“The board is going to fire you,” she murmured.
“Probably.”
“Your stock is down eleven percent.”
“I know.”
“Victor is going to retaliate.”
“Almost certainly.”
She pulled back enough to look at me. “And none of that is what you’re thinking about right now.”
“No.” I traced my thumb along her jaw. “It isn’t.”
Something shifted in her expression — the last professional distance dissolving into the look I’d been cataloging sincea service corridor in November. The look that meant she’d stopped managing the feeling and was just having it.
“Sebastian.” Her voice had dropped. “The door?—”
“Locked.” I pressed my lips to her temple, her cheekbone, the soft skin below her ear. “Daniel won’t come unless the building’s on fire.”
“That’s remarkably convenient.”
“I planned ahead.”
She laughed against my throat — warm and breathless — and I walked her backward toward the couch in the corner of my office, my hands moving to the hem of her sweater.
“May I?”
Her answer was to pull it over her head herself.
She was beautiful — not polished, not performing, just real. Freckles scattered across her collarbone. A faint scar on her shoulder I’d noticed before and never asked about.
“Car accident,” she said, following my gaze. “When I was sixteen.”
“I want to know everything about you.”
“That’s terrifying.”
“Everything about you terrifies me.” I pressed my lips to the scar, felt her shiver. “It doesn’t stop me from wanting.”
Her fingers worked my shirt buttons with the focused efficiency I’d come to recognize as specifically hers — thorough even now, even here, her palms spreading warm against my chest as the fabric fell open.
“You’re ridiculous,” she murmured against my jaw. “Who has time for this?”
“I make time for the things that matter.”
She bit my earlobe lightly. “Smooth.”
“Only with you.”
I reached behind her and unclasped her bra, and before she could draw breath my mouth was on her — not slow, notdeliberate, just hungry — and she laughed, surprised, the laugh dissolving into a sharp sound as my hands moved over her.
She lay back against the leather, chest heaving, skin flushed, looking up at me with those hazel eyes that had been seeing through me since the beginning.
“Tell me what you want,” I said.
“You.” The word came out without hesitation. “Just you.”
