I inhale slowly, putting my hand on her stomach, feeling it move as her lungs expand. “That’s it,” I say. “Now hold it.”
I move my hand a little higher, sitting it just under her breasts. “Now let it out slowly. Like this. Good girl.”
As she exhales, I see the color coming back to her cheeks. “Again,” I tell her. “In.” I keep my hand where it is, watching as her eyes grow less wild. “And out. Slowly, that’s it.”
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out, managing a weak smile. “Confined spaces. I’m not good in them.”
“Keep breathing like that.” I step away reluctantly. I’ve been enjoying drinking in her beauty. That mess of brown hair in an untidy bun, the hideous gray top that clings tight to her, showing off the curves of her tits and the slight hint of her nipples through her bra.
Her face is coming back to itself, the color giving it warmth and light. Her sapphire blue eyes are sparkling like jewels in Aladdin’s cave.
“I’m sorry,” she says again as I walk over to the cooler and fetch her some water. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing,” I tell her. “You did nothing wrong.”
“I panicked,” she says, sitting bolt upright as I tip the cup toward her mouth. “It just started going up so I hit all the buttons. Why did it go up?”
“Tell me what happened.”
She swallows the last of the water. I get a look at her long neck and want to kiss it more than I’ve ever wanted anything.
“I pushed the button for the basement but it just started going up. I panicked, I hit the buttons and I think I broke it. It just stopped dead and I thought it was going to fall.” She wrinkles her brow. “I thought the building was supposed to be empty. Why are you here?”
I look down at where she’s holding my wrist. The last person to grab me like that is in the bottom of the Hudson with weights tied around his waist to keep him there.
No one touches me. Ever. I don’t even let my women touch me. But her? She’s holding my wrist and the strangest thing is that I don’t even mind. “Why would it go up when I pressed the button for the basement?” she asks, looking up at me with pleading eyes that break my heart.
“Because I overrode it when I called it up here,” I reply, forcing my hand out from hers. I set the cup down on the nearest desk, leaning to turn off the computer screen before she spots anything incriminating. “I had no idea you were inside. I thought we had a mole in the building. What are you doing here?”
“I told you. I’m supposed to be cleaning an office on the tenth floor.” Her eyes bulge again. “I was trapped in there. I thought I was going to die. How did you find me?”
“I heard screaming and came to investigate.”
“Thank God you did. I could have died in there.”
“You’re all right now. Just take it easy.”
She looks at my hand. “You cut yourself. You’re bleeding.”
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
She looks at me like she’s seeing me for the first time. “Thank you,” she says. “I promise I’m not normally like this. I’m calm and with it most of the time.”
“I’ll walk you down the stairs,” I reply, glancing up at the clock. Twenty minutes until the deadline and I’ve emptied the office. I need to get my people back to work. Otherwise I’m looking at twenty years inside.
I’ll think about that later. I’ve something more important to deal with.
She isn’t moving. I hold out a hand out toward her. She looks at it and frowns but does nothing. “I need to clean the office,” she says. “I can’t just go.”
“The office is shutting down for a while,” I tell her, thinking how much I’m leaving out in those few words. The Feds closing in, the entire laundering operation closing in one day. The building mothballed. Me and my employees all leaving the country until the heat dies down. “There won’t be anything for you to clean.”
“Oh.” She looks crestfallen. “I see.” She takes my hand and gets to her feet. I keep hold of her fingers, not wanting to let go of them.
I tell myself it’s so she doesn’t get chance to look at any of the other computers but it’s not that, not really. It’s because I don’t want to let go of her. I want to keep her here.
I could easily fuck her over the nearest desk right now. No one would hear her screams of ecstasy when I take that innocence of hers and snap it into a million pieces.
But the clock is ticking. I need to be out of here before the Feds show up or I’m going away for a very long time. Can’t be caught with my fingers in the till. No plausible deniability if I’m in the fucking building when they come to raid it.