Earth Bound by Emma Barry & Genevieve Turner

image flashed through his mind—her lips parted, the tips of her teeth bared as she gasped beneath him. Ah God, to finally be with her, after all those months of binding need—
    His pen skidded across the paper. He took a slow breath, placed the tip back where it had started. No one said anything, so they must not have seen.
    “I know how to smile,” he said.
    She knew it too, because he’d smiled at her last night like a besotted teenager. But just the once, since the rest of what happened between them was too intense for anything so wan.
    “Since I’ve seen no evidence of any such thing, I’ll have to disbelieve. It’s the skeptic in me.”
    She was mocking him, as usual. Jefferies had his hand over his mouth, no doubt trying to hide a smile, and Hal was probably silently laughing too.
    Or was she flirting? There was a frisson between them that made her words less painful, more teasing.
    Parsons finally allowed his head to turn and his gaze to land on her. She was exactly as he’d expected—composed, lovely, utterly in control of her expression and her posture.
    And she wasn’t looking at him. Instead, her gaze was directed at the front of the room, as if she thought the meeting might begin at any moment.
    It didn’t hurt, her inattention. That was what he wanted: for them to carry on as before. He’d been clear, and she’d agreed with him. He was only a little piqued he’d given in to the urge to stare at her.
    He turned back to the manual. “I see nothing to smile about here.” He crossed out another line.
    Jefferies’s smile dropped, and Hal shifted behind him, clearing his throat. They likely thought he was only being his usual, surly self.
    But Charlie no doubt heard what he was really saying.

    Charlie shut the door to her office. She paused before locking it. She didn’t want to be disturbed right now.
    It wasn’t a very large space. Four steps and she was at her desk. She set her notes down and exhaled, long and low. She dropped her chin to her chest and rubbed her shoulders, deep circles right where her neck meet her body. She’d made it through the capsule team’s presentation.
    Except for Parsons’s hands. Charlie had sat several chairs down from where she normally did to be further away from him. She’d kept her eyes trained straight ahead and her pen moving the entire time. She’d practically transcribed the presentation word for word.
    It hadn’t kept her from seeing his damn hands. She hadn’t made eye contact with him, but she’d watched his hands.
    The last time she’d been in New York, giving a talk at a computing conference, she’d stolen away and explored the town. Her mother would have had a fit. “Conferences are for networking, Charlotte.”
    Charlie had taken an entire afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, at least a quarter of an hour of which she’d spent in front of a single chalk sketch by Michelangelo. In the picture, the figure’s body had been twisted, muscular, beautiful, but it was the hands that had kept Charlie riveted in place. The wrists radiated strength, the fingers long and graceful. They reached off the page, away from the viewer. She’d wondered if they would be rough from work, or smooth like silk. Those fingers had haunted her dreams for weeks.
    Parsons had hands an Italian master would salivate to sketch.
    His hands were probably why she’d said those stupid words, and why she’d had an assignation in a seedy motel with him. They were why, only hours after she’d left him and with her body still sore, the sight of his fingers sweeping over the conference table, gesticulating, holding his pen, had her running back to her office until she could cool down.
    She didn’t want to think about how they’d felt in her hair when he’d finally kissed her. She didn’t want to remember his forearms bracketing her head while he’d thrust into her or the desperate edge to his breathing, as if he needed this, her. She particularly didn’t want to