Page 25 of When Ice Queens Collide
“It bothered me,” Alexandra said, “because the project matters. And the reason it matters is not something I discuss in the context of a negotiation.”
“We're not negotiating right now.”
“Then what are we doing?”
The room was very quiet. Simone could hear the building's ventilation system cycling somewhere behind the walls, the faint tick of Alexandra's watch, and her own breathing, which she was managing with more effort than she wanted to admit. The wine sat between them, half finished in both glasses, and the tablet on the desk had stopped being the focal point of the conversation several minutes ago.
“I don't know,” Simone said and meant it. Sitting across from Alexandra in a warm, dim office with no one else in the building, she didn’t know what she was doing. She knew what she wanted, which was a different thing entirely, and the gap between these was where all the danger lived.
Alexandra held her gaze. The eye contact that had been a contest since the boardroom in October was doing somethingdifferent tonight; it was less competitive and more searching, as though Alexandra was trying to find something specific in Simone's face and wasn't sure she wanted to find it.
“The project was my mother's,” Alexandra said, her tone quieter and softer than usual. “She submitted it fourteen months before she died, knowing that she would never see it finished but trusting that it would be.”
Simone had remembered this from when Alexandra told her at Elements, but she intuitively knew Alexandra was doing something deeper than just relaying information. She was answering her own question honestly without the diplomatic framing in a room with no board and no counsel and no one to perform for. And that was something Simone had never seen her do.
“I know,” Simone said.
“I know you know. You pay attention.”
“So do you.”
The silence that followed was different from the silences that had punctuated the negotiation. Those had been tactical pauses where one of them was deciding how to respond, how much to concede, and where, and how much, to press. This pause had no strategy in it. It was two women who had spent months studying each other arriving at the same conclusion simultaneously: the obsession had been mutual. The attention had been received and returned. They had each been watching the other with an intensity that exceeded professional necessity. They both knew it but as long as they didn’t say it out loud, there was a wall between them.
That wall had just come down.
Simone reached for her wine and drank. She needed something to do with her hands, and it took genuine effort to redirect them toward the glass instead of toward where they wanted to go. Alexandra was sitting only four feet away, and thedistance had been manageable an hour ago but was becoming less so with every minute that passed. The air in the room had changed as the professional pretense dissolved, and the thing they'd been circling since October was right there between them, no longer hidden by corporate language or the excuse of a negotiation.
“We should discuss theTribunestatement,” Simone said half-heartedly.
“We should,” Alexandra said but didn't move to pick up the papers.
She was looking at Simone with an expression Simone had never seen from her. She was open in a way that was clearly involuntary, as though the composure that usually governed every micro-expression had been pulled too thin by the evening and was now failing in places Alexandra couldn't patch fast enough. Her eyes were darkened in the lamplight, and she maintained her stillness. She looked like a woman trying to hold herself in place.
“Alexandra.” Simone said her name deliberately, but her voice came out lower and with a weight she hadn't anticipated. She heard it leave her mouth and knew that whatever this conversation had been, it had just become something else.
Alexandra's fingers pressed into the desk until they turned white. She didn't speak, but the silence was louder than anything she could have said. Alexandra always had words—the precise phrase, the measured response, the professional vocabulary—that kept the world at the distance she needed. Her silence meant the vocabulary had failed. Simone watched Alexandra’s composure thin and crack in real time and felt her own discipline collapsing in parallel, the two of them losing the same battle.
Simone stood up. She hadn't meant to; her body just moved, the chair scraping back behind her. “We should stop,” Simone said but didn't move toward the door.
“Yes.“ Alexandra stood and came around the desk.
Simone could feel her body heat and smell something understated that she'd never been near enough to catch before. She could see the pulse jumping in rhythm in Alexandra's throat above her sweater's neckline.
“This is a terrible idea,“ Simone said. Her voice came out low, barely above a whisper. Her feet stayed rooted in place.
“Yes, it is,“ Alexandra said. Her breathing had changed. Her hands were at her sides, fingers slightly curled, the tendons visible along the backs of her wrists, and Simone could see them trembling, a fine, almost imperceptible vibration that Alexandra was fighting and clearly losing.
Simone could feel the pull in her fingers and her palms, the physical urgency of wanting to close the last of the distance and put her hands on this woman who was standing close enough to touch. The room had narrowed to just the two of them and the eighteen inches of charged air between their bodies. Simone's discipline was thinning out with every breath.
They closed the distance at the same time, their mouths colliding hard and graceless. Alexandra kissed with her whole body, fierce and unrelenting, and Simone's hand fisted in the front of her sweater and pulled her closer. Alexandra's hip hit the edge of the desk. Simone pressed into her, one hand still gripping the sweater, the other finding her waist and lifting, and Alexandra scooted up onto the desk's edge, papers sliding and scattering to the floor around them. Alexandra’s hands found Simone's shoulders first, then her jaw, then the back of her neck, gripping hard enough that Simone felt each finger individually.
The desk lamp's glow caught the sharp line of Alexandra's jaw, the faint sheen of sweat already beading there, andSimone's mouth crashed back against hers again, teeth grazing her lips, tasting the metallic edge of their desire. Alexandra's legs parted instinctively, hooking around Simone's hips, pulling her in harder, and Simone pressed forward, her body a solid weight pinning Alexandra down.
Alexandra's hands, always so in control, were anything but now. They roamed Simone's neck, fumbling at the collar of her blouse as she scraped her nails against her skin. One hand slipped underneath Simone's shirt, Alexandra’s palm flat and hot against her sternum, trembling just enough to make Simone's breath hitch. Nothing about this was smooth or practiced; this was raw hunger without conscious thought as Alexandra’s fingers caught on a button, popping it free. The imperfection of the moment hit Simone. She'd imagined Alexandra a thousand times, but this, the messy desire, unraveled something tight in Simone's chest.
She broke the kiss to bite at Alexandra's neck, her teeth sinking into the tender skin just below her ear. Alexandra gasped, a sharp, involuntary sound that vibrated against Simone's lips, her body arching up off the desk. Simone's hand slid up under the sweater, pushing it higher, exposing the lace edge of a bra that looked too delicate for the woman wearing it. She yanked the cup down, palming Alexandra's breast roughly, her thumb circling the nipple until it hardened into a taut peak under her touch. Alexandra's response was immediate and fierce. Her hips bucked up, grinding against Simone's thigh, and her hand in Simone's shirt twisted, pulling at fabric like she meant to tear it.
“Take it off,“ Alexandra muttered, the words rough and barely more than a breath, her fingers already working at the buttons again with that same unsteady urgency. Simone didn't help; she wanted to watch, to see her struggle, to feel the desperation in every missed button. When the blouse finallygaped open, Alexandra's hands dragged down Simone's sides, nails raking over her ribs, leaving faint red trails that stung in the cool office air. Simone hissed, the pain sharpening her focus, and she retaliated by shoving Alexandra's sweater up and over her head in one rough motion, tossing it aside. It landed in a heap on the scattered papers, forgotten.
