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Men approaching Amari in bars is not an uncommon occurrence.

As a matter of fact, it’s a very common one. The attention is ego-inflating, and she likes to bask in it to a certain extent. When she’s not in bars, it also happens often enough at Runway’s galas, fundraisers, and presentations. Some approach her hoping for an audience with her boss. Most simply want her number.

But that’s where the cookie inevitably falls apart. Because every time she gets up after a casual fuck during the ungodly hours of morning, the first thing her instincts tell her is to bolt out of the flat or townhouse before she even catches her lay’s surname. Giving out her number is strictly out of the question.

She’s not scared of relationships, but her career used to demand a pretty tight schedule. Her promotion has given her a little bit more leeway with her time now. Enough that she can take morning jogs in Central Park. Enough that she can let the city’s nighttime current sweep her toward bodies and skin and the brief, numbing pleasure of being pawed and kissed and eaten out by men in designer wool and with sports cars. She never remembers a single one of their names anyway.

She isn’t looking for something permanent. That would mean NYC actually still has some decent, datable guys left, which is… just not true. Amari’s nights are designed to be simultaneously an outlet and a palate cleanser from the pressures of her career. Sex is a stress valve as much as it is a pleasure.

It’s a Saturday night, and she finds herself at her go-to bar in the West Village, alone at the marble counter, sipping a Hendrick’s and tonic and composing a list of tomorrow’s priorities on her phone notes. There are a handful of men who have glanced her way since she arrived: a surgeon with his hair slicked back; an indie musician, worth the consideration but immediately ruled out for the holes in his jeans and the visible tattoo peeking from his collar. Quite a looker, but it’s a must for Amari’s vices to be well-dressed.

Somewhere between Send thank-you to Jensen PR and Discuss the next spring editorial, the vacant stool next to her becomes occupied. When Amari turns away from her phone after switching it off, she is expecting a broker, maybe the art consultant she’d noticed in the mirrored wall behind the bar, the one with Mephistophelian cheekbones and a Seiko watch. But it is not. The first thing she sees is the sickeningly shoddy cashmere sweater over a white shirt with rolled sleeves. The second thing is the pair of unbranded, worn-out trainers.

On impulse, she grimaces, and she must have been glaring down at the offending ensemble longer than she realizes because the man donning it chuckles apologetically. “I’m sorry, you must be expecting someone.”

Amari looks up and—oh.

If one could look past the sartorial disaster and nerdy glasses, then the man trying for eye contact with her is unusually good-looking. He should consider himself lucky that Amari can, in fact, look past it. Just this once.

(How disappointing. He could’ve been perfect.)

She clears her throat. “No, I’m alone,” she answers, re-inhabiting her glass.

“Ah, but am I disrupting your alone time or…?” Holy shit, is he new at this?

She raises an eyebrow. “Are you?”

“I hope I’m not. If I am, I’ll take my mortification to the other end of the bar.” He chuckles again, angling his head to probably glance at something past her shoulder, the tip of his ears reddening. His right hand reaches up to scratch his jaw as if to scrape off a speck of dirt or something. This makes her catch the delicate flex of his exposed forearm, the coarse hairs tracing the tributaries of his veins down to his wrist.

Amari tries to suppress her slight surprise when her eyes travel to one of his fingers. “You don’t seem mortified to approach me with a ring on, though.”

It’s a simple silver band. It could be just an accessory, but she isn’t taking any chances. The man pauses for a second before his eyes follow to where she is staring. “Oh. Sorry. I know it’s a little unconventional, but…” He doesn’t tug the ring free as she expects him to. Instead, he regards it briefly. “I’m divorced. Have been for four years now.”

Four years is a long time. Oddly enough, it only deepens her curiosity. “How old are you, exactly?”

“I think I should know your name before I answer that.”

“You’re forgetting you approached me first.”

“Henry.” He extends his hand for a shake. She ignores this.

“Amari.”

Henry retracts his hand and takes a flagrant gulp from a sweating pint of Guinness that, Amari only notices now, has been resting in front of him on the countertop. “Well, Amari.” He offers a smile that is bright but not cocky. He actually looks rather shy. “To answer your question, I’m thirty-seven. I hope that’s not a problem?”

Amari’s first thought is to form a list, mentally jot down the pros and cons of sleeping with divorced, sexually repressed men over thirty-five. She abandons this, of course. She has already abandoned her standards just by entertaining the idea of this nerd in battered trainers and cashmere with loose threads sticking out.

“Not really,” she says dryly. “But surely, at your age, you can do better than that.”

Now he looks bemused. “Better at what?”

“Flirting.”

Henry’s brows shoot up to his hairline, the blush on his ears spreading rapidly to his cheeks. “Oh, um, I wasn’t flirting,” he blurts, then almost clamps a hand on his own mouth. “Or—wait, I was! Poorly, uh, now that you mention it.” His throat bobs as he swallows. Whatever nervous energy that has been radiating off him since he sat down next to Amari increases tenfold with impressive speed; it’s like the word flirting flipped a switch in him.

His whole face is reddened by the time he’s recovered, just a tiny bit. “On a scale of one to ten, how badly am I fucking this up?”

Amari hums, “Mmm, I’d say six and a half.”

Eventually, after she grants him numerous seconds to compose himself further with a patience she’s unconvinced he deserves, Henry clears his throat and straightens his posture on the stool. “I should probably just be honest with you—”

Her eyes narrow upon this.

“—but I’m here with my coworkers tonight because it’s our boss’s birthday—his treat. They’ve been badgering me endlessly about always focusing on work, about never ‘putting myself out there’ since my divorce. Despite how many times I've told them to mind their own business, they wouldn't stop. And I, uhh… approached you because I think you’re beautiful, and when I admitted that out loud, they refused to leave me alone until I actually came over here to talk to you, and I’m really, really sorry.”

This time, Amari shows her surprise, blinking wordlessly while her thoughts reassess themselves. If this were a pick-up technique she has never heard of, it’s a terrible one. But no man looking for a quick fuck would ever commit to the bit of dressing up like a nerd in a department store’s clearance rack. Henry’s eyes look so earnest, antithetical to just about every diamond-hard, icy interaction she has ever had in bars. It throws her off-kilter to the point she finds herself fiddling with one of the pieces of her Cartier stack.

What exactly do you say to a man who just gave himself away less than three minutes into a conversation?

Meanwhile, Henry seems to take her silence as a cue to save himself from further humiliation. The legs of his barstool scratch soundly against the tiled floors when he stands up. “I’m very sorry for bothering you,” he says softly, looking nearly akin to a helpless puppy. Well, that won’t do.

Amari eyes him contemplatively before sighing, “Sit down, Henry.”

He freezes. “I—what?”

“I said sit down.”

He quickly obeys like a puppy as well, and he looks so flummoxed that she almost feels sorry for him. He rubs his palms on his pants, then reaches for his pint again, takes a cautious sip from it.

She pivots on her stool to face him entirely, knees crossing at a certain angle. Satisfaction blossoms in her chest when he tries and fails to keep his eyes from glancing down at her exposed legs. She always knows when to put on her favorite slip dress. “Let’s clear this up. Are you here because you were coerced?”

Henry swallows again, loosening the already loose collar of his shirt. “Um, coerced is a bit of a strong word, but I think I’d get torn apart by my coworkers if I return to them empty-handed.” His index finger weakly points past her shoulder at a cluster of ten in business-casual attire a few tables away, peering over their drinks and phones with unsubtle carnivorous eyes.

Amari recognizes someone there, though. Her gaze snaps back to him. “… You work in the Natural History Museum?”

His demeanor brightens up like a lightbulb. “As a paleontologist, yeah. I was dismissed then re-employed just a while back.”

Oh god, he is a nerd.

“But how did you know?”

Just as she never gives out her number, it’s also part of her protocol to never give out anything about her job. Henry doesn’t need to know that she recognizes his boss—curator-in-charge of the paleontology department, mind you—from the occasional times he’d been present during the planning process of Runway’s events in the aforementioned museum.

“That’s beside the point.” Amari clicks her tongue, waving off the inquiry. “More importantly, are your coworkers expecting you to get a lay tonight?”

He snorts as he twists his ring around his finger. “Half of them think I’ve been abstaining after the split.”

“Well, aren’t you?” She arcs an eyebrow. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

The laugh he lets out is sheepish, reminiscent of the way some people do when they’re not sure if they’re being mocked. Amari wonders if it would be cruel to dangle this out a little longer. “Not tonight, specifically… but they are.” He takes a swig of his Guinness again. It leaves a foam moustache over his beard that he doesn’t wipe off immediately, gauging her for a reaction with a hopeful quirk of his brow.

She tries to suppress it. Really, she does, but as Henry dabs away the foam with a napkin, she resists the tiny smile threatening to slip through her impassiveness. She refocuses on her drink, just in case he’s looking. When she hazards a sideways glance, she confirms that yes, he is very much looking.

“Can I buy you a drink?” he offers, because Amari’s glass is pretty much empty now. Oh.

“Trick question.” She thinks he means that in jest. “Can your wallet even afford three more Hendrick’s?”

“I’ll put it on my boss’s tab.” He grins playfully, charmingly. “I told you he’s paying for everything tonight.”

Fuck, she’s charmed. Fuck, she is actually charmed.

There are rules for this, and Amari knows them by heart. Men flirt, buy her a drink, make some tasteless joke, and if the man is halfway decent enough, she lets him invite her to his place. Sometimes, she’ll allow a bathroom fuck if it’s urgent—best to get it over and done with than drag it out. She prides herself on being a professional at managing expectations and intercepting disappointment.

But Henry is, somehow, violating all her protocol. Somehow, he hasn't followed the rules. Somehow, she is actually enjoying his company. She isn’t loving that she’s beginning to project either, musing about how that focused, almost juvenile eccentricity of his would translate in a bedroom. He’s admitted to being rusty, but that’s a challenge that only intrigues her further.

Not to mention his veiny hands have been distracting her for the last minute. What would his fingers do if set loose on her skin? Paleontologists are good with fine details, aren’t they?

“I have another question.” Amari leans in closer this time, lowering her voice so only Henry can hear.

He leans in as well. “Yeah?”

“Were you being serious when you said I'm beautiful?” It's definitely not the first time someone told her that straight to her face, but rarely has it sounded so uncontrived and detached from an ulterior motive. What she awaits is nothing less than complete, unshrouded honesty from Henry.

The slight rise of color is back on his cheeks, suddenly undecided whether to look at her or her drink.

“I-I was,” he admits. “I kept trying not to stare—actually, fuck, that sounds worse. It’s just—” He fumbles a little over his words, and Amari almost expects him to implode again as he did earlier. “You’re very stunning. I’m sure you already know that.”

How very honest.

A different sort of thirst rushes sharply down Amari’s spine. All at once, she can see herself past midnight, tangled with this Henry, unwinding what knots four years of abstaining, or pretending to, might have left in his system. The idea makes her smile, only a crescent flash before she tucks it away again behind a poised sip of gin.

Apparently, he’s not yet finished. “Which is why I don’t understand why you’re still talking to me at all. You could’ve cussed me out and left after telling you about my coworkers.”

“Frankly, Henry, your coworkers are quite shitty,” she tells him bluntly, appeased when he doesn’t look offended on their behalf. “Are they still watching us?”

He glances over her shoulder, and the molecules in his face snap tight. “Seems like it.” He intakes a breath. “Why’re you asking?”

“Because I want to kiss you, I think.”

The silence that stretches is lush and comical and deathly serious all at once. Henry, personally, almost cracks; he blinks in a sort of startled stupor where Amari fleetingly thinks she might have to wrench his glass from his hand and splash its contents on his face to reset their entire conversation.

But he eventually gets it. His lips part in a round surprise, and he laughs, as though some rarely-heard joke just landed with full explosive force. “Right now?” he asks, strangled.

She smiles, undeterred. “Right now.”

Henry’s pupils dilate, fixing her with a flabbergasted look that lasts for several seconds before he rakes a hand through his hair, sighing heavily. Fascinated, Amari can almost see every synapse in his head misfiring as he debates the pros and cons of public displays of affection versus disappointing the (not really) stranger he’s been quite openly desiring. She likes the tension crawling up his neck, the internal war, the rabbit heartbeat, as long as she is the cause of it all.

“Okay,” he sighs.

Amari pauses. “Are you sure?” Because she’d rather not partake in coercing him as well.

“Yes!” He sounds a bit too eager. She finds it endearing rather than off-putting. “I mean, of course. Only if you’re okay with it. But, uh, you don’t really have to, you know, prove a point. Or make a show to my coworkers. I’m fine with just talking and drinking and sitting here as I make a bigger idiot of myself.”

He smiles wryly as he goes on. “And I’d rather not have my first kiss after four years be a PR stunt, Amari. Not like this.”

He must be a romantic, not that it’s a particularly surprising twist. What about him has gone exactly as expected?

“Doctor.” Amari exhales. Both of Henry’s brows rise at the sudden title usage. “You do have a PhD, don’t you?”

He nods.

“Great, so you’re at least book smart.” She smiles ironically. “Because otherwise, you would be the densest man alive.”

His Adam’s apple bobs. He is looking at her in this way that is not at all predatory, but more like how his profession requires him to observe raptor bones and shatter-patterns of minerals. At least he’s learned not to stare at her legs. Or maybe his nervous system is firing on so many cylinders he can’t decide where to focus.

She leans in, just enough for her left shoulder to brush his arm, and she catches a faint whiff of cedar and coffee emanating from him. She imagines what his tongue would taste like. Guinness? Slightly bitter with a creamy finish. She’s a gin person, but the thought is surprisingly inviting.

“I don’t really care about what your coworkers think, Henry,” Amari murmurs, “but I do about you.”

Henry gulps, his eyes flickering between hers and her lips. “What do you mean by that?”

He hasn’t rejected her so far. So when she sees no indication that he will, she closes the gap between them and kisses him.

His whole body stutters with surprise in the first half-second. Amari tastes the foam from his drink, the evidence of nerves, the tartness of a man who is both out of practice and entirely swept by the moment. Henry’s upper lip is unexpectedly soft, and he lets her dictate the cadence, neither pushy nor withholding. As Amari’s hands go up to cup his face, Henry fumbles with his cautiously until his left settles on the bar rail and his right on the small backrest of her stool.

It’s a slow, almost hitching kiss, but Henry is a fast study; he opens up, latches onto the rhythm, deepens it in a way that suggests more confidence he might not realize he still possesses. In this moment, he’s not the dorky paleontologist in a shoddy sweater, but a man who’s been repairing some impossible pent-up hunger in himself for years. Amari is his match touched to a sea of dry ochre grass.

She pulls away first, just the faintest breath. Then, because he looks so thunderstruck, she plants another, softer kiss at the edge of his mouth.

“Does that answer your question?”

Henry’s Adam’s apple is still throbbing. “God.” He releases a breathy laugh, dazed and still not quite upright on his stool. “For how long?”

“Truthfully?” Amari is still cupping his face, staring unwaveringly into his brown, brown eyes. She realigns the skewed glasses on his nose. “Since you short-circuited after I said flirting.”

He is silent for a moment. “Okay, that’s… that’s good information to have.” His voice is so nervous as he chuckles it nearly vaporizes, but the heat in his stare is all earnest. “If you weren’t—well. I’d be thrilled to do it again. With a touch more panache, this time.”

Her lips curve in mirth. “You want to go for another?”

His cheeks flush again. Endearing. “Only if you want to.”

“Only… if you initiate it this time.”

Thankfully, Henry doesn’t need to be told twice. He is already leaning back in, bridging the gap with clear, vibrating intention.

This time, he is less alarmed, more assured, and although he claims not to be up to scratch, he is also very good at listening. The friction of his beard—a very welcoming sensation, might she add—is a counterpoint to the pillowy give of his mouth.

Her delight skyrockets as Henry’s right hand leaves the backrest of her seat to reside on her waist, his firm arm circling her with a featherlight claim. Heat pools in the hollow of her stomach; she smooths her palm over the slope of his neck, enjoying the progressive rise in body temperature. She could fix him. No, more than that, she could unravel every last stitch of restraint left in this darling man.

When the kiss deepens and Amari, ever analytical, catches the way Henry’s fingers tighten almost reflexively, she hums against his lips. His tongue slips daringly forward, just the right side of unpracticed. What a treat, she thinks, to be this wanted by someone who could still blush so genuinely.

They part right away at the sound of someone clearing their throat. The bartender is standing just in front of them on the opposite side of the counter, hands busied with polishing a coupe glass.

Henry’s face colors. “Oh, um—”

“Please come back later, Harvey,” Amari interrupts him, evenly. The bartender only raises a brow and leaves to tend to another patron.

“That was quite mortifying,” Henry mutters, eyes trailing the bartender before he returns to gazing into Amari’s eyes. “But also the best thing I’ve done in as long as I can remember.”

He says it like a probability he’s already tested, a fact in the fossil record. She almost melts.

Amari doesn’t remember when their seats got this close, but it gives her enough latitude to lean against him without toppling over. Stella once mentioned her eyes could look like honey under the right light, so she uses that power now, watching Henry’s mouth go slack. “So, Doctor,” she says, almost purring, “do you want to get out of here?”

Henry almost chokes, the frames of his glasses further slanting down his nose while his fingers flex again on her waist. Swallowing, he casts another brief look over her shoulder. “Let me retrieve my bag first.”

It’s odd. The last kind of man Amari had been expecting to ever sleep with was a nerd.

A nerd in shabby clothes, at that. A nerd who might mistake navy blue for cobalt blue. But the thing about Henry is he’s already cuter than all her past hookups and the plethora of male models she regularly sees at work. She finds his blush lovely, his hands nice, arms visibly thick enough for her to know he’d be unexpectedly good at lifting her up and pressing her against the wall, should the necessity arise. He’s also as open as a book, which has continuously tickled her since learning his name, so she’d be damned to let this pass up.

Besides, he wants her too. So much so that he gathered the balls to break free from his four-year dormancy. It should dismay her that she is even remotely enthralled by this, but she’s not. Oh, well.

Henry is taking a bit too long to get his bag, and Amari can only surmise his coworkers are still metaphorically and literally clapping him on the back for his ‘success’. When he finally steps outside the bar, a brown satchel bag is slung over his shoulder, with a dark grey coat folded on his arm.

God, he really is a nerd.

“Your place or mine?” Amari asks with a small tilt of her head.

“Oh, no, not mine.” Henry grimaces. “I share a flat with two of my coworkers.”

She scoffs, “Of course you do.”

She’s never really brought a man to her home, but it’d feel almost a waste to still stick by her rules when she’s already broken a good portion of them tonight. Protocol be damned at this point.

Much to Henry’s shock, a single wave of her hand has a cab swiftly stop by the curb. He gapes. “How in the…?”

Amari doesn’t wait for him. She strides to the vehicle, then pulls open the door. “I’m only bringing you if you promise not to dissect or carbon-date anything in my flat.”

He grins sheepishly, and she wonders if he’s about to make a fossil joke. He’s at least self-aware enough not to. “I promise,” he says.

Chelsea is usually only fifteen minutes away via car from the West Village, but the not-so-heavy traffic draws out the ride.

Amari sits on the left, Henry on the right, and they’re so close their knees are kissing. She watches him pull a small metal tin of what looks like Altoids(?) from his pocket before he pops a piece into his mouth.

Then…

“Oh my god.” Amari quickly sits up straight. Henry looks at her as if he’s the deer while she is the headlights. “How are you chewing so loudly even with your mouth closed?”

“I’m sorry,” is Henry’s immediate response. “My coworkers often told me this, but I thought they were just messing with me.” He looks down at the tin of mint and extends it to her, probably as an offering or an apology. She’s not sure.

“No, thank you,” she murmurs. She prefers gum anyway.

“What is it that you do exactly?” Henry asks four minutes into the ride.

Amari stares at him blankly. “That’s classified.”

He blinks, lips parting and closing like a goldfish. “… Where do you work then?”

“That’s classified, either.”

He starts to laugh. “Are you in the CIA or something?”

“Worse,” she says, means it, too.

“You said you’re divorced,” Amari speaks up eleven minutes into the ride. “But what about your children?”

Henry regards her thoughtfully, something quite forlorn swimming in his eyes. She already regrets asking.

But he startles her when he actually gives a genuine answer. “None. No kids. It’s partly why the divorce happened in the first place.”

Her brows rise.

“I… wasn’t quite ready for them—I thought I was.” He fiddles with the metal tin in his fingers. “So I kept holding it off, and she grew tired of waiting. Not to mention whatever we felt for each other by then was already dissipating, so…” He smiles at her, though it’s painfully apparent it doesn’t reach his eyes. “We split. It was an amicable decision, and my ex-wife seems happier in Chicago now.”

Amari is not interested in the backstory of the men she spends time with, and yet: “I see,” she says, letting her hand rest on the bunched wool at his knee. It is, she notes, not the finest linen, but it is soft. Henry’s whole thigh jumps upon contact.

“Sorry,” he whispers, then tentatively places his own hand over hers, presumably because he cannot decide what else to do. His palm is broad and surprisingly warm; she can feel the edge of a callus along his pointer finger, maybe from years of chisels or old bones. Good.

They leave the conversation at that.

They’re making out eighteen minutes into the ride.

Amari thinks she shouldn’t be blamed for initiating it when Henry’s profile is right there, lip briefly chewed, glasses glinting from the strobes of passing headlights. New York City is a Rubik’s cube of infinite combinations, and tonight she’s decided the next course of action is his tongue in her mouth.

His technique has evolved in the mere hour since they first met. The first kiss was all learning curve. Now, he’s like a fucking personified algorithm, cataloguing her body language and making statistical adjustments in real time. His left hand rests just above her knee. It’s an innocent place for a hand to linger, but then his thumb starts to stroke lightly at the inside of her thigh, and a stupidly potent pulse rises right between her legs.

A dangerous thought slides into Amari’s mind: if he keeps this up, they might just have to fuck in this cab right then and there.

She tilts into him, bites lightly at his bottom lip, feels his cock twitch up to attention through the layer of linen he’s wearing. So he’s been holding back. Adorable. But so, so unnecessary.

“We’re here.” The cabbie unlocks the doors before the car even comes to a complete stop. Amari almost tosses him a crisp bill before she is hurriedly pushing Henry to get out of the cab.

She drags him into the building by his arm. The doorman, always the consummate professional, clocks Henry’s wrinkled attire and Amari’s hand around his elbow with a single blink and says nothing. Her flat is up thirteen stories. She groans in relief when the elevator they walk into is miraculously empty. (Because Henry’s hard-on is already quite visible on his trousers.)

They stumble on their way to her front door. Amari’s key sticks, but she jimmies it hard enough to make Henry laugh under his breath at her impatience.

“You’re doing a terrible job of hiding how excited you are for this,” he comments.

“Who says I’m hiding it?” she counters, pushing the door open and stepping in first. She slips off her heels as she hears Henry graciously close, then lock the door. When she turns around, his coat and satchel are already on the ottoman by the entrance.

Amari sizes him up for a beat. His hair is tousled. His breathing a little out of it. He blinks like he’s wandered into a high-end lifestyle magazine. She thinks he might compliment her home—everyone does—but Henry is back to only looking at her hungrily from across the glossy floor.

It takes only three strides for her before their lips are on each other again. His are still cool from the wind outside, the Guinness and Altoids on his tongue singing with adrenaline that for a moment, Amari’s brain is only a puddle of yesyesyes. His hands, uncertain at first, plant themselves beneath her thighs, and oh, she knew her intuition about those forearms. She locks her arms around his neck and tightens her legs around his hips, enjoying the undignified little grunt he makes as he easily hoists her up.

(Henry is stronger than she pegged. A very pleasant discovery.)

“Bedroom.” He briefly pulls away, catching his breath. “Where’s your bedroom?”

She points and he starts for it, off at a half-jog, carrying her with zero effort, like he’s done this every day of his life. Henry stumbles so enthusiastically in the bedroom that Amari’s head weakly bumps against the door frame. She gives him a dirty look, but the chuff of laughter vibrating in his chest is a better apology than anything he could say. The heels of her feet dig into his back as he awkwardly carries her over to the bed and tips her gently onto the memory foam mattress.

A noise embarrassingly close to a giggle escapes her when he takes off his glasses, wipes them on his sweater, then puts them back on. Does he plan to study her like a specimen?

Speaking of sweaters, though.

Amari tugs the excruciating second layer Henry is still wearing for some reason. That blasted cashmere he got from who-knows-where. “Get this off,” she spits out. “Get this hideous thing off—”

He yanks the neckline over his head in a hasty movement, mussing his hair (even sexier) and revealing a line of stomach below the not-buttoned-enough shirt. “Um, not a fan of navy blue?” he quips. Oh my fucking god.

“Navy?” Amari hisses through her teeth. “It’s cobalt, you fool—” She bunches the front of his white button-up in her fists to haul him down and plant their lips back together. This one is next.

The shirt is easier, with the buttons ricocheting to the carpet in her impetuosity. Henry doesn’t seem to mind it. He’s still chuckling, giddy, as she peels it from his shoulders. He leans in when her hands appreciatively rove over his chest. Jesus, for a scientist, he is fucking fit. A delicious field of tight muscle and chest hair and faint outlines of tan that leave her with the strangest urge to etch bite marks on his skin.

Amari’s own slip dress is barely hanging on her shoulders. He must have noticed, because his hands go hesitant at the thin strap between his fingers.

“May I?” His eyes bore into her.

“You can do literally whatever you want,” she purrs. He nearly swallows his tongue.

She hopes Henry understands that literally means literally, so she lets him push the strap down with his thumb. Subsequently, his lips are on her collarbone, teeth and beard scraping down to the space between her breasts, leaving a hot, wet trail behind. Amari tilts her neck with her eyes half-closed.

Once Henry peels the rest of her dress with both hands, she gasps a little, shivering as the satin slithers off her legs and leaves her bare except for the thin scrap of black lace beneath.

“I…” His glasses almost tumble down his nose when he looks at her in full. “I know you’re used to hearing it by now, but you really are beautiful.”

“Stop analyzing and get to work, Doctor,” Amari drawls.

Henry’s eyes grow dark. Or did she just imagine that? “How do you want me?”

“If not your mouth… Your fingers.”

“I want to make this good for you,” he whispers, honest to a fault. “I know I’m rusty, but I swear I’ll relearn fast. Just tell me what you want.”

Amari, for all her supposed stoicism, finds herself caught breathless by those words. That’s the first for a man to tell her that so straightforwardly.

“Take it off first,” she says, shifting her weight on the bed, popping her hip forward, a practiced arch that draws Henry’s vision downward to her lace knickers.

He wets his lips, fingers pausing at the waistband, lest he fumble—cute, though Amari will have none of it. She lifts her hips until he pulls the lace down her thighs, so slowly her patience thins with the need to have him on her, in her, and everywhere in between.

“Jesus, Amari.” Henry’s gasp could echo against the walls. The knickers are completely off now. He lets the soaked material fall to the floor. “I didn’t—I wasn’t expecting you’d be this wet. Which—I mean, that’s great, right? I just—I want—”

“Less talking,” Amari murmurs, grabbing his wrist and guiding his hand down to where she’s waiting. “You’re supposed to be an expert in the details. So focus.”

He nearly sputters, but at least that spurs him on. He repositions himself on the bed, propped up on one elbow with the fingers of his right hand ghosting carefully between her thighs. As he begins, his gaze is weighing on her, seemingly determined to document every single expression she makes. Two fingers part her before pressing inside. At last, Amari’s head tilts back.

In a way, it should be degrading that she’s willingly let herself be a test subject for Henry to experiment on. But it’s not, not even in the slightest. In fact, it’s hot as hell. He pays attention, like actual, astute attention to her and her only. She realizes this as his cock strains against his trousers, yet he’s still wholly focused on her.

He has become less tentative and simply more careful at some point, pumps his fingers in slow motions, adapting his movements to match hers instead of the other way around. His thumb flicks her clit once, twice, before he steadies her, drawing circles so precise, so meticulous, it snaps her thighs shut around his hand.

“Harder, Henry,” Amari gasps, eyes glazed with lust, twisting slightly to hold on to his shoulders. “Put one more.”

And Henry listens. Oh, fuck, does he listen. Adds a third finger into her cunt, moaning as she clenches tight around him because she feels the coolness of his wedding ring prod in her. His lips crash clumsily to her neck, suckling and biting probingly, perhaps to know what she’ll allow. The answer is everything.

When his tongue reaches her breasts, he finds a tempo that has Amari spiraling, grinding her hips against his hand. His glasses are a bit of an inconvenience, she muses, the frames digging into the swell of her breast as he licks her nipple, but she can’t bring herself to make him remove them now.

“How am I doing?” Henry’s voice shakes, mildly muffled against her skin.

“There,” she breathes, “right there. Don’t fucking stop—”

“I won’t.” He’s quick to assure her. His palm glistens where his fingers disappear into her cunt. He meets her gaze and she’s floored by the raw, dead-heat focus in his stare, his dedication to making her the center of some micro-universe. His, hopefully. “Not until you come, Amari.”

Her orgasm builds embarrassingly fast, mounting higher and higher with each premeditated flex of his hand. Three of Henry’s fingers spear her open while his thumb rubs in relentless circles. He is making a wet, obscene mess between her thighs and it’s exactly what she wants. What she deserves.

“Oh god.” Amari’s voice hits a ceiling, dying away on a sharp inhale. Since she hates the neediness of how she sounds, she bites down on Henry’s shoulder hard enough to make him cuss, dragging her nails against the muscle of his back as she comes undone.

He stills his fingers inside her until he’s sure her aftershocks have subsided. He withdraws them slowly, regards the slick on his digits before bringing them to his mouth. Amari blinks in surprise.

“M’sorry,” he mutters the second he has licked himself clean, plopping down next to her on the bed, fingers tracing patterns just below her belly.

She turns her head to him. “What for?” That orgasm was glorious.

He smiles, dazed and boyish, a hint of sheepishness also. “If I were more confident, I would’ve eaten you out already.”

Hm. That is a bit of a shame. A next time hangs precariously on the tip of her tongue, but best to hold that in for now. She’d rather not dwell on the ‘what could’ve been’s this early when he has yet to fuck her first.

Amari rolls onto her side to take a full, good look at the man beside her. Henry is gorgeously disheveled with his short, rumpled locks and sweat-damp skin, bathed in the cool spill of Manhattan lights and the moon. It’s because of this that she kisses him then.

His tongue is sweet with traces of her. A calloused palm flattens on her arse and she feels herself being pulled until Henry’s hardness is nudging her hip. Naturally, Amari rocks against it, glees at his sharp intake of breath. She is lazy in her satisfaction but already reanimating with anticipation for the second act.

“You’re still wearing your trousers,” she mumbles against his lips, sliding her hand down his toned stomach to the waistband.

Henry visibly swallows when her fingers dip below the fabric. “I was—well, pretty distracted.”

“I know.” Amari smiles. “You were doing so well.”

She marvels at the size of his bulge, briefly wonders if every paleontologist in that museum is built like him. Most likely not. Henry being the outlier in many things is hardly (ha) a bombshell anymore. And Amari has ripped enough men out of their clothes on autopilot to recognize when a cock is going to be in the above-average range, because fuck, his boxers are so tight that she can feel the head through the cotton.

Amari peels the trousers and boxers down. To no one’s surprise, Henry is proportioned like a Cretaceous predator despite behaving anything but. His cock is beautiful, she reckons, long and thick enough to be worth all the rule-breaking she had done.

The awe must be noticeable on her face, given that he flushes so darkly even his chest is botched with color. “I, uh, take it you’re not disappointed?”

“You look like you could use the ego-boost, so yes.” And she’s not even lying.

He tries to laugh. “That’s—yeah, that’s fair.”

Amari wraps her hand around his length, and Henry’s laugh dissolves into a groan, so raw that her stomach flips. She squeezes gently, gives him a few pumps, watching the muscles in his abdomen contract and his hips jerk forward. The sound he makes sends a fresh surge of heat straight to her cunt. She’s already wet again, humiliatingly so.

“Sit up.” She glances at the pillows neatly piled by the headboard of her bed. “Or lie down there. Whatever.”

He is as pliant as clay, reclining with his back on the pillow pile. Amari can’t say she hates the display, not when his cock is standing upright, the posture of his body still radiating with some disbelief that this is actually happening. It only makes her want to tear off the last remnants of renowned Doctor Henry and devour whatever is left.

She straddles him, cages his knees between hers and lowers herself down just enough to let the head of his cock nudge her folds, slick from the mess he’s already made of her. Henry’s eyes bore into hers with the look of a man about to be knighted or executed, maybe both at once. She lets him think it’s his call, whether he’s being honored or slaughtered.

“Amari,” he says, “you’re…” But he doesn’t finish, which she greatly prefers. She takes this as her cue to finally sink down, her earlier orgasm enabling his cock to easily slide into her, wet and hot.

Oh, he feels immaculate.

“Shit—!” It’s the loudest Amari has heard Henry cuss, evenly matched with the keen slipping past her simultaneously. His head thuds back against the headboard, hands flying to her hips, his four-year pent-up inertia blowing up to his face at full force. Admittedly, a small part of her was unsure whether that was ever true, but she has no reason to doubt now.

To think a cock as exquisite as this was neglected for years is baffling. At the same time, Amari finds gratification in being the one who gets to break that dry spell.

“How’re you feeling, Doctor?” Her chest is heaving, winded at how he is buried so deep. She can barely breathe, but making this man forget his own name is, right now, her primary objective.

The first time she rocks her hips, Henry lets out a stuttered moan. “Like I’m about to come any second now.”

Amari would be lying if she said she didn’t want him to let go right away. She rides him, gradually at first, indulges in the sensation of being burned inside by the stretch of him with both hands braced against his chest. The next time she rises up, Henry’s hands nearly slip, and the third, he meets her movement with an eager thrust that knocks the air from either of their lungs.

So, not just a fast learner, he’s also an overachiever.

It’s not long before she’s bouncing, a seasoned undulation of her hips as she drives herself down onto Henry perfectly. She’s been with Olympic-level men, so to speak, men who were thoroughly proficient with their cocks and hipbones. Henry, ironically, seems to prioritize following his instincts more than his intellect as he tries to chase Amari’s tempo. His heart is beating so much she feels it all the way down to his dick.

He is also quite loud, now she learns. With every plunge, Henry makes a sound, every time different. A low groan, a bitten-off curse, a helpless moan of Fuck, Amari, you feel so good. Don’t stop, please, don’t stop.

Throwing her arms around his neck, she licks deeply into his mouth to shut him up. She can’t risk showing how much his talking is weirdly affecting her. And Henry gets the memo, or maybe he doesn’t, but he reacts anyway with his tongue and teeth. His hands begin to wander from her hips to her back, then her ribs, up to her breasts. He successfully elicits a high-pitched mewl when he pinches one tight nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Amari answers back by clenching his cock hard.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god,” he blurts out, hips bucking up without any rhythm at all, only his basest impulse. “I don’t think I can—”

She locks her arms around him firmer. “Stop talking and fuck me, Henry.”

What Amari doesn’t expect is for her vision to blur immediately after that. Before she can even process it, Henry has flipped over their positions in bed.

The sudden jerk of gravity leaves her disoriented until her brain supplies his lips seizing hers again, teeth slamming more than biting. His hands—those stupid, veiny hands—glide beneath her arse, fingers squeezing as he yanks her hips to his and pistons into her with renewed frenzy. His cock felt good—great, even—when Amari was on top, but now, with the weight of his body pushing her thighs wider, the penetration is heavenly.

She can’t help it. She claws at his back, uncaring if her neighbors hear her, hear Henry, her bed frame’s repeated collision against her bedroom wall as she gets pounded into oblivion. Every thrust from him is a nail hammered home.

“Henry,” Amari whimpers—whimpers, like she has been reduced to nothing but a wanton mess. All by some paleontologist who can’t color coordinate his outfit for shit. She’s pulsing around him, a delirium of cunt and muscle memory, wrecked senseless by his four years of wasted abstinence. Tears sting the corner of her eyes, and she would rather kill herself before letting this man see her cry because of how overstimulated she has become.

Henry’s voice is in her ear, the words nothing but I can’t hold on. I’m about to come, Amari. Amari, please— and she realizes he’s asking permission. He’s inside her, he’s split her open, yet he’s still so fucking considerate it’s making her nauseous.

“Do it,” she gasps, barely intelligible. “Come in me. I want you to—just do it.”

Amari almost screams at the coil in her belly snapping, her cunt giving out the same time Henry’s cock throbs erratically as he finishes with a lengthy sound teetering between a moan and groan. She convulses like her body was built solely to milk him dry.

He collapses, but not before he pulls out his now flaccid cock, finally takes off his glasses and sets them on the bedside table. She can see in his blown-out pupils that he’s somewhere else, swimming in a faraway sea of hormones and serotonin. He looks outright ruined. Amari, for her part, is only just beginning to register the sensation of hot, spent seed pooling inside her, the aftershocks of two orgasms coursing through her nervous system with blinding clarity.

Henry is lying next to her when he breathes out, “Holy shit.” He repeats it, softer. “Oh shit.”

Amari’s heavy breathing evens unhurriedly. She blinks at the night-cloaked ceiling, lazing in the renewable heat that has replaced the tension in her body.

“Um, how’re you feeling?”

She turns, finds Henry’s questioning brown eyes on her.

“Can you even see me without your glasses?” she asks instead, genuinely curious.

He chuckles, a bright, nervous thing. “If you were any further than two feet away, you’d start to look like a Pollock painting. But here?” His eyes wrinkle at the edges, smile widening, twisting so his body is fully turned to her. “I see you quite perfectly.”

This is dangerous, Amari thinks. She’s felt her entire world unfurl on the other side of a good fuck before, but nowhere near on the same wavelength as now. She envies how Henry can look so content shortly after an orgasm. Honestly, her own heart is still ringing in her ears.

She doesn’t want to bruise it with sentiment, but she is already so tired she wonders if she could just delay all the musings of her conflicting emotions for tomorrow morning and let herself spiral into his arms. Let him touch her with his strange, meticulous science hands until the sun draws stripes on her sheets. It’s growing more and more tempting by the second.

It doesn’t take long for her to succumb, anyway.

Amari feels Henry go rigid when she leans forward and nestles herself against his chest. His hands hover tentatively above her hips. “Oh, uh, does this mean you’re not kicking me out?”

“Do you want me to?” comes Amari’s audibly muffled response.

His chest vibrates against her cheek as he chuckles again. “Not really. No. I like how comfy your bed is.”

(Is that the only thing you like? A thought rises unsolicited. She tampers this down straight away.)

Henry pulls her by her hips, and she registers the way he draws her closer, like he’s uncertain whether he’s allowed to do this or not, but helpless to resist nonetheless. He’s possibly the warmest individual she has ever lain with. She could sleep like this, snuggled to his hairy chest without a duvet in the middle of November.

He’s stroking the back of her head once she feels her drowsiness begin to overtake her. Amari hums, shamefully content, eyelids growing thready with the exhaustion and afterglow.

“Amari.” She hears him say.

“Hmm?”

Henry shuffles even closer, pressing his nose to her hair and sighing, “Goodnight.”

(Did he just sniff her?)

She pauses, just before saying in return, “Night.”

Amari can’t remember the last time she slept like a log.

The moment sleep escapes her, she wakes first thing to light. Sheer, bright, unruly sunlight. Jolting up with a duvet clutched to her chest, she sees that Henry is no longer beside her, nor anywhere in the bed, nor in her bedroom at all. She doesn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed by it. She’s always the one who bolts out of a hookup’s bedroom by 5 AM, not the one being bolted on. He made no promises about staying till morning anyway, so why does she feel so—

“Oh, fuck me!”

Amari’s shoulders jump upon a sudden loud thud from outside, followed by a string of ow ow ow in the shape of Henry’s voice. He walks into the room with slight bedhead and two mugs in his hands, clad in nothing else but dinosaur-print cotton boxers. She blinks at him, utterly nonplussed.

“I was wondering when you’d wake up.” Henry smiles. He takes his spot by the edge of her bed, extending one mug to Amari, to which she confusedly accepts.

“You made chai?” She looks down at her drink.

He stills. “Did you want coffee?”

“I—no, I just.” Great, now she’s the one fumbling her words around him. “It’s more like the other way around, actually. You drink chai as well?”

“Sometimes, yeah.” He takes a sip from his mug. It’s the same as hers, she realizes. “I like to drink it on Sundays, like today.”

Amari cannot help herself. She stares, dumbstruck, at the mug, then at the dinosaur shorts, then at Henry, who looks at home in her bedroom, on her bed, sipping chai and blinking contentedly. There’s a moment where she wants to tear into him for getting too familiar too fast and another where she wants to climb him like a tree (he’s taller by only a few inches) and kiss his stupid, sweet face for a full hour.

When she doesn’t say anything for the next couple of seconds, he adds, “I hope it’s alright.” He’s still smiling at her. She hates how it makes her brain all fuzzy, that semi-permanent curve seeming even more devastating in daylight. “You’ve got a whole cupboard full of teas, but no instant coffee. Chai seemed the easiest option out of everything there.”

“It’s good,” Amari says, blowing over the foam. Henry’s chai is actually fucking perfect. Not too sweet, with the right spicy warmth pouring in the back of her throat. “Thank you. You didn’t really have to do this.”

“Amari.” Henry gazes at her intently. “I wanted to. Last night was… a lot. The least I could do, after…” He pushes up his glasses, blush surging anew, vivid even under the sun. “I figured you might need a little fortification after the… well…”

She levels him with a blank look. “After the mind-blowing sex?”

“Yes, after the—” His hand twitches, the chai swishing dangerously by the rim of his mug. Amari is going to kill him if a droplet stains her bedsheets. “—I-I’m sorry, mind-blowing?”

“Yes, Henry,” she says. It’s not so easy to stifle the memory of last night. It replays in her muscles and in the low, mild ache between her thighs. “You’re not so rusty after all. Or are you implying I was lacking?”

Henry looks gravely offended on her behalf. “Nononono! Amari, god, no. You were—” He is practically babbling, and Amari watches the bob of his throat with a perverse sort of satisfaction. This is how she finds that, yes, she does still want to climb him like a tree. “You were incredible. I just meant that four years is a long time to go without, and I was worried I’d be, I don’t know, clumsy or inept or—”

“Henry,” Amari flatly intones, “you and your cock were wonderful. Let’s leave it at that, yeah?” She has to stretch to her left to set her mug on the nightstand. The act causes the duvet on her chest to skid, exposing them to the partially cold morning air. Henry’s gaze drops before he snaps it back to her face. She doesn’t bother pulling it up again.

“You’re allowed to stare,” she states.

“I… I know that.” He’s still not looking down.

“Do you like what you see?”

Henry swallows, audible enough for her to hear it. “Very much, yes.”

“Good to know.” Amari’s own gaze falls, landing on the dinosaur boxers, where he is half-tenting again. “So I can be blunt here. Do you want to fuck me again?”

He chokes literally on thin air, ears turning pink right away. “I—yes? I mean, yeah. Would it be a bit much? You’re… do you want to?”

She’s aching for it, as much as she loathes to admit it. “I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”

“Oh, uh… okay.”

“Put down your chai.”

The next time Henry fucks her, he goes for languid and gentle over fast and urgent. Amari, still feeling quite boneless, lets him reposition her to his preference, lets him manhandle her so she is lying on her right, his chest like a furnace behind her.

When his fingers find her cunt, he gasps, “How’re you this wet already?”

She weakly bites her lower lip. “Figure it out.”

What starts as a simmer of him prodding gently at the soaked seam between her thighs becomes clearer as Henry presses flush to her back, hand anchored under her knee, legs tucked open. He fucks her in, and the slide is perfect, impossibly hot, the sound of the soft wet slip of cock to cunt making her head spin.

Amari hasn’t had morning sex since college, since her last actual relationship with a varsity volleyball player who couldn’t hit her G-spot to save his life. Henry, again, is different. He nuzzles his face into the crook of her neck, inhaling deeply as he begins to move. She moans sharply, his cock almost tender compared to last night’s fervent debauchery, but no less overwhelming. Every full, measured thrust melts her from the inside out.

He keeps this pace for long enough that Amari considers burying her moans in her pillow until she lets go of the idea. Henry deserves to know how fucking good he’s making her feel this early in the day. He is murmuring something at the back of her neck in between kisses. She catches snippets of you’re beautiful, so beautiful, this is perfect, and it propels her noises even louder because who says that during casual sex these days?

(Casual… Right, this is all there is to it.)

She turns her head to be met with his mouth, lets herself be kissed sweetly like sugared cream, a perfect complement to the earthy spices she tastes on his chai-warm tongue. Henry makes sure to take his time with her, though she still loses track of said time before her orgasm is coaxed out of her, her cum leaking over her thighs and down to his cock. He follows not long after.

“Feels so good,” he murmurs against her tresses, voice strangely roughened. When Amari whines after he withdraws from her sopping cunt, he presses a kiss to the edge of her lips.

Henry is overstaying his welcome here. Amari knows this.

The morning sex has stretched the limits of the boundaries she had already bent the second she brought him to her flat, but having him cook and dine with her in her kitchen is overkill. Minutes after they relished in the afterglow of their second fuck, Henry shyly asked if she was up for breakfast. Amari only relented when he offered to cook for either of them.

She barely uses her kitchen in the first place, besides brewing coffee or tea in the mornings.

That being said, she’s a little sad to see him dressed up again (sans the atrocious sweater) as he moves back and forth between her fridge and stove top, whipping a simple bagel sandwich for himself while for her, an avocado toast. A refilled mug of chai rests in her hand, and she’s in nothing but a satin robe when she watches the whole thing unfold from the dining table.

“I don’t suppose you’re the relegated cook between your roommates, are you?” Amari comments once her plate is in front of her. Henry takes the seat across from her.

“You’re not wrong. I’m a better cook than both of them, but that’s not a high bar.” He nods to his plated bagel, quite artless but loaded with vegetable omelette, cheese, and crimson folds of parma ham. “Sandwiches are usually what I whip up for breakfast. It’s cheaper and easier to make. My roommates are pretty content with it, too.”

“So you have a fixation,” she says, jabbing her fork into a slice of avocado.

He raises a brow. “I mean, who doesn’t like carbs?”

“You have a six-pack,” she points out. Actually, it might even be eight.

Henry glances down at his middle like the evidence has migrated. “I work out in the gym on weekends.”

Amari’s brows lift. Not at all a shocking piece of information, but she is suddenly bombarded with mental images of a shirtless Henry on a treadmill, a stationary bike, a shoulder press machine. His bare biceps flexing every time he hefts a dumbbell. Sweat trickling down his bobbing throat as he chugs from a water bottle.

“Amari? Earth to Amari?”

She blinks. “Sorry. Zoned out.” She tries to focus on her avocado. The toast is nearly as crisp as she likes, and there’s paprika dusted on top. Fancy. “You were saying?”

“Thought I lost you for a second.” His smile is gentle, a dash of morning hair still haloing his head.

They eat their meals in relative silence. Amari chews, sips, observes Henry cram down his sandwich and wipe away any specs of crumbs with a napkin. He’s opted for a coffee this time instead of chai, after she insisted on brewing the coffee beans herself, since he is accustomed to making the instant kind only.

It’s easy. It’s easy.

As soon as they’re done, Amari volunteers to wash the dishes herself. It’d be rude to let Henry do everything in her kitchen.

So that begs the question: why is she still not telling him to leave?

It makes no sense. She’s exhausted all of her excuses to keep him in this flat by now. She’s been up in arms about boundaries and protocol and minimizing superfluous entanglements for years, yet she’s letting a freaking nerd lounge around her kitchen, sipping coffee and scrolling on his phone, in which he occasionally shows her an animal clip or two.

Stop it, she tells herself. It’s only hormones. It’s only the sex. He’s not even your type.

“Thank you for breakfast,” Amari says, realizing too late she’s holding her arms over her chest as if she’s shielding herself. From what, though?

“You’re welcome. Thank you for letting me stay the night.” Henry holds up his mug in a salute, then sets it down. “But, um, about—”

“Don’t.” Fuck. “Don’t make it weird.”

He looks genuinely wounded. “I wasn’t going to make it weird. I was just going to say that I had an amazing time.”

His certainty is intense. He means it. She can see that. There’s a solid core in Henry that’s oddly undiminished even by the cynicism usually caused by a failed marriage and the years of living in New York. Amari found it amusing at first, last night when they were in West Village. Now she finds it totally destabilizing.

“Me too,” she simply says, keeps her tone carefully neutral. “It was great sex, Henry.”

He smiles, but something in his gaze shifts. “Yeah. Great sex.”

He decides to leave five minutes later, after having dumped his mug in the kitchen sink and fetching his cashmere sweater that was still in her bedroom.

“I, uh, guess this is goodbye?” Henry turns back to Amari, satchel bag slung over his shoulder, his coat slung on top it. “Or see you around?”

“Whatever floats your boat, Doctor.” Amari is lingering by the foyer with her still unfinished chai. She expects relief, or at least the usual sense of accomplishment she gets from holding her line. Instead, all there is is a soul-crushing weight pressing against her ribs.

(Say something. Say something else, will you?)

Henry’s smile grows lopsided. He adjusts the strap of his satchel and nudges his glasses back up his nose. “Then… I hope you take care, Amari. Thanks again for everything.”

He’s gone before she can think of a better answer.

Amari watches the door close, the chill creeping up her spine having nothing to do with the November cold. She finishes her drink at the kitchen table, staring at nothing, letting her head float in a haze as she listens to the faint traffic outside her window. She’s aware of the way her body aches. Henry has left tender spots blossoming gently all over her thighs, belly, the column of her throat scraped by his beard and the rawness at the seam of her cunt. She’ll have to shower, exfoliate, hydrate, and reconstruct. The only other evidence he was ever in her flat is the half-empty tin of Altoids he left behind, which she only notices when she’s washing the dishes.

She pops a piece into her mouth after they’re cleaned, tries to ignore the taste of the mint’s bitter burn, and why she was expecting a sweet aftertaste.

The following week passes by painfully slowly.

It’s a nightmare, but a nightmare Amari has managed countless times. Miranda’s flight to Paris has been delayed, meaning Charlie is expected in the office in twenty minutes to run a double debrief, and Amari has to help him through it since he is still learning the ropes of being the freshly promoted first assistant. By Wednesday, she has a scheduled meeting with a publicist for a design house in Soho. She is single-handedly editing, confirming, and sending four separate versions of the February issue table of contents to three different teams. While Charlie, her glorified protégé, sometimes still sweats over correctly dictating Miranda’s hyper-specific cappuccino order. Maybe she's finally reaping what she sowed for always gluing him to his chair before they got promoted.

The way she’s working is more an act of flagellation than anything, and not even the memory foam of her office chair is keeping her brain from replaying the events from the weekend. Henry, in her bed, in her kitchen, in her goddamned head. It’s like every mundane task has been rewired to some perverse thought experiment that circles back to him. Has Henry ever snapped at a coworker mid-conference? Does Henry ever get this worked up about Outlook reminders? Does Henry ever use Montblanc pens like she does? (Most likely not.)

When Saturday night comes again, she tries for her weekly palette cleanse. This time, a new bar and a new dress. Three men approach her, and she callously rejects each of them within the first two minutes of interaction.

For the first time in her life, Amari goes back home after an hour, unfucked and defeated.

She keeps the tin of Altoids even after it’s been empty for days now.

It happens on an average Monday.

Ironic, really. It’s usually the most packed and stress-inducing day of her week. Amari is headed to return to her office after a brief lunch in the cafeteria, spinning a Cartier bangle around her wrist while muttering a terse voice memo to editorial. She had just doused herself with a triple shot of espresso, and a headache is blooming behind her temples. She walks briskly through the glass-stacked canyon of Runway’s main floor, ignoring the curious looks she is receiving from some of the personnel. Weird.

Oh, wait. Someone is waiting for her by her office door.

That explains why they are staring at her.

Immediately, Amari registers the figure: tall, brown hair, the nerd glasses. That can’t be right.

“Henry?” Her voice trips over it. Henry startles, and so does she, because there is no conceivable way that security would have buzzed a civilian up to her door without at least alerting her beforehand. Her first thought is that she’s hallucinating from the triple espresso, and it’s playing havoc with her eyes. But the man is actually there, in a denim dress shirt and—jesus fuck—khaki trousers, satchel bag over his shoulder, a visitor’s pass pinned to his shirt, holding a bouquet of red flowers in a way that can be considered a death grip.

Her body does a full stop, all the air robbed out of her system.

“Hi, Amari,” says Henry, a sheepish smile making its way to his face. He looks at her like he’s the one who can’t believe she’s real.

She could have turned on a dime, sleight-of-hand her surprise into a smile and ask You have an appointment? Maybe she would have, too, if the rest of the office weren’t watching. Half the assistants have gone still, two junior editors are dawdling nearby, and at the glass-walled end of the hall, Nigel and Andrea. Amari is aware she has a bit of a reputation in this office as a Miranda-in-training, so with Henry posted up at her door, she feels every eye anticipating her reaction.

She chews the inside of her cheek for a good five seconds before she stalks up to him and drags him forcefully inside.

“Oof!”

He stands lamely just in front of her desk, bouquet held in one hand, the other hovering in his hair, undecided whether to muss it further or smooth it out. He looks completely, offensively out of place among her office’s palette.

Regardless, Amari still wants to kiss him.

“What are you doing here, Henry?”

He blinks at her. The flowers are a twitching, shamefaced token in his hand. “I, uh, thought coming here during lunch break wouldn’t be a bad time.” He glances past her, at the door, at the clock on her wall, then back to her. “But I… I just wanted to see you again, Amari.”

Her heartbeat is loud in her ears. “That's a little hard to believe.”

Henry takes a step closer. The hitch of her breath only encourages him further. “Look, I was a coward that Sunday morning, felt like I had spectacularly ruined my chances after leaving your flat, but I—you’ve been in my head ever since. Amari, I can’t stop thinking about you. And-And I’d feel like an idiot if I didn’t at least try to see you one more time before you reject me for good.”

Amari feels herself flush, skin prickling at her neck, spreading to her arms, down to her legs. God, she is acting like a schoolgirl. He was a coward? If anything, that was her. “Henry…”

“If-If you’re busy right now, I’m sorry. I’m sorry it took me this long to reach out to you and for making you wait. I’ll leave now if you don’t want me around anymore—”

“Henry!” She cuts through his rambling a little louder than intended. It works, though. “I haven’t said anything.”

The man looks small and exposed as he fiddles with his bouquet. Amari’s eyes can’t help but soften. “How did you even get here in the first place?”

She knows the intended effect of that question, because all the meekness and hesitancy in Henry’s demeanor vanish in an instant. He gapes at her with such shocked, unguarded confusion that she has to hold back a smile. “Amari,” he voices, almost sardonically, “Amari.”

“Yes, Doctor?” She crosses her arms.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

He stares at her puzzledly for a moment, then something like laughter breaks loose from his lips. “Two can play at that game.”

He sets down his satchel and bouquet on her desk. “If you want to know that badly, Ms. Mari.” He fishes out a red post-it note from the main compartment of the satchel, which had been repeatedly folded open and closed, judging by its apparent wrinkles. “I guess I should thank whoever slipped this in my bag that Sunday.”

It reads—

Amari Mari
Elias-Clarke building, Runway offices
1221 Sixth Ave, New York, NY 10020

—very clearly in Amari’s own handwriting.

She regards it for only a beat before she scoffs, “And what’s that flimsy piece of paper supposed to prove?”

“Amari.” Henry makes no effort to hide his silly grin.

“For all I know, you could’ve snooped in my flat when you were making chai.”

“Amari.”

She rolls her eyes. “Get over here, you stupid, incorrigible nerd.”

Amari doesn’t see herself move, but she’s surging forward and bunching Henry’s shirt collar in her fist, lips clashing against his in a second and a half. If Henry is stunned, it’s only for the length of one heartbeat before he is kissing her back, both arms looping around her and hauling her off the floor—he really seems to like doing that. She’s not going to moan in her own fucking office, but his iron-grip on her hips is perilously close to prompting one out of her.

She feels a cold surface beneath her bottom, and it faintly sinks that Henry has perched her on her desk. They break apart, gasping. “Do you always go to work like this?” he asks, fingers tracing the lace garter of the stockings under her skirt. He breathes her in, looking already wrecked and blissed out of his mind.

His hand drifts just at the bare skin above her stocking, and Amari leans into it, arching into his touch, eyes hooded with want.

“Only when I have important visitors,” she whispers to his ear, running the toe of her Jimmy Choo up his knee, savoring when he feels his posture stiffen.

Suddenly, there’s a sound of a cough. It’s from neither of them. “Amari.”

Her head whips to the direction of her door, which, to her utter dismay, has not been closed this entire time. Nigel stands at the entryway with a folder in hand, outwardly unfazed by the compromising scenery on the desk.

Color rushes to Henry’s cheeks. Talk about déjà vu. “Oh, um—”

“Nigel,” Amari manages, voice staying levelled out of sheer willpower, despite the mortification pumping in her bloodstream. “Knocking first would’ve been nice.”

“As far as I’m concerned, that is for closed doors.” Nigel holds out the folder, but shifts his weight in a way that suggests he’s bored, or perhaps amused. Amari can never tell when it comes to him. “Anyway, do you still want these mock-ups for the new ad campaign, or should I give you a minute?”

It’s excruciating to briefly part from Henry’s embrace, but she does, straightening her skirt and approaching Nigel to take the folder with hands that shake just so.

“Thank you,” she says, still trying for composure, although that game was lost the second Henry lifted her to her desk. “I’ll return these in the next hour.”

“Make sure you do.” Nigel gives her a flat look, then flicks his attention over a flustered Henry from head to foot. “Not bad,” he adds quietly to Amari before turning on his heel to go elsewhere. She gawks at his retreating form, aghast.

This time around, Amari ensures she closes and locks the door for maximum privacy. She tosses the folder into the nearest armchair as she turns back to Henry, who is still standing awkwardly by her desk, face the color of a ripened tomato. His shirt is rumpled where she’d grabbed it, with a smudge of her lipstick at the corner of his mouth.

“Don’t move,” she says, reaching into her desk drawer for a tissue. She steps close, dabs at his lip to erase the smudge, watches his pupils blow wide.

“There.” She crumples the tissue and tosses it in the bin. “Now you’re a tiny bit more presentable again.”

He heaves a humorless laugh, scrubs a hand down his face and pushes his glasses up his forehead. “How am I more embarrassed than you are about being seen by your coworker? I think I might die.”

She might, too. “Nigel’s seen worse,” she states, not really lying at all. Andrea can easily testify to that. “But I have a question.”

Henry waits, blinking inquiringly with wide eyes. Scrutinizing the pin barely clinging to his shirt, she continues, “How did you get to my office with a verified visitor’s pass? Do you know someone else in this building?”

He follows her line of sight. “No.”

“Then how? I was never even informed about anyone visiting today.”

Henry shrugs weakly. “Well, I asked the receptionist on the first floor about you, and someone else must’ve heard me, because he piped in and said he could bring me to the 17th floor, where Runway offices are located. I was quite reluctant, really, but he insisted, said I’m allowed to go as long as I have a visitor’s pass, which he verified for me—”

“I’m sorry?” Amari’s gaze grows razor-sharp. Henry swallows. “Who is this man who led you here?”

“Umm, uh, I never caught his name, but he had black hair, glasses, a suit with this really odd pattern, and… he was… Uh, how do I say this?”

She already has an inkling who it was. “You can say fat, Henry.”

“Stout,” Henry finishes, and Amari feels a vein throb in her temple. Charlie. “He was stout and very friendly. Complimented the flowers I brought you.”

She makes a mental note to have a talk with Charlie after all this is over, but in the meantime…

“Right.” She picks up the bouquet from her desk. “They are beautiful. I assume these are red lilies?”

“Hippeastrum,” he corrects, flushing again when Amari’s curious eyes shift to him. “I mean, everyone else calls them amaryllis.”

“Amaryllis,” she echoes amusingly.

Henry fidgets. “Yes.”

“Please don’t tell me you chose it just because my name is in it.”

He makes a strangled noise. “Fuck,” he says, “is it too corny?”

Amari tries to suppress her laugh. She is not very successful. “It’s on brand for you, so I’ll allow it.” She lets the petals brush her jawline as if that gesture could assuage his embarrassment. “Thank you for these. At least you’re trying hard.”

“Trying very hard!” He grins, suddenly rejuvenated. “You know, I considered popping by at your flat, but that’d be too invasive, I think, so thank you for the note. And if security refused to let me visit your office, I probably would’ve committed a felony by sneaking up here anyway. Wouldn’t be the first time I trespassed on private property.”

She should be worried about that. She should probably be a little worried about that. But alas. “A nerd with a criminal record. Should I file a restraining order now?”

Henry huffs a laugh, stepping into her orbit, the charged air now heavy, syrupy, with not even an inch between them. Amari finds the newly worn confidence in him intoxicating. “If I really scared you, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“You are awfully sure of yourself, Doctor—”

“—Loomis.”

Amari blinks, pupils dilating slightly.

“Henry Loomis. Dr. Loomis,” he clarifies, voice softer now. “I’d at least like for both of us to know each other’s full names before we start seeing each other.”

Seeing each other.

The Amari from two weeks ago would've run for the hills if she ever heard that aimed at her. She spent a long time convincing herself that New York City had already dried up its supply of decent, datable men, hence the weekly flings. But Henry tilted her world upside down the moment he left her doorstep that Sunday morning, and it made her fret whether or not she botched her one chance of being in a normal, committed relationship after years of speculating if that kind of thing was still possible for her.

It’s terrifying. No one has hollowed her heart out as deeply as he did in such a short span of time.

“Dr. Loomis.” She likes the sound of it. “Amari Mari. A pleasure to meet you at last.”

“Likewise, Ms. Mari.” He’s grinning, eyes filled with so much glee and warmth that Amari feels her chest tighten. “But first, you must know that I’m only a humble paleontologist in my late thirties. I have a PhD, but also a failed marriage under my belt. I know nothing about fashion, and the most I can offer you is endless dinosaur facts. Despite all of that, would you still have me?”

She pretends to give this some thought for approximately three seconds. “I will. But under one condition.”

He lights up like she’s just informed him of the discovery of the next feathered dinosaur. “And that is?”

“Let me take you shopping at least once a month,” she says, revels in the way his enthusiasm collapses into wary, petrified alarm. “Because I can’t bear to see you in another off-rack cashmere ever again.”

He laments, “You’re still hung up about my sweater!”

“It was ugly!”

“It was thrifted!”

“My point precisely!”

“It was thirty bucks and didn’t itch as much as the others!”

“That’s the only thing I want to hear you say about it ever again,” Amari warns, “unless it’s on fire and you’re burning it.”

Henry lifts her hand to his mouth, kissing her knuckles with a feigned solemnity. “Understood, boss.”

“Don’t call me boss.”

“Ma’am?”

“That’s… better.”

Out of nowhere, Henry’s hands cup her face that second, and he is back to kissing her past the point of breathlessness. Amari melts into his arms without a single thought. The amaryllises are practically squashed between them, but she’s too busy engraving the feel of his tongue into memory to care about it and anything else.

Henry’s lips have become insistent, so astoundingly greedy, that she lets herself tumble straight into the gravity of it.

“God, you can be frustrating,” he groans after pulling away, dipping his nose below her ear, scenting the column of her neck. “But you smell so good. I don’t even know why I’m so fixated on it. I missed it, missed you.”

Amari’s knees threaten to buckle. She presses her palms flat against his chest, finding the solid thrum of his heartbeat through the denim in tandem with hers. I missed you, too. I missed you, too. I missed you, too.

She lightly taps his shoulder. “Henry.”

“Mmph?” His nose is still pressed flush against her neck.

“As much as I'd love to continue this, we're still in my office, and my break ends in three minutes.”

“Oh.” Henry hesitates before he leans back enough to properly meet her gaze, lips rosy. “Understood,” he says, but his hands are still cinched at her waist. “I could… Um, when do you clock out?”

“Seven thirty.”

He makes an exaggerated noise. “Right. A bit later than my schedule, but… are you amenable to having dinner afterward?”

Amari watches his eyes glitter, as if he can already picture them in some bistro or hole-in-the-wall, her annihilating him with wine recommendations and him ordering seafood when steak is out of his budget. They can find a bar after if they want, and this time sit on plush banquettes instead of stools by the countertop. They can flirt and gaze and touch as two people who know now what it feels like to belong to each other already, in defiance of everything she has previously allowed herself to believe.

“I’d like that,” she says, dangerously imagining a constellation of future Henrys in her calendar, stretching along the year, maybe more. “I’ll let you choose the place. You have something to prove.”

Henry instantly beams, and the way it lights up his face is scandalous in this high-gloss, buttoned-up office suite. “Really?”

“As long as there’s a strong cocktail list,” Amari answers, suppressing a smile. “And zero chance of running into any of our coworkers.”

“I can probably think of some. So… eight?”

“Eight.”

He kisses her again before retrieving his bag and going to the door, a light, sweet peck as of now, one that tastes nothing like a farewell.

“Wear that shirt tonight,” Amari remarks. “I like it when you roll up your sleeves.”

He gives her a ridiculous grin. “Yes, ma’am.”

Henry salutes her with his hand, his stupidly endearing smile growing even bigger. Then he’s gone, door closing behind him. The shadows in the office have shifted, and everything, somehow, seems lighter than ever.

Amari paces behind her desk for a few seconds. Breathes in, closes her eyes, and tries to smother down the eager coil at her core. Tries to convince herself that this is a manageable level of excitement, that she isn’t verging on spinning out of control. It fails completely.

It takes her five minutes to realize she and Henry never exchanged numbers.

“Shit,” she mumbles to herself, pulling out her phone from the pocket of her skirt. As it does, something else falls to the floor.

She blinks. The red post-it note she left in Henry’s bag.

She unfolds the small, wrinkled paper and finds a jotting in unfamiliar blue ink on the other side.

(212) 555-0328
Thanks for giving this a chance :)
— Henry Loomis

Amari bites back her smile, readily adding his number to her phone under the contact dinosaur nerd.

She can’t resist. She texts him.

Meet me in Central Park after I clock out. And bring your cashmere sweater so we can burn it together

Henry’s reply comes instantly.

You wound me, Ms. Mari
Nevertheless, I’ll see you at eight ;)

That man. That vexing, captivating man.

After responding with a particular emoji, Amari spots an unread text from Charlie that was sent many minutes ago:

just so you know there’s a nerd asking for you in the lobby. like, a REALLY HOT nerd. he even has flowers. goes by henry. he says he knows you. gave him a pass, sorry if not supposed to

Huffing, she leaves it on read.