Too Close for Comfort

Part 9

"Good morning, everyone. I hope you're all well rested," were the first words you heard when you arrived at the field office the next morning.

Even though you were exhausted by the time you made it to your room last night, you still had trouble falling asleep. You tossed and turned for about an hour before you finally drifting off, and it was his fault.

Spencer. 

You couldn't get him off your mind.

If you'd had a nightmare about him so intense that it caused you to whimper out loud, what did that say about the way you felt?

And then there was your conversation on the jet to ponder.

You didn't talk about those things with him, and he certainly didn't talk about those things with you, not until now anyways. Your previous conversations consisted of him going off on tangents about philosophers, sociology, and topics he'd read about over the weekend.

But that was before you saw each other naked. Physical vulnerability, it appeared, precipitated emotional vulnerability. And of course, the latter frightened you much more than the former.

You thought you might spend the entire day mulling it over in your head, but a stinging sensation in your eye snapped you back into reality.

"I'll be back," you told Emily, "My contact lenses are bothering me."

The two of you had just finished interviewing friends and family of the first victim. Interviews were one of the tasks you struggled to complete. It wasn't that you couldn't conduct them, it was how emotional they could be. One girl burst into tears before you'd even asked her a question.

You decided to make the slightly longer walk to the bathroom on the other side of the floor that was single person only. It wasn't a particularly embarrassing situation to find yourself in, but you still didn't like the idea of someone walking in on you poking your eyeball.

Once you'd made it to the bathroom, you quickly took out your contact lenses, rinsed them, and put them in again.

Your hands had just come in contact with the door handle when you felt pushback from the other side. Someone was trying to get in.

You unlocked the door and prepared to make an awkward apology to whoever was outside, except "whoever" turned out to be Spencer.

He was the last person you needed to see right now with all the conflicting thoughts swirling in your head.

"I was just leaving," you informed him.

"Not if I can help it," he attested, daggers in his eyes. He placed a hand on your hip and pushed the both of you inside, locking the door behind him.

You took in a breath of air. "We're at work," you managed to choke out.

"Oh, sweetheart, I know."

Spencer flipped you over so that your back was to the door, pressing against you so you could feel the material of his shirt against yours.

"I've been watching you parade around all day, talking to Emily about who knows what. The work rule still stands, but today's an exception. You're gonna do something for me."

"And what's that?"

"You're going to correct your mistake from yesterday, your little slip of the tongue."

You'd wondered how he'd react to you calling your "date" mediocre, and now you had your answer.

"Oh, it was no mistake," you affirmed, a small smirk playing on your lips. He wanted you to submit to him, but you figured, why not make him work for it?