Page 7 of Fierce

I frowned. Karen could be so withdrawn these days. But fifteen-year-olds could be moody. Not that I knew. I hadn’t been able to afford to be moody at fifteen. But her school was tough. Were they putting too much academic pressure on her? It was so much work for a freshman, but we’d both been so excited when she’d been admitted on scholarship to Brooklyn Friends. She’d assured me she could do it, and that she wanted to. She was very bright, but it was a big change from her public school, and a huge leap.

“Is it school?” I asked. “The work?”

“No. I’m fine.”

A boy? I wondered. The other girls? She was a scholarship student, and she didn’t have the right clothes or know the right people. She couldn’t afford to go out for lattes after school like the other kids, and I knew that must sting, even if she didn’t say it.

But I couldn’t worry about that now. I’d talk to her over the weekend. I’d have work to take home, I’d already figured out that much, but I’d steal some time. We’d watch a movie, take a walk. I’d find out what was wrong then, but I couldn’t afford to quiz her now.

“All right,” I said reluctantly, because I really did have to get all this done, or there would be no takeout, and no apartment. “I’ll see you later.”

“’Kay. Bye.”

Two hours later, I was still working. I’d be lucky to be home by nine-thirty. There was nothing so silent, so lonely as an empty cube farm. Fluorescent lights lighting nothing, the doors to the coveted outer offices closed, their windows dark and blank. The janitor had been through already to empty my wastebasket and exchange a word. I was getting to know Clarice pretty well. And I was squinting so hard at a scrawled note that ran up the side of a page, the letters blurred. Or maybe that was just fatigue.

“How you goin’?”

I leaped again, and—yes. I squeaked. I whirled in my chair, and it was him. Hemi. Umm…Mr. Te Mana.

I jumped up with such haste that the chair rolled out from under me and I stumbled over the wheels, and he put a big hand out, caught my upper arm, and steadied me. Except it wasn’t so very steadying, because he was so tall, and his chest was so broad. Way too tall and way too broad for comfort.

Tall men made me nervous anyway. I always felt so little next to them, and I could feel them enjoying being so big, and…well, it never seemed like a good idea. Just like eating dessert every night isn’t a good idea. Too much of a good thing is the very definition of a bad idea, isn’t it?

He wasn’t wearing a jacket tonight, just a white shirt that must have been custom-made, the way it stretched across that expanse of chest and still managed to be so form-fitting all the way down to his waist, showing off his absolutely flat abs. Dark trousers covered his powerful thighs—and everything else I was not looking at.

Wait. It wasn’t just that he was so tall. It was that my shoes were off. Oh, God.

“Umm…” I glanced wildly down to where my shoes were scattered under my desk. “I’m sorry. I’ll just…”

His hand was still on my arm, and I could smell the hint of his aftershave, faint and spicy. He was so close, I could see the dark stubble of five o’clock shadow along his bronzed jaw. He had a heavy beard. Of course he did.

“What?” he asked, a faint smile lifting one corner of that mouth. “You’re sorry about what?”

“I’m…barefoot,” I whispered.

He looked down. “So you are.” The smile was a little more in evidence now. “And very nice it looks, too. I like your pink nail varnish.”

I sat down again without all that much grace and scrabbled with my feet for my shoes, but one of them was so far under there that I was going to have to crawl to get it. And I wasn’t crawling in front of him. Not again.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” I said, trying to laugh it off.

He laughed himself, the sound sudden and rich. “Is it? Let’s scoot you back, then, so I can get them.”

He had his hand on the back of my chair, so close to my shoulder, and was shoving me gently out of the way, and then, yes, Hemi Te Mana was under my desk, pulling out my pumps. Swiveling around on his powerful haunches, taking an ankle in his hand and slipping on one shoe, then doing the same with the other.

When he touched my skin, I jumped, because it was as if a current had leaped straight up my leg. I could feel my heart pounding, my cheeks were heating, and surely his hand was around my ankle now. It couldn’t be, though. Could it?

I sneaked a peek. It was. He was holding it, and then he’d reached for the other one. He was kneeling in front of me with an ankle in each hand.

Oh, help. What was he going to do? More to the point, what was I going to do?

I should tell him to stop. I should make a joke. The problem was, it felt good. His hands were so big and my ankles so small that his hands wrapped all the way around them with room to spare. And just like that, everything in me was pulsing, my breasts were tingling, and I was…liquid.

He let go and stood up in one fluid motion, and the moment was over, and I swallowed.

“You need new shoes,” he said, and the smile was there again. Small, but real.

“I need lots of things,” I managed to say. “Needing isn’t getting.”

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