SocialTech’s downtown office building looks like I expected: coffee bar downstairs, skinny guys wearing plaid shirts and tight pants, reclaimed wood and dim lighting. I feel like a shark in a minnow tank.

In the elevator, I mentally review our bid and skim through my negotiation points. Our people have been in touch, but this is the first face-to-face. They’ll want a higher offer, but they’ve got no leverage, and I know this CEO—Emma Vance—wants bigger things. I could practically smell it in the dossier Marge prepared. Stanford grad, top of her class in computer science, two master’s degrees, first job at a major software firm, couple of feel-good pro bono projects, and board member at a local charity. No photos, so she seems to like a low profile. I respect that; I’m the same way. We reached out when rumors floated about her seeking capital for another startup, and they agreed to meet. My gut says she gets bored easily and wants to move on. I can write the script on this deal.

A young woman with jet black hair, heavy bangs, and a stud in her upper lip pounces when I walk in. She appears to be a big fan of eyeliner.

“Ms. Vance will be with you shortly. I’m her assistant, Stephanie. Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, thank you. I take it black.”

On the way to the conference room, I glimpse a large basket in the break room.

“Ah, I see the basket arrived.”

“That was you? Excellent. We love you already. We normally use beans from the artisan roaster downstairs, but we made coffee this morning with the El Diablo blend from the basket. It’s not bad.”

“It’s a Seattle brand. Not as local as downstairs, but you don’t have to feel bad about it.” I wink. Screw “not bad.” It’s amazing and she knows it. I love that Marge put my favorite coffee in. She’s an evil genius.

SocialTech received the offer electronically for review, but I’ve got the backup packets with the latest projections from my business forecasting division. I’ve got the numbers on my side. I’ll get what I want here.

I’m reclining with my coffee near a large window framing the gray sky when a shadow passes by the hall window and pauses. The oversized blinds are turned so they can see in, but I can only see bodies blocking light through the cracks. Another shadow joins the first, and then dips below the window like the person dropped something.

I’m almost ready for another cup by the time the door opens. A tall, elegant woman with elaborate braids, maybe in her early forties, steps inside. She extends a manicured hand, and I assess her as we shake. Wide-legged pantsuit, single strand of light pink pearls. Shrewd, conservative, reasonable.

“Mr. Stone, I’m Christine Brown, Chief Financial Officer here at SocialTech. Welcome to Seattle.”

I fake a smile and mutter pleasantries, waiting for the CEO to show. Making me wait is a bullshit, amateur power play.

The door opens again on a youngish guy in a wrinkled dress shirt and skinny trousers, and behind him strides the smoking hot brunette I screwed in the hotel business center last night.

The natural order of things flips for a queasy second. I don’t like being on the receiving end of surprises. She’s wearing a black pinstriped skirt suit, light blue blouse, and patent leather heels. Her hair is pulled back into a prim bun. I almost think it can’t be her, and then I smell her perfume.

I flash back to my hand in her panties, the moment my lips first touched her neck.

“Good morning, Mr. Stone. I’m Emma Vance, CEO here at SocialTech. Pleasure to meet you,” she says, like her hands were never wrapped around my cock.

What the fuck was she doing in my hotel? Did I get massively played?

“Pleasure is mine, Ms. Vance.” It was both of ours last night. I catch her eye, but her face registers zero recognition.

She drops a thick folder on the table, and I recognize it from last night. The SocialTech logo stares me in the face when she pulls out a stack of papers. If I hadn’t been thinking with my dick, I’d have avoided this shit show, or at least avoided an ambush.

And then I remember the way she felt around me.

I’m half-hard thinking about it, so I focus on a crumb nestled at the bottom of the hipster’s beard as I shake his hand next.

“Nick Khan, IT Director.” I peg him as one of those MIT wunderkind.

Emma moves to sit at the head of the table, and the rest of us settle into chairs. I’m trying not to stare, and failing. She has yet to look me in the eye. I sit back further in my chair like I’m totally at ease. If it fucking gives me an aneurysm, I will not show how jacked up I am right now.

“Welcome to SocialTech, Mr. Stone. We were sorry to miss you at dinner last night.”

“I was sorry to miss it. I hope the gift basket helped make amends.” That and the orgasm.

“Yes, thank you. I’ve never seen the office that coffee and sweets won’t win.”

“I hope you all had a chance to try the strudel.” It takes a lot to throw me, but her absolute refusal to act like we’ve met, much less screwed, leaves me less glib than normal. Get in the game, Nate.

“Everyone except Emma,” Nick says. “She’s got a competition this weekend.”

Her lips tighten. Annoyed, I’d guess, that he let something personal slip. I pick it up, since it bothers her.

“Really? Since coffee and pastry are the programmer diet as far as I can tell, I assume this is a non-computer related competition.”

“Amateur Muay Thai kickboxing.”

“Kickboxing. Sport of the future.” The movie reference pops out of me by reflex. A high school friend loved that movie, and that was probably our most quoted line.

Emma sputters over a half-suppressed laugh. “Say Anything, right?”

“Yes. Kickboxing’s an interesting choice of hobby, Ms. Vance.” I retreat from the moment of intimacy by flattening my voice to fake disinterest. I don’t want to give her anything personal without knowing what the hell game she’s playing. I tap the table. “Shall we begin?”

Emma exchanges a look with Ms. Brown and nods. She leans in, the friendly banter replaced by a hard stare. “Mr. Stone, I’m going to get right to the point here. We’ve reviewed the offer, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to do better.”

My smile is genuine this time. I know this game, and it’s my turn to deal.

“Sorry, Ms. Vance, but the offer stands, and I think you’ll want to take it. You offer a useful service, or I wouldn’t want to acquire your little operation here.”

Her nose flares at “little operation.” My pulse jumps with a spike of pleasure at cracking her composure. She opens her mouth as if to speak, but I hold up a hand, and I double down by letting my voice take on a sing-song quality. I talk to her like I would a child.

“You guys have done a great job with what you had to work with. However, SocialTech’s growth has likely hit a ceiling, as almost every tech startup does. A buyout will propel the company you built to the next level and free you up for other things. Kickboxing, maybe? You could go pro.” I give her an earnest-looking smile and tilt my head.

“Look, Emma, you need someone willing to come in, make the hard decisions, and ally SocialTech to a larger suite of companies. I can do that for you. But we’ll have a lot of costs transitioning your company to our way of doing things. This offer,”—I stab a finger at the air—“is precisely what you’re worth to us.”

I lower my eyebrows and meet her glowering eyes. “Unless we didn’t get all of the pertinent data. Is there something else you didn’t mention? An ace up your sleeve, maybe?” Like a willingness to get what she wants on her back. Or up against a wall, more precisely.

“Mr. Stone, you had all the data that we did. If there are any holes in your information, that’s your own responsibility, not mine.” She lets that hang over the table while she passes a slim packet to me. I hold her eyes, but she doesn’t betray even a microexpression of guilt. Should I believe that she didn’t know either, or is she the kind of woman who screws to get ahead?

Her blazer shifts, and the silk of her blouse pulls apart to show a hint of cleavage. I remember the way her breasts looked in my hands, the way her wide nipples puckered in my mouth. I run my tongue over my bottom lip and hastily drop my eyes to the packet of graphs and data, which might as well be cave art.

Damn it all to hell. As far as I can tell, she’s got the upper hand here. She’s unflappable, and I’m over here stewing in distracted lust. She clears her throat. Fuck me, is it obvious? I can’t tell if I’ve missed something, so I scowl at the packet like I’m deep in thought.

“What concerns me is the fact that I don’t think your projections capture what exactly we do here.” She copies my condescending tone. “You know about business, but you aren’t a computer scientist. Yes, you’ve seen the numbers, but what you’re not getting—among other things—is the cultural capital we’re laying in.”

“I’m not interested in sociology.” I slide her pages aside. “If you can’t give it to me in data, you’re blowing smoke. I’m not paying for guesswork.”

She and Khan protest in a tangle of objections, then shut up when I hand out my revised numbers. I give them a minute to flip through.

“I printed these newer projections last night at my hotel.”

Her head jerks up. There, that scored a point. A muscle flexes in her jaw, and I relish the small victory. The silence stretches too long, and I realize they’re waiting for me to explain. I curse myself again. Take control of the situation, Nate.

This has never happened to me in a business deal. What kind of dark magic does she have in that sweet cunt of hers?

“Ah—so our initial offer is actually higher than what you’re worth to us. You need to be realistic about what you have here, because very few other corporations are going to offer you even this much. I’m not going to revise my bid down, but I want you to be very clear about your position.”

And I’m fourteen again, and can’t say the word position without thinking about the ways I had her. Dammit, if I can’t get my head out of my ass, I’m the one who’s fucked here.

“I appreciate your concern for my position,” she deadpans. Jesus, are her colleagues picking up on this? She’s fucking with me, and it’s working. What I can’t figure out is why this woman, out of every woman I’ve been with, has thrown off my game.

Christine, the CFO, scribbles a note and slides it over to Emma, who nods. “Nick,” Christine says, “why don’t you explain the differences between your analysis and Mr. Stone’s?”

He adjusts his black-framed glasses. “Time.”

I can’t tell if he’s being an ass or I’m too distracted to follow. I swear to god, I’ll force her hand on this deal, and it’ll be on my terms.

“There are a few companies that have defined the online world for consumers. Google. Microsoft. Amazon.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “We’re on the brink of doing exactly that for social media marketing. If you track clients over the full time span of the data we gave you, you’ll see not just sales, but brand loyalty, increased market share, and exponential growth in organic marketing reach and brand perception across demographics.”

With effort, I focus enough to make sense of what he’s telling me.

“So you’ve got a magic bullet for internet marketing?”

Emma answers. “We’re saying that between my research on internet-specific behaviors and our proprietary predictive algorithms, we move past viral marketing to deliver content when customers want it. And if you’re not looking at those metrics alongside the sales numbers, then you don’t know the internet. Perhaps, Mr. Stone, you’re simply not equipped for this deal.”

Tell me she didn’t just insult my equipment.

I scrub a hand over my mouth like I’m amused. Last night was freaking hot. And it wasn’t one-sided. She got hers. But all that heat seems to be in my pants now, and none of it searing her memory. To shift the energy in the room, I lean back in my seat. Her eyes flicker to my lap so fast I might have imagined it. Vindication. She’s thinking about it, too. I’d begun to wonder about doppelgangers and evil twins.

“No one has yet shown a way to correlate viral content to real, predictable consumer behavior.” I force boredom into my voice and avoid looking at her bottom lip, which I’d like to be sucking right now.

“Wrong.” She bares her teeth. “We have.”

Her voice with its sexy rasp holds a challenge, the same tone she used to tell me to ogle her last night. She keeps controlling the game, and I’m fucked.

Because it makes me hard as hell.

“Ms. Vance, you can spin the data however you want, but here’s the offer. Firm. We all know you need the capital to grow. I’m holding the good cards here.”

“No, you’re not. I want this deal, but I don’t need it, Mr. Stone.” She pushes away from the table. “And I won’t sell this company or its employees short.”

Her heels click on the hardwood floor as she stomps out, leaving me sitting there like an ass. And thinking about how sexy she looked telling me off.

Ms. Brown rises, unperturbed. “Mr. Stone, you have our counter-offer. Please contact us if you’re ready to actually negotiate. Can I show you out?”

“I can find it, thanks.” I shove the SocialTech offer in my bag. It’s handy for covering up my hard on.

The receptionist waves cheerfully as I pass the front desk. I’m wound up so tight I barely walk straight, but I force a smile until my dimples show and continue my tactical retreat.

The fuck just happened?