NOAH
The laugh didn't start in my throat; it started somewhere deep in my gut, a bubbling, involuntary reaction to the sheer, cosmic absurdity of the moment.
Mason was still leaned in, his hand clutching mine with the kind of white-knuckled sincerity usually reserved for hospital waiting rooms.
His brown eyes were wide, brimming with a protective heat, waiting for me to confess to the "hostile work environment" he'd spent the last ten minutes constructing in his head.
Is your boss bullying you? The image of Cassian... the man who had spent the better part of Friday night with my head in his lap, his fingers tracing patterns in my hair while he whispered the most guarded parts of his soul into the dark... Being cast as a common office bully was too much.
The structural integrity of my composure simply vanished.
I tried to hold it. I squeezed my eyes shut, my shoulders shaking as I fought to keep the sound in, but it escaped anyway.
