His voice had been loud enough that I glanced around, wanting to avoid making a scene.

“We work in the same building, if you didn’t realize.  Coming all the way here, on the night of a big show, is not the way to handle this.”

“The gallery in the casino is your territory.  You’ve been very clear on how you feel about me infringing on your territory.  Are you saying I’m allowed to come there now?”

“Yes, that’s fine,” I said, to appease him.  Anything to avoid what he was doing right that second, because having him there, talking to him there, was going to turn me into a basket case in the middle of an event I’d been planning for too long to flake out on.  “Now please, you need to let me work.”

In theory, he did back off, just not far.  He didn’t leave, as I’d hoped, but stayed, going through the entire building slowly, room by room, perusing the art thoroughly, always in my peripheral, hovering close enough to be distracting.

I tried my best not to be distracted.

One of the artists had done a series of paintings on large multi paneled room partitions.  They each measured roughly six feet high, and the way they were set around the room turned it into a sort of maze.  It was a striking series.

I’d just shown it to some potential buyers.  I was taking down a few notes about some other work by the same painter that the buyers were interested in seeing before they made a decision.  They had since moved on to the next room.  I always encouraged this.  I didn’t hover, tending to let the buyer find the pieces that spoke to them on their own.

There was a small table at the back of what had turned into the maze room.  It was displaying a series of small painted fans, but had enough free space for me to set my paper-thin laptop on as I typed a few details in.

I was just straightening when big hands cupped my shoulders from behind and started rubbing.

I knew who it was instantly.  Of course I did.  I could smell him.  The warm, spicy scent of his cologne was permanently branded into my brain.

And those hands.  No one else on earth had hands like his.

I breathed in deep, taking him in, trying to get a grip.

One hand left my shoulder, and I felt a teasing finger run the length of my spine through the thin material of my dress.  His touch was so light, his journey from bottom to top so slow, my ni**les had tightened into hard peaks by the time he reached my nape.

I shivered involuntarily.

He moved in closer behind me, that wandering hand going to my waist, gripping.  I could feel the heat of his palms, one on the skin of my shoulder, the other through my clothes.  The contrast of the touches made me catch my breath.

A sensitive muscle very low in my belly began to quiver.

He moved closer by infinitesimal degrees, until I felt him leaning over me, head tipped forward.  I thought he must be staring at my features, gauging my reactions.

“What are you doing?” I asked him in a shaky voice.

“You said you didn’t want to have our conversation here.  I’m improvising.”

I shook my head slightly, then froze as, gently but firmly, the hand at my waist moved up and held my breast.  His palm slid softly over the already hardened peak.

“This is not the place for that, either,” I whispered furiously.

But I didn’t move away.

His other hand moved from its scorching grip on my shoulder, covering my right hand, which was clenched into a fist on the table in front of me.

He lifted it, pried it open until he could fit his thumb against my palm, and started to rub.  His touch was so soothing, so fundamentally pleasurable, that my hand fell open like he’d unlocked it with a key.

And that was when he knew he had me.

He continued to fondle me while he straightened my arm, then pulled it behind my back, palm twisted to face him.  Without a word, he pulled it to the front of his pants.  Slowly, leisurely, he rubbed himself into my palm, stroking himself with our connected hands.  Up, down, up, down, each stroke taking its sweet time along his broad length.

My lips were trembling, my body shaking, every single muscle in my belly tight with anticipation.

I felt like all of the nerves inside of me were about to shatter.  And I wanted it.

How was it so easy to fall into this old pattern, of all things?

Still stroking my breast and his c**k with our combined efforts, he whispered into my ear.  “If you say no now, I will stop.  But I can’t make any guarantees for after.  Now is the cutoff for no.”

I shuddered.  After everything, the rise and the fall of us, the pain and the aftermath, why did his touch still bring such comfort?  How could it unearth such a sense of security?

I made my mind into a temporary ally with my want, my desire, yet again, and took the plunge.

I felt so out of control that I didn’t even care what happened after.

It was madness.

And yet, completely necessary.

“Yes or no.  I want to hear it.”

My eyes fell closed and I gripped him harder.  “Yes.”

His breath shuddered out harshly, and he fumbled at his pants, working them open.

I gripped and started stroking as soon as he spilled, bare and hard, into my open palm.

I felt him working my skirt up, his other fingers plucking firmly at my nipple through two layers of fabric that I would have liked to make disappear just then.  But there was no time for undressing, not here.

This was a direct access; get at it as fast as you can kind of f**k.  And yes, it had a name.  Thanks to the devastating power of our history together, nearly every damn thing did.