The Soft Spot part 5

We woke to daylight and the kind of quiet that made every small sound feel too loud.

Noah lay on his back, one arm still under my head. I kept my eyes on the ceiling. Last night had been easy in the dark. Morning asked questions neither of us had answered yet.

“We should talk,” he said.

“I know.”

He turned his head. “About work, about how we walk in there today.”

I sat up, pulling the sheet with me. “We don’t walk in together. Different times, different elevators. No one sees us leave the same building.”

“And after that?”

“We act normal, you do your job and I do mine. We don’t sit next to each other in meetings unless the seating chart already puts us there.”

He was quiet for a moment. “You’re already planning the cover.”

“I’m planning not to make this a rumor before we decide what it is.”

Noah sat up too. “So what is it?”

I looked at him. The question sat between us, heavier than the night before. “I don’t know yet. I know I don’t want to pretend last night didn’t happen. I also know I don’t want the whole floor talking about it by lunch.”

He nodded once. “Different times, then. I’ll leave first.”

“Give me twenty minutes.”

He showered, dressed, and paused at the bedroom door. “If anyone asks where I was, I was home. Alone.”

He left. I waited, ordered a car, and went back to my own place to change into clothes that did not smell like his sheets.

The ten o’clock strategy meeting started on time. Noah sat three seats down, tablet open, answering a question about overseas margins without once looking at me. I lost the thread of my own sentence halfway through a projection.

“Sorry,” I said. “Run that number again.”

Someone repeated it. I recovered but my pulse did not.

When the room emptied he stayed by the door.

“You all right?” he asked.

“Fine.”

You dropped a figure you know by heart.”

I stood. “Close the door.”

He did. The lock clicked. For a second neither of us moved.

“This is a bad idea,” he said.

“So was last night.”

“Last night we weren’t three floors above a room full of people who report to you.”

“I know.” I came around the desk. “I also know I spent the entire meeting trying not to look at you, and I failed.”

He watched me cross the space. “So what do you want to do about it?”

“Right now? Stop talking.”

The kiss was immediate. Then he looked at me. His hands found my hips and walked me backward until the backs of my knees hit the leather couch. I pulled him down with me. The cushions gave. He shoved my skirt up and dragged my underwear aside while I worked his belt open.

“We have to be quiet,” he said against my mouth.

“Then don’t make me loud.”

He pushed into me in one deep stroke. I bit down on his shoulder to keep the sound in. The couch creaked under us. He moved hard and steady, one hand braced on the armrest, the other gripping my thigh. Every thrust dragged a wet sound into the quiet office. I wrapped my legs around him and met him halfway.

The pace stayed rough but controlled, like he was listening for footsteps in the hall. When the angle stopped being enough I pushed at his chest.

“Desk.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He pulled out, hauled me up, and bent me over the edge of the conference table we had used that morning. Papers slid, a pen hit the floor. He drove back into me from behind, one hand fisted in my hair, the other flat between my shoulder blades.

The table knocked softly against the wall. I moaned into my forearm and pushed back to meet him. The wet slap of skin on skin filled the room until I came with a sharp, muffled cry, clenching around him. He followed a moment later, buried deep, a low groan caught against my shoulder.

We stayed like that, both breathing hard.

He eased out and helped me straighten. My skirt was wrinkled. His shirt was half untucked.

“We can’t keep doing this in secret,” I said.

“No.”

“People are going to notice anyway. The way I look at you. The way you don’t look at me.”

He fixed his collar. “So we stop hiding.”

“You’re sure? Once they know, they won’t un-know it. Some of them will have opinions.”

“Let them.” He met my eyes. “I spent months taking every sharp word you threw because I wanted to be near you. I’m not interested in pretending that was nothing.”

I nodded. “Thursday’s all-hands. We sit together. We don’t make a speech, we just stop acting like strangers.”

“Done.”

He kissed me once, slower, then stepped back so I could unlock the door. When he left, the office still smelled like us. I sat in my chair, straightened the papers we had knocked aside, and opened the seating chart for Thursday.

I put his name beside mine and left it there.