From the first, it had been impossible for him to ignore her sensual power, although she never used it. She had, in fact, done absolutely nothing but her job. She was a member of his team and she was passionate about their work, full stop. But she was not passionate about her superior officer, and he fully intended to keep his distance from her. He told himself he could admire her: the skin, the hair, the eyes, the hands, the arms, the legs, the lips, the . . . He couldn’t, he couldn’t think of her breasts and the dip of her waist and the shape of her arse. He couldn’t think of what he didn’t have with Pete and what he wanted and what it meant about him if he made the wrong move.
And yet he finally did just that: he made the wrong move. It was an after-hours knees-up at the local, something he occasionally suggested for everyone on the team, plus a few extras from Empress State Building joining them. Teo went along. He hadn’t sat with her, nor had he sat near her. Neither of them ended up drunk. They’d become tipsy, perhaps, but not to the degree that one’s laughter was a bit too loud, that an inappropriate joke or comment seemed perfectly in order. Neither of them was tipsy enough even to place a hand on a shoulder, let alone to put it where it never would have been mistaken for a gesture between friends. The hour was late, though, and as Teo didn’t have her car and as her journey to Streatham from West Brompton on public transport would be a long one, and as he did have a car, it seemed polite to tell her he would drive her to her flat. It was not a problem, he did say, despite the fact that he lived in the opposite direction.
So he’d taken her there, to Streatham, to her flat. They’d spoken on the way and they’d spoken upon their arrival. All of it was business . . . until it wasn’t. And that was down to him. She was so intelligent, she was so beautiful there in the darkness with part of her face lit from a street lamp near the car, she was so female, she was . . . she simply was. Still he intended nothing.
After a few minutes of business talk, she’d thanked him graciously for seeing her home, she’d said goodnight, she’d reached for the door handle, and he said her name. Just “Teo . . . ?” and she turned back to him and he felt something break inside his mind and attack whatever sensibility he had left. He had a moment of do not do this, but like all moments, it did not last.
He kissed her. She let him. The kiss went on. He had to touch her. Just her breast, he thought, just long enough to feel the gratifying sensation of her nipple hardening beneath his fingers. Would that be doing too much or asking too much or wanting too much in a situation like his in which he had nothing? Or so he asked himself.
These sorts of things never ended well. He knew that now and he’d known that then, but he had not cared to speculate upon the fact. He’d only acknowledged that he wanted her and he’d convinced himself that if he had her just once in the way he wanted to have her, that would be enough.
It might have been, but she would not allow it. He’d assumed—like the idiot he was—that her refusal was about power and control. If she did not submit, she had the power, and as such, she controlled whatever happened between them, no matter what his passion dictated or where his animal instincts tried to lead. In all of this, he’d seen only his need and her determination—as he named it—not to meet his need. In all of this, he’d completely failed to see that there was something she did not want him to know, let alone to see or to touch. It was only in her death that he understood, and only her murder had made it possible.
He’d tried to explain to her that her transfer from the job she loved and did so well had nothing to do with her unwillingness to give him access to her body in the way he was desperate to have. It was her very presence, he’d said. It was the fact that he couldn’t think straight, that when she was in the room with him or when they were in a meeting together or when he saw her at her desk or speaking to someone on the phone or standing at the copier machine or anything at all, he could no longer properly do his job. He’d asked her to try to understand what it was like for him. He had not bothered to advance his own knowledge about what it was like for her.
She’d said, “Why don’t you request a transfer, then? Having me transferred is sexual harassment, Mark.”
He’d replied, “You can go that route. I hope you don’t, but I know you can.”
She’d said, “It would be a completely different situation if I had you in my bed, wouldn’t it? There’d be no transfer.”
He’d said, “Teo, please. Try to understand.”