“I’ve never meant anything more.”
I hang up. The apartment goes quiet for one breath. Two.
Then Willow says softly, “You didn’t have to do that.”
My eyes drag over her, slow, lingering. She looks wrecked and radiant, glowing with uncertainty and need. Mine. All fucking mine.
“Yes, I did,” I say, taking a step closer, then another. “Because the things I plan on doing to you…”
I reach her, sliding my hand beneath her jaw, tilting her face up to mine with a firm grip.
“…are not workplace appropriate.”
Her breath hitches, her pulse fluttering just beneath myfingers. Her perfume spikes—peaches and heat and something deeper, something that’s all for me.
“What if I said I want to find out what those things are?” she whispers.
I press my thumb against her bottom lip, watching her mouth part beneath my touch.
“Then I’m going to bend you over that table,” I murmur, “and make sure your body forgets every other man you’ve ever been with.”
Her breath stutters.
Carson groans beside me. “Okay, seriously, I quit again.”
Willow’s lips curve, her tongue brushing the pad of my thumb, and I feel it down to my spine. My cock is already thick behind my zipper, demanding release.
But I wait.
Because when I take her, it won’t be rushed.
And it won’t be soft.
I lean in, my voice low and rough in her ear. “Stand up, omega. Now.”
She stands.
Not quickly, not nervously—but with a kind of slow, deliberate confidence that makes something in me snap.
She’s already submitting, and she doesn’t even know it.
I step in close. Her chest rises and falls, her lips parted, her eyes never leaving mine. I tilt her chin up, just a little, and drag my gaze over every inch of her.
“I’m going to tell you exactly what I’m going to do,” I murmur, my voice sharp steel wrapped in velvet. “And if at any point it’s too much, you tell me. Red for stop, yellow for slow down, and green for keep going. But you stop me. If you can’t handle it, you use your voice, Willow. Understood?”
She nods, breathless.
I narrow my gaze. “That’s not good enough.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “I understand.”
“Good girl.”
Her knees nearly buckle.
I trail my fingers down her arm, slow and possessive. “I’m going to bind your wrists. Spread you out for all of us to see. I’m going to take my time making you fall apart—one sound, one gasp, one shiver at a time.”
Her breath catches.
