"Just the cleaning crew," Cole breathes against my ear. "They always start on the twentieth floor and work down. We have at least an hour before they reach this level."
The tension drains from my shoulders, replaced by awareness of how exposed we are—me sprawled across the piano bench, Blaine's hands in my hair, Cole's warmth anchoring me from behind.
"That doesn't mean we should push our luck," I manage, though my voice sounds wrecked. "Anyone could have walked in just now, and then what? My career ends, your reputations suffer, and everything we've built collapses because we couldn't wait."
"You're adorable when you pretend to be rational," Blaine murmurs, his thumb tracing my swollen lip. "But your body is telling a very different story. You want us to keep going, to see how far this can stretch before you break completely."
"What I want and what I should do are rarely the same thing."
But Cole's mouth finds the sensitive spot beneath my ear, and my protest dissolves into a sound that betrays every word.
They take me apart with patient precision.
Cole moves inside me with agonizing slowness while Blaine swallows every whimper, every fractured syllable.
The piano keys press cold against my palms, discordant notes punctuating each thrust.
When the orgasm crashes through me, it feels like drowning and breathing at once.
I shatter between them, my body arching as wave after wave strips away every defense I've ever constructed.
Afterwards, I lie boneless against the instrument. Cole presses soft kisses along my spine while Blaine smooths the hair from my forehead.
"You're extraordinary," Cole whispers against my shoulder blade. "Every time we touch you, I discover something new to worship."
The tenderness undoes me more than the pleasure did.
Tears prickle behind my eyes—not from pain, but from the overwhelming strangeness of being cherished.
"I need to go."
The words come out raw, scraped from somewhere deep in my chest.
"Ethan, you don't have to run from us," Cole starts, but I'm already gathering my scattered clothing, my hands shaking as I fumble with buttons.
"I'm not running. I'm creating necessary distance so I can think clearly, which is impossible when you're both standing there looking like you want to devour me again."
I pull on my jacket.
"I'll see you at work tomorrow. Professional distance, remember?"
I flee before either can respond.
The shame arrives halfway down—not shame for what we did, but shame for how completely I surrendered.
You begged, the familiar voice whispers in my head. You begged them to keep going, and you liked it. What does that make you?
The December air hits my face as I burst through the lobby doors, and I walk three blocks before my hand reaches automatically for my phone.
My pocket is empty.
The realization crashes through me like ice water.
My phone—with the notes app still open, those explicit lyrics displayed, every desperate word about wanting Asher visible for anyone who picks it up.
I left it on the piano.
My legs are moving before my brain catches up, sprinting back toward Apex Global with my heart pounding so hard I taste copper.
The security guard barely glances up as I swipe my badge, and the elevator takes an eternity to climb to the fourteenth floor.
The music room door stands ajar. Warm light spills into the hallway.
I push it open and freeze.
Asher sits on the piano bench, my phone cradled in his hands, the screen casting blue light across his sharp features.
His expression is unreadable—that familiar mask of ice and precision that reveals nothing of what moves beneath.
"You came back," he says without looking up. "I wondered how long it would take you to realize."
"Asher, I can explain those lyrics."
My voice comes out strangled, panic clawing up my throat.
"They're just words, just a way to process feelings I don't know how to handle. They don't mean anything, and I never intended for anyone to see them, especially not you."
"They mean everything."
He finally lifts his gaze, and what I see there steals my breath—not judgment, but hunger so vast it threatens to swallow us both.
"You wrote about wanting my frost to burn you. You wrote about wanting to be the reason my control breaks. You wrote about being claimed and consumed and kept, and you expected me to believe that doesn't mean anything?"
"I expected you to never find out."
My legs won't hold me. I sink into the chair across from him.
"I've been wanting you since before I understood what wanting meant, Asher. And I couldn't say any of that out loud because saying it makes it real, and real things can be taken away."
"You don't have to hide what you want from me."
He sets the phone on the piano and rises.
"I've read every word you wrote, Ethan. I've seen exactly what you imagine when you think about me, and none of it frightens me. None of it changes how I feel about you."
"How do you feel about me?"
The question emerges before I can stop it.
"Because I've spent months trying to decipher your expressions, and I still can't tell if you see me as an acquisition or an employee or something else entirely."
"Something else entirely."
He stops in front of my chair.
"I see you as the first person who's ever made me want to abandon every carefully constructed boundary I've spent my life building. I see you as someone brave and broken and beautiful, someone who deserves to be wanted with the same intensity you've been taught to be ashamed of."
His hand finds my jaw, and when his mouth descends on mine, the kiss is nothing like what I expected.
It's control. Pure, absolute control—his lips moving against mine with precision that makes my head spin, his tongue claiming mine in slow, measured strokes.
He kisses me like he's memorizing the shape of surrender.
I whimper against his mouth, my hands fisting in his shirt, desperate for more.
He pulls back.
"When I finally have you properly," he says, his voice rough in ways I've never heard, "I won't hold back. I'll give you everything those lyrics begged for, and you'll understand exactly why patience is the most dangerous form of desire."
He straightens, my phone still in his hand, and I watch him slip it into his jacket pocket.
"Wait, that's my phone. I need it for work, for personal communications, for everything."
"And you'll have it back tomorrow." His smile holds edges sharp enough to cut. "After I'm finished adding some notes of my own."