[Oliver’s POV]
The Whitmore presentation glows on my laptop screen. Slide fourteen. Revenue projections. Numbers that should command my full attention.
Instead, I'm watching Lottie chew her pen.
She's been doing it for three hours. Teeth worrying the cap while she frowns at spreadsheets. Completely unconscious. Completely devastating.
The conference room has glass walls. Fishbowl transparency. Anyone walking past can see us working late on this presentation Sandra assigned this morning.
Sandra, who smiled when she paired us together. Who probably thought she was doing us a professional favour.
The last colleague left thirty minutes ago. The cleaning crew won't arrive until ten. It's currently eight-seventeen, and I've memorized exactly how Lottie's lips move when she's concentrating.
Pathetic. Truly, magnificently pathetic.
Three weeks since The Flat Incident. Three weeks of professional distance and carefully maintained boundaries. Three weeks of pretending Sunday morning didn't happen.
She meant it this time. Definitively. Her word, not mine.
I believed her for approximately six hours before my brain started cataloguing evidence to the contrary.
The way she looks away too quickly when our eyes meet. The flush that climbs her neck when I pass her desk. The careful distance she maintains—always exactly arm's length, as if she's calculated the precise radius of temptation.
People who don't want something don't work this hard to avoid it.
But I'm not pushing. Not pursuing. Respecting boundaries I don't believe in because she asked me to.
Because I'm capable of growth. Apparently. Allegedly.
Lottie stands suddenly. Stretches. Her arms rise above her head, spine arching, and my concentration shatters into approximately seven thousand irretrievable pieces.
The fabric of her blouse pulls taut across her breasts. Her neck extends, elegant and exposed. She looks like a Renaissance painting come to life, if Renaissance painters had fluorescent lighting.
She catches me staring.
Neither of us looks away.
The air between us shifts. Thickens. Becomes something tangible I could reach out and touch if I were foolish enough to try.
"What are you thinking?" Her voice is quiet. Careful.
The truth escapes before wisdom intervenes.
"That I've been watching you chew that pen for three hours and it's driving me insane."
She freezes. The pen hovers near her lips like evidence at a crime scene.
Slowly—deliberately—she sets it down on the table.
I stand.
The distance between us shrinks. Six feet. Three feet. Nothing.
She doesn't retreat. Doesn't look away. Just watches me approach with those brown eyes that see too much and forgive too little.
I should stop. Should remember every reason this is catastrophic. Should maintain the professional boundaries we've both been pretending matter.
I kiss her instead.
The contact is immediate and absolute. Her mouth opens against mine without hesitation. Her fingers find my collar, my shoulders, the back of my neck. Weeks of professional restraint dissolving in seconds.
I back her against the conference table. Papers scatter across the floor. A laptop nearly crashes down. Neither of us stops.
Her hands yank at my shirt, untucking it from my trousers with urgent efficiency. My hands find her waist, her hips, the curve of her arse through that professional pencil skirt.
I lift her onto the table. She weighs nothing. Her legs wrap around me instantly, pulling me closer, eliminating every inch of space between us.
"Oliver—" My name comes out broken. Desperate.
"I know." My mouth finds her neck. Her collarbone. The hollow of her throat where her pulse hammers. Lower still.
I work at her buttons with shaking fingers. The blouse falls open, revealing skin I've been dreaming about since Sunday. Her bra is simple. White cotton. Somehow more devastating than lace.
She's making sounds that will haunt me. Small gasps. Breathless moans. The soundtrack of her surrender playing exclusively for my benefit.
My mouth travels down. Between her breasts. Across her stomach. She arches into every touch like she's starving for contact.
My hand slides beneath her skirt. Up her thigh. The skin there is impossibly soft. I find the edge of her underwear already damp with want.
Her hips rock against my palm. So responsive when she stops overthinking. So beautifully, devastatingly responsive.
The elevator dings.
We freeze.
Footsteps in the corridor. Someone forgot something. Someone came back.
The glass walls. The fucking glass walls.
We separate with frantic urgency. Buttons fumbling. Clothes straightening. Papers grabbed from the floor and arranged in approximations of professional order.
By the time Patterson passes the conference room, we're seated on opposite sides of the table.
Laptops open. Faces flushed but plausibly from overwork. The picture of dedicated employees burning midnight oil for Monday's presentation.
Patterson waves through the glass. Retrieves his umbrella from his desk. Waves again.
I wave back. Smile. Perform normalcy while my heart threatens cardiac arrest.
The elevator dings again.
Silence returns.
Lottie's hands shake visibly against her keyboard. Her blouse is buttoned wrong—one hole off, creating a slight pucker near her collar that screams evidence.
I want to fix it. Want to touch her again. Want to finish what we started on that table.
I don't move.
Neither does she.
The silence stretches between us, pregnant with everything we almost did. Everything we almost got caught doing.
My pulse pounds against my ribs. The adrenaline hasn't faded. If anything, the near-discovery amplified everything—terror and arousal tangled together until I can't separate them.
"I should go." Her voice is barely audible.
"Lottie—"
"Don't." She raises one trembling hand. "Please. Just... don't.”
She gathers her things with mechanical efficiency. Bag. Coat. The pen she was chewing, shoved into her purse like incriminating evidence.
She doesn't look at me as she leaves.
I don't try to stop her.
The conference room feels enormous without her. Glass walls reflecting my solitary figure back at me from every angle. A hall of mirrors showcasing my spectacular lack of self-control.
I sit alone.
The scattered papers mock me. Revenue projections and market analyses. Professional documents we just compromised on every conceivable level.
My shirt remains untucked. My collar bears traces of her lipstick. My entire body hums with frustrated want that has nowhere to go.
We almost got caught.
Ten seconds later—thirty, maybe—Patterson would have witnessed his colleagues tangled together on the conference table. Bodies pressed close. Hands in inappropriate places.
The consequences scroll through my mind. HR investigations. Termination. Family dinners explaining why neither of us works there anymore.
The terror should clarify things. Should make me grateful we stopped. Should reinforce every boundary I've been pretending to respect.
Instead, I feel exhilarated.
Alive in ways I haven't felt since the hotel. Since her body arched beneath mine and she made sounds I've been replaying constantly ever since.
We're playing a game we cannot win.
I know this. She knows this. Every rational part of both our brains screams the same warning.
But watching her leave, I realise something devastating.
I don't care about winning anymore.
I just want her. However complicated. However catastrophic. However completely it destroys both our careful lives.
The glass walls reflect my expression back.
I look terrified. I look hopeful.
I look like a man who's finally stopped pretending he has any control over this situation whatsoever.
Monday's presentation will be awkward. Tomorrow will be worse. Every interaction from now until eternity will carry the weight of what almost happened in this room.
And somehow, despite everything, I cannot bring myself to regret a single moment of it.