My heart raced as I took in Reid’s silhouette against the Seattle skyline, the city stretched out behind him like something he owned simply by standing there.
Sebastian Reid had just asked me out.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. He was the man I’d been fantasizing about while blindfolded by another. The voice I’d borrowed in my head when sensation stripped everything else away. The one that had said my name as I drifted off to sleep in his arms.
I pressed my fingers into my palm. Grounding myself. Fantasies were safe because they weren’t real. Because they didn’t look at you or caress your wrist like they wanted to see into your soul.
But Sebastian Reid had. And that made my thoughts scatter in directions I didn’t trust.
I swallowed and straightened my shoulders, reminding myself where I was. Who he was. And who I was supposed to be. I was a nobody. Someone who, a few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have spared a second glance.
“I should get back to work,” I said. “Assuming I still have a job.”
He turned then, really looked at me, and a quiet laugh slipped free.
“Are you asking because you’re worried about your performance,” he said, “or because you’re the first woman who’s ever turned me down for a date?”
“I’m asking,” I said, “because I take my work seriously.”
His gaze searched mine.
“Good,” he said quietly. “So do I.”
He crossed his office and opened the door.
I thought that was it as I stepped toward the exit.
He turned to me as I reached the threshold, one hand bracing against the frame beside my head. Not touching me but close enough that I felt the heat from his body, the faint brush of his breath against my cheek.
“When this is over,” he said, his eyes dropping to my lips. “Things will be simpler.”
His mouth was close enough I forgot how to breathe. Close enough that it would not take much to close the distance.
“Is it serious?”
My tongue wet my bottom lip before I could stop myself. “What?”
“Your relationship?”
“I…”
He smiled. “Then he shouldn’t mind if you have dinner with me.”
He straightened, stepped back, and gestured to my desk.
“Let me know if you change your mind.”
I walked out, forcing my legs to cooperate, painfully aware that the offer he’d left hanging in the air had the power to undo me far more completely than my master ever could.
Chapter 24
Sebastian
The door closed behind her, and I forced myself back to my desk.
Pathetic, really. Even in high school and college, women had angled for a piece of what I had, betting early on a name they assumed would matter. They were right, of course. Ididgo places. Back then it was ambition. Now it was the weight of my last name, my company’s name, and the size of the accounts trailing behind them both.
No one had ever said no to me. Not until her.
