Pencil Me In | Part Eight
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Rule number one: do not fall in love with your boss.
Rule number two: do not forget rule number one.
Rule number three: when he looks at you like that, pretend it doesn't mean anything.
Summary: When you land a job as the personal assistant to Harry Styles, the calm, charismatic CEO of Fine Line Enterprises, you quickly learn the role is much more than managing a calendar. From early morning calls to last minute flights and being the gatekeeper to one of the busiest men in the industry, your lite becomes completely intertwined with his.
Word Count: 8 k
Warnings: Power imbalance, eventual smut, drinking, cursing, mentions of throwing up (no throwing up), SMUT
A/N: banner by @fkingstyles Taglist : @stoneyggirl2 @witch-rry @shimmerygloss @angeldavis777 @kenahemmings_ @littlealonebutterfly @theyfwniall @pizzadragono7 @folkdriving @inkedskin @loving-hazz @youdontcaredoyou @haylor-stylinson @watermelonlovershigh
You kick your shoes off first.
It feels like the most human thing you’ve done all day, sinking your feet into carpet so thick it almost feels wrong to walk on, and you stand there for a second in the middle of the room just breathing. The city spreads out below the windows in every direction, lights flickering on one by one as the evening settles in, and you stand there looking at it with your shoes in your hand like you’re not entirely sure how you got here.
You put your shoes neatly by the door. Old habit.
Then you take your bag to the luggage rack near the wardrobe, unzipping it slowly and starting to unpack the way you always do, even when it’s just one night. Hanging things up so they don’t wrinkle. Toiletries lined up in the bathroom in a way that makes the space feel like yours. Phone charger on the nightstand. Notebook on the desk even though you probably won’t need it tonight.
The bathroom stops you completely.
You stand in the doorway and just look at it for a moment. It’s all marble and warm light and a bathtub that could fit two people comfortably, which is a thought you immediately evict from your brain. There are products lined up on the edge of the sink that you don’t recognize but that smell extraordinary when you open one out of pure curiosity. Thick towels folded with architectural precision. A robe hanging on the back of the door that looks softer than anything you own.
You close the bathroom door gently, like you’re being respectful of it.
You change out of your work clothes and into something comfortable, an oversized shirt and soft pants, the kind of clothes that feel like permission to stop performing for the day. Then you climb onto the bed, settling back against pillows that are somehow both firm and impossibly soft, and pull your knees up and stare at the ceiling for a moment.
The room hums quietly around you.
Outside the windows the city carries on, indifferent and beautiful, and somewhere one floor above you Harry Styles is presumably doing whatever Harry Styles does at the end of a day like this. Answering emails probably. Taking calls. Existing with the same effortless calm he brings to everything while you lie here on an eight hundred thread count pillow trying to process the fact that you said okay on a plane this afternoon and meant it.
You reach for your phone.
Mia answers before the second ring even finishes.
“I’ve been waiting for this call for three hours,” she says immediately. “Tell me everything.”
You let out a long breath and close your eyes. “Mia.”
“No,” she says. “Start talking. Right now. I want all of it.”
You shift against the pillows and stare up at the ceiling and try to figure out where to even begin. “Okay,” you say slowly. “So you know how I said this trip was going to be fine and professional and completely manageable?”
“Yes.”
“It was not fine and professional and completely manageable.”
A sharp inhale on the other end of the line. “What happened?”
“He cornered me on the plane,” you say. “Not in a scary way. Just in a very calm, very him way where he basically said we’re going to talk and I literally could not go anywhere because we were thirty thousand feet in the air.”
“Oh my god,” Mia breathes.
“And then he just—” you pause, trying to find the right words. “He asked me why he makes me nervous. And I tried to say I didn’t know and he told me that was a lie. He said this whole job is built on trust and honesty and he wasn’t going to let me sit there and pretend.”
“He called you out.”
“He called me out completely,” you say. “He told me he sees the way I look at him. He knew I was checking him out at the interview. He knew I looked at his hand for a wedding ring.”
There is a sound from Mia that is somewhere between a shriek and a laugh. “He did not.”
“He absolutely did. He told me to cut the shit, literally.”
“I love him,” Mia says.
“Mia.”
“Sorry, sorry. Keep going. What did you say?”
You pull the corner of the duvet over your legs and stare at a fixed point on the ceiling. “I admitted it. I told him he makes me nervous and that I think about the kiss and that—” you stop for a second, feeling the heat rise in your face even though you’re alone in a hotel room. “I told him he makes me nervous in a way that pretty much makes me extremely turned on.”
Dead silence.
Then, “You said that. Out loud. To your boss. On a plane.”
“On a plane,” you confirm.
Mia makes a noise that sounds like she’s pressing her face into a pillow. “What did he do?”
“He laughed,” you say. “Not in a mean way. Just like he was—I don’t know. Like he was relieved almost. And then he said—” you pause again, and even just recounting it makes something warm move through your chest. “He said he can’t stop thinking about the kiss. About the way I fell into his lap. About how my lips tasted. He said it’s been driving him mad.”
“Stop,” Mia whispers. “Stop the car. He said that.”
“Word for word.”
“And you’re alive? You didn’t just dissolve into the seat?”
“I almost did,” you admit. “And then he asked what we were going to do about it and he said—” you shift against the pillows, looking back out at the city lights through the window. “He said this could work out really well for me. He talked about his life. The travel and the places he goes and all of it. And he said let me treat you. Let me take care of you.”
Mia is quiet for a moment, and when she speaks again her voice is softer. “What did you say?”
You look up at the ceiling, at the warm light of the room, at the impossible softness of everything around you that feels nothing like your cracked bathroom tile or your check engine light or the life you drove away from this morning.
“I said okay,” you tell her quietly.
Another silence, longer this time.
“Okay,” Mia repeats slowly, like she’s testing the weight of it. “Just like that.”
“Just like that.”
“And how do you feel about it?” she asks. “Like actually feel. Not the panicked version. The real version.”
You think about it for a second, genuinely think about it, lying there in the middle of a hotel bed in a city that isn’t yours while the world glitters outside the windows.
“Terrified,” you say honestly. “But also like maybe this is one of those things that happens once and you either say yes or you spend the rest of your life wondering what if.”
Mia exhales slowly. “Yeah,” she says. “Yeah, I think so too.”
“He put his hand on my back when we got off the plane,” you add quietly, almost to yourself. “Just to guide me down the steps. And it was such a small thing but I felt it everywhere.”
Mia makes a soft sound. “You’re in so much trouble.”
“I know.”
“The good kind though,” she says. “I think. Hopefully.”
“Hopefully,” you agree.
You both sit with that for a moment, the line quiet between you, and outside your window the city continues its indifferent glittering and somewhere above you on the ninth floor Harry is probably completely calm and composed and not lying on his bed staring at the ceiling at all.
Or maybe he is.
You’re starting to think you don’t know as much about what goes on underneath his surface as you thought you did.
“What happens tomorrow?” Mia asks.
“Meeting at nine,” you say. “Professional. Work trip. Everything normal.”
“And after the meeting?”
You smile slightly at the ceiling. “I genuinely have no idea.”
“That’s either very exciting or very terrifying.”
“Both,” you say. “Definitely both.”
Mia laughs softly. “Call me tomorrow night?”
“Obviously.”
“And for what it’s worth,” she says, “I think you deserve nice things. I think you deserve someone who wants to give them to you. So just—let yourself have this, okay? You don’t have to talk yourself out of everything good that happens to you.”
Your chest tightens at that in a way that has nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with the fact that she knows you well enough to say exactly the right thing.
“Okay,” you say softly.
“Okay,” she echoes, and you can hear the smile in it.
You hang up a few minutes later and lie there in the quiet, the phone resting against your chest, the city glowing outside the windows, the room warm and still around you.
You think about tomorrow. About the meeting and the professional distance you’ll maintain and the way you’ll have to be his assistant in a room full of people who don’t know anything changed on a plane this afternoon.
You think about the hand on your back.
About okay.
About let me take care of you.
You reach over and turn off the lamp on the nightstand, and the room goes soft and dark, the city light coming through the windows casting everything in a gentle glow.
You close your eyes.
For the first time in a week, you fall asleep almost immediately.
You wake up all at once.
No slow drift back to consciousness, no peaceful transition between sleeping and awake. Just darkness and then suddenly your eyes are open and your heart is beating too fast and you lie there for a second trying to figure out what pulled you out of sleep so abruptly.
Nothing. No sound. No bad dream you can remember. Just your own restless brain deciding that two hours was apparently enough and it had other things it wanted to do with the night.
You look at your phone.
12:43 AM.
You drop it back onto the nightstand and stare at the ceiling.
The room is quiet in that particular way hotel rooms are quiet, a dense, insulated silence that feels different from the quiet of your apartment. No neighbor walking overhead. No pipes. No familiar creaks that your brain has learned to sleep through. Just the soft hum of the climate control and the distant, muffled sound of the city far below.
You shift onto your side and close your eyes again.
Nothing happens.
You shift onto your back.
Still nothing.
You look at the ceiling.
The city light coming through the gap in the curtains draws a thin gold line across the room, and you lie there following it with your eyes while your brain slowly fills up with the one thing you’ve been trying all week to keep out of it.
Him.
It starts small. Practical almost. You think about the meeting tomorrow and whether you remembered to confirm the room setup, and then your brain drifts sideways to the way he looked in that meeting back home, leaning forward, asking questions nobody else in the room was sharp enough to ask, and then suddenly you’re not thinking about the meeting at all.
You’re thinking about the tattoos.
You’ve been thinking about the tattoos since the elevator, if you’re being honest with yourself. The way they appeared when he rolled up his sleeves, dark ink against warm skin, something completely unexpected in the context of everything else you’d seen of him. There’s something about the contrast of it that you can’t stop turning over in your mind. The polished, composed executive on the outside and then underneath the cufflinks and the dress shirts, all of that.
You think about the way he smells. You’ve been close enough to notice it more than once now and you’ve filed it away without meaning to, the way it’s clean without being sharp, something warm underneath it that you couldn’t name but would recognize immediately. You noticed it in the elevator. In the car. When he leaned over your desk that first week to point at your computer screen and you had to actively concentrate on the words he was saying instead of the proximity of him.
You stare at the ceiling and acknowledge, in the privacy of a dark hotel room at twelve forty three in the morning, that you want him.
Not in the vague, this is probably a bad idea way you’ve been framing it all week. Not in the careful, professionally acknowledged way you admitted it on the plane this afternoon. But in a real, specific, this is taking up significant space in my brain way that you haven’t let yourself sit with until right now.
You think about the kiss.
You’ve been thinking about the kiss since it happened but you’ve been doing it in a controlled way, examining it quickly and then putting it back down before it could become overwhelming. But lying here in the dark with nowhere to be and nothing to do and two hours of sleep sitting uselessly behind you, you let yourself actually think about it.
The way it started soft. Almost careful. Like he was giving you room.
The way it didn’t stay that way.
The way your hand moved into his hair without you deciding to do it, just moved there, like it already knew where it wanted to go.
You close your eyes and press them shut and exhale slowly through your nose.
This is not helping you sleep.
You roll onto your side and look at the curtains, at the thin line of gold light coming through the gap, and you think about the fact that he’s one floor above you right now. Just one floor. In a room that probably looks like this one, or maybe a bigger version of it, because he’s Harry and of course his room is bigger.
You wonder if he’s asleep.
You wonder if he’s lying awake too, calm and composed as always, his brain already three steps into tomorrow while yours is completely useless, spiraling through the memory of his hands and his cologne and the quiet certainty in his voice when he said let me take care of you like it was the simplest thing in the world.
You wonder what it would actually look like. Being taken care of by someone like him. Not the travel and the restaurants and the things he was describing on the plane, but the quieter version of it. What it would feel like to be the person he comes home to. To be the one he talks to at the end of the day, the real version, not the polished executive version but the one you saw glimpses of on the couch in his office. The one who got locked in a bathroom at twenty three and still answered emails through the door. The one who said it gets lonely in a way I didn’t expect with enough honesty that it sat in the room for a full minute after he said it.
You want that version of him.
That might be the most honest thought you’ve had since you started this job.
You lie there with it for a while, the ceiling unchanging above you, the city glowing quietly outside, your heart doing something slow and complicated in your chest that doesn’t feel like the nervous flutter from before.
This feels heavier than that.
This feels like something you’re not going to be able to talk yourself out of even if you wanted to.
And lying here at twelve forty three in a hotel room one floor below him, you’re starting to think you don’t want to anymore.
You lie there for another twenty minutes convincing yourself you’re about to fall back asleep.
You’re not falling back asleep.
You stare at the ceiling until you can’t anymore and then you throw the covers back and sit on the edge of the bed, your feet finding the thick carpet, your elbows on your knees and your face in your hands. The room is warm and quiet and the city glows through the curtain gap and none of it is enough to slow your brain down or talk it into something sensible.
You get up.
You don’t have a plan. You’re not making a decision. You’re just standing up because lying in that bed for another four hours with your own thoughts sounds genuinely unbearable, and your feet are already carrying you toward the desk before you’ve fully committed to anything.
The hotel folder is sitting where you left it when you checked in, tucked neatly beside the notepad with the hotel’s name embossed at the top. You flip it open and scan the papers inside without really knowing what you’re looking for, the check in confirmation, the amenities guide, the room service menu.
And then a folded slip of paper near the back.
You open it.
It’s from the front desk. A standard note included with the booking, names and room numbers listed for the reservation. Professional. Logistical. The kind of thing you’d file away without thinking about it in any other context.
His name.
Room 912.
You stand there holding the paper for a moment, the number sitting in your head like it’s settling somewhere permanent.
912.
One floor up.
You set the paper down carefully and stand very still in the middle of the room for a second, the city glowing quietly outside the windows, the room warm and still around you.
Then you go to your bag and pull out your sweatshirt, the oversized grey one you packed for sleeping in, and you pull it over your head and tug it down. It doesn’t exactly transform your soft pants and bare feet into something respectable but it makes you feel marginally less like you’re about to do something completely reckless.
You look at yourself in the mirror on the wardrobe door.
You look like a person who woke up at midnight and is about to make a questionable decision.
Which is accurate.
You pick up your room key from the nightstand and stand there holding it for a second, your brain making one last attempt to talk you into something sensible. You have a meeting in eight hours. You barely know him. This is your job. This is your actual career and you worked hard to get here and walking up to the ninth floor in bare feet at one in the morning is not the behavior of someone who takes that seriously.
You know all of that.
You go anyway.
The hallway is empty and quiet, the carpet muffling your bare feet as you walk toward the elevator. The lighting is low at this hour, that specific late night dimness that makes everything feel slightly outside of normal time, like the regular rules don’t quite apply the same way they do in daylight.
You press the button and stand there waiting, your arms crossed loosely over your sweatshirt, your heart already beating faster than it should be for someone who is technically just going for a walk.
The elevator arrives with a soft chime and you get in and press nine and watch the doors close on your own reflection in the polished metal. A girl in an oversized sweatshirt with her hair loose and her feet bare going to knock on her boss’s hotel room door at one in the morning. You look slightly unhinged. You might be slightly unhinged.
The elevator slows and opens onto the ninth floor and you step out into a hallway that looks almost identical to yours. You look both ways. Empty. You start walking, reading the numbers as you pass. 904. 906. 908. 910.
You stop.
912 is right in front of you.
You stand there looking at the door and all of the very reasonable thoughts that should have occurred to you forty minutes ago decide to show up now all at once. It’s one in the morning. He might be asleep. He is probably asleep. You have a meeting in eight hours and you’re standing barefoot in a hotel hallway in a sweatshirt because you couldn’t stop thinking about his tattoos and the way he smells and the way okay felt sitting in your chest on that plane like something finally settling into the right place.
You take one step back.
Then stop.
Think about the ceiling of your room and the four remaining hours until your alarm and the way he said let me take care of you like it was the simplest thing in the world.
You lift your hand and knock before you can take another step backward.
Three soft knocks.
And then silence.
You stand there in the quiet hallway with your heart in your throat and nothing happens. No sound from inside. No movement. No light appearing under the door. Just the hum of the hallway and the distant sound of the elevator somewhere behind you and your own heartbeat which is embarrassingly loud in your ears.
Five seconds.
Ten.
“This is so stupid,” you whisper to yourself, and you mean it completely. This is genuinely so stupid. You take a step back and then another, already half turning toward the elevator, already composing the story you’ll tell yourself tomorrow about how you almost did something reckless but came to your senses in time, already planning the very long shower you’re going to take while you convince yourself this never happened.
Then you hear it.
The soft sound of the latch.
You freeze.
The door opens.
And there he is.
You don’t say anything because your brain stops working completely and immediately.
He’s in a pair of shorts, low on his hips, and nothing else. No shirt. No composed executive armor. Just him, standing in the doorway with his hair slightly disheveled and his eyes adjusting to the hallway light, looking like he was awake but only barely.
And the tattoos.
All of them.
You knew about his forearms. You’d catalogued those already over the past two weeks, filed them away in the part of your brain that was supposed to be strictly professional. But this is different. This is the full picture. Two swallows spread across his chest, wings open, dark and striking against his skin. The butterfly large and impossibly detailed across his stomach, so much bigger than you would have expected, the kind of thing that demands your full attention and gets it without apology. The laurel leaves curving low across his abdomen just above the waistband of his shorts, dark and elegant, framing everything above them. His arms covered from shoulder to wrist, layered and overlapping, a heart, a cross, images you can’t fully read from here but want to take your time with.
You are staring.
You know you’re staring and you cannot stop.
Your mouth has gone completely dry.
He blinks at you, taking you in slowly, the sweatshirt and the bare feet and whatever expression is currently on your face that you have absolutely no control over. Something shifts in his eyes when he realizes it’s you, something that moves from surprise into something warmer and more knowing.
“Can I help—”
You close the distance between you and press your lips to his.
Hard.
Not careful. Not tentative. Nothing like the kiss in his office which started soft and worked its way into something else. This one starts exactly where that one ended, your hands coming up to his face, his stubble rough against your palms, your lips on his with all the intention of someone who has been awake for an hour in a dark hotel room making a decision she is completely done second guessing.
For one half second he doesn’t move.
Just long enough that the back of your brain starts to panic.
And then his hands find your waist and he kisses you back and any remaining piece of sensible thought you had left dissolves completely.
He steps back from the doorway and takes you with him, his hands firm at your waist, and the door swings shut behind you with a soft click that sounds impossibly final in the quiet of the room.
And then your back is against it.
The wood is cool through your sweatshirt and he is the opposite of cool, warm and solid and close in a way that makes every rational thought you have left evaporate instantly. His hands are on either side of your face now and he kisses you like he’s been thinking about this too, like the last week of careful professional distance has been costing him just as much as it’s been costing you.
You kiss him back just as hard.
Your hands find the back of his neck and pull him closer like there’s somehow not enough of him yet, like the distance between you even now is still too much. You can feel the ink under your fingertips where your hands slide to his shoulders, the raised and smooth planes of everything you spent an hour lying awake thinking about, and it’s so much better than thinking about it.
He makes a low sound against your mouth when you pull him closer and something about that sound does things to you that you are not prepared for.
His hands slide down from your face to your waist, fingers curling into the fabric of your sweatshirt, and he kisses you slower now, deeper, like he’s made a decision and he’s in no hurry about it. Like he has all night and he intends to use it.
You think distantly, in the very back of your brain, about the meeting tomorrow morning.
And then he tilts his head and kisses you again and you stop thinking about the meeting entirely.
You pull back just enough to breathe, your forehead dropping against his, both of you catching your breath in the small charged space between you. His hands are still on your waist, warm and unhurried, and you can feel the steady rise and fall of his chest against yours.
The room behind him is dark except for the city light coming through the curtains, the same gold glow from your room one floor below, and it casts everything in soft shadow. His eyes find yours in the dim light and there’s something in them that makes your chest feel tight in the best possible way.
“You came upstairs,” he says quietly, and his voice is low and rough in a way that is completely different from the boardroom version of him, from the elevator version, from every version you’ve been carefully cataloguing and filing away for two weeks.
“I couldn’t sleep,” you say, like that explains everything.
The corner of his mouth lifts slightly. “No?”
“No,” you admit.
He studies you for a second, his thumb tracing a slow absent line along your waist through the fabric of your sweatshirt, and the simplicity of the gesture makes your breath catch more than the kiss did somehow.
“What were you thinking about?” he asks, and he already knows the answer, you can tell by the quiet certainty in his voice, but he wants to hear you say it.
You look at him in the dim gold light of the room, his hair disheveled, his chest covered in ink, his hands warm on your waist, and you decide you are done being careful about this.
“You,” you say simply.
He kisses you again before the word has fully settled in the air between you.
He walks you backward through the dark room slowly, his lips never leaving yours, one hand at your waist and one coming up to push your hair gently back from your face like he wants to see you even in the dark. You move with him without thinking about it, your feet finding the carpet, your whole body oriented entirely toward him in a way that feels completely natural and slightly terrifying.
The backs of your knees find the edge of the bed.
You sit down and look up at him for just a second, the city light catching the lines of his face, the ink on his chest, the steady way he’s looking at you like you’re something he’s been patient about for long enough.
Then you lay back and take him with you.
He comes down over you, catching his weight on his forearms, and for a moment he just looks at you in the low light with an expression that makes your heart do something complicated and slow in your chest. Not rushed. Not urgent. Just looking at you like he wants to remember this part too.
You reach up and slide your hands into his hair.
It’s soft. Softer than you expected, which you didn’t think was possible to notice right now but you notice it anyway, your fingers curling into it gently and then not so gently, pulling him down toward you.
He makes a sound low in his throat.
Something quiet and involuntary, barely there, but you feel it everywhere.
It does something to you that you have absolutely no framework for. Something immediate and overwhelming that starts in your chest and moves outward until your whole body feels like it’s been rewired. You tighten your fingers in his hair almost without meaning to and he makes the sound again, and this time there’s nothing left of the sensible, professional, carefully composed version of you that has been sitting at that desk for two weeks trying to act normal.
She’s gone.
There’s just this.
The weight of him. The heat of his skin. The low steady rhythm of his breathing that matches the frantic beat of yours. His forearms bracket your head and when you look up at him he is watching you like he is memorizing every shift in your expression.
His mouth finds yours again, slower this time, deeper, like he is settling in. One of his hands slides down your side, under the hem of your sweatshirt, palm warm against the bare skin of your stomach. You arch into the touch without meaning to and he smiles against your lips. Small. Knowing.
“Easy,” he murmurs, voice rough at the edges. “We have got time.”
You do not trust yourself to answer with words, so you pull him down again instead, kissing him harder, your legs parting just enough for him to settle between them. The press of his body against yours is overwhelming in the best way. Already half hard through his shorts. Your hands explore the planes of his chest and shoulders, the warmth of his skin, the unexpected textures you have wondered about for days.
He kisses along your jaw, down the side of your neck, open mouthed and unhurried. When he reaches the collar of your sweatshirt he tugs it gently.
“Can I?”
You nod, already lifting your arms to help him pull it off, then your shirt beneath it. Cool air hits your skin for half a second before his mouth is back on you, tracing your collarbone, the swell of your breast, the sensitive peak of your nipple. The sound you make is embarrassingly needy. He hums in response, the vibration traveling straight through you.
His hand slips lower, fingers brushing the waistband of your soft pants. He pauses there, eyes lifting to yours in the near dark.
“Yes?” he asks quietly.
“Yes,” you breathe. No hesitation left.
He peels the pants down your legs along with your underwear, slow enough that you feel every inch of fabric sliding away. Then you are bare under him and his gaze drags over you like he has been waiting for this view specifically. The city light paints silver and gold across your skin and he follows it with his mouth. Down your stomach, across your hip, the inside of your thigh. He settles between your legs like he belongs there, shoulders broad, hair falling messily over his forehead.
He looks up at you once, eyes dark and steady, like he is making sure you are still with him.
Then he leans in and licks a slow, deliberate stripe up your center.
Your head falls back against the pillow with a broken sound. He does it again, firmer, tongue flat and warm, savoring. One of his hands spreads your thigh wider, the other resting low on your stomach, thumb stroking soothing circles like he knows exactly how overwhelming this is. He finds your clit and circles it with the tip of his tongue, gentle at first, then with more intent when your hips jerk toward his mouth.
“Fuck. Harry,” you gasp, one hand flying down to thread through his hair.
He makes that low sound again, the one that vibrates against you and makes your toes curl. He licks into you like he is learning you, like he has all night to figure out exactly what makes your breath catch and your thighs tremble. When he sucks your clit gently between his lips your back arches clean off the bed. He presses you back down with the hand on your stomach, holding you there while he works you open with his tongue.
It is too much and not enough all at once. The wet heat of his mouth, the slight scrape of stubble against your sensitive skin, the way he groans softly like he is enjoying this as much as you are. Maybe more. Your fingers tighten in his hair and he responds by sliding one finger inside you, curling it just right, then another. The stretch is perfect. The rhythm is devastating.
You are panting, hips rolling against his face in tiny helpless movements you cannot stop. He does not seem to mind. If anything he encourages it, hooking your thigh over his shoulder to get deeper, tongue and fingers working together in a slick, relentless rhythm that has you spiraling fast.
“Look at me,” he murmurs against you, the words vibrating right where you need them most.
You force your eyes open and the sight of him between your legs nearly undoes you on its own. He holds your gaze as he sucks harder on your clit, fingers pressing that spot inside you again and again, and the coil in your belly snaps without warning.
You come hard, thighs clamping around his shoulders, a broken moan tearing out of you that you do not even try to muffle. He keeps going, gentling you through it with slow licks and soft kisses until the aftershocks fade and you are trembling under him, boneless and dazed.
Only then does he kiss his way back up your body, slow and reverent, tasting like you. When he reaches your mouth he kisses you deep and lazy, letting you taste yourself on his tongue. His hand strokes soothingly up and down your side.
“You are beautiful when you fall apart,” he whispers against your lips, voice low and warm. “Been thinking about that sound.”
You laugh breathlessly, still floating, and pull him closer. Your hand slides down his chest, heading lower with clear intent.
He catches your wrist gently, pressing a kiss to the inside of it.
“Not yet,” he says, eyes bright even in the dark. “I’m not done taking care of you.”
You lie there under him, still catching your breath, the aftershocks moving through your body in slow waves. He stays right where he is, warm and solid above you, one hand stroking slow lines up and down your side like he has nowhere else to be. The gentleness of it makes something twist deep in your chest. He just gave you everything without asking for a single thing in return. Without hesitation. And you’re lying here bare and trembling while he is still hard against your thigh, patient as always, like taking care of you is enough.
It feels unfair. It feels like too much one way.
You shift beneath him and slide your hand down his chest, over the hard planes of his stomach, not stopping this time. Your fingers slip beneath the waistband of his shorts and wrap around him. He is hot and heavy in your palm. The sharp inhale he gives sends a spark through you.
You look up at him in the dim gold light from the window.
“Let me,” you whisper. Your voice is still rough from earlier. “Please. I want to take care of you too.”
He catches your wrist gently and lifts your hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to your knuckles. His eyes are dark but steady in the near dark of the room.
“Not tonight,” he says quietly. “This was for you. Let me keep taking care of you.”
The refusal only sharpens the ache in your chest. You push up on your elbows, leaning in to kiss him. It is messy and urgent, your free hand still reaching for him, still trying.
“Please, Harry,” you murmur against his mouth. “I’ve been thinking about this too. About you. I want to make you feel good. I need to.”
He groans softly, forehead resting against yours. His hand tightens around your wrist but there is no real force in it. “You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to.” You kiss him again, deeper, then pull back just enough to meet his eyes. Your voice drops, almost pleading now. “But I want to. Let me. Please let me taste you.”
Something shifts in his expression. The careful control cracks just a little. He searches your face for a long moment, like he is looking for any sign that you are only saying it to be polite. You hold his gaze, letting him see exactly how much you mean it, how badly you want this too.
Finally he exhales, slow and shaky, and releases your wrist.
“You are going to kill me,” he says, voice low.
You smile, small and a little triumphant, and push gently at his chest until he rolls onto his back. You follow, settling between his legs, your hands sliding up his thighs. His shorts come off easily. You take him in fully then, hard and flushed, and the sight of him like this in the soft city light makes heat pool low in your belly again.
You lean down and press a soft kiss to the tip before taking him into your mouth. He curses under his breath, one hand coming to rest lightly in your hair. You start slow, exploring him with your tongue, learning the weight and the taste of him. When you take him deeper he groans, fingers flexing but not pushing, letting you set the pace.
You want to give him everything he just gave you. You hollow your cheeks and move over him, one hand working what you cannot reach. The sounds he makes are quiet but devastating. Low rumbles in his chest, your name breathed out like something sacred. You look up at him through your lashes and find him watching you, eyes heavy lidded, lips parted. The eye contact makes you moan around him.
You lose yourself in it. The rhythm. The warmth of him on your tongue. The way his breathing grows ragged above you. You want him to fall apart the way you did. You want to be the reason.
He warns you when he is close, voice strained. “Love, I am… if you do not want…”
You do not pull away. You take him deeper instead, and with a low groan he comes, hips twitching, hand gentle in your hair the whole time. You stay with him through it, swallowing, until he is spent and breathing hard.
Only then do you pull off, pressing one last soft kiss to his hip before crawling back up his body. He pulls you against him immediately, arms wrapping around you, mouth finding yours in a slow, grateful kiss.
“You do not have to do that,” he murmurs against your lips, but there is a smile in his voice now, warm and unguarded.
“I wanted to,” you say simply. You settle against his chest, listening to his heartbeat slow, the city still glowing quietly outside the window. “I wanted all of it.”
He strokes your back, quiet for a moment. The room feels softer around you now, the thick carpet, the heavy curtains, the distant hum of the city far below. You lie there tangled together in the quiet, his skin warm against yours, and for the first time all night your thoughts feel still.
You wake up slowly.
Not all at once the way you did last night. This time it’s gradual, warmth first, then the unfamiliar weight of an arm around your waist, then the soft sounds of a city still mostly asleep filtering through heavy curtains. For a few seconds you just lie there, not quite conscious enough to think, just existing in the warmth and the quiet and the particular feeling of being held by someone while you sleep.
Then your brain catches up.
Your eyes open.
The room is grey and gold in the early morning light, that specific hour before the sun fully commits to rising, everything soft edged and still. You stare at the ceiling for a second, taking inventory. His room. His bed. His arm draped warm and heavy over your waist, his breathing slow and even behind you.
You lie very still.
His chest rises and falls against your back in the steady rhythm of someone deeply asleep, and you become aware of every point of contact between you with sudden, acute clarity. The warmth of his skin. The slight tuck of his knees behind yours. The way his arm holds you without gripping, easy even in sleep, like this is just where you belong.
It feels dangerously good.
You look at your phone on the nightstand. 6:47 AM.
The meeting is at nine.
You close your eyes for one more second, just one, letting yourself stay exactly here in the grey morning quiet with his arm around you and the city waking up somewhere below. You let yourself have it. The full weight of it. How unexpectedly right it feels to be lying here.
Then you move.
Carefully. Slowly. You lift his arm by the wrist, barely breathing, and slide out from underneath it, setting it back down gently against the mattress. He shifts slightly and your heart stops, but his breathing stays even and deep and after a moment he stills again, one hand curling loosely against the sheets where you just were.
You find your sweatshirt on the floor near the door where it landed last night and pull it over your head, then your soft pants, then stand there for a second making sure you have everything. Phone. Room key. Whatever is left of your composure.
You look back at him once.
He’s on his stomach now, face turned away from you, one arm stretched across the space you just vacated. The sheets sit low on his back and you can see the ink across his arms and you stand there for approximately three seconds longer than you should before you make yourself look away.
You let yourself out as quietly as you can, pulling the door shut behind you with a barely audible click, and then you’re standing in the empty hallway in your bare feet at six forty seven in the morning with nowhere to be for two more hours.
You take the elevator back down to your floor.
You shower. You do your hair. You do your makeup with the focused precision of someone who needs the routine to feel normal again, who needs the familiar steps of foundation and mascara and the particular red lip you save for days when you need to feel like you have your life together. You put on the most professional outfit you packed. The structured blazer. The tailored trousers. The heels that make you feel competent and composed and not at all like a person who snuck out of her boss’s hotel room an hour ago.
You go downstairs at eight fifty five and take a seat in the lobby, crossing your legs and pulling out your phone like you’ve been here for hours and everything is completely fine.
You check the meeting details. You review your notes. You respond to two emails that don’t really need responses yet just to have something to do with your hands.
At nine exactly the elevator opens.
You look up and there he is.
Dressed impeccably, jacket on, the composed executive version fully assembled. He crosses the lobby toward you and you stand, smoothing your blazer, arranging your face into something professional and neutral.
His eyes find yours as he gets closer and something moves through them. Not the warm knowing look from last night. Something quieter than that. More controlled.
“Morning,” he says.
“Morning,” you say. “Car’s outside. Meeting room is confirmed for nine thirty, I have the contact details for everyone attending and the agenda is in your email.”
“Sleep okay?” he asks, and the way he says it is perfectly neutral. The kind of question anyone would ask. The kind that has nothing behind it unless you know that it does.
“Fine,” you say, matching his tone exactly. “You?”
He looks at you for just a second, something moving briefly across his expression before he controls it.
“Better before six forty seven,” he says quietly.
The words land directly in the center of your chest and stay there.
You don’t say anything because there is nothing to say to that, no professional response, no deflection that doesn’t feel inadequate, so you just nod once and turn toward the door and he follows and the driver opens it and you slide in and he gets in beside you and the door closes.
And the silence in the back seat is immediately different from yesterday’s silence.
Yesterday’s was easy. Companionable. Full of things that felt good.
This one has an edge to it.
You look at your phone and pretend to review something. He looks out the window, one arm resting against the door, his jaw set in a way you’ve seen before. The way it looks in meetings when something isn’t going the way he wants it to. The way it looked on that phone call you overheard his first week when he said that’s not what we agreed on and meant every word of it.
You clear your throat softly. “I thought we could go over the agenda on the way if you want to—”
“I’ve read the agenda,” he says.
Not unkind. Not sharp. Just clipped in a way that is somehow worse than either of those things.
You look back at your phone.
The car moves through the morning streets and the silence stretches and you sit there in your professional armor feeling it press against you from the inside.
“Harry,” you say quietly.
He doesn’t look at you immediately. He keeps his eyes on the window for a second before turning, and his expression is composed but there’s something underneath it that he’s not quite hiding.
“You left,” he says simply.
“I needed to get ready,” you say.
“You had two hours.”
“I know but I thought—”
“You didn’t want to be there when I woke up,” he says, and it’s not an accusation exactly. More like a fact he’s decided on and isn’t particularly happy about.
You open your mouth and close it again because he’s not wrong and you both know it.
He looks back out the window.
“It’s fine,” he says, and the way he says it makes it very clear that it isn’t entirely fine, that it’s the kind of fine that means I’ve decided to let this go for now but I haven’t forgotten about it.
You sit there holding your notebook against your chest and stare at the back of the seat in front of you, your chest tight with something you don’t entirely know how to fix.
“I wasn’t running away,” you say after a moment, quietly enough that the driver couldn’t hear it even if he was trying to. “I want you to know that.”
He glances at you then, something shifting slightly in his expression.
“Weren’t you?” he asks, just as quietly.
The question sits between you for the rest of the drive and you don’t have a good answer for it, which is probably an answer in itself. You look out your window and he looks out his and the morning city moves past around the car in that indifferent way cities have, everything continuing as normal, completely unaware that the back seat of this car feels like the most charged space in the world right now.
The car slows as it pulls up to the building and the driver comes around to open the door and Harry steps out first, straightening his jacket, sliding back into the version of himself that walks into rooms like he owns them. You follow, falling into step beside him, your heels clicking against the pavement.
He holds the door open for you without looking at you.
You walk through it.
And somewhere between the lobby and the elevator up to the meeting room you make a quiet decision that has nothing to do with professionalism or boundaries or any of the reasons you’ve been collecting like armor for the past two weeks.
You are not going to run again.
Even if it terrifies you.
