His apartment door barely closes before I shove him against the hallway wall. My fist twists into the front of his shirt and I pull him down to my mouth—hard, graceless, starving.
Theo groans against my lips, and the vibration runs through my jaw and settles low in my belly. His hands find my waist and drag me flush against him until there's nothing between us but fabric and five years of pretending this wasn't inevitable.
His hips press forward and mine answer without consulting my brain first. This is not how responsible adults behave. I could not care less.
I'm already working his buttons—fast, fumbling, one tearing free and pinging off the baseboard. His fingers find my zipper and slide it down slowly, knuckle by knuckle, memorizing my spine through the metal teeth. My dress pools at my feet. His shirt follows.
"Bedroom." It comes out wrecked, barely a word.
He lifts me—hands gripping the backs of my thighs—and I lock my legs around his waist. My mouth finds the side of his throat, tasting salt and soap and the frantic hammer of his pulse under my tongue.
He carries me through a doorway and the room is dark except for city light cutting silver slats across the bed. He lays me down and kneels over me.
The way he looks at me—eyes tracing from my mouth to my collarbone to the black lace still covering me—makes my skin prickle everywhere his gaze lands. Nobody has ever studied me like this. Like I'm the answer to a question he's been carrying for years.
His mouth follows the same path. Collarbone first, slow and open, tongue dragging heat across bone. The hollow of my throat. Lower—between my breasts, lips brushing the edge of lace, breath hot through fabric.
My back arches and his hand pins my hip, pressing me down with a firmness that sends a jolt straight through my center. "Stay," he says against my stomach, voice rough.
"Make me." The words leave before my brain approves them, and I feel his smile curve against my skin before his mouth moves lower.
He unclasps my bra one-handed and his lips close over my nipple—tongue circling, teeth grazing—and the sound I make is not dignified. His other hand hooks into my underwear, drawing it down with agonizing patience. I kick them off the rest of the way because I am not above helping.
His shoulders press my thighs apart. Then his mouth is on me, and my fingers twist into the sheets hard enough to hear the fabric strain. He's thorough—devastatingly, methodically thorough—tongue stroking flat and slow, finding the rhythm that makes my hips buck against his grip.
His hand tightens on my hip, holding me in place while he works me with a focus I will never recover from. Every sound I make adjusts his pressure, his pace, like he's learning a language he intends to speak fluently.
"Theo—" His name breaks apart between my teeth, half breath, half plea. He doesn't answer with words. His tongue presses harder, two fingers sliding inside me, curving upward, and my spine bows off the mattress.
I come apart with his name still caught in my throat, thighs clamping, sheets tearing under my grip, shuddering waves rolling through me while he works me through every single one with no intention of stopping until my body goes boneless.
I'm still trembling when I push him onto his back. He goes willingly—hands dropping, chest heaving, watching me with blown-dark eyes as I straddle him. I reach between us and wrap my hand around him—hard, hot, a groan tearing from his throat that I feel behind my own ribs.
I guide him to my entrance and sink down slowly. Every inch pulls a sound from one of us—his head drops back, throat exposed, tendons standing sharp. The fullness of him rearranges something fundamental in my body.
I plant my hands on his ribs and roll my hips—slow, deliberate—watching his face come apart beneath me. "Christ, Annie." His hands grip my thighs, not guiding, just holding on.
"Don't rush me." I circle my hips, clenching around him, and the noise he makes is worth every second of the last five years. His fingers dig into my thighs hard enough to leave marks I'll find tomorrow. Good. I want the evidence.
He sits up—arm locked around my back, pulling me flush against his chest—and the angle deepens and I gasp into his mouth because the world has gone white-hot at the edges.
"Look at me." Stripped to nothing—raw, wrecked, command and surrender at once. My eyes find his, and the intimacy of it is more devastating than anything his body is doing to mine.
Forehead to forehead, breathing each other's air. My nails in his shoulders, his arm tight at my waist, moving together with no strategy left—just the desperate rhythm of two people who've been orbiting this since a hotel room five years ago.
I break first, his name tearing out of me, and he follows three strokes later with a sound pressed into my collarbone that I will hear for the rest of my life. His arms give out and we fold into each other, trembling, wrecked, still connected.
We collapse sideways, tangled, breathing like survivors. His nose presses into my hair and for thirty seconds the universe shrinks to sweat-damp skin and synchronized heartbeats and the absurd realization that I just slept with my daughter's secret father who also signs my paychecks.
If my life were a résumé, HR would shred it on sight. His thumb traces lazy circles on my hip. "You're thinking too loud."
"I'm thinking this was incredibly stup—"
My phone screams from the hallway floor, still buried in my dress pocket. The ringtone is Nina's—sharp, professional—the one she gets because she only calls when something is already burning. The universe's comic timing remains flawless.
I pull Theo's shirt off the floor because it's closer, button nothing, and answer on the fourth ring. "Nina."
"Jake's lawyers filed a new motion an hour ago." Clipped, furious, fighting to stay useful. "Surveillance photos. The Meridian parking garage at eleven PM, entering the office together. Multiple dates, all timestamped."
The floor tilts under my bare feet and my hand finds the doorframe. "What are they arguing?"
"Inappropriate relationship with your employer, predating the divorce." Her voice thins. "They've subpoenaed your employment records—hiring date, promotion timeline, the full package. They're building a narrative that Sarah's environment is unstable by association."
I hang up. The shirt I'm wearing smells like his cologne and I'm standing in his bedroom wearing nothing else and the timing of this phone call is so catastrophically perfect that I almost laugh. Two hours ago I was rebuilding a capital stack. Now I'm a surveillance exhibit.
My phone buzzes again. Not Nina this time. Jake. No words—just three photographs: the Meridian lobby, Theo's car idling outside Sarah's daycare and my mother’s building. Each one timestamped and annotated like evidence in a trial that hasn't started yet.
I show Theo. He's pulled on shorts at some point—I missed it, which says everything about where my head is. He takes the phone, scrolls through each image, and his jaw goes so tight I can see the muscles cording beneath the skin. His eyes lift to mine—steady, certain, terrifying.
"Let him come."