"The lamp cord was a genuine concern that I have now confirmed was addressed." She crossed to me in three barefoot steps. "Everything else is a bonus."
She stood close enough that I could see the window light catching the silk of her camisole. Her blue eyes shifted. The CEO left. Someone else took her place. The version that existed in locked rooms and late hours, in the specific silence that settled between two people who had been building something for months without naming it.
"Three weeks," she said. Her voice dropped from professional to something lower, warmer. The Charleston drawl stretched vowels into long pulls. "Three weeks managing Victor Sterling’s approval rating. Reading your interview transcripts. Lying awake in that empty house wondering if my boy was eating enough protein. Sleeping enough. Staying out of trouble that requires my intervention."
Her hands found my chest. Palms flat. Fingers spread. She pressed against my shirt the way she’d pressed against bare skin in her bedroom, her home office, the kitchen at two a.m. when Sloane was asleep and the world was just us and the refrigerator’s hum.
"You’ve gotten stronger." Her palms moved up, over my collar, across my jaw. Her thumbs traced my cheekbones. "The shoulders. The jaw. Something’s different."
"Conditioning with Steele."
"Conditioning with Steele does not produce this." She held my face and studied me with the full weight of Read the Room, the Aspect that let her see gaps between projection and reality. "Conditioning with Steele does not make a boy look like he’s crossed a line he can’t uncross. What have you been doing, Lukas?"
Growing. Changing. Becoming something Cole Dravid’s Suppress couldn’t shut down. Absorbing abilities through a gacha interface nobody in this world could detect. Sleeping with your daughter in ways that permanently rewrote her power ceiling. Telling a girl with horns and a sheep tail that her combat potential terrified me. Kissing a classmate to avoid getting shot and triggering a cascade involving four separate women.
"I’ve been becoming someone worth seeing," I said.
Diane’s expression broke.
The CEO dissolved. The composure that had weathered twenty years of managing Heroes and impossible deadlines and the specific strain of raising someone else’s child cracked, and what came through wasn’t the professional or the strategist or the woman who could read any room.
Just Diane.
Her mouth found mine.
This kiss started soft.
Her lips pressed against mine with a tenderness that looked like it cost her. I felt the confession in the contact: she’d missed me in a way Read the Room could detect but not categorize. Three weeks of empty house and managed clients and professional composure concentrated into this single moment. The softness was her trying to communicate something her framework had no protocol for.
I pulled her closer.
My hands found her waist. Found silk and heat underneath. Found the curve of her hip, the small of her back, the architecture of a body I’d mapped across six rounds in a California king while her daughter slept three doors down and we pretended the math on that was something we’d address.
Her fingers threaded into my hair and tightened. The kiss deepened. The softness burned away. The real Diane surfaced, the one who took what she wanted and gave what she decided. Her tongue found mine. The sound against my mouth, a quiet "mmn" that vibrated against my lips, sent electricity down my spine.
I walked her backward until her thighs hit my desk. She sat without breaking the kiss. Her legs parted, pulling me between them. Her skirt rode up against walnut wood Diane had selected during a shopping trip where she’d tested weight capacity by pressing both palms down, bouncing slightly, declaring it adequate. The memory of her hands flat on this desk collided with the reality of her sitting on it now. Her mouth on mine. Her ankles locked behind my thighs, heels digging into the backs of my legs with enough pressure to feel through my trousers.
Her hips rolled forward. Pressed her center against me through inadequate barriers. I felt the heat of her through silk and wool, felt the friction of movement that wasn’t subtle or accidental. She broke the kiss to breathe, forehead pressed against mine, breath hot against my mouth.
"Lukas." My name stretched by the drawl, vowels going long. Her voice carried weight I’d never heard before, something raw underneath the composure that usually wrapped every syllable. Her fingers tightened in my hair again. Her other hand gripped my shoulder, nails pressing through my shirt. "You came back different."
"I came back."
"That’s not what I—" She cut herself off. Her mouth found mine again, harder this time, like she was trying to confirm something through contact. Her tongue swept against mine. Her chest pressed against me with each breath, silk and warmth and the specific shape of her I’d memorized in darkness across a bed that wasn’t mine. The friction of her breasts against my chest registered through my shirt. Full and soft and present in a way that made my hands move without conscious direction.
I gripped her thighs. Pulled her closer to the edge of the desk. Her skirt rode higher. My hips pressed between her legs. The desk creaked, solid walnut protesting geometry it was built to handle but hadn’t expected today. Diane made a sound against my mouth, something between approval and surrender, something her public register would never produce.
"This desk," she breathed against my lips, "was expensive."
"You tested it."
"Not for this." But she didn’t pull back. Her legs tightened around me. Her hips rolled again, seeking friction, finding it. The heat between us built in layers: her breath, her body, the specific pressure of her against me through fabric that felt increasingly irrelevant. "Lukas, we—"
I kissed her again before she could finish the sentence. Whatever we needed to address could wait. Right now Diane Fitzgerald was sitting on my desk with her legs around me and her composure nowhere in the room, and the gap between what we were doing and what we’d pretended we weren’t was too narrow to matter anymore.
"Nnh..." The sound escaped when I moved from her lips to her neck, finding the spot below her ear I’d discovered during our second night. The spot that made Diane Fitzgerald’s composure stutter. Her head tipped back. Her fingers tightened in my hair. Her hips shifted against the desk in a rolling motion, pressing her center against me through inadequate barriers of skirt and trousers.
"Lukas..." My name in her mouth, stretched by the drawl. Her chest rose and fell against mine. The silk camisole provided friction I felt through my shirt. Her breasts pressed against my chest, warm and full, straining against silk with every breath.