“He kissed you?” I did not think that I’d be the one saying that tonight.

Turned out I wasn’t the only Lind sister who’d gotten kissed on the way home by a Reach executive.

“More like I kissed him,” Audrey said dreamily.

“You kissed my boss?” Jesus, I hadn’t even gotten my coat hung up before she’d attacked me with this information, let alone gotten a chance to tell her anything about my car ride with Donovan.

She pulled her knees under her on the couch. “Dylan is not actually your boss. He’s more like your boss’s equal, if you want to be technical.”

I threw my coat on the back of the sofa next to her along with my purse. Forget making it to a hanger; it wasn’t happening. With my hands free, I put a fist on my hip. “If you want to be technical, he’s old enough to be your father.”

She rolled her eyes. “He is not. He’s just experienced and wise.”

“He’s twenty years older than you.”

“Maybe I have a thing for dads. Don’t knock my kink. I don’t knock yours.”

That shut me up for a second. I hadn’t actually ever told her my kink, but Audrey wasn’t stupid. She could probably figure out enough to guess that I at least liked a good spanking.

“Fine.” I dropped my hand. “I won’t knock the age difference.” I circled around to the front of the couch and plopped down next to her. “I don’t actually care what you’re into anyway, as long as it’s consensual.” It was the truth, too. I wasn’t just blowing sunshine up her ass. “I just don’t want you getting hurt. Dylan doesn’t seem into relationships. You get that, right? Not to mention that you live on entirely different continents.”

“It was just a kiss! God,” she huffed, shifting so her legs were out in front of her. “I’m not planning to marry the guy.”

“Just a kiss.” I sounded skeptical only because, with Audrey, it was never just a kiss. The minute she decided she liked a guy, she liked a guy. She started doodling their initials on the back of napkins. She changed her Facebook status to In a Relationship. She gave her heart when she swapped saliva. She didn’t do one-night stands. She didn’t do casual hook-ups. She didn’t do just a kiss.

Audrey sighed up at me with doe eyes. “I felt bad for the guy. All that doom and gloom. ‘Love’s dead. Grump, grump.’ He needed something nice for a change.”

Uh huh. “So you thought you’d kiss him and that would show him. Make him magically believe in hearts and romance again?”

“Shut up,” she said with a pout.

That’s what I was afraid of. Just a kiss and now she was head over heels for Dylan-love-is-a-myth-Locke. Thank God she was leaving in six days. And he was leaving. She might not even get a chance to see him again.

Audrey sank further into the couch beside me. “You think I’m naïve.”

I looked over at my baby sister, ready to tell her all my worries, but stopped myself at the last second. I couldn’t tell her to change how she felt any more than she could tell me to change how I feel about Donovan.

And she’d never try to tell me to change how I feel in the first place. She’d just encourage me to feel it.

So instead I kissed her hair. “I think you’re amazing.”

She peered up at me and grinned. It had been the right thing to say. Score a sister point for me.

She nudged me with her shoulder. “Hey. Tell me what happened with Donovan. He wasn’t on a date with that woman, was he?” She said it with certainty, as if she had an inside scoop.

“He said he wasn’t.” I threw my feet up on the coffee table in front of us. “How did you know?”

She shrugged. “The way he looked at you.” She followed me with her feet on the table too. “What else?”

“He said he came back to the States for me.”

“To talk to you? To be with you?”

“That’s what I don’t know yet. We have more to talk about, obviously.” I pulled a lock of hair down and twirled it between my fingers, replaying everything he’d said. There was so much I wanted to remember. So much I wanted to obsess over and hold too preciously.

“He said he loved me,” I said softly. Well, he hadn’t actually said it. I’d said it, and he’d confirmed. Was that the same thing? I was counting it as the same thing.

“Wow. That’s big.” Her excitement was hard to contain, but she was doing a pretty good job being cool about it. For me, I guessed. Probably trying to figure out how I felt about it before she let loose her own enthusiasm.

I nodded. It was big. But…

“But you already knew that he loved you,” Audrey said, filling in the blank that I couldn’t.

“Yeah. I did.” That was the problem. Everything he’d said had only confirmed things I’d already suspected were true. I wasn’t any closer to a solution where he was concerned. And it was going to be another several days before we got a chance to make any more progress.

“Still,” Audrey said, “it had to be nice to hear.”

I had a list of arguments why nice didn’t matter. Then I remembered that I should just feel it.

“Yeah,” I said, genuinely. “It’s really nice.”

* * *

I’d heard Donovan tell Dylan he’d be in the office the next day, I just hadn’t really thought about it until it was the next day. Suddenly I was nervous and anxious and totally unprepared. All night I’d tossed and turned, and that was believing there were several more nights before I’d see him again. Now that there was a possibility I’d see him sooner, I was going out of my mind.

I settled on the simplest game plan—I’d hide.

My office was nowhere near Donovan’s and since I was taking Wednesday off to spend with Audrey, I had a lot of work to keep me busy anyway. I just had to stay on task, holed up in my little corner, and everything would be good.

The plan worked well for the most part. By late afternoon, I’d gotten all my must-complete projects done and had gone the whole day without leaving my office.

All I had left to do was drop off some forms that needed to be signed off on. Forms that couldn’t be emailed because they contained client payment information.

I walked down to the edge of the hall and glanced toward Donovan’s office. It was dark, which should have made me feel relieved. And it did. Mostly. I didn’t even know if he’d actually made it in like he said he’d planned to. Now I wouldn’t know at all because I’d been too chicken to look for him.

I was seriously ridiculous.

I wanted to see him; I didn’t want to see him. It was confusing even to me.

Anyway, Weston’s office was in the opposite direction and it didn’t matter if Donovan was in or not.

So I headed toward Weston’s.

Halfway there, I passed the glass-walled conference room and realized it wasn’t empty. Weston, Nate, and Dylan were sitting around the far end of the long table. And standing behind them, as though he might have just walked in and hadn’t sat yet, was Donovan.

As soon as I saw them, I snapped my head away, back to the hallway in front of me. They hadn’t seen me. They were wrapped up in their conversation. I didn’t need to interrupt them.

God, my stomach was fluttering like a teenager’s. Just because Donovan was nearby. I didn’t want to see him, but I wanted him to see me. My face was flushed, and I couldn’t think and—

“Sabrina,” Weston called through the open door, eyeing the stack of files in my hands. “Are those for me?”

Adrenaline shot through me at the shock of being “caught.” I looked down at the pile, having almost forgotten what my original agenda had been. “I was dropping them off at your office.”

He used two fingers to gesture me toward him. “I’ll take them.”

My heart was beating so loud I could hear it, and shit, I suddenly couldn’t remember how to walk in heels. Somehow I made it to him without falling on my face, and without obviously staring at Donovan the entire time.

“Executive meeting?” I asked as if speaking would make me look somehow more collected than I was.

“Just shooting the shit, really,” Weston said.

“Ah.” Dumb, but fine. It was all fine. I’d gotten through it just fine.

But after I set the files next to Weston, I looked up, and Donovan was right across the table from me, staring at me in that way he always did. That way that saw into me and knew me.

It always rattled me when he looked at me like that. But today when he saw me, I remembered that he loved what he saw and the butterflies fluttered again inside me.

“Hi,” I said quietly. Like a dork. Like a lovesick kid.

The corners of his lips pressed up just slightly, just for me. If we were alone I’d kiss him there. One kiss on each corner before—

“Donovan,” Nate said, interrupting my daydream. “I meant to tell you—I saw the early footage from the France campaign. Sun Le Chen looks stunning.”

And then it was all gone—the butterfly flutters, the racing heart, Donovan’s smile. Left was stark, bleak reality.

“Sun was with you in France?” My voice was even because this wasn’t shocking. This made much more sense than any of the amazing things he’d said last night.

He didn’t answer. The silence in the room was answer enough.

“Excuse me, fellows.” I turned and walked on steady feet out of the room, but not before hearing Donovan mumble “fuck” under his breath.

Unlike at the restaurant, he was right on my heels. “Sabrina, stop.”

I didn’t want to stop. But I could feel the eyes of the other men on me, and who knew who else was watching from their offices? So I stopped.

“What, Donovan?” I said through gritted teeth. “Go ahead and tell me what you’re going to say. You’re going to make sure I hear it one way or another anyway.”

“I explained last night that she is the spokeswoman—”

I interrupted him, my voice escalating. “You said you were negotiating terms. I didn’t know she’d been with you all along.”

“She wasn’t with me.” He was obviously frustrated. “She was—”

I glanced toward the conference room. Weston wasn’t even pretending not to gawk. “People are watching us.”

“I don’t care who’s watching us.”

“I care.”

Of course he didn’t care. He owned the goddamn place. I was the one who’d be laughed at in this situation. Not him. Never him.

Half a beat passed. Then without any warning, he grabbed me by the elbow and roughly escorted me down the hall. At the first open room, he dragged me inside and shut the door behind him. After a second, he locked it.

I folded my arms across my chest and fumed, my eyes locked on his. At least now we were in the privacy of the copy room, and I could say what I really wanted to say. Ask what I really wanted to ask. “Did you fuck her?”

“I haven’t fucked anyone since I last fucked you. And before that the only woman I’d been with was you since you showed up in town.” He stood in front of the closed door and braced his hands in the frame, barricading me from trying to go past him.

“You were only in France two weeks. Seems her campaign got arranged awfully quickly to get her there that fast. And then she got back to the States when you did? That’s awfully convenient.” Models were scheduled months in advance. They didn’t do shoots at the drop of a hat unless they were fucking someone.

But he had an answer for this too. “She’d been booked to do the campaign since Reach proposed to Elizabeth for Weston. You can look up the contract information yourself and check out the date. She was already in France when I got there. She left a week ago.”

Okay. More plausible. “Still gave you lots of time together there.”

“We weren’t together at all.” He took a step toward me. “What else? Ask me what you want to know.”

I inhaled then exhaled, my cheek twitching. “Did you kiss her? Stick your face between her legs?”

He shook his head sharply. “I barely saw her off the set. And I never touched her.”

God, it was maddening! There was no reason not to believe him. We weren’t even technically together, and even without a commitment, all signs had pointed to him being faithful.

It was just that we were unbalanced in our relationship in general. We were on a teeter-totter with him solid on the ground, and me dangling in the air. He had so much more of the picture than I did, and it left me to grasp and reach at anything and everything.

“Too bad I didn’t hire a PI to follow you around Europe,” I said, acting petty and rash. “I have to ask you these questions instead of reading a report. How am I supposed to know you’re not lying about all of this?”

“I guess you’ll have to trust me.”

I pouted. “Well that fucking sucks.”

“That does suck. Having to trust me.” He sounded a little annoyed and a whole lot dangerous.

He took another step toward me, and I started to step back, but there was a counter behind me, so I had to stay put. And maybe I wanted to stay put. He was only a foot and a half away from me now.

“But I haven’t lied to you, Sabrina.” His gaze never left mine. “And I’m not lying when I say I don’t give a fuck about anybody else’s cunt but yours.”

We stood there, not touching, not speaking, each of us standing our ground. But I had no basis to keep my position, and it felt like he’d won so much already.

I couldn’t back down.

“Prove it,” I said.

His expression flared, his eyes growing dark and mean, and I realized what I’d done. Donovan wasn’t one to be provoked.

I’d just invited the devil out to play.

“Unzip your skirt and put your hands on the counter behind you.”

My heart hammered and my belly twisted. My panties were embarrassingly drenched all of a sudden, and I wanted him. But I stood completely still. “I didn’t—”

He cut me off. “No talking and unzip your skirt.”

My mouth slammed shut, but I still didn’t move. If I moved, I’d be asking for this. But if I talked, I’d be telling him to stop.

And I didn’t want this to stop.

I just didn’t want to ask for it because I was stubborn and stupid for wanting him in the first place.

But he would give it to me without the words, without my obedience. Because he knew me. He knew what I needed.

With his eyes never leaving mine, he found the zipper at the side of my waist and pulled it down. After that, the skirt was loose enough that all he had to do was tug it once and it fell easily to my feet. He nudged his knee against my inner leg, and automatically I stepped that foot out of the pool of material on the floor, widening my stance.

He gave a nod of praise, sending a jolt of warmth through my entire body.

Then he bent down in front of me.

Suddenly, breathing was harder than it should have been. My chest moved up and down, air passed through my mouth, but I couldn’t get enough of it to my lungs.

And he hadn’t even touched me yet.

The sight of him alone—Donovan Kincaid, one of the most powerful men in the world, down on his knees in his black Ermenegildo Zegna suit—it was overwhelming and erotic, and by the time he put his hand at the back of my knee, I was already trembling.

He smiled up at me with his devil’s smile, trailing his fingers up the back of my thigh, higher and higher still, to the round curve of my ass. His constant gaze kept my eyes pinned to his, and I knew he could read every thought, every emotion that ran through me. He knew exactly what he did to me with this caress of my skin, with that pinch of my flesh.

Finally breaking eye contact, Donovan brought his other hand around me and squeezed both of my ass cheeks as he buried his nose into the crotch of my white lace panties. My knees buckled when he inhaled audibly, and now I had to reach for the counter behind me. Just to keep myself from collapsing.

“I’m going to believe you wore these for me,” he said before licking slowly up the center panel.

It wasn’t a question so I didn’t comment. Besides, I was too busy stifling a moan. If he’d made me answer—if I’d been able to speak—I’d have told him he was full of himself. It wouldn’t have been a lie, but it wasn’t all the truth. Of course I’d worn them for him. There was a chance I’d see him today, and I dressed thinking about that, thinking about all the dirty filthy things he might do to me if I let him.

I just hadn’t actually planned to let him.

Keep telling yourself that, Sabrina.

“Fuck, you’re already wet.” He said this so quietly I was almost convinced it was for himself, but the gleam in his eyes told me differently. It told me I wasn’t fooling anyone. I was as at least as turned on as he was whether I wanted to admit it out loud or not—and judging from the way he kept having to adjust himself, he was pretty goddamned turned on.

He sucked my clit into his mouth through my panties, and this time I couldn’t keep my moan inside. There’d been too much want, too much need, and he sucked eagerly, driving me quickly to a frenzy.

But the material was an unwanted barricade. Like a condom, dulling the sensation, and I wasn’t getting where I needed to be. Not all the way. I was still dangling. Always dangling.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take it any longer, he dragged his mouth lower, and found my hole. With his thumb now on my clit, he used his tongue, to push the fabric of my panties inside me.

I jerked forward, caught off guard by how fucking good it felt, my hands landing on his shoulders.

Immediately, he sat back. “Hands behind you.”

The rules, right.

Did he want my hands behind me because it was part of the game? Or because he didn’t want me touching him? Or just because he said so?

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he finished, that he made me come, and I was far enough along now that I didn’t care about what I conceded in giving him my obedience.

I put my hands on the counter.

His mouth was back on me in an instant. This time he nudged my panties aside with his nose and resumed his attack on my bare cunt in earnest. With one hand wrapped around the back of my thigh, his other hand used the bunched material of my panties to cause extra friction on my clit.

He pinned my eyes once more, and maybe that was the most erotic part of the whole thing—the way he looked at me. The way he always looked at me.

I was whimpering now, bucking into his face, so close to coming.

Suddenly the door handle behind him jiggled as though someone was trying to get in.

I tensed in absolute panic, but Donovan didn’t ease up at all.

A second later, the person knocked. “Anyone in there?”

I recognized the voice. It was Ted from creative. And Jesus, I was so close to coming.

“Melissa?” Ted called out to someone. “Do you have a key to the copy room? Does anyone know where a key is?”

I tried to push Donovan away, but his grip on me tightened. Without ceasing the massage of my clit, he took a break with his mouth long enough to say, “I’m not stopping until you come. So either relax and let it happen or be prepared to give them a show.”

I knew enough about Donovan to not question his sincerity on this.

Giving my eyes back to him, I forced myself to ignore the commotion outside the door and focused only on the feeling of his mouth. Of his lips. Of his tongue. Of his fingers, and the expert way they played me—like he knew how to make me sing; like he had me memorized.

I didn’t think I could relax enough, that I could come with Ted outside and the door locked and the lights off, but suddenly my orgasm shot through me like a freight train at a railroad crossing. Even though I knew it was coming, its speed still surprised me. I saw stars, my knees buckled, and a burst of pleasure ricocheted through my body. I didn’t recognize the wail coming from me, low and unfurling like a ribbon of sound. Immediately, Donovan jumped to his feet to swallow my cry with a kiss, his hand still rubbing me through my climax below, and all I kept thinking was yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

I was still shaking when he broke away a minute later. Thankfully, I still had my hands on the counter behind me or I might have slumped to the floor. Donovan bent down and straightened my panties, then went to the floor, and picked up my skirt. I stepped into it, moving my hands to his shoulders for support while he pulled it up and fastened the zipper.

He didn’t complain about the touch this time, and even gave me a half-smile as he wiped at the makeup under my eye. He leaned in and kissed me once more, hard, his tongue sweeping deep inside me. As deep as I wanted him to be. Even after he’d just made me come.

“I love the way your jealousy tastes,” he said.

I frowned, remembering all of a sudden how this whole interaction started. “I’m not sure that—”

The doorknob twisted. Donovan dropped his hands and moved away from me just as the door opened and Ted walked in.

“You guys were in here the whole time?” he asked, confused. “The door was locked. I had to find a key.”

“I didn’t realize you were trying to get in,” Donovan said without apology. “It’s all yours.”

He slipped out around Ted before he could say anything else. Before I could say anything else.

Maybe it was for the best. I didn’t know that Donovan wanted to hear what I had to say anyway.