A side-effect of being what she is involves a baseline temperature that’s already two degrees above what is normal for humans--and that heat surges upward in her when he touches the garters---it’s like he’s touching skin somehow in her head, a sensation amplified when he actually does drag her thigh up. She hooks her leg around him, pressing back against the elevator wall for balance. When she rolls her hips upward, it’s with that challenging look she gave him in the kitchen of the beach house, the heady one that suggests no one else exists. It’s easier to accomplish when they’re in a small, enclosed space like this, too.

“I remember,” she says, unsteady, but anticipatory, too, “Believe me, I can’t get it out of my head.”

She kisses him, then, not long, but slow and sweet about it, in direct juxtaposition to the way her nails are digging in, just a little, to the back of his neck. When she speaks, it’s breathless. “I want you to leave marks again, Mitchell. The other ones faded.”

...and then the elevator dings, as it hits her floor, and the doors slide open. At least no one’s in the hallway.