Temptation Across The Hall

I almost didn’t see him.

I was running late, keys in one hand, bag in the other, head already somewhere else entirely when I stepped out of my apartment and walked straight into a wall of solid muscle.

He grabbed my arm to steady me and for a moment we just stood there, tangled together in the narrow hallway, and that’s when I smelled him. Sweat and something underneath it, something warm and distinctly male that hit me somewhere low and unexpected before I had the sense to step back.

“I’m so sorry,” we both said at the same time.

I laughed. He smiled. And I made the mistake of actually looking at him.

He was tall. Dark hair still damp from exertion, a thin white t-shirt clinging to a chest that had absolutely no business looking like that at whatever hour of the morning this was. He had the kind of jaw you noticed and the kind of eyes that made you feel like you’d said something interesting even when you hadn’t.

Be normal Jade.

“You’re the new neighbor, right?” he asked.

“That obvious?”

“Only because my wife has been trying to figure out who moved into the apartment across the hall.”

I groaned.

“Please don’t tell me I’ve already become neighborhood gossip.”

“Nothing scandalous, I promise.”

I rolled my eyes dramatically.

“Good.”

He smiled again and I noticed it reached his eyes. He explained he’d just gotten back from his morning jog when his wife had called asking him to pick up groceries.

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

“The supermarket actually,” I said.

He raised an eyebrow. “I could give you a ride if you want.”

I hesitated. He was a complete stranger. Just a face across the hall I was only now putting a body to. But it was early, I was tired and the supermarket was a twenty minute walk.

“Sure,” I said. “Thank you.”

I told myself it was purely practical.

We hit traffic on the way there which should have been awkward but wasn’t. We talked the way you sometimes do with strangers — easily, without the usual walls up. The weather, films, music. Then somehow our jobs, our families, the cities we’d lived in before this one. He laughed at something I said and I felt it in my chest before I could stop myself.

Stop it Jade.

By the time we pulled into the supermarket car park we were mid-sentence and neither of us seemed particularly eager to get out. He reached into the back seat for his reusable bags and his hand grazed mine.

I went completely still.

It was nothing. A half second of accidental contact. Skin against skin. It shouldn’t have meant anything.

But the air in the car changed immediately, like something invisible had shifted. I became acutely aware of how small the space was. How close he was sitting. How his eyes had dropped to my mouth for just a fraction of a second before snapping back up.

My heart was hammering.

His jaw tightened.

Neither of us spoke.

Then from somewhere outside came the long blast of a car horn and we both startled back to reality. I grabbed my bag and got out of the car faster than was probably dignified, not quite meeting his eyes, telling myself what I’d felt was nothing. Just proximity. Just imagination.

I was almost convinced.

On the way home the silence sat between us like a living thing. Heavy and aware. I kept my eyes on the window and my hands in my lap and said absolutely nothing and neither did he. By the time we pulled back into the complex my nerves were wound so tight I could barely breathe.

We got out of the car and I reached for my bags quickly, eager to put distance between us and get inside as fast as humanly possible. I was moving too fast and I knew it. One of the bags caught on the car door and before I could grab it, it tipped and my groceries scattered across the floor.

“No no no,” I muttered, crouching down.

“Here—” He was already beside me, gathering tins and packets off the ground, close enough that I could smell that scent again. The one from the hallway. I kept my eyes down and my hands busy and tried to pretend my heart wasn’t doing something completely irrational inside my chest.

“Thank you,” I said without looking at him, stuffing the last of it back into the bag and straightening up quickly.

“Of course,” he said.

We were standing very close now. Too close. Right at the base of the stairwell, the building quiet around us, no one else in sight. I needed to grab my things and go. I could feel it, that pull, that terrifying magnetic thing that had no business existing between two people who had known each other for less than a morning.

“Well,” I said, “thanks again for the—”

His hand was on my arm.

He turned me gently and I let him, which was my first mistake.

I knew the look on his face because I felt it too.

“No,” I said.

But I didn’t pull my hand away.

He drew me into the corner of the stairwell, one hand cupping my face, tilting it up toward his. I could feel the warmth radiating off his skin. Could smell that scent again, the one that had started all of this.

“Tell me to stop,” he said quietly. “And I will.”

Every sensible thought I had left dissolved completely.

His lips met mine and I stopped thinking altogether. He kissed me like he’d been considering it since the supermarket car park, deep and unhurried, one hand sliding to the small of my back and pulling me flush against him. I felt my whole body melt forward into his and I heard myself moan softly against his mouth like I had absolutely no control over it whatsoever.

His hands began to move and I felt them travelling slowly downward and I knew — I knew — that if I let this go any further there would be no coming back from it.

I pulled away.

Hands shaking. Heart pounding so hard I could feel it in my throat.

“Stop,” I managed. “This isn’t right.”

I grabbed my bags, turned and walked to my apartment as fast as my legs would carry me. I didn’t look back.

But even as I closed the door behind me and leaned against it in the dark, chest heaving, I could still feel his hands on me.

And I already knew that was going to be a problem.