His voice is like butter and brown sugar, smooth and seductive with something foreign in it. He speaks as if he is telling secrets for my ears only. The way he says my name  sends a flutter in my throat. I want to hear him say it again but closer.
It is a business conversation but it is also more.It floats, a liquid subtext of warmth and desire. We flirt without flirting. Here and there, he or I pause at odd moments in a sentence, ordinary words spoken on a sigh and nearly whispered, breath hitching.
We email a confirmation of our conversation in precise language, in unspoken undertones, letting a glimpse of the soul show through the hollows of vowels, the curls and strokes of consonants. I wish to seduce and he lets me.
Then he signs his email “Yours, as always.”
And I die a little.