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She groans, and it’s sexual enough that my dick stirs. “That’s so much better.”

“Good. Stop trying to keep up with Aria. What you don’t realize is that every chance she gets, hers are off.”

“That sly fox,” she says, snickering.

“Not everything is as it appears, especially around here,” I say, feeling as if I’ve revealed too much when her brows furrow.

The tension between us builds again before Wallace buzzes to tell us it might be a couple of hours before the elevator gets moving.

Seraphine slides down the wall across from me, sits, crosses her feet at the ankles, and I decide to take a leap and sit beside her.

Why not? Especially when it’s been so long since I’ve felt anything more than bored stiff.

“So, we have time to kill,” she says, shifting to look over at me.

“Seems we do. Tell me about yourself, Seraphine.”

She cocks her head. “How do you know my...”

But then she says, “Right, the other day…”

Her writing me off calms my heartbeat, which had intensified momentarily.

“There’s not much to tell about me, really,” she says, her tone growing reflective and tense, and it makes me wonder if she has the same dark past I grapple with myself.

“I highly doubt that.” I laugh.

“What does that mean?”

I bite my cheek. “I just mean, look at you; you look like you’d be as deep as the ocean, teeming with backstory.”

She laughs awkwardly. “I didn’t say I didn’t have a backstory. It’s just not… appropriate for a first…” She trails off.

Was she going to say first date?

Because I can’t lie, that’s what this tension between us feels like.

Too bad she’d run for the hills when she found out I come with a lot of baggage, including two other men whom she’d need to accept, one of whom it would never work out with, to be with me.

We’re a package deal.

“How about you? Do you have family? I mean, clearly you have family; you’re here. That’s how we all get here.”

I find her nervous rambling so endearing. The sound chases away the dark that typically consumes me, back into a bleaker side of my psyche.

“I do have a family, and now that I think about it, it’s too complicated to talk about. You’re right.”

She snickers. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Likewise,” I tell her, and she turns to look at me.

Something between us grows taut, like a tight wire in a circus show. We both teeter on it as we grapple for words, as we grapple with this buzzing sensation between us.

I register the moment she presses her thighs together and leans in a fraction, testing.

This is nuts.

She’s my employee, and it’s her third day.