Just One Night 1_ The Stranger(19)

But does it matter what she heard? The point is she knows! Those green marbles weren’t reflecting the image I had so carefully crafted for the people around me. Instead she sees a woman driven by the basest of impulses, a woman who snuck into an office building at eight in the morning so she could fuck her new client.

A woman who takes what she wants.

The words are coming from a little voice inside my own head. It’s not a voice that I’m very familiar with. The angel on my right shoulder defeated the devil on my left eons ago. But now the devil speaks. It’s the angel who struggles to find her voice.

“Would you like a glass of water?” the woman asks. She tilts her head to the side, causing her auburn hair to fall over one shoulder.

I nod silently and her smile widens as she leaves the room and then returns with a clean glass and a bottle of SmartWater.

“I’m Sonya,” she says as I reach for the items. She doesn’t let go right away. When I look up at her, she’s staring at the buttons on my shirt. I’ve missed one. I quickly take the water and glass and put them on the side table before scrambling to fix the problem.

I can discern the essence of the questions she’s working so hard to repress. Her now empty hands flutter as if she wants to assist with the buttons.

“It’s a beautiful silk,” she says, quietly watching the quick work of my fingers.

She wants me. The knowledge springs up inside of me like a geyser. I stare at her impatient hands, her marble eyes. Mr. Dade’s assistant wants me.

And astoundingly, that makes sense to me. I have never felt this desirable, this enticing, this potent. I’ve never been with a woman before. I can’t fully imagine it. A woman’s skin is too soft, her touch too delicate.

Mr. Dade had pulled my hair, lifted me up, entered me. . . .

No, I can’t imagine being with a woman . . . and yet I understand her desire and it electrifies me in all the places she wants to touch. I glance at the closed door of Mr. Dade’s office. Her desire makes me want to open that door and ask him to take me again—against the wall, on his desk, on the floor. I almost laugh when it occurs to me that the one place we’ve never made love is in a bed.

The green marbles have rolled in another direction. I recognize the embarrassed blush on Sonya’s cheeks. “I don’t know if he mentioned it,” she says, following my gaze to Mr. Dade’s door, “but he has a meeting at nine thirty.”

“Yes,” I say, finally trusting myself to whisper a few words, my buttons now all neatly hooked. “With me and my team.”

“You’re his nine thirty?” She walks back to her desk and checks her computer screen. “Kasie Fitzgerald?”

I nod.

“Ah,” she says, sitting down, “you came early.” Apparently struck by her own unintentional pun, her mouth twitches with the effort to keep from giggling.

Her amusement does not sit well with me. The unaccountable confidence I felt just moments ago wanes and I press my legs together so tight the muscles of my hips and thighs shoot up little daggers of pain in protest. I may be desired but I have also risked humiliation.

Pride and shame smash into each other, causing an avalanche of less comprehensible emotions. I want to go home, lock the door, and try to make sense of the battle going on inside me.

But I had told my team to meet me in the waiting area outside Mr. Dade’s office. So I drink my SmartWater and try unsuccessfully to wash down the confusion.

I refuse to look at Sonya as the minutes tick away. I pretend I don’t see her when she knocks on the door of Mr. Dade’s office and asks him if there is anything she can get him. I wonder if he’s as embarrassed as I am, but the assured and professional tone he uses with her belies no discomfort. I’m the only one unnerved.

She returns to her desk and tries to flash me a conspiratorial smile but again I ignore her. I tense even more when I hear familiar voices coming from down the hall. My team of four files into the waiting room like a pride of lions on the hunt, with Dameon, the only man on my team, hanging back and letting the women take the lead. Nina, Taci, and Asha are my women. Their movements are slow, almost languid, but there’s stealth there. They’re taking it all in, trying to spot the company’s weakest links. They’re hungry and they’re ready to pounce on anything that smells like opportunity. But they don’t see me . . . or rather they do but they don’t see my details. They don’t see the crease in my shirt that is almost gone now. They don’t see my clenched fists resting in my lap. All they see is Kasie Fitzgerald, greeting them one by one as they walk in. The only thing that strikes them as unusual is my hair that now hangs loosely around my shoulders. It contradicts the severity of my suit and it’s a style my coworkers have never seen me wear. They all take a moment to throw me a compliment along with a curious look. I thank them for the former and ignore the latter.