The office chair

𝐀𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐀'𝐒 𝐏𝐎𝐕♡︎

𝐈 told myself I wouldn’t shake this time.

I told myself I would walk in, sit down, breathe like a normal person, answer his questions, and leave with my head high. 

No blushing. No stammering. No thinking about last session’s almost-kiss.

Then he said my name.

“Alessia.”

Just that. Just my name in his deep voice - and my heartbeat skidded like it hit black ice.

I stood from the waiting room chair and followed him into his office. Same shelves. Same faint scent of leather and something darker. Same chair across from his desk.

“Sit,” he said softly.

I sat. My knees pressed together. My hands twisted in my lap.

His eyes traveled over me, calm but not kind. It felt like he could read me again - my blush, my racing pulse, my stubborn pride pretending I was fine.

“You’re tense,” he said.

“I’m okay.”

“You’re not.”

I glared at the floor. “Maybe I’m allowed to be nervous around a man who nearly-” I stopped, biting my tongue.

His mouth curved. The small silver ring at his lip caught the light. “Who nearly what?”

“You know,” I muttered.

“Say it,” he said.

“You know what.”

He let it go - or pretended to. He shifted the chair behind his desk, then walked around with a slow, practiced ease and dragged a rolling office chair into the center of the room.

“Come here.”

I blinked. “Why?”

“Because I said so.”

I stood, legs unsteady, and let him guide me to the chair. He didn’t touch me yet. 

He simply placed the chair where he wanted it, turned it slightly, and nodded for me to sit again. I did, my breath already uneven.

“Today,” he said, “we’re going to try something different.”

“If it’s your mouth on mine-”

“It isn’t,” he cut in, tone clean and clinical, though his eyes were not. “Breathing.”

“Breathing,” I repeated, suspicious.

“You’re holding your breath when you’re anxious. It locks your body. It shuts everything down - mind and pleasure. We’ll reset that.”

He came behind me. I felt him there first - the heat of him - then the soft creak of the floor as he stepped closer. I sat very still.

“Feet flat,” he said. “Back against the chair. Chin down.” His voice went low. “Good girl.”

Heat raced up my neck. “You can’t call me that.”

“I just did.” He leaned over me. “Hands on your ribs.”

I lifted my hands awkwardly to my sides.

“No,” he murmured, and his fingers brushed mine, positioning them lower. “Here. Feel what moves.”

I tried to breathe, but it came out shallow.

He noticed. “Exhale slowly through your mouth.”

I obeyed, lips parting. The sound left me soft, shaky.

“Again. In through the nose. Fill the ribs. Feel them expand into your palms. Slower.” He paused. “Good. And exhale.”

I did it again. And again. Each breath longer than the last. My shoulders loosened. The buzzing in my head faded into something slow, heavy.

“Better,” he said. “Now I’ll cue the rhythm.”

He stepped closer.

His chest grazed my shoulder blade. Not a full touch - more like a presence - enough for my spine to notice and my pulse to climb again. He didn’t move away.

“In,” he said, a steady count. “Two… three… four.”

My ribs lifted under my palms.

“Out,” he said, low at my ear. “Two… three… four… five.”

His breath brushed my skin. I swallowed hard.

“In,” he went on, voice like a metronome and smoke. “Two… three… four.”

I followed.

“Out… two… three… four… five.”

My eyes fluttered closed. The room slipped to the edges. It was just the chair, his voice, the rhythm. My body listened like it had been waiting for someone to talk to it gently.

“Where do you feel the breath now?” he asked.

“In my hands,” I whispered. “Lower… in my belly.”

“Good.” His tone warmed by a degree. “Keep going.”

I inhaled. I exhaled. My fingers spread wider over my ribs, noticing the lift, the fall, the rise. A quiet warmth unfurled where panic usually lived. I didn’t know breathing could feel like this - slow, heavy, almost sinful.

“Shoulders away from your ears,” he said. “Drop them.”

I dropped them.

His hands hovered - close, close - then skimmed the air above my shoulders as if measuring the space I’d created.

“Better,” he murmured. “Now hinge forward a little.”

“I’ll fall.”

“I won’t let you.”

I tipped forward an inch. The chair didn’t move. His palm - large, steady - settled on the top of the chair behind my head. Not on me. But I felt caged in the best way.

“Breathe,” he said.

I did.

“Now stand,” he said.

I stood slowly, legs shaky.

He wheeled the chair back until it touched the desk, then turned it around, facing the edge. He tapped the seat. “Sit, facing the desk, knees apart - comfortable,” he added when my breath hitched.

I sat, a safe width between my knees. My fingers gripped the edge of the seat.

He stepped between me and the desk, close enough that I could see the faint shadow along his jaw and the tiny scar at his eyebrow. 

He braced one hand on the desk beside my hip, boxing me in. Not touching. But everywhere.

“Hands here.” He brought my palms to the desk’s edge. His fingers brushed the heel of my hand. Heat darted up my arm.

“Count with me,” he said. “In… two… three… four.”

We breathed together.

“Out… two… three… four… five.”

My chest eased again. The room came into focus and blurred at the same time.

“Now,” he said softly, “I’m going to adjust your posture. Say stop if you don’t want my hands on you.”

I stared up at him. “Okay.”

He waited a beat, eyes searching mine, as if making sure I understood the question and the power in it. I nodded once.

“Good,” he said, and his hands came to my hips.

I forgot how to breathe.

His fingers were warm, firm, not shy. They rested on the outer edges first, waiting. 

When I didn’t flinch, he drew me a few inches forward on the chair until my hips were stacked under my ribs.

“There,” he murmured. “Feel the ground now.”

My feet found more of the floor. I inhaled and exhaled, slow. His thumbs pressed lightly into the curve where hip met thigh. The pressure robbed my thoughts clean.

“Better?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, but it sounded like a prayer.

“Good. Keep breathing.”

I did, and he stayed where he was, his hands resting through the next breaths like punctuation marks. 

The warmth seeped through fabric into skin. Every inhale lifted me into his space; every exhale let me sink back down.

“Your jaw,” he said. “You’re clenching it. Unclench.”

I tried. It loosened a little. He reached up without warning and slid two fingers under my chin - not holding, just guiding - and tipped it a degree. “There. Let the tongue rest. Good girl.”

Heat flared in my cheeks. “You keep saying that.”

“Because you keep earning it.”

His hand left my chin, but he didn’t move away. My breath brushed his shirt. His did the same to my cheek. 

Our faces were close - too close. The air seemed thicker between us, like something invisible was pulling forward, forward, forward.

“Zayn,” I whispered.

“Yes.”

“This is… a lot.”

“I know.”

“Is it still… therapy?”

His eyes held mine. “Yes.”

I swallowed. “It doesn’t feel… normal.”

“Nothing about wanting is normal,” he said. “But we can learn to breathe inside it.”

I wanted to laugh or cry. Instead, I exhaled and felt my body settle another inch into the chair and his hands.

“Now close your eyes,” he said, voice softer. “Follow the breath. In… two… three… four. Out… two… three… four… five.”

I let them close.

“Tell me what you notice,” he said.

“You,” I almost said. I caught it. “Warmth. In my chest. In my stomach.”

“And in your hips?”

My mouth went dry. “Yes.”

His thumbs made the slightest, smallest drag along the fabric at my hips - barely movement, more like a suggestion. My breath stuttered.

“In,” he said.

I inhaled.

“Out.”

I exhaled, shaky again.

“Better,” he said. “Now I want you to ask your body a question.”

“What kind of question?”

“What it wants right now - comfort, pressure, space, stillness.” His voice dropped. “Not a fantasy. A sensation.”

My brows drew together. “Pressure,” I admitted, throat tight.

“Where?”

I hesitated. “Your hands are fine,” I said quickly, as if he’d take them away.

A quiet laugh touched his mouth. “I wasn’t planning to move them.” He increased the pressure by a fraction. “This?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Tell me when it’s too much.”

“It’s not.”

His fingers held me there. My breath found a new rhythm against his chest and the desk and the quiet click of the wall clock. 

It was maddening and calming at the same time - like standing inside a storm and realizing I wasn’t going to be blown away.

“What else?” he asked.

“Space,” I whispered.

“Where?”

“Here.” I tapped my sternum, embarrassed. “It feels tight sometimes. Like I can’t let the breath in.”

“May I?” he asked.

I nodded.

His palm rose, slow and careful, hovering a breath from my chest, not touching - close enough for heat to bleed across that exact tight place. He didn’t push. 

He didn’t press. He just held his hand there like an anchor right outside my skin.

“In,” he said.

I inhaled, and the breath went somewhere deeper and wider than before.

“Out.”

It left me with a small, shaky sound I couldn’t hide. My eyes opened. His were waiting.

“See?” he said, almost gentle now. “Your body knows.”

I stared at him. “Or maybe it’s you.”

His gaze didn’t waver. “Maybe it’s both.”

We didn’t move. He was still caging me in with an arm on the desk and his hips a breath from my knees. 

His hand hovered just off my chest. His other hand had returned to my hip, firmer now, as if he’d forgotten to be careful.

“Zayn,” I said, and even I could hear the plea in it.

“Alessia.”

“This is not a kiss,” I said, ridiculous, because it almost was.

“It isn’t.”

“It feels like one.”

“It does.”

“Are you going to-”

He leaned in, a slow, terrible, perfect lean, until our breaths mingled. The ring at his lip caught the light. My eyes fell to his mouth. His fell to mine.

My heart pounded so loudly I could barely hear.

“Breathe,” he said.

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

I inhaled on a tremor. His hand at my hip pressed, steadying me, drawing me the smallest inch forward-an inch that made everything worse and better at once. Our mouths hovered in the same piece of air, not touching.

His eyes lifted back to mine. “This is where you run,” he said softly. “Or where you learn to stay.”

“I don’t want to run.”

He held very, very still. “Then stay.”

I stayed.

We breathed. The room shrank. The clock disappeared. The world became the shape of his shoulders and the heat from his chest and the faint scent that made me dizzy. I tilted up without meaning to.

“Zayn,” I whispered.

His jaw tightened. The silver at his lip flashed. He came that last impossible fraction closer-

-and the door handle rattled.

We both froze.

The sound was sharp and ordinary, but it hit like lightning. Someone tried the knob again, impatient, a quick metal scrape and a hollow thud as the latch held.

“Dr. Steele?” a woman’s voice called from the hallway, muffled through the door. “Do you have a minute?”

He didn’t move. Neither did I. His hand was still on my hip. His breath was still on my mouth. My heart slammed against my

ribs like it wanted out.

A beat of silence stretched. Then another.

He closed his eyes once, briefly, as if counting to three inside his own head. When he opened them, they were dark again, but the heat had gone hard and controlled.

“Session’s-” he began, voice low and rough.

The handle rattled a third time.

“-over,” he finished.