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“I have it.”

“I know you do.”

I free it and turn back to him. The dress loosens at my shoulders and Colt does not move.

“You are doing it again.”

“Waiting?”

“Yes.”

“Thought we liked that now.”

“I like you listening. I did not ask you to become furniture.”

That lands. Whatever he was going to say next is gone the moment I slide the dress off one shoulder, and his eyes follow it down.

I have been looked at. In rooms where it was a transaction, and in rooms where it was an opinion nobody had asked me whether I wanted.

There is nobody here deciding which version of me is useful. He is looking because I told him to.

I let the other shoulder go.

The dress catches at my hips. I push it down and step out of it.

Colt does not make a sound.

I let him look. There is nothing underneath it, and there has not been all night.

“Astrid.”

“Yes.”

“All night.”

“Yes.”

He goes still in the way he goes still on the ice, in the half second before the rest of the building has worked out what just happened.

“At dinner.”

“Yes.”

“On that floor.”

“Yes.”

“I had my hand on your ass in front of two hundred people.”

“You did.”

“You let me.”

“I was waiting to see how long it would take you.”

He says something I do not catch.

I leave the dress where it fell and walk back across his front room to the table by the door, and I take my time about it, because he is watching and because I decided this afternoon that he would be.