Page 8 of Mister St. James

Compartmentalization

Aiden

A boardroom is supposed to be a neutral territory, the white-gloved, sterilized Switzerland of the office, where emotion goes to die and numbers live forever. But whoever designed Precision’s main conference room didn’t get the memo. The walls are glass, transparent on three sides, but instead of making the place feel open, it’s like sitting in the world’s least forgiving microscope slide. You can see everything, the city in the far distance, the twitch of every intern’s pen two desks away, and the terrified glances as the executive team cycles through its quarterly Monday-morning hangings.

I sit at the head of the table, a position that was supposed to feel like power. Today it just feels like exposure. Every surface in the room gleams, reflects: the burnished black of the table, the polished steel of the chair arms, the lenses of my glasses that capture and repeat every micro-expression in a loop. I can see myself from three angles. I look composed. I do not feel composed. I feel like an open-ended wire. Exposed and ready to set fire to everything I’ve worked so hard for.

My suit is tailored so tight it feels like a second skin, but it isn’t enough to keep the sweat from slicking the inside of my collar. My palms are already clammy, my mouth dry, my left knee bouncing micro-inches above the carpet as the CFO drones on about “aggressive but plausible” market penetration. Normally I’d be counting the errors per minute, but today my math skills are shot. They’ve been replaced by a movie reel, and the only film playing is the weekend’s memory of Cat on stage at the Velvet Stag, bare to her birthmark, standing at the eye of a storm of need.

I try to snap the reel. Recite my own private code, a list of fuck-you axioms that have kept me in charge of my own life for three decades. It doesn’t work. I blink and she’s back, back arched, lips split in a smile so brazen it dares you to try and be worth her time. Every shift of the presentation slide, a new forecast, a new graph, maps perfectly onto the arch of her hips, the cut of her waist, the reckless line of red lipstick that I want to smudge across her jaw.

My cock is hard. Not “maybe this will go away by itself” hard, but angry, blood-hot, rage-against-the-machine hard. I grip the pen until I nearly snap it and will myself to think about anything else. The next contract, the threat matrix for the next security rollout, even the time a senator pissed on the tile in the men’s room during a tech summit. Nothing works. I sneak a glance at Cat, two seats to my left, pencil in hand, annotating the printout with her usual surgical precision, and the whole thing starts over.

She’s dressed like she means it today. White blouse, buttoned to regulation, but the fabric is so thin it shows the shadow of her bra in the right light. Her hair is pinned up in a brutal twist, a few errant curls escaping down the nape of her neck like a fucking SOS. Her legs are crossed tight, the hem of her skirt at a latitude that should be illegal. She catches me looking, just once, and lifts her eyebrow in a private semaphore that says, yes, I know exactly what you’re thinking.

The lights are too bright. The fluorescents overhead hum a frequency that grinds into the meat of my skull, like the inside of a server farm left to rot. It combines with the low whir of the projector, the nervous throat-clears, the tap of the legal counsel’s wedding band on the glass water pitcher. Everything is noise. I shift in my chair and pray no one notices the tent in my slacks.

“Mr. St. James?”

It’s the new VP, the one with the reverse fade and the existential terror in his eyes. I have no idea what he just said. Neither, judging by the look of him, does he.

“Would you, ah, like to weigh in on the third quarter projection variances, sir?”

Fuck. I flick my eyes to the screen, see numbers that might as well be hieroglyphics, then to Cat, who is already looking at me, waiting to see if I’ll flinch. She doesn’t help. She never does. She must love to see me squirm.

I swallow hard and give a vague answer that will get him to stop talking to me so I can go back to obsessing over a woman who can unravel the very fabric of my life if I let her. And fuck me right now, I almost want to let her.

The VP blinks, then nods, frantically scribbling. The rest of the table breathes a sigh of relief, as if someone just cut the cord on a bomb. Cat’s lips curve in a slow, private smile before she lowers her gaze to her notes.

I hate her. I want her. I hate that I want her so much. I despise the fact that some part of me even wants to crawl over to her and beg her to sit on my fucking face and suffocate me to death. I want to tie her wrists behind her back, press her against the glass, and make her say “sir” with the same derision she spits at me in email. I want to see how long she can last before she breaks character. I want her enough that I think it could kill me.

“Moving on,” drones the CFO, as if nothing’s happened. As if I’m not contemplating blowing up my entire life for a night with the Scarlet Muse. He gestures at another chart, but nobody’s really paying attention, least of all me.

My throat is bone-dry. I reach for the water glass, only to find it empty. Cat notices. She leans in, pouring from the carafe at her elbow, not spilling a drop. The tendons in her forearm flex. Her fingernails, painted the same shade of arterial red as the shoes she wore last Friday, drum the rim as she pours. I wonder if she’d dig them into my back. I wonder if she’d draw blood. I want her to draw blood.

The water is ice-cold. I drink too quickly, nearly choke. Cat leans back, resumes her annotation as if nothing happened. But I see the way she flicks her pen, the way her pupils dilate just a fraction before she glances away.

I force myself to focus. The rest of the hour passes in a haze of slide decks, off-kilter dialogue, and the constant throb in my pants. The team is used to my silences, but not to the way I grip the edge of the table, or the way my jaw works when I’m trying not to lose control. I think I pass for normal, but I can’t be sure.

The meeting finally adjourns, with a chorus of scraped chairs and a collective scramble for the exit. I stay seated, head bowed, waiting for my pulse to drop below fight-or-fuck threshold. When I’m sure no one is watching, I pick up my portfolio and let it fall, perfectly, casually, into my lap, covering the evidence. Only then do I stand, one hand on the folder, the other smoothing my jacket.

Cat lingers at the far end of the table, rearranging her papers. She doesn’t look at me, but I feel her watching, like the moment before a thunderclap. I want to say something, but any words that would spill from my lips to her at this moment would absolutely get me sent straight to HR.

Instead, I move past her with the most efficient grace I can manage while concealing my still hard cock. I duck into my office, close the door with unnecessary force, and lean against it for a full ten-count. The pulse in my neck is out of spec. My palms leave wet prints on the lacquered wood. I flex my hands, try to bleed out the static, but it’s no use.

I take two steps to the window and scan the city. Numbers, schedules, the pattern of traffic: these things are supposed to calm me, to ground me. But the city is just noise, and every time I try to focus, my mind veers left, straight into the memory of her tongue, the way she caught her own lip between her teeth during the meeting when she thought no one was watching. The club taught me to compartmentalize, to seal every distraction in an invisible box. But the container I built for Cat is cracked, leaking desire that I can’t contain.

I sit behind my desk, arrange my keyboard at a perfect right angle to the blotter, and try to lose myself in the Zurich contract. It lasts four minutes. But I can see her typing, casually brushing a lock of hair past her cheek, the faint birthmark at her hairline hiding in plain sight taunting me. My chest tightens, my cock twitches as if in salute and I can’t help but picture her now. Wearing nothing but that lipstick, those heels, the silk rope I’ve tied in my fantasies.

My phone buzzes, pulling me from the edge of ruin. A new message, urgent flag. From Legal. The Sato file needs my signature before lunch, and only Cat has the clearance to prep the packet.

I slide the door open and step into the liminal space, every sense on high alert. She’s not at her desk, but standing at the copier, already pulling pages from the tray, her nails making tiny clicking sounds on the glossy paper. She’s focused, so focused it hurts to look at her. I approach, my steps measured, my face arranged in what I hope is a neutral expression.

“Catalina,” I say, voice lower than I intend.

She glances up, startled for half a heartbeat, then composed: “Yes, Mr. St. James?”

I want to say, I saw you last night. I want to say, you are the most dangerous woman I’ve ever met, and I need you to ruin me, before I ruin you. Instead, I clear my throat. “I need the Sato addendum by 11:30. Do you have time?”