When Desire Bowed to Dream

"The height of fashion," I deadpanned, pushing my glasses back up my nose. That was new, too. Years of childhood bullying had prevented me from ever wearing them around the office; today, it was exactly what I needed. "Sam, the fuck is happening here?"

His gaze fell to where the pinafore grazed my thighs. "Hmm?"

"The building." I waved my hand around. "This whole situation. Where is everybody? Did... did something happen?"

Sam was quiet for a while. The kind of quiet that did nothing for my rippling concern or anxiety. The wind howled as he drummed his fingers against the door, and after a few seconds, he sighed.

"Anjul's pregnant." His brows twisted together, conspiring before they unfurled into a flat line. "Talha's wife. They're looking for a nest egg, and he offered to buy me out."

I absorbed the sentence, and then I waited. Waited for him to tell me how he scoffed, or laughed - perhaps how he noticed how serious his shitstain of a brother was, but found some way to kindly decline. Waited for him to bring up the ten-year profit plan he'd drawn to serve their mutual benefit, because that was the kind of mind-mapping Sam liked to do at four in the morning.

But he didn't. Sam's gaze drifted to the wall, then the dipping floorboards, and then back to me.

I simply stared aghast in return.

"Sam... no."

A tiny, wicked smile that ticked with unspeakable tragedy crossed his face. He shrugged.

"You didn't!" I was horrified. "This company is your baby! You MADE this thing! You love it with such a fucking passion, why would you - why would you do something like that??"

"Yeah?" He pushed off the door and picked up the new dossier on his desk. "What would you know about what it means to me? It made me money, for a while. It doesn't anymore. Selling it gives me a perfect out, plus a little something on the side."

"Bullshit." I couldn't stop myself. The sentiment came out plosive, aggressive, and I watched Sam still as the word rang across the room. "I don't... I don't know why you won't be honest with me, but you know what, fine. It's none of my business anyway."

"Exactly." Sam's response was calm but it cut twice as deep. Sharp and swift and cold enough to cleave a man in half. "It's not. And isn't that exactly what you wanted?"

Whatever ghosts of guilt still lingered within me squeezed around my bones.

Sam threw the file back on his desk and braced a hand against it, running the other down his face. Two and a half feet and a single rhetorical question separated us, clinging to different sides of the room.

"I'm sorry."

The whisper had as much integrity as the dust strands clinging to the ceiling. But I know he heard me. I saw his hands knuckle into fists.

"I mean it, Sam. I didn't intend for this to happen. But you know I didn't have a choi-"

"DON'T."

The ghosts in my system flinched - as did I. I held myself still as I stood in the echo of his outburst, loud and brash but unable to disguise the defeat that sat on the hunch of his shoulders; the tiredness in the sweep of his exhale.

He glanced at me, watching him from the other side of the room, and smiled like something was funny.

"Of all the things you could have shown up in," he said, slowly, "why the fuck did you have to wear that?"

What?

"Sam," I replied, failing to keep the disbelief from my voice. "This... this pinafore is probably the ugliest thing I own."

He drew himself up tall, standing over me. A single grunt punctuated his shrewd regard. "Yeah. I believe that."

Then he leaned forwards and placed one of his hands behind me, stretching across the desk. My sharp breath met the heat of his chest.

"But it's the kind of ugly a man would rip off just to prove how lovely you look underneath."

I couldn't summon up an intelligent response. Sam raised an eyebrow as I coughed out a squeak of surprise; smirked at the flush running the length of my neck.

"Hmmm."

He lifted his hand to trace its trajectory. Feather-like fingertips smoothed the hairs at my nape as he swept a distracted tongue across his lips.

My lips parted on the softest moan - then wrenched around a gasp.

"Sam, NO." A waterfall of cold sobriety drowned my thoughts and ghosts and nerve endings as I shoved myself off the desk. "No. I didn't come here for this. I can't do this all again. You said to... to come collect my belongings; that's all I came for. That's the only reason I'm here."

I dug my fingers into my scalp and held onto my hair, shaking. "I can't do this all again."

Sam stood silently by the offending precipice I'd jumped off of, his hands open and empty. The distance between us stretched elastic and cavernous as I fought to snatch back the bits of myself that ached for him.

He stared into the distance like it was a literal pit in the floor, eyeing its unthinkable depths with a quiet kind of agony. Without saying another word he swivelled towards a cupboard in his wall.

The items bundled in his arms in a messy pile of paraphernalia - the book, the shawls, miscellaneous stationary I definitely wouldn't have missed. He stacked them on his desk with a dull sort of thump.

Then he ducked behind his desk to sink into his office chair, unlocking a hidden drawer with a key.

I frowned.

It slid out with a rickety scrape, indicating it was hardly ever used or held very little. Whatever he pulled out remained concealed in his palms for a long moment, his eyes glued to it like it was a relic of some kind.

When he stood up again, I was apprehensive. He dropped it to the top of the pile.

"There." His voice was rough, matching the scrape of his hidden desk drawer. "You're free."

I stared at the small mountain of goods for some time, squinting at the velvet pouch. It was small and black and layered with dust, but I didn't recognise it at all.

Digging two fingers into the drawstrings at the top, I managed to cradle a familiar weight in my hands. But it only was when I saw the silver chain that poured out of the opening, ever so slightly discoloured, that I recognised it for what it was.

That I realised what exactly he'd called me back for.

"You... you..."

Sam only swallowed. "I'm sorry."

"SORRY??!" I whirled round to face him with a rage I hadn't felt in years. A rage brought on by grief and deception, by more of the stairs with which I'd carved my ascent crumbling before my very eyes and leaving me with blinding, burning tears. "SORRY??!! You don't get to - you absolute beast of a man, how could you -"

"- I didn't know what it was until you told me."

"But YOU KNEW!!" I was yelling now, retrieving my own screech from the hidden drawer where I kept it, along with all the other desperate, ugly, unused emotions I rarely had cause to contend with. I'd spent so much of life absorbing sucker punches through a cushion of numbness and easy, breezy apathy that the kaleidoscope of feeling brewing within me felt absolutely ruinous. "You KNEW, SAM!! You knew it was what I was looking for; you knew that I had no interest in your stupid company or your stupid vacancy when I FUCKING CAME TO WORK FOR YOU!! You knew that I was looking for something - and you never bothered to tell me?? Don't tell me you have shitfaced tarts crawling round your warehouse every fucking Monday because I'M NOT FUCKING STUPID."

"No! I know, okay, I just -" he let out an aggravated sigh, and in the second where he hesitated I really wanted to strangle him. "I was suspicious, first of all; I didn't know who you were or why the fuck you were moping around the warehouse in the first place. You looked like a wreck. I thought you might be high, or lost, or something."

"So you offered me a fucking job??"

I posed the question with all the sarcasm I could muster. Sam's eyes glinted with a touch of violence.

"Did you turn it down?"

He levelled his gaze with me - blank, unyielding - and I gaped at him.

"You cannot be serious."

The arrogance rose out of him in a single, gloating chuckle. "Why didn't you ask, if you wanted it so badly?? If you were so sure of where it was?? You worked in this office every day for four fucking years and never once told me why you were actually here. Why would I assume you were so unhappy? Why would I assume you hated me? No one forced you to stay."

I took a deep breath to contain my building anger, the blood boiling in my veins. "I didn't know you had it. I didn't assume anything. Why would a man with everything he could possibly want hold onto something so essentially worthless?? Maybe what you were supposed to do was leave it alone or FUCKING GIVE IT BACK."

"Maybe I was supposed to find it for you."

A beat of baffled silence passed as Sam plucked the necklace from my hands, threading his fingers through the chain and letting daylight bounce off the pendant's surface for the first time since... well. I had no idea how long it had been sitting in his desk.

The pad of his thumb ensconced it completely as he wiped it down - a sterling silver bird with a small flower in its beak. He delicately skirted over the sparkling jewel it had in place of an eye and snorted out a laugh.

My hands clenched at my sides.

"I should never have come back for you," I whispered fiercely.

Shouldering past before he could look back at me - before that smirk could wipe its slate clean; before the death and darkness and all-consuming destruction of his gaze could take any more from me than I could afford to give - I stalked towards his office door, making sure to knock his half-baked peace treaty off the desk. The books and stationery clattered as they fell to the floor.

"Fuck. Jei - wait."

The doorknob wasn't working. I wriggled it once, twice, shook it frantically with a grunt of frustration before I remembered it was locked and I needed to turn the key.

"Jeida, please."

His hands were around me before I could secure that small, simple step to salvation - and I screamed.

"Jeida would you just FUCKING LISTEN TO ME FOR ONCE!"

"NOT ON YOUR FUCKING LIFE!!" I pushed at him, shoved at him, roared because none of it mattered and none of it meant a single shit anymore and by God if I was going down I was going to do it kicking and swinging. Gouge an eye. Rip my heart out. Bleed all over the floor of this stupid office and make sure this absconded into a mess he would never be able to bleach from his hands. I wanted him to feel the filth of me on his soul for however long his sorry arse lived.

I knocked him backwards, maybe out of surprise more than anything, his back barely braced for impact as it collided with a filing cabinet. An unholy growl of despicable intent rose from within him.

"Stop - fighting - me."

He grabbed onto both my forearms and pulled me into his body. I crossed them like a barrier and attempted to tear my way out, but I was trapped between him and the desk.

"JEIDA!"

His arm wrapped around my waist. Both my wrists were transferred to one hand and he held them easily against his shoulder, panting through a grimace as I panted too, tousling with my human harness. Even as I pressed against him for leverage, the hand at my hip and angle of his body kept me stacked against a solid wall of muscle from the waist down.

I glared at him.

"You gonna use your fucking words?" he spat, viciously and violently incensed, "or do I have to screw them out of you instead?"

My heavy breathing hitched in my throat. Empty air shook around the protests that died on my tongue, and I tugged at him one last time.

"Always want to play the fucking victim," he seethed, pulling me even closer. His voice dipped low and positively murderous even as he palmed the curve of my arse. "Always want to make out that I'm the bad guy. That I hurt you. Like your silence doesn't kill me. Like I'm the one who kept you locked in misery when all I ever did was fucking put you first."

He dipped his nose to the base of my collarbone and dragged it along the length of my neck, coasting it like a madman's line of coke. I gasped when he found the spot below my jawline; I groaned when he marked it with his tongue.

"Sam... please."

"Please what?" His taunt was a gentle murmur. He nipped along my jaw, slow and self-assured and completely unfazed by the way I squirmed with his motions. Somewhere deep within me a bonfire began to burn.

I whimpered. No, not whimpered - mewled. It was so fucking embarrassing I almost died on the spot.

Sam, however, paused. He lifted his head to look at me - really look at me - and the look in his eyes as he blinked thick lashes back from languorous black depths made my heart completely stop.

Something twitched against my belly, and I felt my eyes go wide.

"If we choose to do this," he said, his voice so quiet that I strained to catch his words. I had to watch his beautiful mouth shape them just inches away from my own. "You have to promise not to hold it against me."

In retrospect, I should have given that moment the tender gravity it deserved. This myth of a man, this looming monstrosity, someone who had once been so dear and so deeply ingrained in me my heart and brain had heeded him like an orchestra committing mutiny - bowing to a conductor who tore their symphony to shreds and my dreams to nightmares with the mere flick of his wrist - pleading with his lamb for mercy. Baring his vulnerability like a cryptid exposing itself to the world.

But the feeling of his cock settled against my abdomen, straining through his jeans with a hard, delicious firmness, was enough to put my lizard brain in a panini toaster.

His grip on my wrists had loosened to a lover's caress in the time it had taken to stare me down, anxiously waiting on my reply. I prised them free, one hand after the other. My fingertips danced across the folds of his shirt as I dragged them down the placket.

Delicately - deliberately - I undid one, then two, then three of his buttons. Blue and black and shell and horn gave way to the softest curls on the smoothest skin. I ran a quivering finger over that thatch of desire, feeling it spring back against my touch - and all too quickly I felt a brutal rhythm begin to thrum throughout my entire body, my thoughts roiling with want, my pulse overridden with need.

My ghosts fled in lust-addled exorcism the moment I pressed my mouth to his sternum.

I wish I could have bottled the noise he made. The sound of an angel being born, or a phoenix bursting into flame, or a man being broken in two. A hand came to rest on the base of my spine.

"You're definitely trying to kill me," he muttered, voice serious as a vow as he clenched my pinafore up over my cheeks.

"I think you've mentioned that before."

"Yeah?" A sudden chill crested the tops of my thighs, leggings clinging to my hips as he shuffled the dress over the rest of me. "The objective hasn't changed, then?"

I blew out a breath of laughter as we struggled over my shoulders and arms, elbows knocking into each other. He tugged the pinafore off with a gentle flourish and I shook the rest of my hair free.

"If only you were so lucky," I said lightly. "You'd relish a death at my hands."

His eyebrows slanted into a curious pitch. "You might have to explain that one to me."

I adjusted my glasses and thought on it. "No, I don't think I do."

Sam laughed into his shoulder, closing his eyes as he creased. I counted the lines of crows' feet that appeared at the corners and unthinkingly gave into the hands at my waist.

"Oh, I see. You still think you're calling the shots." Wayward eyes drank from my face, my nose, my lips, watched me keen as he took his fill of me and let my palms coast over his abdomen. I was so lost in the hard planes of his body I didn't notice the hand that came to steal the glasses from the bridge of my nose.

"Hey!"

I snatched for them a second too late. In that time he had a hand at my neck, gripping me, and the sweetest kiss stealing the sound from my body and the breath from my lungs.

"As good -"

He nipped at me.

"- as you look -"

He kissed the corner of my mouth.

"- with these fucking secretary specs -"

He swiped at my lower lip with his tongue, and I fucking shivered.

"- they make it kind of hard for me to do... this."

He kissed me, again, and I felt his lashes against my face as he teased my mouth open. Sucked my tongue playfully before pointedly pulling away.

The glasses were pocketed without any further preamble.

"You like the glasses." I tried for nonchalance even as I wrestled breathlessly with the words. But I suddenly, desperately needed to know.

A slight smile took over his face before he released a deep sigh.

"If you'd worn those things to work even once," he said, with the low, soft silkiness that made me think of that wildcat crawling over the jungle floor, "I would have liquidated the company and shagged you senseless on top of the paperwork."

I blinked at him, widely, as my heart began to pound. "Right."

Slow hands slid up the sides of my body until he found the hem of my turtleneck. "Yeah," he said, scorching the skin beneath with icy fingertips and bringing us nose to nose. "Right."

And then his mouth was on mine again, kissing me, cursing me, claiming me the kind of senseless that had my toes curling and my mind whirling and spine curving right back into him. I looped my arms around his neck and shuddered as my limbs turned to jelly, kissing him back like I could swallow him whole.

His tongue laved the length of mine and I groaned into his fucking mouth.

"Jeida, Jeida, Jeida. Precious fucking Jeida."

The way my name fell from his lips made me want to detach from my body, because there was no way I could survive something as intense and implosive and downright cosmic as the way he said it out loud. I'd spent months - agonising months in the trenches of gut-wrenching pain, trying to get used to the sensation of becoming a footnote in Sam's memory, or a sordid little detail turned into a hue in his colourful past. And now I could hear each syllable leave his mouth like a falling star, crashing like cymbals, whispered as he moved like an urgent secret. Growled like some terrible profanity.

"So sweet," he bit out. "So kind."

Fingers slid across my back. I held my breath as I relished the freezer-burn, and then gasped, feeling the pads of his thumbs smooth a sensitive line just beneath the base of my bra.

"So fucking good it hurts."

The sentiment echoed with something unspeakably vulgar. The rest of the turtleneck was torn off of me with little more than a grunt.

His gaze followed the lines of my body - and his heated stare, his blazing reproach made every single one of my hairs stand on end. The displeasure in his voice with meant nothing to me when I knew those molten depths of desire were completely in my thrall.

The heat in my core reached blistering heights as I reached for him, wandering digits climbing over shirt and collar until they could cling to the nape of his neck. Snag themselves on the dregs of his sanity.

"Sam..."

His line of sight shifted back to me, waiting on a smart retort or some flippantly callous remark. A brow quirked towards his hairline when I refused to say anything at all.

"What?"

I couldn't answer him. My fingers threaded thoughtlessly through his curls as I dragged my gaze over him, absorbing his wound jaw, his delectable stubble, his lips stretched thin with impatience. He craned into my hand with shuttered eyelids and swore.

A surge of emotion barrelled through me. I could feel my heart beating erratically against my ribs, thrumming against the fingers still holding me up and flooding my system with a flash of cold that had nothing to do with the cool of the room. My thumb stroked the corded muscles in his neck and I whimpered.