Good.
I didn’t want her to.
I was going to have to end this charade eventually, but I’d be damned if I wanted to. Why did I want her like this? Why did the sight of her at the bistro do something to me I couldn’t explain? Why did every instinct sharpen the second she walked into a room?
She’d be here in forty-five minutes.
Plenty of time to shower and change before the session began.
I headed down the hallway to the locker room reserved for the private suites. Everything hit differently the moment I walked in. It was cleaner, colder, more clinical. Less CEO. More Sir. Her master.
My locker door opened with a metallic click.
Inside sat everything I needed to switch skins.
My regular cedar wood gel sat in the corner, the one I used every day, the one she’d never commented on but always seemed aware of. But here—here I couldn’t use it. Not tonight. Not if she got close enough to breathe me in.
Because in this room, in this other life, the scent was different.
Distinct. Older. Darker.
Sandalwood. Leather. A whisper of smoke.
The scent of domination.
If I walked into that room smelling like cedar and control and boardrooms, she’d know in seconds. She wasn’t oblivious, not to me, not to anything. She noticed details she had no business noticing.
Like the way I knew her by peaches.
Fresh, clean, soft. The moment she brushed past my desk the first week she worked for me, I’d caught the scent of her shampoo, peaches and something bright and sweet beneath it. Something that clung to her skin long after she left a room.
I’d never admitted it, but I always knew when she walked into a space before I saw her.
I wasn’t about to let her have that same advantage tonight.
I set the cedarwood aside and reached for Sir’s gel instead, the one I only used here. Where my voice changed, my posture shifted, and everything inside me sharpened.
I turned on the shower, steam filling the tiled stall.
If she wanted to play with her master tonight?
Then she was going to meet him—not the man she ran from, not the man she almost kissed, not the man she lied to, but the man behind the mask.
Water pounded against my shoulders, hot enough to distract me, but it didn’t touch the truth gnawing at my ribs.
Why was it that the more time I spent with her—CEO and Master both—the more I wanted to stop splitting the difference?
Why was it that every time Mira stepped closer, I wanted to show her all of me…
even the parts no one else had ever been allowed to see?
Chapter 21
Mira
The rain had picked up by the time we passed through Sanctum’s ten-foot iron gates, sheets of water sliding down the metal like the place itself was exhaling. The driver pulled around the back and came to a smooth stop beside the private entrance. When he opened my door, a blast of cold air rushed in.
I tugged the hood of my jacket tighter as I stepped out, bracing against the downpour. The rain wasn’t the only thing prickling across my skin, something else hung in the air tonight. A charge. A warning. A promise.
