Three hours later, the elevator doors began to close, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. That had been hell, but I had gotten through it, and I was still breathing. I could say that much. And I had seven stories of solitary elevator-riding to decompress before having to put my public face back on.

The walls might have been glass, but being twenty stories off the ground did wonders for privacy. I scrubbed at my face with the heel of my hand, feeling the gritty remnants of my makeup. I just wanted to curl up and take a nap. But there was still so much to do.

I took another deep breath. Focus on the bright side. The worst part of today was over, and there was only mindless busywork to fill the remaining hours. For now at least, it was all over—

A strong hand caught the door and arrested its movement. A second later, Grant Devlin slid inside, and suddenly the luxuriously large elevator seemed a whole lot smaller.

He insinuated himself next to me as the door glided shut, despite the fact that there was about ten square feet of rich carpet floor to take advantage of.

But he still wouldn’t look at me.

He pressed a button—five. What the hell did he need to do on accounting? I wondered if he had just panicked and pressed a button to not have to get off on the same floor as me. One glance at his stony face, however, and I had to admit that that seemed unlikely.

The elevator descended, so slowly that I thought I might scream. I stared at the changing view of doors and walls, trying not to look at Grant next to me. Trying not to think of what to say if he spoke to me. Trying not to count the seconds until I could flee—oh God, what if the elevator got stuck?

Meanwhile, Grant stared straight ahead. I watched his face in the glass reflection. He was doing his best imitation of a statue.

The floors clicked by with a slowness that would have been a credit to Chinese water torture. Sixteen…fifteen…fourteen…

“Is it normal for Portia to be so active in meetings?” I asked just to break the silence. My voice sounded oddly high-pitched and shaky in my ears. “She seemed pretty aggressive today. I thought she was just an advisor.”

“Portia has occasional delusions of power,” Grant said. He sounded bored. “She flutters about like a deranged butterfly for a few days before realizing she’s made no impact, and then she retires to her house for Valium and white wine. You’d know that if you knew anything about this company.”

Now that was completely unfair, and my blood boiled. “Now you look here—”

Faster than I could blink, Gant’s hand slammed the stop button, freezing us between the twelfth and eleventh floors, the glass window bisecting the view of downtown into two rectangles. He grabbed my arms and pressed me up against the wall, his lips a mere fraction from mine as he breathed: “No, you look here, Lacey Newman. Why can’t you just leave me alone? You press and you pry and you pout up at me with those sad little eyes—what are you looking for when you look at me like that? Didn’t you get all you wanted?”

“I—” All my anger had melted away, and along with it all my angry speeches about his behavior. Hell, I think I’d lost ability to string words into sentences altogether.

His full lips were so close to mine, his eyes were the night and I could get lost in them. He smelled like sweat and cinnamon and aftershave and I wanted to taste him, his lips and his neck and that patch of skin just tantalizingly revealed by the undone top button of his shirt. I wanted to unwind his tie and lick that drop of sweat that hovered at his temple…

“I—”

Grant’s eyes grew calculating; he lowered his voice to a rumble, like far off warning thunder before a storm. “Do you miss me, Lacey?”

His hands slid up my arms, leaving goose-bumps in their wake before they wandered over my breasts, his thumb circling my nipple as it grew hard beneath the silk of my shirt and insubstantial lingerie. I shivered under his touch, and he leaned forward to whisper in my ear.

“Have the memories not been enough?”

He set up a slow, torturous rhythm around my right nipple as his other hand slid to my waist, fingertips flirting with the top of my tight pencil skirt. A whimper escaped my throat. His voice deepened, gravel and whiskey and darkness twining in each syllable.

“When you rode off into the sunset, did you go home that night, touch yourself all alone in your bed?” His voice grew rougher yet his touch stayed light, the gentleness a startling contrast to his coarse words, the combination making me slick between my thighs. “Did you imagine it was me inside you, did you think about how hard I used to fuck you?”

Oh God, I could feel him hardening against my thigh. I could remember how he felt inside me, and I wanted to feel him again, oh God, right here up against this wall—no, we couldn’t—but—

“Did you say my name out loud when you came?” he whispered, and I moaned, unable to respond in any other way to his warm breath on my skin, his strong hands intent on my body, even as his words broke my heart.

“Grant—” I pleaded. Oh, if he could just give me a moment to think, to think about anything except how desperately I wanted him, I could explain.

“Just like that,” he growled. One of his hands had made it under the hem of my skirt, he was pinching and teasing my clit through my thin lingerie. Oh God, his fingers would be slick even through the fabric. “Did you say it just like that?”

I surged upward, grabbing at his collar as I kissed him. I devoured his mouth as if he were going to war, as if he were water in the desert, as if he were the antidote to poison and fear and despair. And he kissed me back as if he were starving for the taste of me, biting my lips possessively, thrusting his tongue into my mouth, claiming me—

Suddenly he pulled away and slapped another button, and the elevator was moving again.

I staggered, dizzy with the loss of him holding me upright, wondering what kind of tension was filling the elevator now. Was that—? Did he—? Should I—? And then we came to a halt, the elevator chiming as the doors slid open.

Grant smirked, as if he had just scored a point in a game he didn’t quite know how to win. He smoothed down his tie and tweaked his cuffs back into place as he stepped toward the doors. “I guess I’ve still got it, Lacey?” he asked, almost as if he wasn’t sure.

My brain struggled to recover from its lust-fueled short circuit, but before I could come up with an appropriate verbal reply, the doors started closing.

Grant’s face went stony again, and he backed out into the hall. “Well. Good to know.”

And then he turned and walked away, was gone before I could even respond.

The elevator continued on its way, and I stared out the window. Grief and anger battled inside me like wolves, but I felt something else win: determination.

I had lost Grant, but I still had Devlin Media Corp.

And I would do whatever I had to do to protect it.