The office at daybreak was the same. This, more than his bare shoulder blade in her periphery, or the obscene clarity of the night before, startled her most of all. Nothing had changed. Her files were on the floor near them, above their heads. Her chair was facing the window. The window framed a peachy, bright dawn, which she would have liked to watch were she not naked, wrapped up with an almost stranger, an almost boss.

Facing her, he had encased her in his arms, the flex of his neck against her cheek. His blazer covered their waists. Their legs were bare. She blushed remembering she had worn pants yesterday because she was running late and did not shave. She knew Aang Yangchen did not notice the stubble on her legs, though she had noticed his own. Suddenly she felt embarrassed, as if such an outburst necessitated perfection, or ceremony – or as if she was not permitted to be so near to him, to notice the mole on his arm, or the rhythm of his breath – silently violent, sonorous. She thought, even in sleep, he sounded like a man.

With some difficulty, Katara Kuruk detached from him, untangled her legs and arms with the precision of a spider. She searched for her blouse. No, no – panties first. Where had he thrown those? And the bra? The desk… beneath the desk. She fished the delicates from the carpet, agitated, thinking again and again: this office is the same. She wanted to state it to bring it into reality but did not want to wake him. This office is the same, nothing has changed, but there are clothes on the floor, and some files that dropped from the desk, and there is his sock, and a loafer overturned, and one of her earrings. Fortunate, she thought as she fastened it in her earlobe, that she had found it so easily again. Out of habit from living with her bother, she picked up his clothes too and folded them, placed them in a neat pile on the corner of her desk. She left his blazer, draped over his behind, and watched him as she drank from the cooler.

She anticipated a silence in which she could think – at the very least, prepare – but he inadvertently denied her that. Shortly after tossing her paper cup in the recycling bin, he stirred, turned to his back and searched for his boxers, frantic but attempting to douse his panic with a yawn.

Katara handed his clothing to him and turned away, allowing him to dress. She crossed her arms and searched out of the corner of her eye. "The office is the same," she said aloud, needing to hear it was so. "My office. It's the same."

He zipped his pants and asked after clearing his throat, "Have you seen sunrise from your office before?"

"When I started here. A long time ago."

"This is the first time I've seen it. You have a good view." He put his hands on his hips and faced the morning, which filled the room with bright pink light. When Katara turned around, she marveled again at his shoulders and back. A good view indeed. But now he was dressed – a little wrinkle here and there, but dressed. His pants were still pressed, straight-legged. Gray pants, bright yellow shirt. She had witnessed the breadth of Aang's ankles and calves last night, a surprise to find such a sinewy, athletic body beneath dress clothes that always looked a size too big. When had she been this desirous? When had she wanted something as much and taken it – without asking permission, or considering the facts, the outcomes? Her head throbbed and she suddenly wished for a hangover. A few shots would have made last night forgivable, at least. She shot a glance to the door. They hadn't even made it that far.

"I – um. I'm going to make coffee," she announced. He turned to face her. "And then I'm going to go – uh, I'm going to drive home and take the day off. To think? I think."

"Oh," he answered. "I should probably leave too, huh? Take the day off? Or at least change."

"No – no! Both of us can't take the day off." She busied herself with the coffee maker. In her agitation she had ripped the last paper filter in half, and was digging in the cabinet beneath the counter to find the new pack. He bent down to her level and reached far back for her, presenting the new filters without a word.

"You're right. That might be bad," he agreed, filling the pot with water. "Gyatso needs us today to set up meetings for his project. It's Friday, right? We should get started before the week is over so –"

"What the actual fuck."

"Excuse me?"

"I can't believe – Spirits! Aang, you're talking work? Look at this place!" She extended her arms about her. She pointed behind her to the glass walls. She had yet to put on her blouse and Aang found he loved her in her undershirt, her makeup smeared, her breath sour, her wild hair ambushing the delicate ledges of her clavicles. She was a goddess. Simultaneously, he felt blessed and remarkably stupid.

"Okay. I know," he started, shaking his head. "I know –"

"No!" she stopped him. "You really don't know. We – I – I fucked up. I'm sorry. I will not swear. I let myself get this far… We messed up." She held her head in her hands as the coffee pot gurgled with fresh brew. The familiar sloshes and aroma of the coffee calmed her. "I messed up. Mr. Yanchen. I messed up. Last night… the walls are glass for Spirit's sake. Who knows who saw us. And what we did in here… again and again. That… I'm so sorry." She stepped away from him and bowed deep. She clasped her hands together, kept her gaze off of him. "Mr. Yangchen, with all of the respect I lacked last night, please believe that I have never done such a reckless, inconsiderate – inappropriate! – thing in my entire career. I have absolutely no intention to start now, and –"

"Hey. Okay, hold on." He tried to move his face so that she would look at him, but when she continually refused, he reached for her desk chair and sat in it, then looked up at her. She smiled, her lips full, a little white line of drool still in the corner of her mouth. She was red. Her blue eyes crinkled at him. She was looking at him now. Time to think.

"I… I wanted to do… what we did," he said slowly, picking his words with care. He did not want to say 'mistake' or 'bad.' He did not want to apologize, because he was not sorry. He observed, with awe and gratitude, that his words had embarrassed her, and she turned away again. "Was it the most graceful thing? No…" He rubbed his knees, wishing for a cup of coffee. He felt groggy and exhausted, still anxious enough to be on edge. "I am just over six feet tall... to be honest with you, I can't do much with grace. And for a while, as a kid, everything I did looked stupid. So I know it's hard for you to believe, but I am not inappropriate either. I have never… went with a feeling. That far. Um." He pulled the collar of his dress shirt away with a single finger. "Is the coffee done?"

For a small while, they sipped in silence, the paper cups burning their fingers. It was 5:45 a.m., a Friday. No one would arrive until at least 8:00 a.m., which left them a little time. Sokka hadn't called her the night before, and neither had Suki, which led Katara to assume they had also spent the night together. It was the only time she got away from those two.

Aang, meanwhile, spun slowly on her chair, his long legs outstretched, shoeless. His socks matched, Katara noticed, while Sokka's never did. His pants had somehow remained pressed. Despite herself, and her mental warnings to stop, she found she could easily admire him. But she also found she loathed him, or perhaps a better word was 'regret.' Regret him? Last night was so… no, no. She punished herself and blocked describing the memory. Instead she blurted, "You're my boss. My new boss."

"I should have been more responsible, I know that," he stated suddenly, pulling her from her own thoughts. "But nothing has changed. This office is the same. And I still respect you… I still think you are beautiful. I've always thought that. I thought it the day I met you."

"Which was only a couple of weeks ago," she reminded bitterly, too angered by herself to appreciate his compliment.

"Before that too. When I met you as an intern during the summer. Remember? We worked on a project together."

There had, in fact, been a day – a single day – where Gyatso told Aang to help Katara compile research for a grant she was proposing. It had taken them two hours total. They stayed in the same room and barely spoke. He helped her but he hadn't alphabetized his findings, which she had done herself, homage to some ancient perfectionist tick inside of her.

"The children's rights meta-analysis, that's right." She looked far away and smiled. "You remember that?"

"Yes. We worked in Ms. Kyoshi's office, and when we finished, I knew you'd want me to alphabetize them, because I had studied your proposals before… but I didn't do it on purpose. I just left them in the order I found them." His voice grew quieter then, and he looked at his feet. "I wanted you to call me back in so I could stay for longer. But you're so hardworking… and you did it all yourself."

"That's no reason not to do it!" she exclaimed, but when she turned to him, she felted warm and reassured. She teased without meaning to, "You liked me."

"I like you," he corrected.

"I like you too. As my boss."

"I would also like a boss who entertained me for most of the night!" he laughed. He winked at her and she felt shy again, as if he had ordered her to a time-out in primary school.

"Inappropriate, Mr. Yangchen."

He stood up. She thought, perhaps he was trying to intimidate her with his size. Without her heels on, he stood almost two heads above her. At five foot two, she was not the most impeding Publications Manager in the world. Somehow his stunt worked, and the fight that had been aggregating in her heart fizzled out after he stood.

"I told you. I like you. I respect you. You are an incredible woman."

"I'm older than you. I work for you. I'm a professor with a reputation. And I'm divorced."

"Frankly, Dr. Kuruk, I don't care."

"I'm divorced!" she reiterated. "You aren't going to ask?"

He shook his head stubbornly. "Your past is your business."

"I have a daughter," she lied, and imagined Lin-Lin scribbling on the walls of her apartment, the last time she had seen her before Jet had taken her to live with her birth mother. "I have a daughter who is almost seven years old."

"I would love to meet her," Aang returned. He slipped on his loafers and reached for his blazer. He put it to his nose and smiled wide at her. "I like your perfume."

"That blazer was on my ass!"

"Not the whole night," he laughed. "But I like your ass too."

"No, you don't! This needs to stop. Mr. Yangchen! Please understand where I'm coming from. This is completely inappropriate. Everything about this… this could end my career." She touched him for the first time that morning. She had marched over to him and jabbed his chest with her fingers. "I can't do this!" she cried. "I won't do this! I won't get fired because I decided to undress for you. It isn't fair. I've given my life to this press, I've dedicated hours to –"

He had taken her hands and kissed her, hard, on the mouth. She was stunned herself when she did not fight him. "You think I am younger than you," he whispered, still holding her, "but I am not. You think you are jeopardizing your career by giving yourself space to love me, but you are not."

"Love you?"

"Yes. Only not just in the way we loved each other last night, Katara."

"Dr. Kuruk."

"Katara," he insisted.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

"You are hostile," he observed. "You want to hurt me."

"I'd like for you to leave," she said. "That's all."

He kissed her again, slowly, and she let herself be kissed, and then she kissed back. He accepted the invitation to kiss her longer, deeper, and he moaned slow into her mouth, relishing her taste. She had denied herself the margin to describe him for too long, but she couldn't anymore. He was good. Good God, he was good. He had been good last night for hours. He kissed her as though he knew her, as though he had studied the structure of her mouth for years and devised a map of nerves to touch. His mouth was soft. The stubble on his chin made her shiver, made her back arch, made her feel vulnerable for him, and small.

In the way an eager child breaks a toy, he released her wrists long enough to open her pants. Instead of stopping him, Katara wondered why pants made for women came with a zipper. To imitate those of men? What purpose could the zipper serve, other than to break, which is certainly what Aang Yangchen just did with those large fingers of his – the way it sounded. She was doing it again, she realized. Distracting herself. He walked her towards the desk and pulled her on top of it with the same ease he had exhibited last night. Her pants fell. He did not bother to remove her panties or undress himself. With ease, he pulled down his fly, removed the erection from his boxers, and pulled the pink fabric to one side of her thigh. He wanted to enter her slowly, so he lingered at first so that she could stop him if she wanted. He stopped kissing her. He examined her face. With great care, he held her head in his hand, his thumb on her cheek. With the other hand, he guided himself, stroked himself against her, unhurried, gentle. Meanwhile he licked her lips as if he had coated her in sugar, leaving no space uncovered. When she did not refuse him or push him away, he held her backside with both hands and pushed his hips against the table as far as he could go. She cried into his shoulders. He pulled back, a small watermark on the front of his pants from her, circumscribing the fly like a seal. He pushed deep again and bit her shoulder with the tips of his teeth. She wrapped her legs around his waist and fell backward for him. He stopped, but she mouthed, "More," and he smiled so wide she thought he might burst. He mouthed, "Thank you," and continued, slow. Paced. He said, his eyes not leaving hers, "Good morning."

And he says he isn't graceful, she thought miserably, already on the cusp of orgasm.

i realize how long i've been away, and i'm so grateful to those of you who have stayed with me. i hope this sexy scene made up for my absence! make my day by reviewing! much love, gg scorpiaux