Our True Names [Part 3] [MF] [Slow Burn]

[Part 3: The Unstill Mind]

“Please, take off your coat.”

I carefully undid the buttons, painfully conscious of *him* standing right behind me. He stepped closer to me and gently pulled the coat off my shoulders. His warmth, his scent made me heady. Clean, crisp, *intoxicating.*

I sat down in one of the chairs and watched as he settled in behind the desk.

“Samira, I’m glad you decided to come see me.”

I blushed. *Yes.* ***I*** *made all of this happen.* ***I*** *decided it was a good idea to go to some stranger’s workplace instead of working towards becoming a doctor. Brilliant* ***me****.*

“I just wanted to thank you properly.” I pulled out an envelope from my purse and slid it across the table. “Please take this.”

“A present?” He said, smiling warmly.

I watched him open the envelope. “Now we don’t owe each other anything.” His smile slowly faded.

“I-I just wanted to repay you.” I smiled brightly, trying to show him that I simply wanted to return the kindness.

He placed the metrocard back in the envelope and tucked it into one of the desk drawers.

“Right,” He cleared his throat. “You don’t owe me anymore.”

Silence fell over the room and I had to look away from him, from the look in his eyes that was making me feel so incredibly guilty. I settled on a photo of a beautiful older woman wearing a wide-brimmed sunhat, the ocean rolling in behind her.

“That’s my mother. She passed away a few years ago.”

I looked back at him in concern, but he was lost in his thoughts.

“That was her favorite place to be.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss, Alex.” Speaking his name seemed to jolt him from his reverie. He leaned in closer, suddenly full of earnest.

“Samira. I didn’t give you my business card because I wanted you to pay me back. I gave it to you because when I saw you that day, you looked completely… crushed. And lost. I wanted to… I *want* to help you.”

My heart raced as the words spilled from him.

“I don’t need your help!”

He sat back in his chair. I too had surprised myself with how angry I sounded. *What is going on with me?*

“Samira. Tell me you don’t feel this.”

I sat in silence, the sound of my heart pounding in my ears.

“Tell me you haven’t thought about me.”

My cheeks burned as I remembered what I had fantasized about. His hands. Touching, caressing, squeezing. His eyes bore through me and I wondered if he could see the truth.

“Please… stop.” I could barely speak the words as once more, the desperate throbbing between my legs began and I could feel my wetness slip down, seeping through my panties.

“Samira.” I looked down at my lap, feeling as though each nerve in my being was a live wire.

“Samira. Please look at me.” I looked up at him, almost defiantly. My body was no longer listening to me. No. But *I* was still there. *I still have control*.

“I know what the pressure can be like. I know how suffocating it can be. How isolating it can be. We want great things for ourselves. …It will never be easy.”

I felt the tears welling up in my eyes, followed by anger. *How could he know that about me? Am I so transparent? So easy to figure out?*

“Samira.” The room became blurry. In seconds, he was sitting beside me, my hands caught up in his. The tears finally fell, like rainfall after a particularly long drought. They fell upon our hands, until he pulled his away, and gently brushed his forefinger beneath by chin, pushing it up ever so slightly. He cupped my head with his hands, his fingers in my hair, his thumbs on either side of my face, softly dragging the tears away. He leaned in and kissed my eyelids, my cheeks, and finally my forehead. He was so gentle, and yet every place his lips touched me stung. It was all so new, so foreign.

“Let me help you, please,” he whispered against my forehead.

I didn’t speak. I couldn’t. *What exactly was he offering me? How could he help me?* He was a man, surely a man with experience. I knew what he wanted from me. How could such a complication ever help?

I pulled away from him and stood up, looking towards the door.

“I-I need to get back. I’m running late. I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time.”

“Samira.”

I didn’t look back. Only when I began to shiver on the train, thirty minutes later, did I realize I had left my coat, hat and scarf back in his office. I held myself, horrified. *How could I be so careless?* I had been with him for such a short amount of time. Despite that, he managed to get in my head and make me completely mindless. *He is a threat to me.*

___________________________________________________________

Alex sat back down at his desk, leaning back into the chair. He wondered how it had gone so wrong, so fast. He had called after her, wanting to call her a cab, but she had ignored him. Alex couldn’t quite explain why he felt so drawn to her. It had been a busy week, but he found himself thinking about her at any free moment he had. Her face was there whenever he closed his eyes. He couldn’t forget how she looked like the whole world was crashing down on her in front of that metrocard machine. She looked so frustrated and utterly adorable. He couldn’t help but step in.

He was surprised, however, by how happy he was to hear that she was down in the lobby… and how much it had hurt him to see the metrocard in the envelope. He knew what she was trying to do. A clean break. A way to say goodbye and put the whole incident in the past. But their meeting today had proven to them both that whatever this was, it couldn’t be wrapped up prettily and hidden away. *No.* He had been viscerally impacted by her. It was hard to not think about her wide eyes, flushed cheeks, the way her thighs trembled when he held her hands and rested them on her lap, the taste of her soft skin when he had kissed her. It was hard not to imagine what she would look like beneath him, how dark her eyes would get, how he would make her gasp and moan and tremble. He groaned as his own body reacted to the idea. He wanted all of that for her. Pleasure, pain, release and finally, quietude. What he had sensed that first day and again today was her unstill mind. And something inside him so badly wanted to be the one to change it all for her.

A sharp knock on the door interrupted his thoughts. A man with curly coppery hair peeked into the office.

“Oi, Alex! Who was that running out of your office? What did you do to the poor girl?” Colin was an Irish expat, the human embodiment of social lubricant.

Alex laughed, some of the tension finally leaving his body.

“Just some business.”

Colin mimicked him, “*Just some business.* Fine then! Keep your secrets. Come out tonight. The whole team is going to Hatsui’s.”

Alex sighed but nodded in assent. Beautiful women, delicious sushi, seemingly limitless bottles of sake… Anything to forget a certain dark-haired girl.

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/kp5b6p/our_true_names_part_3_mf_slow_burn