Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sergio woke up at 2.44 in the morning. He did not know why.

He drifted off shortly after. The next time he woke up, his bedside clock read 4.05 a.m. He closed his eyes. The hours that still remained from the night gave their way into a thinly veiled sleep. His alarm rang at 6.00 a.m.

He laid in bed for a bit, not because he wanted to, but because he couldn’t bring himself to get up. The life that awaited outside was a chore, stripped of meaning overnight.

The bathroom light burned his eyes. He turned on the sink, splashed cold water to his face, and watched it drip from his wrist all the way down to his elbow. Life could shatter into a billion fragments, and he would still have to wash his face and go to work the next day. Then the next day. And the day after the next.

Can you be exiled from your own life?

Invest what little you have into building a set of rules, construct it in such a way that when you bolt the wooden door, what’s inside is no longer visible to the outside. Then one day, on a cold night, somebody discovers fire and burns everything you once considered fortified. Sergio stood aimlessly in his bathroom, realizing that there wasn’t any point to a life of construction when a woman you could meet on any ordinary day carried a lighter in her pocket.

So, he leaned over to the sink once again and washed his face for a few additional seconds because he didn’t know what else to do.

His limbs felt heavier than usual, his mind felt lighter. He fell stranger to his morning, and he spent a few seconds staring at the way his jaw protruded a sharp line under the dark blanket of his beard. He ran his fingers through it. If he trimmed it shorter, it would soon grow back. Trim it again, and it would grow back shortly after, as though your sense of order did not matter, and regardless of which country you imported your razor from, there was no controlling the disorder, and come again the morning, you would have to trim again, and again and again until you were dead.

The pressure was back. He put on his jacket and left his room.

On his way out of the apartment, his eyes got caught on the half-open door to Raquel’s bedroom. Almost on instinct, he paused and lingered by the threshold.

She was asleep in her bed. The duvet draped halfway across her torso, one hand under her pillow, eyes shut tight, she breathed in and out in soft whispers. Drawing confidence from her slumber, he took a step closer to the doorway and allowed himself a few moments of observation, something he would never dare to do a month ago.

If nothing had meaning, if he lived by an arbitrary set of circumstances that could make and unmake his life in a matter of seconds, he found himself even more fascinated by the way his body kept coming back to her. Shoving meaning into that particular phenomenon had been absurd from the start and severing connection with Raquel would just be a waste of a razor.

So, he watched her. His body grew hot at the sight of hers. Then one look at where a pile of her hair curled around her neck and sprawled loosely around her shoulders had him craning his head to get a better look at her skin. A little lower and there was her waist, connecting smoothly down to her hip and drying his mouth.

There was something immutable in the way he reacted to her, and after all this time, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Raquel consisted solely of everything he was born into wanting.

If she woke up and confronted him, he wouldn’t know how to explain himself. Sorry, he’d probably say. I was on my way out, but you were sleeping so peacefully that I decided to ruin it. Do you happen to have a razor by any chance?

Thankfully she didn’t wake up, and Sergio didn’t have to put that morning’s unscheduled existential crisis into words. He left quietly.

#

“Lilies or peonies?”

“What?” he asked in confusion.

“Pick one,” Silene said as she walked down the hall with Sergio, with the latter itching to get to his office, shut the door and never emerge again in this lifetime. Unfortunately, Silene was a lot faster in heels than he gave her credit for, and she seemed to be catching up with his pace without much effort.

“Lilies.”

“Do you want them in a vase or more like a decorative bowl?”

“I don’t want them in anything.”

“You need to pick between ceramic or marble.”

Sergio paused before he was about to enter his office, throwing Silene a curious look. “I didn’t know we were entering the floral industry.”

“We’re not. This is for the viewing pleasure of the shareholders,” she replied flatly, clicking the end of her pen in between her teeth.

“Shareholder pleasure is Andres’ jurisdiction, ask him.”

He walked into his office with a deep sigh, already dissociated from his job, stunned beyond measure that he was expected to come in, turn on his computer and maximize the company profit when his life was no longer where he had left it, and the only thing his desk reminded him of was the gun that had been once taped under it.

The room seemed devoid of any crime. So quiet and terribly peaceful under the morning sun, basking in the glow as though he hadn’t spent the worst terror of his life the last time he had been there. His lips began tingling with the memory of it. The way he had rushed home from the office to find Raquel, then the way he had rushed right back to find the gun under his desk so he could protect Raquel.

The jacket he had worn that day still hung on the back of the chair. A pen sat on the desk with its cap still open, dripping ink onto the notepad he hadn’t bothered to put away.

These were the only traces of chaos. The rest were basked in sunlight, creating an illusion of peace in a room that hadn’t witnessed such a thing since before he had met Raquel. Being in his office reminded him of what he was truly capable of. Walking further into it reminded him how it could so easily be covered up. Even in the middle of the day, blindingly bright and transparent, the office concealed the events of the past, somehow becoming an accomplice to his crime.

Silene did not notice the shade of purple under his eyelids. Ignoring the pressure in his chest yet again, he forced himself to carry on with the shell of his old life.

Silene stood restlessly by the door, tapping her foot on the carpet, silently demanding attention. “Andres is out, I need you to decide.”

Sergio paused. “Where is he?”

“If you want me to question the comings and goings of the company CEO, I’m going to need a few more zeroes on my paycheck.”

Well, he knew a dead end when he saw it. Without taking his attention fully off his briefcase, he let out an inconspicuous nod and sneaked a brief glance at Silene. She had her eyes glued to her little notepad, crossing out a line off her list violent enough to tear the paper.

Andres was absent often. No one cared, no one dared to ask. Normally, Sergio wouldn’t mind it more than he minded sugar in his coffee. But that morning, he was showing his face at work for the first time since Gandia’s death, and his best friend’s absence pushed him just a little further over to the edge.

Had Andres noticed? Had anyone else?

He didn’t know much about the kind of life Gandia had lived. He didn’t know who’d search for him and who wouldn’t. Raquel had mentioned taking the blame for his death, and Sergio had been too distraught to object. After her most recent confession, it was obvious that she didn’t shy away from risk if it meant his protection. If it took murder to stop her from sacrificing herself, Sergio didn’t think he could change her mind about the lies she told to the Spanish police… not without a fight at least.

So, even though he was safe from the legal implications of his actions (the ethics of it to be overthought, analyzed, churned, and beaten to death, until it took a mouthful of benzodiazepines to calm down), Sergio still needed to keep an eye on the societal consequences of what he had done to Gandia.

Suddenly, his nonchalance to Andres’ affairs melted away, and he found himself surveying the way Silene’s pencil dug a hole in her notepad. Then he became disgusted by his choice of furthering his motives instead of paying a moral price over what he had done. He needed to be in bed crying, not snoop around his own company.

Find a self-benefit, he reminded himself of Raquel’s words from the night before. If you’re lucky, you’re horrible enough to find something to gain out of this.

He cleared his throat. “Ask for purple calla lilies in glass vases with an assortment of succulents. If they insist on variety, tell them we’ll only accept lavender petunias. Keep it monochromatic.”

“All I heard was purple.”

“You’re terrible at your job. What are the flowers for?”

“Auction gala on Saturday,” she replied without taking her eyes off her notepad.

“And you don’t know where Andres is?”

“He’s in my dreams, paying me more to spell the word monochromatic.”

Silene turned around and left, clearly not in the mood to take any further questions. Sergio spent a few seconds staring at the air she vacated, then he immediately left his office.

He had one thought in his head as he rushed down the hall amidst the glass walls… There weren’t any auctions on his calendar for the month.

Sure, he was accustomed to Andres’ impromptu events that reeked of grandeur and illegally imported whiskey. But the timing was disastrous. If Andres was hosting a night where he expected attendance, he needed to try harder to contain Gandia’s disappearance before the situation got too out of control.

But first, he needed to locate Andres and figure out whether he knew about Gandia. If he didn’t yet know, then Sergio needed to know how much time he had until Andres would begin asking questions. After he gathered the necessary intel, he could put all of his findings into a neat little box, put a bow on it, and present it to Raquel to handle.

Unless the problem came as a package deal with risks… The types of risks Raquel would jump into without a second thought… Then he needed to keep both the situation and Raquel under control.

With his brain running into billion simultaneous directions, he almost didn’t notice the files that were scattered around the floor by Anibal’s desk and barely avoided stepping on them.

He came to a sharp halt.

From the glass wall, he could see that Andres’ office was truly empty. What surprised him was the absence of Anibal Cortez, the secretary who had himself chained to his desk located at the foot of Andres’ office, determined beyond reason to answer any and all phone calls received by the company even if it meant he’d spend half an hour on the phone every day playing therapist to a salesman who tried to sell him vacuum cleaners in bulk.

The phones were ringing off the hook. Where the hell was Anibal Cortez?

With a sigh and an absent-minded criticism on the work ethic of the younger generation, he bent over and picked up the files that were scattered on the ground. His eyes landed on the desk, to the tall stack of envelopes arranged neatly in Anibal’s outgoing box, all with the same address for them. Navarre, Spain. Sergio had a second cousin who lived there, or maybe third…

The envelopes reminded him of the true nature of Anibal’s job; he was Andres’ secretary. If anyone had any information as to Andres’ whereabouts, Anibal would be a strong candidate.

Walking behind the young secretary’s desk made him feel a little guilty for intruding upon his professional space, but after a quick cost and benefit analysis as to the discovery of Gandia’s murder versus the violation of Anibal’s privacy, he quickly turned on Anibal’s computer.

Andres’ schedule for the week was crossed out entirely with the words ‘Out of Office” branded across the days.

Not a lot to sniff, then.

Back to work… But first, one final favor to gather up the pens that were scattered carelessly on the floor, just to teach the young man a lesson about the importance of tidiness, similar to the envelopes he must have stacked flawlessly together on the corner, clearing not bothering to apply the same degree of care as to the rest of his desk, but he did…

…the papers and pens were the only mess around the otherwise immaculate desk, and suddenly Sergio stopped breathing.

He swallowed and raised his head slowly. The hallway was empty, no sign of anyone in the empty corner of the hallway that housed solely the entrance to Andres’ office, no sign of any further disorder… except for… Sergio squinted his eyes to examine and confirm the only anomaly in the building.

The weekly maintenance of the executive floor bathrooms was scheduled strictly on Sundays.

So, why the hell was there a maintenance sign up on the door?

Sergio from a month ago would frown at the oddity of this and trot along to his office, merrily en route to that morning’s overpriced espresso. Sergio from that day however, knew that when it came to things of true importance, deviations from the norm mattered.

He rushed to the men’s bathroom.

When the door flung open, two gentlemen he did not recognize spun around in shock to greet their intruder. One man’s hand went to his belt. By the wall was Anibal Cortez, breathing heavily right in between the men.

Alive.

Of course, he was alive. Why would he be dead? No one had any reason to harm the young man, and clearly, Sergio had more paranoia in his body than he had thought. Though the paranoia did not explain the way the two men kept staring at him and suddenly, Sergio straightened his spine and tightened his grip on the doorknob in anger.

Andres’ men.

“Is there a problem here?” he asked, trying to get a better look at Anibal, who stared at him uninterrupted with wide eyes.

“Mr. Marquina,” the taller one on the right said, and Sergio racked his memory to remember whether he had met him anywhere before. “Good morning.”

No, they hadn’t met. Sergio had never seen these men in his life.

“Morning? It’s almost noon, you might not have realized if you’ve been in here for a while,” he said carefully, scanning down the scene before him for any clues as to what might have been going on.

It was a gut feeling, and it was the tense silence in the air, as though everyone thought a few seconds longer before they spoke. Anibal’s back was pressed against the wall. The last time he saw the young secretary like that was when he had accidentally stumbled upon him and Raquel, trading insults with each other.

The men did not respond. So, Sergio forced himself to inquire further. “Can I help you?”

“No, we’re good,” the shorter one on the left replied.

“Then remind me to issue a memo to the janitorial staff. You don’t have to be this overdressed to unclog toilets.”

“What?”

“I’m not actually asking if you need help,” Sergio said tensely.

Anibal’s eyes grew even wider. The man on the right let out an amused scoff before taking a few steps in Sergio’s direction. Suddenly, his heart rate picked up, but he lifted his chin regardless, reminding himself that he’d been through worse situations with Raquel.

“Mr. Marquina,” the man said pleasantly, almost with a hint of a smile. “I apologize, we did not mean to disrupt your business. We wanted to ask Mr. Cortez here about some investment options, but it was too crowded outside. We came in here for some privacy.”

Sergio blinked a few times. Then he answered flatly. “Was the conference room down the hall too comfortable, or are you particularly fond of toilets?”

“What?” the other one asked again.

“Lucky for you, we manufacture hearing aids.”

The taller of the two was quick to intervene. “But I think we got what we came here for, so we’ll be on our way.”

They exchanged a quick look and a nod, then much to Sergio’s dismay, one final, and even longer look at Anibal, who just turned a shade greener as a response, before they approached the door. As they walked out, the shorter one made eye contact with Sergio that lasted longer than what was appropriate and quickly cleared the bathroom.

Then there was silence, and Sergio immediately shut the door to make his way over to Anibal.

“Who the hell were they?”

Anibal let out a deep sigh of relief that he had clearly been holding in for a while and fell back against the wall in surrender. “Mr. Marquina… Thank God.”

“How long have you been in here?”

“I don’t think they were looking to invest, Mr. Marquina.”

“Yes, I got that. How long have you been in here?” Sergio repeated.

“I tried to tell them about our insurance plans, but they just wouldn’t listen.”

“We don’t sell any insurance, Anibal.”

Anibal stopped breathing. “We don’t?”

“Tell me what they wanted.”

“I don’t know,” the young man replied in distress. He was still panting louder than he spoke. “They grabbed me from my desk, brought me in here, and began asking me questions.”

Sergio frowned. “What kind of questions?”

“Questions like when I last left the building or if I’ve seen anyone around I didn’t recognize. They even asked me where I parked my car. I tried telling them about the bus fares, but they just kept asking me about the building instead.”

“Did they tell you who they were?”

“No, but I’ve seen them before. Just once, after everyone left home.”

Running his fingers through his hair, Sergio desperately tried to keep his composure. But it was almost as though his body was already caught up with what was going on, and it refused to calm down. “Why were you in the office after hours?”

“You promoted me to executive filing clerk, remember? I stay after everyone else leaves to finalize the entry log every day.”

Yes, yes. He did vaguely remember creating a title out of thin air to entertain Anibal’s ambitious career goals and occasionally catching sight of him in the office after dark, keeping company to a million binders.

“What were they doing?”

Anibal shrugged. “Nothing. They came out of Mr. Fonollosa’s office, I don’t know when they went in. They looked surprised to see me, then they practically ran out of there.”

He was too anxious to formulate any coherent thoughts as to what the information he had just learned might have meant. Suppressing the urge to splash buckets of water to his face, he placed a gentle hand on Anibal’s shoulder, trying his hardest to keep his concern under wraps.

“Listen to me. The next time you see these men, you’re going to come and tell me immediately. Then you’re going to keep this to yourself, understood?”

“But what if they’re here for Mr. Fonollosa? How can I not tell him?”

“You’re going to take a deep breath and exercise self-restraint,” Sergio advised, as though he didn’t forget what the word restrain meant whenever he was in the same room as Raquel.

“But,” Anibal whispered in panic. “It’s Mr. Fonollosa!”

“Calm down, he can’t fire you if he doesn’t know your name.”

Anibal began sweating profusely. But that didn’t matter because Sergio had just made eye contact with trouble. Andres’ men were clearly chasing a lead.

Not that Sergio expected anything big, but he did expect something. He didn’t know whether those men were actually suspicious as to Gandia’s disappearance (or whether they even knew him? How big was this organization anyway?) or whether they were just on the clock, going around Madrid to do Andres’ bidding.

But he wasn’t naïve enough to ignore the potential risks. In a way, he was glad that he had caught them torturing Anibal because, at least then, he knew to keep an eye open. He was going to tell Raquel immediately. Of course he would, but he didn’t know if he could detach himself from the scenario any longer.

Deep down, he knew that the time for introducing Raquel to his circle and stepping aside had passed. He was now just as involved, and he didn’t know if he could sever himself from the storyline without taking her with him. He didn’t know if he wanted to.

#

He did not see Andres at all that day. He didn’t come across any other strangers lurking around the building either.

Comforting Anibal had been easy. Once the young man understood the true extent of Sergio’s influence, all it took was a few arbitrary financial terms to distract him from the purpose behind their circumstances. Anibal had been too scared to detect Sergio’s lies, and Sergio had already become too experienced to let his trembling get in the way of deceit. Together, they had reached an understanding on secrecy.

Convincing Silene to cough up more information about the auction gala and follow his instructions had been a little more difficult. Regardless, Sergio was able to tear his body from the corporation somewhat early, and he was home by the time the sun was going down.

Raquel hadn’t been home.

The paranoia over her absence didn’t set in until after an hour of being alone in the apartment. Then a brief concern and an overwhelming need for verification flooded him, and he only calmed down after a brief survey of her bedroom from the threshold, grateful upon seeing that the bed was unmade, and her laptop rested half-open on her nightstand.

Her jacket on the back of the chair. A half-empty cup of coffee on the desk. She hadn’t left. His worries eased after that, somehow trusting the fact that after their most recent conversation, she wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.

Almost like a confirmation, he heard the faint sound of her unlocking the door right when he was completing his nighttime skincare routine. All traces of paranoia left his body then, to never return.

Just like he had done that morning, he spent some time staring at himself in the mirror. He contemplated the meaning of his life, then ridiculed himself for devoting time to something that didn’t exist and didn’t think it was worth it to put on his pajamas for the night.

He went to bed early.

#

His sleep was light. He woke up to a faint sound of shuffling coming from the hallway.

It took him some time to snap out of the darkness. As always, his eyes opened to the pressure in his chest, then his attention was once again stolen by the noise coming from behind his bedroom door, soft but still audible, as though someone was just walking past his room over and over again.

His confusion didn’t last long. Soon enough, there was a gentle knock on the door. His heart rate picked up.

“Yes?” he called in a voice too groggy for his liking, attempting to sit up on the bed, already quite sure as to who his intruder was.

The door creaked open to more darkness. Then there was the outline of Raquel’s hair. His eyes, still not accustomed to the dark, struggled to see the rest of her face.

“Did I wake you?” she whispered, sticking her head into the room.

He sat up and rubbed the sleep off his eyes. His hand reached for the glasses resting on his nightstand. “No, of course not. Is everything alright?”

Suddenly the room was clear, though she remained shrouded in black.

The door opened even wider, and Raquel just stood there, clad in a pair of shorts and a tank top (much to his detriment, as with everything else) and her arms around herself as though she was cold.

“Yes, everything’s fine,” she responded quickly. “Nothing to worry about.”

Sergio frowned and squinted harder to survey her face with better clarity. His pulse had quickened once, there was no turning back. Raquel might say everything was fine, but she still didn’t have a habit of knocking on his door in the middle of the night.

“Okay,” he said, waiting for her to elaborate further.

She didn’t.

For a moment, they looked at each other in silence. Then Raquel immediately turned around. “Never mind, this was a bad idea.”

“No, wait,” he called out, catching her right as she was about to close his door. “What is it?”

Raquel let out a deep sigh and opened the door wide once again. She did not let go of the knob. “It’s just that…”

“Tell me.”

“Well,” she huffed, evading his gaze. Her voice was so low that he could barely hear her. “I just…” she took a big gulp of air and confessed quickly. “It’s just that I had a nightmare.”

Oh.

Sergio blinked a few times in surprise, trying to formulate a coherent thought. Then a lot of coherent thoughts formulated all at once, and he was so mentally overloaded that he just stared at her blankly, unintentionally failing to comment on her most recent declaration.

Lucky for him, Raquel was also equally terrible at communicating, so after a brief impasse, she elaborated poorly. “I thought you could help.”

“Do you need an appointment at a therapist?” he blurted out suddenly.

Raquel just looked away in distress as a response. “I’m looking for something a bit more… immediate.”

“An emergency therapist?”

Raquel groaned loudly. “No, Sergio. I thought you and I could try… the physical touch thing.”

“Oh!” Sergio balked, snapping in and out of a coma twice rapidly.

“If you don’t mind,” she added quickly as an added caution.

Never in his lifetime would he ever imagine… No, scratch that. Never in a million years, a billion years, a trillion years, would he ever think that, Raquel… Raquel Murillo, the undercover inspector from hell, assigned to torture him and kill him slowly through a system of psychological warfare tailored personally for him, the Raquel Murillo, the woman who-

“Well?” she asked in panic, one foot still out of the door, her hand fidgeting with the doorknob.

“Come in,” he said so quickly that he surprised himself.

Despite the fact that Raquel remained frozen by the door, a warm glow spread into the room. Suddenly, Sergio was slipping into the present, something he was doing for the first time that day since he woke up. This time there was something in the present that gripped at him, and the shell was filling up and overflowing with endorphins.

He maintained his poker face, not at all keen on scaring her off.

The way she had guided him through the sharp turns of his life was still stuck with him. She was the only person who knew his secret, who knew what he had done. She had been with him through the thick and the thin. If there was anything he could do to give her the same, he’d take the chance in a heartbeat.

If she was at his door, the request was not up to question. His bed was always open. Besides, she was just at the threshold, yet he had already stopped feeling lonely.

“Really?” Raquel asked, in a different type of shock herself, regarding him with pure suspicion.

“Of course,” he said without skipping a beat.

But her reluctance wasn’t over. “You’re not going to make fun of me? Tell me that the cop assigned to you to protect you can’t even protect herself from her nightmares? Give me a speech about my melatonin deficiency and offer to make me some grass tea?”

A ghost of a smile brushed his lips at her scattered predictions, though he remained silent.

Don’t get too excited, she’s never going to drink the herbal tea. It’s a tactic.

Instead, he reached over to the other side of the bed and pulled open the covers, throwing her an expectant look.

However, her wariness clearly grew because she said, “What is this?”

“I thought you wanted to sleep with me.”

“Sleep next to you,” she corrected him tightly.

Shit.

“Well,” Sergio smiled regardless, not willing to be distracted. “Come sleep next to me then.”

Raquel took a few steps into the room and closed the door gently behind her with a soft click. Electricity filled the air, the kind that micro-dosed you with one inaudible voltage at a time. But before she made her way over to the bed, she paused again and threw him another sympathetic look.

“Are you sure you’re not going to freak out?” she asked. “No ‘Raquel, I need my antidepressants,’ ‘Raquel, you’re making me lose my mind’?”

“You make me sound so… mentally ill.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she replied immediately, no longer whispering now that the subject was drifting elsewhere. “It’s just that you have an anxiety disorder, and… some other stuff, I think…”

“Come to bed, Raquel,” he interrupted, a little sharper this time.

He couldn’t help himself, really. It was just difficult to get through to her. Unless he pinned down her idea to let him help as quickly as he could, she was just going to make another rapid decision and jump out of his room before he could stop her. His window was short, and he cared for her too much to let her talk herself out of it.

“Right,” she whispered quietly. “Alright.”

She approached the bed as slowly as she could, reminding him of the very first night they had shared a bed, back when his mother was there with her overnight bag, shoving them into the same room even when she had already guessed that they were lying to her. They had shared a bed once more since then, but both of them had been too intoxicated to notice.

Her hand flattened over the covers, and she slowly pulled the blanket even lower.

But upon seeing the sight before her, she balked at him. “Where are your pajamas?”

He looked down at himself, having completely forgotten about the fact that he had forgone his usual evening attire for the sake of an effortless t-shirt and a pair of boxers during a particularly strong wave of something that could only be categorized as a seventeenth century existentialist philosophy.

“I was… hot,” he lied badly, hoping that Raquel would never get an opportunity to see his summer pajamas sets.

He took off his glasses and placed them back on the nightstand. She nodded and sat down slowly, filling his bed, jolting him out of the paralysis that had been his life that day. Suddenly, he became a little too aware of her presence.

She slipped her legs under the blanket. A flash of two toned thighs disappeared quickly under the covers, and his eyes immediately snapped up to her own.

She was about to lie down. He was about to slowly lie down with her. But in a moment, she paused again. “How are you?”

His gaze softened at the question. So did his jaw. “I’m better.”

“Oh, good… Is there anything I can do?”

“You can lie down.”

“Right,” she swallowed. “Sorry, yes.”

Carefully, she lowered herself to the mattress and settled on her back. Sergio lay down with her, turning to his side to watch her silently for the next move.

He wasn’t sure what to do… or how to approach. How would you even approach something like this? A woman like her? His hands craved her hips, but his mind held him back. He needed to maintain caution.

Things were still settling between them since he had driven them back down from the field that night, and they had shared a quiet buttered toast on the kitchen stools. Since then, he had established that whatever it was that existed between them, existed objectively, was far from hate. But unfortunately, his revelations ended there.

He knew she cared about him. Enough to disregard herself if needed. But where did that lead?

He knew virtually nothing about this new side of her. Ever since they met, he treated her with the idea that what she harbored for him was nothing but resentment that fluctuated rapidly based on her mood or the chemicals in her bloodstream. Now that the presumption of hate was gone, he was seeing her in a new light. He just didn’t know how to change into the right gear.

How to act around her when she didn’t hate him? How to ease into the deepest friendship he was probably ever about to have with a woman? How to contain his love as he did so?

So, he waited for her to initiate. She did not disappoint.

“Should we… um,” she began, throwing him brief, rapid glances. “How should we…?”

“Let’s try this,” he said, moving his body a little towards hers. “Turn around.”

Raquel’s eyes widened quickly, and she looked away, pressing her lips together. He suppressed the urge to laugh at her discomfort, not intending to give her any reason to back out. Besides, suppressing laughter was easy when you hadn’t been laughing in a while.

She listened regardless, slowly turning her back to him and curling to her side.

He moved her hair out of the way first, creating space for himself on the pillow he knew they were about to share. It was surreal, it was all deeply surreal, the fact that he was allowed to see Raquel like this, in his bed on her own will, waiting for him to touch her, letting him stare at the smooth skin on her back as long as he wanted. 

He just hoped he didn’t have a heart attack. Or at least if he did, he just hoped she wouldn’t notice.

But his mind was so engrossed with the way the thin strap of her tank top rested loosely on her shoulder, so eager to drop down her shoulder if need be, that his heart started beating in an exemplary rhythm to make sure he did not die before he got to touch her.

He moved up behind her. Then taking a deep breath, he slid his hand over her stomach and pulled her flat against his chest.

God…

She fit perfectly.

His mind was on overdrive, making his body oversensitive to every inch of contact her skin was making against his own, then overanalyzing said inch of contact to its very death. Suddenly, he was all too aware of what he was wearing, of what she was wearing, and how cuddling her that night meant that the backs of her bare thighs would rest on top of his own, equally bare now that he was only wearing a pair of boxers.  

It had been an ignorant idea. If it didn’t prove to him the importance of wearing proper attire to bed, he didn’t know what did…

Her belly was tight under his palm. He wasn’t sure if she was sucking it in or if she was just nervous, and frankly, he didn’t have time to wonder because he was being smothered by the smell of roses. He began fighting every urge in his body with spears and axes that ordered him to bury his head in her head.

But no, a few strands of her hair were already around his nose, giving him more than what was appropriate, and he needed to diffuse the tension if he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable beyond measure.

So, he cleared his throat and spoke with a slight smile. “Well, well, well. So, the inspectora from hell needs to be cuddled to sleep, huh?”

“I knew it,” Raquel responded after a brief sigh, making a sudden attempt to break out of the cuddle.

But he tightened his hold on her, preventing her from moving away in any shape or form. “Slow down, I was joking!”

Thankfully, Raquel was quick to calm down, and Sergio didn’t have to dig his fingers around the skin of her hipbone longer than necessary. Besides, her brief struggle had already spilled half of her hair on his face, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could handle the temptation before he decided to let the roses smother him for good.

“I don’t receive jokes well in this position,” she replied instead.

“No?” He removed a big chunk of her hair from his face, his hand immediately coming back to her stomach again, pulling her tightly to himself. He replied without thinking. “You don’t receive them well from behind?”

Raquel let out an audible gasp.

Suddenly, Sergio’s eyes widened in shock, wanting nothing more than to pull the words back into his mouth. For a brief moment, fear kicked in, but it was evaporated in a matter of seconds when Raquel finally closed her lips and responded playfully.

“Mr. Marquina, that is very inappropriate of you!”

He could barely contain his relief. Then of course, there was the added gratitude. Raquel knew what tortured him before the suffering even began.

“Oh God, I know,” he replied instantly with a nervous chuckle. “It was terrible. I probably won’t sleep a wink over it tonight.”

“No, it’s alright. I thought it was funny.”

“Really?” Now it was his turn to be suspicious and turn the tables back on her. “No ‘I’m going to kill you for this, Sergio’? You’re not going to carve your initials on my tombstone or whatever violence you normally think of every morning when you wake up?”

She let out a giggle, her back shuffling softly against his chest. “If you want my initials on your tombstone, all you have to do is ask.”

This time, he knew, without any careful analysis and calculated predictions, he knew that sentence hadn’t included a real threat. Instead, it was almost a joke. A playful remark uttered perhaps without much thought now that every word they said to each other didn’t hinge on the health of their relationship.

Or was it because of the close proximity? Maybe sharing a pillow in the dark eased their stress. He didn’t know what it was, but he did know that whatever it was, it was giving him confidence.

“Please,” he replied with a chuckle on his own. “Don’t limit yourself to initials. Sign and date it if you wish, even notarize it while you’re at it.”

Raquel’s response was another throaty laugh. “What have I done to deserve such generosity?”

He replied without skipping a beat. “You came into my life.”

Her laughter came to a sharp halt, and she turned her head back as much as she could, trying to catch a glimpse of his face. Thankfully, she wasn’t the only one, and he had already lifted his head from the pillow, inching towards her to see her reaction.

Their eyes met. Raquel let out a soft ‘oh’ and immediately turned back around. “Poetic.”

Satisfied, he settled back onto the pillow. “What can I say? My true colors come out at night.”

The concept of sleeping next to Raquel, deliberately this time, was still too surreal. He didn’t quite understand how he was supposed to relax enough to actually fall asleep when all of his energy went into putting immense effort into preventing his fingers from wandering around and exploring Raquel’s stomach. Her stomach that he hadn’t touched since he had stitched her up in his bed. God, how long had it been…

But, no. She was there because she needed help. Exploiting her needs for his own personal gain did not apply to this particular scenario. He might have been becoming a new man, but as his mentor, Raquel had trapped herself into a bubble. It was impossible to change towards the person he was changing for.

So, he was going to force himself to behave and count a small dukedom worth of sheep until he somehow fell asleep. There was simply no other option.

But Raquel was clearly on a different page. “What other colors do you have?”

“What?” he asked, already on his tenth sheep.

“You said your true colors come out at night. Colors. Plural.”

His lips parted in surprise, and a few strands of hair immediately rushed in. He moved away from them and tried to get a better look at her face, but she was turned strictly to her side, and she clearly had no intention of meeting his gaze.

Did she not want to sleep?

Carefully, he replied. “I think it’s your turn to reveal one.”

“Me?” she scoffed. “With me, nothing much comes out after dark.”

“Oh, I disagree,” he replied immediately. “You come out after dark.”

She fell silent. She did not deny, but when her silence persisted, he felt the need to elaborate.

“Well,” he said. “We both know you’re not a morning person, I can’t even establish communication with you before ten in the morning. Then, during the day you’re off to chase whatever lead you have on Andres, too busy to even have lunch, I’m sure.” He threw her a pointed look, and she actually angled her head towards him to roll her eyes dramatically.

“But you relax after the sun sets,” he continued. “You play your soft rock music in there, and you take long baths.” Losing himself a little in the moment, he couldn’t stop his palm from flattening completely over the swell of her belly and pressing her tighter to himself. “And when I bump into you in the kitchen late at night before I’m about to go to bed, you almost don’t hate me.”

She was quick to turn to him. “Oh, no. I do hate you.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, this time knowing full well that there wasn’t any truth to that statement. He let out a knowing smile. “That’s right, how can I forget? Because I am a… What was it? A corporate barbie?”

“No,” she responded with a defiant smile. Then the smile was gone, and the determination was back. “It’s because if you’re in the kitchen before bed, it means you’re getting a glass of water, and I have to watch you fumble with the dispenser for hours when there is a sink right there!”

“The dispenser tastes better.”

“But it takes way longer!” she snapped.

Clearly, you could be willing to die for a person and still not approve of his life choices. Because Raquel was in his bed voluntarily, yet she was still complaining about his daily habits. Though this time, her annoyance felt a thousand times lighter against his skin, and he had no intention of cowering under it.

“I’m sorry,” he answered with enough ammo of his own. “I didn’t realize I was standing in the way of you and the bread you were about to violate with mayonnaise!”

Bingo.

Suddenly, Raquel thrashed in his arms. “You pretentious asshole, that’s a perfectly valid midnight snack!”

His hands were immediately around her body, this time not limiting himself to single spots but taking advantage of her struggling to slip his other hand underneath her waist to envelop her stomach entirely.

Then he pressed her flush against his chest once more, preventing her from moving an inch. For good measure, he also gave her a playful warning. “Stop moving.”

She stopped fighting but tried to turn her back slightly to get a better look at him. “Why?”

“Because in this position, you’re neutralized, and you can’t harm me.”

“That’s a pretty bold assumption,” she replied with a chuckle that served no other purpose but to instill fear in him.

“It’s not an assumption, Raquel. It’s a fact.”

But of course, his civility backfired, and Raquel just began struggling in his arms again as a response.

She was trying to break free of the cuddle she had initiated, solely to prove a point to him. A point that he knew to be wrong because his forearms were simply thicker than hers, and his chest was wider than her back. With his hands clamped down around her body, she was entirely bound to him, and any effort on her part to overpower his entire body would simply be in vain.

Yet, it didn’t stop her from squirming her body against his own, desperately trying to pull his hands away from where they were latched around her stomach, refusing to let go of her pride, even if it came at the cost of her starting to rub her ass on his crotch little by little, setting Sergio on a simmering type of fire.

No, no, this had to be stopped.

He removed his hands from her body briefly to snatch both of her wrists from the air and fold her arms tightly against her chest before trapping her body hard against his own. She didn’t stand a chance.

Then he leaned his lips to her ear and whispered smugly against her cheek, losing a bit of his control to the way she was caught firm in his arms, and there wasn’t any part of her smooth back that wasn’t pressed tightly against his front. “Are you really going to make me say I told you so?”

Her ass felt rounder when it was all shoved up against him, taking up more space in his lap than he would have imagined, not that he ever imagined, but now that he had experienced it, he didn’t know how he was going to stop himself imagining it continuously in the future. She needed to stop moving immediately if they wanted to come out of the night in one piece.  

“You need to prove me wrong, for that,” she said instead, with a brighter color in her voice, bucking once again in his arms, sharply this time.

“Look, no one’s denying your ability to knock me out in seven different ways using only a single strand of uncooked spaghetti. But I’m telling you, from this position, you are completely trapped, and you are just tiring yourself out.”

Or, in other words, stop moving so I don’t sexually harass you by accident.

But she bucked her hips once more, and he slipped a knee in between her legs, cornering her from every angle to force her into listening. It punched a hole in him, causing his tolerance to begin draining out drop by drop. He was certain he didn’t want to cause any problems, and knowing his own body, he was one rub of her ass away from all sorts of problems.

“I said,” he warned. “Stay still.”

“Or what?” Raquel asked.

From what he could see, with her face angled towards the ceiling, she was grinning.

“Or we’re going to have a little discussion about manners.”

She let out a laugh that bordered almost malicious. “Discussion about matters? What are you going to do? Put a stack of books on top of my head and make me walk for you?”

She was riling him up, whatever it was she was doing, probably without giving it a second thought or letting herself enjoy him fully now that she had admitted caring for him, it was riling him up, and he was engaging her instead of diffusing the moment like he should have actually been doing.

“Oh, I don’t need to resort to traditional methods to get you in line,” he assured her, trying very hard to ignore the fact that he had been right, and the strap of her tank top had finally dropped from her shoulder, giving him unrestricted access to the smooth slope that curved her blade into her collarbone, then sharpened at the corner to rotate vertically up to her jaw. She exposed the flawless skin of her neck to him.

God. I am in deep.

“Get me in line, huh?” she replied with the dying embers of a low chuckle. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then why did you stop moving?” he countered immediately, unable to stop himself from proving his point.

The cost was high. Because Raquel operated through pure reverse-psychology, and her perpetual goal was to negate his entire existence as opposed to co-existing with him in it. So, she struggled once again, and his forearm across her wrists accidentally aligned in between her arms, and suddenly it was pressing against her breasts.

“Easy,” Sergio groaned softly.

He secured his other arm around her stomach, enveloping it completely around her entire body to press her airtight against his own, his knee pushing up in between her legs to hold her in place entirely. He pushed his knee up once more for good measure, and his thigh came to rest in between her legs.

He immediately whispered in her ear, growing desperate, desperate for the salt on her skin. “Calm down. The Raquel I know understands what she is told if it’s in her benefit.”

“And what is my benefit?”

“A man who is willing to sleep with his enemy even if it might cost him a limb,” he mused, trying to hide how out of breath he was.

“Next to,” she corrected him after a beat. “Next to his enemy.”

He could feel himself growing harder. He shut his eyes closed in distress, aiming to move his lap just a little away from her so she wouldn’t notice. But with his knee in between her hips, her leg resting on top of his own, he was just as attached to her as she was attached to him, and there weren’t enough curses to explain the mess he was in.

He replied without thinking, choosing to keep his attention on hiding his frustration as much as possible. “If you’re looking for linguistic precision, I’m actually behind you.”

“I know where you are,” she whispered.

Was he finally losing his mind, or were Raquel’s hips moving slightly against his own?

Was he just absolutely losing whatever remains of his mind that was left up there? Or had she just pushed her ass back?

She was loose in his arms now, no longer tight with tension.

No, no, no. She was silent, why was she silent? This must have been a tactic. His suspicions grew.

“You are starting to look a little complacent with this situation,” he said, trying to locate the holes in his plan and close them before she brought him down. “You are either really used to me, or you are planning something truly evil.”

Raquel was slow to respond. Trying to get a look at her face made him loosen his arms around her, allowing her to turn slightly on her back. Her eyelids were heavy, giving her face a more peaceful expression than he expected, drawing him further into confusion. Maybe she was finally falling asleep.

When the silence went on for too long, she finally spoke, dragging her voice out against the moments. “Evil?”

He was watching her in utter fascination, finding himself a little hooked on this strange new look on her face, trying to understand what kind of a strategy this behavior would follow. But his thought pattern scattered around every time his gaze landed on her half-parted lips, or more accurately, the slight glistening on her lower lip from when she last licked it, making him try very hard not to put his mouth there and see what it tasted like.

Focus.

He forced himself to answer her question, though his mouth was drying rapidly and talking was difficult. “Yes, evil. I don’t know, like foreclose on my apartment.”

This answer broke Raquel out of the trance she was in, but it didn’t last longer than a second. Without opening her eyes, she let out a split-second laugh, too breathy for his blood, and almost snuggled deeper in his chest. “What else?”

He could feel the heat from the sweat that was building on his chest, his body clearly insisting on melting into her one way or another, even if he blocked all paths of access. Besides, his delusion persisted, still almost feeling the way Raquel’s hips might have been grinding against his own, her inner thighs trapping his leg and pressing him even further towards an area that felt hotter than everything.

Maybe holding her in place to restrict movement had been a bad idea…

So he struggled to hold the conversation, knowing full well that if he didn’t, his heart was going to pump every last drop of his blood to an organ that was absolutely prohibited from making itself known. Not to mention he was a little too intrigued by the heavy look on her face, and he wanted to know more.

“Blacklist me from Giorgio Armani?” he offered sheepishly, his head lifting clean off the pillow, already in pursuit of the look on Raquel’s face.

Maybe he was hovering over her, but he didn’t care. She threw her head back and exposed him to what her neck really smelled like underneath the daily quotas of perfume and deodorant. She was completely relaxed in his arms now, letting him hold her in all the right places without a single fight.

“That’s it?” she asked with another smile. But her lips parted again immediately. Her breath picked up, and he was too brain dead to understand.

“Bankrupt my company.”

“No,” she exhaled like she was in a fever dream, eyes still closed.

“No?” he asked, growing more and more intrigued by this moment they were in, so unlike anything he had ever experienced with her. “Do you want more?”

“Yes,” she sighed, arching her back against him.

“Why do you want to see me destroyed so much? What pleasure does it give you?”

Suddenly her hips ground once, sharply around the leg he had pressed right in between her thighs. “Ah, yes,” she hissed.

What.

Raquel’s eyes widened in shock. In a moment, all the muscles in her body tightened.

Confused, Sergio tried to move away to get a better look at her face, but her hands snapped up to his arm and latched onto him.

“Fuck, stop, stop,” she panted, and he didn’t know whether she was pushing him away or pulling him close. She was trying to sit up.

“Stop what?” he frowned, trying to understand what caused her to react (and in what way), but all of a sudden, he felt a hint of dampness on his bare leg, right on the bare thigh he had nestled in between her hips. Losing a fight to his curiosity, he reached down to feel his leg.

“No, wait, don’t do that!” Raquel tried in panic, but it was too late.

Because Sergio lowered his knee and ran his fingers over the skin of his leg Raquel… must have been utilizing… because….

His fingers came up wet.

That must mean… She must have soaked through both her panties and her shorts, and all the way to his…

OH MY GOD.

He sat up with her immediately.

“Raquel…” he rasped. “Are you…?”

He didn’t need to finish his sentence. They were on the same page.

Raquel stared at him in horror, with the color red storming her cheekbones and connecting over the bridge of her nose, so vivid that it was visible even in the lack of light.

“Oh, God,” she let out. Then her panic found momentum. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she mumbled quickly and pushed the covers off her body.

Sergio’s entire body was rigid in every corner. He was a little slow to react.

He remained sitting in bed, alternating his gaze between Raquel and his fingers, piercing through every type of shock known to mankind in the speed of light, breaking one sound barrier after another, falling victim to an intense, targeted excitement that was being injected rapidly into his bloodstream.

Raquel jumped out of bed. “Oh my God…”

“Raquel, wait a minute,” he began, but it was too late because she was already running out of the room.

He knew he needed to go after her, but his eyes were transfixed on his fingers. Then he couldn’t help himself, and he brought his hand back to his leg. Now that Raquel was out of the room, he ran his hand properly over the dampness on his thigh again, colorless and practically invisible in the night.

His thumb slipped against his skin.

Fuck.

He was hard in a moment, too painful for words.

This woman had been in his lap for the last half of an hour, not only inserting herself there without much objection, but almost voluntarily, and all that time he thought she was playing with him, she had been in a whole another world instead.

She had been so wet… She was, currently, so wet. Which meant that…. She was…

Oh, no, whatever the hell it meant, if he wanted it to last, he needed to catch her before she flew away.

So without a second thought, Sergio forced himself to leave his bed behind, and he ran after her.

It didn’t take him long to locate her in the apartment. He could practically hear her pacing around and talking to herself, or whatever it was she was doing, he didn’t know, he just followed the sound and found her walking back and forth in the living room, feet bare, one strap of her tank top still off her shoulder.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she kept repeating over and over again but came to a sharp halt when he entered her view.

“Raquel!”

“Don’t come any closer!”

She hadn’t bothered turning on the lights, more likely because she hadn’t even thought of it. The city lights illuminated the living room, outlining the darkness of her silhouette with a white shimmer.

“It was nothing,” he blurted out the first thing he could think of, knowing full well she was fond of that word. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing!”

But Raquel wasn’t interested in any of that. She ran her fingers through the mess of her hair and watched him in distress.

In fact, he was starting to realize just how bad the situation was. He didn’t remember seeing Raquel like this. Hell, she had watched him kill a man and still remained calmer than she was right then.

“Please go away,” she pleaded, evading his gaze in its entirety, even going as far as to place her hand over her eyes (convenient, as he didn’t need her witnessing the erection that was probably too obvious given the thin fabric of his boxer shorts.) “You really need to go away, and we need to not interact for a few days!”

“We live together,” he replied flatly.

“Don’t remind me!”

“Raquel, please,” he tried again, quickly running out of resources to tend to this particular crisis.

How the hell was he supposed to address this issue anyway when his own hands were trembling violently, itching, practically begging him to let them touch her body again and find out how wet she truly was? But no, Raquel was spiraling, and he needed to get his shit together.

Think, think, think.

“Leave me alone, Sergio. Please, just go.”

“Could you just listen to me for a second?”

“What?!”

“Look,” he began, scanning his brain frantically for some type of logic that he could shove into this situation and calm her down enough to keep her from running from him. “We trust each other, right?”

Raquel threw him an uncertain look, but she did stop pacing. “I don’t know. Do we?”

“We trust each other under certain conditions that are subject to exceptions, right?”

She did not look too pleased with herself as she looked away and nodded reluctantly. “I guess.”

“My point is,” he continued. The tips of his fingers were burning. His leg was burning. He forced himself to ignore the flames. “God….” This was difficult. He decided to start again and base his argument on the objective criteria that they could both agree on. “Listen… You are… a woman.”

“I know, thank you for the confirmation.”

He swallowed. Objective criteria. “And… I am a man.”

Raquel’s hand dropped from her eyes, and she regarded him cautiously. “Oh, this better be good.”

“And…” Sergio tried to continue helplessly. “…I have male parts.”

“Oh, God.”

“Let me finish!”

“Do I have to?”

He ignored her. “Raquel, I’m trying to make you feel better about what happened.”

“Nothing happened!” she snapped all of a sudden. “You just said so!”

He let out a deep sigh, losing all direction as to where this conversation was even supposed to be going and why he couldn’t just surge for her, pick her up, and lay her down on the couch already. But no, no, no. God, this was impossible. He groaned internally.

Calm her down.

“Alright,” he responded as calmly as he could fake it. “I’m trying to make you feel better about what didn’t happen.”

“Nothing can make me feel better.”

He ignored that remark and gathered his thoughts once again. “As I was saying previously, you are a woman… with… an operational equipment.”

“A what?!”

“Alright, maybe that’s not the right term for it.”

“You are worse at this than I am.”

“Maybe I am, but at least one of us is trying!” Sergio took a deep breath, already regretting this entire line of conversation. His own excitement was getting in the way, making it impossible to diffuse a situation that was already out of control.  

It was impossible to calm her down when he could still feel her arousal on his fingers, on his leg, boiling him up from the inside and creating a violent tremble in his hands. Impossible to just stand there without touching her.

He couldn’t even investigate what had happened or why it happened. Any effort spent to get to the bottom of their current situation was utterly futile when there was still a chance she could shut down the entire activity before it even began.

So, he really needed to get his shit together!

But frustration was building up, and Raquel was still pacing, still wearing those short shorts of hers, all hyperactive and almost half-naked in his apartment, in the middle of the night where they could be disturbed by no one, absolutely no one, if he wanted to just surge for her and kneel down and put his mouth on-

God.

For the sake of his own sanity, Sergio snapped. “Oh my god, so w-what if you got aroused?? You’re grown woman, it happens, I know I still annoy the hell out of you, so I understand why you might be freaking out, but get over it and come back to bed!”

Alright… Maybe that was a little too much.

Although somehow, it had put a visible end to Raquel’s panic. After a beat of silence, she spoke cautiously with a voice too low for her own good. “So… you didn’t mind?”

“Why would I mind?”

She let out a tiny scoff, looking away in what he could only identify as embarrassment. “I don’t know… Maybe because the first woman you allowed in your bed after twenty five years of sedentary life… got aroused in it. I mean, look at yourself.”

He perked up at her use of the word, silently grateful that at least she was honest as to what had taken place between them in his bed.

But then he followed her gaze down to his own lower half, finding nothing but what had been haunting him since they had come out to the living room. His half erection, still protruding from his boxer shorts, made his presence aggressively known to everyone within a mile radius.

He looked up to meet her gaze sheepishly. “Like I said… The equipment is operational.”

“You really didn’t mind,” she noted like she was in a trance, still staring below his belt.

Her acknowledgment soothed the sore parts of his frustration but gave life to another part, one that was growing more and more curious the longer they stood there in the darkness, with her refusing to pry her eyes from down below.

“Maybe I didn’t mind because I don’t know why she got aroused,” he replied carefully.

“She is an idiot.”

“I think she is feeling a little lonely.”

“Stop talking to me in the third person,” Raquel flared suddenly, reminding him who he was dealing with in a matter of seconds.

Though it didn’t stop him from taking a step towards her in defiance, too intrigued, too excited to relinquish his power on her. She was clearly under the influence of something still, and it was a sin not to explore, even if it came at the cost of her anger.

He swallowed hard, trying not to think of how dry his mouth actually was. “Why were you wet then?” he asked, risking a brief glance at her shorts that he knew carried traces of her arousal still. “Why are you wet?”

She let out a brief gasp, but she was quick to recover. “Before you say anything, it had nothing with you, okay?”

“Go on.”

“Well…”

“Yes?”

“It’s just that we’re close. We’ve been close. This job is my life… I basically haven’t been on any dates in months.”

He couldn’t stop his next question, licking his lips in a type of anticipation he could no longer control. “When was the last time you slept with someone?”

“I don’t want to sleep with you,” Raquel said suddenly, though her voice was barely audible still, not rising to any level of violence he had grown accustomed to.

Did she mean that, or was she full of spite still? Not able to admit to herself that she could perhaps be attracted to the very man she existed solely to contradict?

Or maybe caring for a friend didn’t always implicate sex, and she liked him as a person and not as a woman?

He wanted to ask her more questions, he wanted to drown her in them, but he almost took a physical step back. He couldn’t pursue it, not like this at least.

Whatever it was, it was too delicate to withstand abrupt midnight accusations, the likes of which would only serve to corner her as opposed to pry out any confessions, if there were any at least.

His eyes fell on her body once again, properly this time, soberly, without losing himself in the blood that was pumping down brutally in his veins. She was alone, all alone in his apartment, barefoot and in the tank top she wore to bed, practically shivering from God knew what.

Not the time, not the place.

“Raquel,” he said, starting anew with a fresh breath of air in his lungs. “I apologize. I shouldn’t have asked you about your sexual partners. That was incredibly inappropriate of me.”

“There is no other partner,” she blurted out.

“Other than who?”

“No one,” she whispered, looking away. “There is no one, I mean. No sexual partners.”

Ignoring the sweat building up in his palms, he forced himself to reply. “And you can have them if you want to… In the meantime, my bed is open if you’d like to sleep for a bit.”

He paused, gauging her reaction to his most recent attempt at calming down both of them. This time, she didn’t immediately begin jumping off the walls like a startled cat. Instead, she remained still, watching him in a way that was making it more and more difficult to stay cool.

Alright, you tried your best. Leave her alone.

Just… leave.

He looked at her face one last time, searching for any residue of the most recent connection they had established. Finding none, he turned and began walking away.

He was at the threshold when she called out to him.

“Wait!”

He spun around, surprised to find her still staring at him. “Yes?”

“Wait for me,” she replied quietly. “I’m coming.”

His heart skipped a sharp beat.

He successfully fought the urge to sweep her in his arms in joy. Although, he could not stop his jaw from tightening at the potential implications of her decision. He was already growing too excited. Everything he had known about his body proved to be useless. He could not keep up with his own reactions to the different shades of her.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s go.”

When he turned around this time, he could hear her follow behind him. The apartment was dead silent save for the soft sound of her footsteps that disappeared as soon as it was heard.

He stopped at the doorway to his own bedroom, sensing a momentary pause. When he turned around, he realized that she had stopped by the door to her own room.

“I thought you were coming?” he frowned.

“I am. I just have to… change first.”

“Change what?” he asked in a moment of distraction.

“My underwear.”

Sergio’s arm shot up to the wall in shock to keep himself from falling.

He struggled to stay conscious, cursing at his brain for not thinking his questions through, for not running them through a filter before they reached his mouth, who was equally at fault for this outcome.

He was really regretting his offer now. Letting her back in his bed just meant that the remaining hours of the night would be torture; a pure, undistilled type of raw torture. Clearly, his mind had leaked out of his skull sometime in the past hour, and he no longer possessed the instinct that had kept him out of danger thus far.

Now the danger was right in front of him, asking him to give her a moment as she changed out of the underwear that was likely soaked through with her wetness –God, he couldn’t breathe.

He let out a strangled nod, grateful to the night for hiding the pain on his face. “Oh…” he choked out. “That’s… quite alright. I’ll be… inside.”

“Okay,” she said before disappearing into her room.

He was growing hard again, and his brain whirred to locate the nearest sharp object within his reach so he could beat his manhood to death.

Not the time, he groaned to himself. Not the fucking place.

He forced himself to return to his bed, the very bed that still carried the crumbs of her scent, signaling the start of his delirium. His thoughts kept returning to the way she had moaned in his arms, using his leg to relieve some of the discomfort that had been building up between her legs that entire time. Perhaps inadvertently, perhaps on purpose.

But he couldn’t just confront her about it, could he?

She works with you, you idiot. She LIVES with you. If the answer is no and you pushed her, she is never going to feel safe around you again.

His eyes fell back onto the bedsheets again. He reached over and ran his fingers over the spot she had vacated, still warm. He licked his lips.

But what if the answer is yes?

His heart picked up a dangerous pace in his ribcage. Hope had latched onto him, and he could not rip his neck free from it.

She had been so wet. Painfully wet.

If it’s a yes, what then?

Then she needed to come to him herself. That was the only way around his predicament. He was the one with space to move, she was the one trapped in his life. If he pursued her, she could not move back. But if she came to him herself…

Could he even make her come to him?

Just then, Raquel appeared by the doorway, wearing a darker color of shorts, throwing him a timid look.

He immediately straightened up his spine, making space in his bed to welcome her back in. “Is everything… dry?”

Her lips curved into a tight smile, and she let out a nod. “Yes.”

“Good.”

She gestured to the bed. “May I?”

“Always.”

She approached him and lifted the covers. The mattress dipped under her weight, and Sergio tried not to pay too much attention to the warmth that arrived in his room with her presence.

He had never hated himself this much. All the rules, the etiquette, the proper behavior he had made up in his head had never sounded so stupid. Raquel was in his bed, wide awake after dark, still drenched in a type of feminine musk he was already addicted to, about to fall asleep. Yet all he could do was to obsess over the societal and emotional consequences of his desires. She was right there, yet he was lost in his thoughts.

But perhaps he held onto his rules precisely because it was her in question, her. She meant too much, and she controlled too much. The stakes were too high when someone played such a potent role in your life. The stakes were even higher when that someone was altering the code of your DNA with one irresistible smile at a time.

He was caught in between her own respect for her and this alien feeling inside of him, commanding him to act on a type of instinct he had never felt before in a way he had never considered before. He was caught in between her and the person she was changing him into. He didn’t know how to handle any of it, so he just stared mesmerized at her until she let out a shaky breath and spoke softly.

“Are you ready?”

That’s a loaded question, Raquel.

He shook his head to disperse the heavy fog of his thoughts. “Maybe we should try another position.”

“Position?”

“To sleep.”

“Oh,” she swallowed. “Right. What do you have in mind?”

He lay down on his back and reached for her. “Come here… Like this.”

He led her to his chest, and she understood immediately, curling carefully on the crook of his neck with a sigh of relief and placing a gentle hand on his heartbeat as though she owned it. His arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer to his body and trying really hard not to roll his eyes at his own behavior. If he was a little more obvious, she was practically going to smell how thirsty he was, and his entire plan of delicate approach was going to blow up in flames.

He forced his body to calm down, telling himself that if Raquel did indeed notice how violent his pulse was, he could just inform her that this was all normal and the resting heartbeat of a male at his age was, in fact, hundred sixty beats per minute, and no, she really did not need to call an ambulance.

Thankfully, Raquel did not suggest taking him to the emergency room, so for a moment, they lay together in silence.

“Are you comfortable?” he asked her after a beat because he was paranoid of everything.

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

He felt her nod against his chest. “Thanks for bringing me back to bed.”

“It was my pleasure,” he replied.

“Why?”

“I told you, Raquel. I like having you around.”

“Good,” she said. “Aren’t you glad you killed Gandia?”

He froze.

In the darkness, she noted. “You didn’t look like you wanted to kill yourself while you were outmaneuvering me into your bedroom.”

A lazy chill settled into the pit of his stomach.