole life around being busy so I wouldn't have to be present."
Rose was quiet. Then she said, "I could have said something sooner."
"You tried."
"I hinted. I dropped things. I waited for you to notice." She shook her head. "That wasn't fair either. I wanted you to read my mind instead of just telling you what I needed."
"So we're both idiots."
"Both idiots."
He kissed her then—soft, lingering, the kind of kiss that wasn't a prelude to anything but just a kiss. When he pulled back, his eyes were bright.
"The London trip is canceled," he said.