Chapter 7: Six O'Clock Shadows
AVA'S POV
The elevator doors slid open with a soft whisper to the vacant hush of the 40th-floor lobby. My stilettos rang out on the sheened marble, each step echoing like a snap in the silent room. The ailing sun streamed in through the west windows, dripping down to discolor the floor in huge, melted pools of orange and gold that lay out menacingly to Julian Sterling's frosted glass doors. The atmosphere was heavy and still, redolent with his usual scent – invigorating cedarwood and a close to medicinal sharpness of wild mint. God, the air here belongs to him, too.
I was frozen in the face of the imposing doorway, the Sterling crest etched on the glass – the stylized 'S' within a circle – gazing back, cold, unyielding, menacing. My own reflection sneered back: pinched white face pulled taut, eyes wide and black with fear. Breathe. Just breathe. Professional. All about Hudson Yards. Just the reworking. The mantra faltered. I opened the heavy door creakily.
The stubbled, imposing size of his office always stole the breath from my lungs. Floor-to-ceiling windows held a burning city, the sun a raw red slash setting behind shattered silhouettes, bleeding raw orange and dark purple along the horizon. He stood there, a form cut from darkness and raw muscle, standing behind the massive, obsidian surface of his desk. He didn't stand. Didn't even flinch. Just caught sight of me approaching. His gaze crashed into me across the room distance – searing, critical, peeling away layers with pitiless accuracy. What does he see?
"Evening, Miss Thompson." His low, unnervingly smooth voice resonated through the quiet. Miss Thompson. The formality was a deliberate blade. My fingers shuddered slightly as I shut the monstrous door behind me. The soft, final snick of the latch into place walled us into a world of their own. He didn't blink, his gaze locked with mine.
Unspoken tension hung between us, thick with potential. He moved then, a cat stretching from its watchful immobility, flowing toward the giant Hudson Yards model that dominated the room in the center. A single brutal, fierce desk lamp splashed a warm patch of light on the complex, city-lit landscape, carving harsh, beautiful angles across his face "Your changes," he breathed softly, the gruffness beneath the silky voice sending a shiver sliding through my spine.
His long finger pointed towards the pedestrian walkway section, the one I’d poured sleepless nights and desperate hope into. As he guided me slowly around the model, the vast room seemed to shrink. The world narrowed to just the two of us, the miniature city, and the thick, choking tension coiling tighter with every shared breath. My arm brushed lightly against the fine wool of his sleeve. A shock – cold, electric static – ran through me. I suppressed a tiny, lethal gasp. His hand flashed out, fingers tightening around my wrist – in the motion of holding me up, or maybe himself. The touch exploded like a brand. His eyes flashed to mine, an inch between our lips. In the held breath, the air thick with raw hunger. I saw the spark in his eyes, hard and bare, an echo of the desperate, frayed beat pulsing in my own throat. His teeth bared, a convulsive ripple moving over him as he fought openly with the hidden current pushing us together. Too close. God, too close.
The something between us was live wire, sizzling with energy. He tore his eyes loose as if physically wounded, stepping back harshly. But his voice, when it finally came, was taut as a stretched wire, vibrating with suppressed fury. "Victoria." He spat the name like poison. “She’s been systematically undermining your structural specs to Planning. Planting doubts. Questioning your calculations.” His eyes found mine again, fierce, blazing with a protective intensity that stole my breath. “I’ve overridden her. Shut it down. For now.
He moved, his massive body radiating danger that was precariously, personally close. "Don't give her any more gas today, Ava." He stood there, the tension growing, thick. "This work… is demanding your attention." Demand you. Unspoken words hung, unadorned and piled, in the thick air. The firm? Or him? The stomach-churning shock of betrayal fought in vain against the immobilizing heat rising up over me at his passionate fighting. He sees me. He's fighting for me.
The weight of his words, loaded with all that had not been spoken, came crashing down. He took a slow, measured step closer. And another. Closing the gap I didn't know I was starving for. His gaze dropped, searing across my lips, before drifting slowly back to my eyes. A silent query. A perilous yielding. His hand crept higher, agonizingly slow. Calloused knuckles brushed against my temple, pushing a loose strand of hair back with a touch as light as a feather, yet it seared my skin like a brand.
The rigid self-control I’d witnessed fracturing in his eyes moments before shattered completely.
He kissed me. Not soft. Not tentative. Hard. Desperate. Devouring. Like a dam finally giving way, crashing down in a torrent. His lips crushed down upon mine with a hunger and a desperation that poured weeks' accumulation of tension, seething fury, and that abhorred, paralyzing magnetic pull into one incandescent, all-consuming fusion. Liquid flame ran through my veins, burning all prudence, all sense, leaving only sensation. Julian. Yes. My hands flashed up, not to push away, but to thrash wildly in the cold fabric of his shirt, grabbing on against the spinning, lovely whirlpool drawing me down.
I kissed him back, equal to his hunger, lost in the rich taste of him – mint and cedar and whatever was characteristically Julian – ridges of hard bone on me, the raw, aching rightness of it so appallingly wrong. And it was over. He pulled away as if scalded, physically stumbling. His chest heaved in ragged gasps. His face… it was a landscape of wreckage. His passionate color clung in withered clots of sodden clods. His intense horror wrestled with the residual heat of raw passion twisted into bottomless, belly-lacerating remorse. The emptiness he left was physical agony, replaced by a searing, savage cold. He swirled back to the dark line of city vision.
The silence which followed was not quiet; it was a ringing vacuum.
His voice, when finally grated out, was rough, brutal, shuddering with self-loathing he could not fully conceal: "We shouldn't…" He didn't have the courage to meet my eyes. "This… never happened." Never happened? The words left me breathless. The warmth of his ghostly kiss still clung to my lips, a rough, indelible imprint that declared defiance in the face of his negation. The warmth that had surrounded me only seconds before had faded, giving way to increasing void, a searing ache creeping into my chest cavity. The gilt, grand room now was hollow, echoing emptiness, a gold cage. He'd slammed his walls again shut, up, colder, more remote than ever before, and left me utterly alone in the ringing hollowness of his rejection. The pressure of his knuckles on my temple, the searing afterimage of his mouth were a never-ending, soundless yell of protest against the lie. It had happened.