After Mira helped me find a suitable assistant, she moved back downstairs and took Micah’s old position. While Micah accepted his promotion without hesitation, Mira insisted we post the job publicly and conduct interviews I wasn’t allowed to sit in on.
She hadn’t wanted special favors.
In the end, she had a corner office, her own team, and was doing extraordinary things—helping replace several key components of our security software and making it stronger than it had ever been.
No matter how busy things got, we made time to have lunch in my office once a week.
And every Wednesday night, we ended the day with dinner at Bastian’s. What I didn’t like was the nights she went home to her apartment, so two weeks ago I asked her to move in with me. I’d never been so nervous in my life. We’d already been back and forth anyway. It was the next step.
And for the first time, the next step didn’t feel like something I had to control. It felt like something I was choosing.
It didn’t take us long to empty the truck. I leaned against the kitchen counter. Boxes were scattered throughout my house. The guys had just left, the house was quiet again as I watched her move through the space like she already belonged here. Because she did. She always had. I just hadn’t known it yet.
She turned, catching me staring at her, her brow lifting. “What?”
I smiled. “Nothing.”
She didn’t buy it, but she let it go, padding closer and looping her arms around my waist. The simple familiarity still caught me off guard sometimes.
Mira nuzzled her head into my chest. I kissed the top of her head. “I love you.”
She looked up at me, smiling. “I love you.”
“I have a surprise for you.”
Her arms tightened around me just a little. “You always say that like I should be nervous.”
“You should be curious,” I corrected, brushing my thumb along her spine. “Nervous implies expectation.”
She tilted her head, studying my face. “Is this a good surprise?”
“My pet will like it.” I raised a brow with a smirk.
She cocked her head. “Are we going to Sanctum?”
Oh, the first time we’d gone to Sanctum, Mistress Vivienne had grilled us both together and separately. She’d actually sent us away, asked us to spend the night apart, then if we stillwanted to enter into this arrangement we needed to see her the next day separately, which we did. The night apart had been the first since I’d been shot.
I brushed the memory aside and refocused on the woman in my arms.
“Not tonight.”
My hand closed around hers, grounding, and I kissed the corner of her mouth before guiding her toward the back of the house. In addition to the new contract we’d signed for Sanctum, we’d sat down and created our own.
At work she was an employee, and I was her boss. It was important for her to keep things professional, during work hours. That didn’t stop me from taking my tie, binding her hands behind her back and fucking her over my desk late one night, well after office hours.
“You said there was nothing down here,” she said at the top of the stairs to the basement.
“There wasn’t.”
“What did you do?”
“You’ll see,” I smirked as we walked down the staircase together. When we reached the bottom of the stairs, a heavy wooden door greeted us.
“Sebastian, what’s this?”
“I had this built for you,” I said.
She raised her brow.
