“Okay?” he said.
I looked down and realized I was still holding his wrist. It was the hand with the No Time tattoo. I let it go. “You shouldn’t be here,” I said. Panic made my voice sharp, and I immediately regretted it. I was shaken, but part of me was happy to see him. Fiercely, wildly happy.
“I know,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
I asked the obvious. “Where have you been, Devon?”
“Prison.”
I felt the breath go out of me. I put my hands to my temples. Prison. I’d suspected it, but I hadn’t been sure. I’d worried that he was on the run, that he’d left the country, that he was dead, that he didn’t want me after all. I felt all of that swirl around my brain and then disappear. Prison. Two years.
“The TV thing?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you okay?”
Okay, stupid question. But they were the only words I could summon to say what I really meant. Was it awful? Were you hurt? Will you heal?
The question seemed to surprise him. His green eyes—in the half-light I could still see their color, their utter focus on my face, my hair, my neck—flickered as something passed behind them that I couldn’t read. But he didn’t laugh. “I suppose I’m okay,” he answered.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m a little flustered.”
That brought a ghost of a smile to his mouth. “My fault. I was going to wait to see you until you were done work.”
“You were going to wait. And then?”
He shrugged. “And then I didn’t.”
And there it was. That flutter, deep in my stomach and flittering across my skin. Pulsing quietly between my legs. The smile had left his mouth, and I watched him watch me, thinking of that last night together, his big body flexing above mine, his mouth between my legs. The last two years fell away like a dry and dusty dream.
In sci fi movies, there is always that portal in the spaceship, the hatch that sucks everything out into space when it’s opened. That was what Devon Wilder was to my life. The hatch. I was so totally, totally screwed.
“How did you know I was here?” I managed.
Devon exhaled a breath, and he put his hands on his hips. He was relaxing slowly, realizing that I wasn’t going to kick him out. “I went to Shady Oaks first, but you weren’t home,” he said. “I had to look you up on the internet.”
“Oh.” My name was on the Gratchen website, I remembered—listed on the “Meet the Team” page.
“So you’re still a designer,” he said. “That’s good.”
“I guess.” But that felt wrong, telling Devon that. So I said, “I hate it.”
His eyebrows went up.
“I get treated like shit,” I elaborated. “Everyone thinks that’s part of it, that you have to get treated like shit in this business. But it’s starting to sound like a lie.” I shook my head. “Sorry. You just got out of prison, and I’m whining about my career problems. Do you need anything? Do you have somewhere to stay? There’s some other guy in your apartment at Shady Oaks.”
He looked at me for a long time. “You’re really doing that, aren’t you?” he said quietly. “You’re offering to put me up.”
I felt my face heat. “Is that rude? I just thought—I wasn’t talking about sex or anything.”
He scratched his jaw. “The guy in my apartment is my friend Max. I gave him the place. I’m letting him keep it. I have… somewhere else to stay.”
My face got even hotter. Did he mean he had a place with a woman somewhere? I’d thought I knew what Devon was saying, even when he wasn’t saying much. But maybe that was wishful thinking on my part, backed up by luck. I was second-guessing everything. I didn’t know what he was saying anymore. I took a step back and crossed my arms.
“You think I’m talking about a woman, don’t you?” he said, reading my mind. “Fuck. There’s no woman. Let’s start over.”
“I don’t—”
He stepped forward, took my face in his hands, and kissed me, and I stopped talking. His mouth felt familiar—I’d been remembering it for two years, the way he tasted, the way he kissed me. It was a bold kiss, confident, a kiss that told me everything he hadn’t said. I opened my mouth and kissed him back, my hands curled over his wrists, the silence a living thing around us in the deserted meeting room as we had our conversation.
He broke the kiss and leaned in, kissing the spot below my ear, his beard rasping against my skin. “Two years,” he said.
He dropped his hands, and I gripped his shoulders. They were like granite beneath the warm fabric of his shirt. His hands moved expertly to my skirt, lifting it up, sliding up the backs of my thighs. I bit back a sound and leaned into him, taking in his smell. His skin and clean laundry and a hint of leather, maybe from his car. We shouldn’t be doing this. I wanted to sink my teeth into his skin.
He cupped my ass beneath my skirt, his palms moving over me almost reverently. “You have a boyfriend?” he said against my neck.
“No,” I said.
His fingers moved to my hips beneath the skirt, hooking into the sides of my panties. “You fuck anyone since me?” he asked.
It was a rude question. Inappropriate. Absolutely none of his business. But still I said, “No.”
He moved one hand to the front of my panties and slid it inside. “So this,” he said softly, feeling how wet I was, “is for me.”
My breath stopped. How did he do that? How was it that his hand on me felt even better than my own? I didn’t answer—I didn’t have to. He already knew the answer. He could feel it.
He moved his fingers, but I put my hand on his wrist, stopping him. If he could be unreasonably possessive, then so could I. “What about you?” I asked, still pressed against him. “Have you had anyone since me?”
“I think you’ve missed the plot,” he said. “I’ve been in prison.”
True. But how long did it take to fuck someone? Ten minutes, twenty, thirty? I knew nothing about him, really. Maybe he had a lineup of women waiting for him to get out. Maybe I was his third visit today. “How long have you been out?” I asked.
He calculated the answer, his hand still in my underwear. “Nine and a half hours,” he said.
I almost laughed, it was so precise. But I’d asked. He’d been released this morning, and he’d come to find me. I tilted my head and looked up at him, taking in his shadowed jaw, his perfect mouth, those green eyes fixed on me. “And you haven’t had sex in those nine and a half hours?” I asked, half teasing.
“No,” he said quietly.
God, it would be so easy. I could just lean back on the table. Push my underwear down. Then I remembered we were at my work. The door wasn’t even locked; anyone could walk in here and see me with my skirt pushed up, his hand between my legs. I squeezed his wrist again and pushed him away gently. “I’ll tell you what,” I said, trying to get a grip. There was no way I could have a conversation with his hand there. He let me push it away and right my panties, pushing my skirt down. “Tomorrow, we’ll have dinner.”
“Dinner?”