Piece of Work

by Staci Hart

  An angry flush crept into her cheeks. “Not particularly.”

  “You didn’t reassign her like I instructed. You banished her to the stacks instead of utilizing a valuable resource for well over a week, and you did so against my express direction.”

  Bianca huffed. “This is ridiculous, Court. Who cares what she does as long as you sign her papers and give her a recommendation? You know good and well she doesn’t.”

  I got the feeling that Rin did care, maybe more than any of us realized. “Well, I do. What happens in this department, with this intern, reflects on me. So, new plan.” I slipped my hands in my pockets with an air of nonchalance, though my face and words were hard and cold as stone. “Rin is going to shadow me today, and you’re going to spend the rest of the day in the library researching in her place.”

  Bianca’s mouth opened. “You can’t be serious.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  She looked away, breaking the connection, her eyes scanning her desk as she hastily gathered her things. “This is bullshit,” she muttered.

  “The intern will learn this department like NYU intended her to when they recommended her. And if you won’t teach her, then I will.” I turned to leave, ignoring the look on Rin’s face, bright with disbelief and uncertainty. “Send me what you have before you leave for the day. Oh, and do me a favor…” I glanced back at Bianca, smirking. “Clean up down there. It’s a real mess.”

  I gave her my back, motioning for Rin to step out first, not wanting to subject her to a flying stapler or otherwise lethal office tool. Once in the hallway, Rin paused, glancing back at me with a question I read as, Where do we go? And as I reached her side, I touched the small of her back to guide her toward my office, intending for the motion to be innocuous. But the second my hand rested against the curve, the silky fabric warming under my palm, the charge between us surged, my awareness of her occupying my thoughts, my senses.

  My hand fell away by sheer force of will alone.

  Cannot. You cannot.

  But my body didn’t want to listen.

  I took a seat at my desk. She sat across from me, reaching into her bag for a notebook and pen, and poising them on her lap. And then she looked to me for instruction, posture straight and eyes unsure.

  With a new directive, I gave her instructions with the knowledge she’d execute them perfectly. And all the while, I did my best not to wonder if she would be this studious with all my demands, wishing I were at liberty to make the ones I really wanted.

  Rin

  It took a solid hour for my shock to subside, but once it did, I fell in step beside Dr. Lyons—Court, he’d insisted halfway through the day—with an ease and certainty I hadn’t suspected was possible. The first order of business had been to download an app where his schedule was kept and managed. With that in hand, I became the shepherd of his day, directing him from one meeting to another, to the café during his allotted lunch where we went over his thoughts for his publication and updated the list of pieces that still needed citations for the catalog for the exhibition.

  It was inspiring to commune with such a brilliant mind, to sit with him and pass thoughts to one another, to mold them and shape them, grow and form them into a cohesive thread. And he took notes, ideas spurring too quickly for his hand to keep up, the cadence of his voice speeding with his excitement. I listened when he needed me to, offered thoughts and questions when he seemed stuck. And together, we built out a solid outline for his objectives and my research.

  After lunch, I accompanied him to a lunchtime talk—a free program the museum ran daily to present museum patrons with a brief lecture on a particular topic. There were about thirty visitors waiting in a gallery in our department, and for an hour, I stood among them, listening as he spoke about Santa Francesca Romana, an Italian saint, the married saint. All she had wanted was to be a nun, but her father had forced her to marry. She’d been the linchpin of a number of miracles during the Renaissance and a popular subject of paintings, including the gold-leafed piece where we started, depicting the congregation of women she’d bound together in service to the poor.

  It wasn’t the art itself or the words he spoke but the passion in his voice, the assuredness in his knowledge that made him so inexorably irresistible. He talked about each piece as if he had been in the room when it was painted, noting details imperceptible to the casual viewer—the way the lighting focused on one element or another, how the perspective translated to perception. The appeal was aided by his appearance; he stood in front of those patrons, tall and solid as a block of marble, his face chiseled to perfection from the strength of his Roman nose to the beautiful bow of his lips. His face was symmetrical and ideally proportioned, and I imagined, if you held up Da Vinci’s mathematical formula for beauty over his face, it would overlay from jaw to brow in perfect alignment.

  It was late by the time he finally finished his work for the day, and I had learned more in those few hours with him than I had in some of my college courses. We were finishing up when Bianca walked in, looking even more bitter than usual.

  “I sent over what I had for the day,” she said to Court. I might as well not have been in the room. “Let me know if it’s adequate.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine,” he answered casually, though there was a tightness to his voice that I hadn’t heard all day. “See you tomorrow.”

  She nodded once and blew out of the room like her Louboutins were on fire.

  He closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair. “I’m sorry about Dr. Nixon. Had I known she’d relieved you of all your responsibilities, I would have done something about it.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s all right.”

  “It’s not,” he insisted, his voice deep and rumbling, not kind but not unkind either. “I meant what I said—I take your education seriously, and I intend to use you.”

  Something about the way he promised to use me sent a chill spiraling down my spine. “Thank you,” was all I could manage.

  “Did you at least get some work done on your proposal?”

  “I did,” I answered, packing my laptop away. “I’m hoping to have my abstract finished by the end of the summer and turned in to my advisor. The library is incredible. To have so many resources for exactly what I need is…well, convenient.”

  A gentle chuckle hummed in the room. “How are you feeling now that your practical exams are behind you?”

  I sighed, smiling. “Like I lost a hundred pounds and earned an extra six hours in a day.”

  Another laugh, this one heartier. “What languages did you choose?”

  “Italian and Latin.”

  “Yo tambien hablo Italiano. A year in Florence helped.”

  My smile split into a grin. “I hope I can do my next field credit in Florence.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem—you’re more than qualified. They’d be lucky to have you.” He paused, assessing me. “I’ll make some calls.”

  I flushed. “Oh, Dr. Lyons—”

  “Court,” he insisted again.

  “Court…I…I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “You didn’t ask,” he said, changing the subject and effectively barring me from argument. “So, what does your proposal have to do with Mary Magdalene?”

  I felt myself warm at the thought of getting to spend a semester in Florence, and I brightened at the mention of my dissertation, felt my enthusiasm mounting the moment I opened my mouth. “I want to write about the shift during the Renaissance from depicting Mary Magdalene as a sinner to a saint. I just…I find it so fascinating, not only the transformation of her perception to sainthood during the Renaissance, but of the progression of her sexuality in art. She embodied this dichotomy of chaste and wanton, ideal and immoral, loving and lustful. That she could be both in a single vessel, that she was free to be both in a time when the truth of being a woman was muted and suppressed by the church. The Renaissance made her real, a real woman, the most real
woman—a woman free to be exactly who and what she was.”

  I stopped rambling and clicked my mouth shut. The charge that always seemed to hang between us crackled when I met his eyes, and I felt a twist of uncertainty at what it meant.

  To my surprise, he smiled. Not a full smile with teeth, but the gentle lifting of the very edges of his mouth, one corner higher than the other, as always. And then he stood and stepped around his desk, picking up his bag on the way.

  “Grab your stuff and come with me. I want to show you something.”

  I stood, stunned, as I followed him to the staff elevators and into the big metal box. The girl who had shared this space with him before was somewhere in my past, and right there, in that moment, I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t embarrassed. Without that distraction, I was free to truly admire him. He leaned against the rail again, his legs so long in deep blue slacks, his shirt the color of the summer sky, his narrow silk tie the same shade as his pants. The combined shades made his eyes look brighter, more colorful than usual, bluer than their usual stormy gray.

  “Where are we going?” I chanced to ask.

  “You’ll see,” he answered, those eyes sparking with something I hadn’t seen before.

  Mischief.

  The doors opened, and I followed him through the hallways and into a dimly lit room. He stopped abruptly, and unprepared for the sudden halt, I ended up close to him, closer than I would have otherwise stood. My senses heightened, the smell of him, crisp and clean, the warmth of his body affecting me from inches away.

  And then he raised the lights just a little, just enough to see where we were.

  The room was a space used for maintaining and restoring paintings, lined with shelves and cabinets of supplies. And in the center on a monumental easel, in an incredible gilded frame, was The Lamentation by Ludovico Carracci.

  The subject of the painting was Christ lying prostrate on a sheet draped over a dais, his body limp and lifeless, head lolling, donned with the crown of thrones. Around him was a cacophony of emotion—the pallid Virgin Mary in red, fainting into the arms of Martha, who called for John’s help where he stood at Christ’s feet, peering into his savior’s face, his own bent in disbelief.

  But in the corner, near Christ’s head, was Mary Magdalene, her face serene, the fulcrum of the painting and the calm in a sea of chaos. The sun behind her profile set the black sky on fire, illuminating her in a crown of light. But her expression was what drew my breath from my lungs; her eyes were on Jesus’s hand resting in the cradle of hers, every curve of her face touched with absolute love and devotion. And in the details of his fingers, in the way they rested, it almost looked as if he were caressing her face. As if she were the only one who really understood life. Salvation. Death. Him.

  I had seen the painting before but never so close, so intimately—the weathering on the elaborately carved frame, the slight cracks in the surface of the painting itself, the gentle proof of Carracci’s hand, each stroke blended together in a harmony of light and shadow.

  “It’s beautiful,” I breathed.

  He stepped next to me, his eyes on the painting. “Mary Magdalene—the sinner and the saint. I wrote a publication on this piece last year.”

  “I know,” I said offhandedly.

  His head swiveled to pin me with his eyes, the charge in the air amplifying with every breath. “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve read all your works,” I admitted, meeting his gaze. “Even your dissertation.”

  A pause.

  “You read my dissertation?” The words were emotionless, distant, controlled, and I struggled to understand what he was really asking me.

  “Y-yes. Is that—”

  “Why?” One syllable. The snap in his demeanor was so intense, so complete, I took a step back, one he met with a step of his own to keep the distance measured. “Why would you read my works? Were you researching me? Looking for an angle to win me over?” We took another step in the same direction—mine back, his forward, his anger deep and wild. “Is that…is that why? Why did you start dressing like this, Rin? Because if you think seducing me will get you anywhere, you’re wrong.”

  Unfamiliar fury blew through me, spiraling around my ribs, warmer, hotter with every labored breath, and for a moment, that was all I could do. Breathe. Breathe and wonder if I’d actually heard what I thought I’d heard.

  But the accusation on his face was proof.

  “How dare you,” I finally managed, my hands trembling and knees unsteady.

  “You come in here, dressed like this, wearing that lipstick that makes me crazy, and pretend to be interested just to, what? To get ahead? To advance your career?” he shot madly, looming over me, his eyes burning coals under the dark ridge of his brow. “What do you want, Rin? Because everyone has a price. What’s yours?”

  I jerked back like he’d slapped me, the shock of his words tearing through my chest. And then I snapped as violently as he had, drawing a breath that fueled the inferno in my rib cage. “I don’t know who you think you are, you…you arrogant son of a bitch, but I came here for me.”

  I took a step in his direction, and he took a surprised step back.

  “This is the most important thing to happen to me in my entire career—this job, this position. And I read your works because I respect you. Or I did before you accused me of trying to…to…God, I cannot even believe you would say that…that I bought these clothes and put this lipstick on for you.”

  I took another step, though this time, he didn’t move. He was still and hard as stone.

  “I did this for me.” I poked him in the chest, and he looked down at my finger. “All of it. I took this internship because I want to learn.” I poked him again, and he met my eyes with fire I matched. “I put on this lipstick because I don’t want to be invisible.” Another poke. “On my first day, you looked at me like I was nobody, and now…well, it’s not my fault that when I come in here, you. See. Me.” With every word, I poked him again, glaring at him like I could set him ablaze by the power of my rage alone. “Don’t you dare suggest that I—”

  His big hand closed over my wrist like a shackle before I could poke him again, and as I opened my mouth to protest, he took a breath that drew me into him, descending like a thunderstorm to take my lips.

  They connected with mine with a bolt of lightning that held such force, our teeth clashed behind our lips before parting on instinct, a sharp inhale of possession, a loud exhale of surrender, our mouths a hot seam. His tongue slipped into my mouth to tangle with mine.

  And he swallowed my words, swallowed my breath, swallowed my will.

  My shock was as complete as my absolute submission, warning clashing with want in my heart and mind. Brilliant, bastard boss. Arrogant, arduous asshole. Cruel, clever Court.

  It didn’t matter. With his hands on my body, with his lips against mine, with all the passion in his heartless chest, he poured himself into me, filled me up, seized me like I’d always been his. Like I’d been waiting for him all this time. And I rose to meet him with a familiarity I felt in my marrow.

  A low moan rumbled up his throat, his body arching over me, one hand in the curve of my neck and the other crushing me to him, holding me exactly where he wanted so he could take what he wanted. Demand burned from him, searing me everywhere we touched. His lips, so insistent. His fingertips, unyielding. His body, solid stone. His hips, narrow and even with mine, unrelenting.

  I wound around him like ivy, my arms twining around his neck, my fingers twisting in his dark hair, my body curving into his.

  He stepped us back to the counter, his lips disappearing from mine to nip and suck a trail from the hollow behind my jaw to my collarbone.

  “Tell me again that I was wrong, Rin,” he hissed between kisses.

  “You were wrong, you asshole,” I panted, the sound of my name sending a rush of heat between my legs.

  “Never in my life have I wanted to be so wrong,” he growled against my skin, and a tremor skated
up my thighs. “All day, I’ve imagined this.” His hand drifted down my hip, down my leg until he brushed my skin, trailing fire in the wake of his fingertips. “For a week, I’ve imagined this. I shouldn’t want you, but I do. I need to touch you.”

  “Please, touch me,” I whispered, the words foreign on my tongue and familiar to my soul, my knees trembling as he hooked his fingers in the hem of my skirt and slid it up my thigh.

  “Fuck,” he moaned. “I want these legs.” His voice was gravelly and low, rumbling through his chest and into mine. “I want them split open and ready for me. I want them wrapped around my waist, slung over my shoulders, bent to put you on your knees.”

  “Oh my God,” I breathed, questioning nothing beyond the speed at which he moved, which was too slow, too fast, too much, not enough. When his hand cupped my ass and squeezed, his fingers grazing the aching center of me, my hips rolled, seeking them. “Don’t stop,” I begged.

  And then he took my lips again, took my mouth as his fingers slipped into my panties, took my breath as his hand pushed them down my thighs. His tongue searched deeper as his fingertips swept the slick line of heat between my legs.

  A jolt burst through me from the point of contact to every limb, and I gasped into his mouth. But he didn’t relent, and that sharp breath melted into a groan as he sank the length of his finger into the throbbing center of me. And he didn’t let me go, not with his lips that moved in perfect rhythm with mine, not with his hand in the nape of my neck, holding me still. Not with the flexing grip of his hand as it worked my body, the heel of his palm pressed against the throbbing tip of my desire, circling with the same pressure, the same rhythm as his fingers inside me.

  That kiss didn’t end until I broke away out of sheer inability to match him, my thrumming body out of my control—it was at his command.

  “I’ve wanted to touch you like this for so long,” he whispered against my collarbone, his hand keeping pace as he fucked me with his fingers and palm. “I’ve wanted to know if your lips were as sweet as I imagined.” My body sang with every word, the hot, trembling orgasm rising in me, electrifying my skin. “But I was wrong, Rin.” My ear…he was at my ear, his breath triggering a pulse around his fingers. “It’s so much fucking better.”