Page 75 of Hate Notes

“Are you saying you want it to stop?” she asked. I felt a guilty touch of relief to hear the fear in her voice. She didn’t want it to stop, either. She was desperately hoping I wasn’t about to end things.

“No,” I said. “I’m only… worried that we’re moving too quickly. Making it too hard for our brains to separate feelings from our arrangement.”

There was a long pause and I didn’t turn to look away from the window.

“Is that your robot way of saying you’re starting to develop feelings for me, Orion?”

Now it was my turn to stay silent for too long. “There’s the matter of your secret,” I said.And mine, I thought. Was that the real reason I told her to keep holding on to whatever dirty secret she had? Was it just a way to alleviate my own guilt for not telling her the truth about the Davenport project?

Maybe.

“You asked me not to tell you,” she said carefully.

“I know. And people who casually sleep together don’t bare their souls to one another.”

“We haven’t slept together,” she reminded me. “I’ve… thoroughly sucked your cock, jacked you off, and let you do all sorts of amazing things to me with those talented fingers of yours. But we haven’t… done the whole thing.”

Hearing her speak so plainly about the things we had done was oddly arousing. Until now, we had at least stuck to the terms of our agreement. When we weren’t fooling around, we more or less pretended everything was normal. If anything, we over corrected toward stiff formality.

“I’m aware,” I said. “And even with the limits of what we’ve done, we both appear to be struggling with the terms of our agreement.”

She was grinning when I finally turned to face her. “Are you implying thatIhave caught feelings, too, Mr. Foster?”

My nostrils flared.

“Easy,” she said, smiling wider. “You’re not the only one struggling. I was just teasing.”

"What are we doing, Ember?" I sighed.

"Currently?" She stood and looked out one of the smaller windows overlooking the office itself. The building was already clearing out because it was late, and only the true over-achievers were still at their desks working. Ember pulled the blinds shut and turned toward me, walking closer. "I’m feeling tired of rules and agreements. My body knows what it wants, and I’m pretty sure yours does too.”

There was something different in her body language and voice. Something less primal and hungry than usual. I felt it, too.

It was as if the complete release and abandon of our last few physical interactions were meant to drown out any possibility of emotional connection.

The way she was looking at me now was…not that.

I moved to the rest of the blinds, pulling them closed. Ember watched me, visibly swallowing as she came closer to me, one hand hesitantly lifting toward my face.

I hooked a hand around her waist and pulled her close. I shouldn’t be touching her now—not when our emotions were so obviously malfunctioning. I shouldn’t have backed her against my desk and kissed her until we were both breathless.

But I did.

Unlike the last few nights, we only kissed. It started hard and heavy, but it turned into something new. It was slow, passionate, and tender. She kissed me softly, her tongue sliding across mine as she smiled so close to my face I could feel it. She held onto melike I was a rock and she was trying not to be dragged away in a hard current, and I let her.

When we finally pulled back, from our long series of kisses, her eyes were heavy and her lips were pink. Her cheeks flushed when our eyes met.

“That was nice,” she breathed.

“Yes,” I said stiffly.

“Okay, then… I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“You work here. I imagine you will.”

She reached up and straightened my already straight tie—as was her habit. “Bye, Orion.”

“Good night, Ember.”

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