I took a step back and watched the color drain from his face. For a second, I thought he was going to have another heart attack. Then he tipped his head goodbye to Judith and scurried away, looking like a ghost of himself. We both watched him join his date. I knew that if I took my time, Lily would approach us, now that Mathias was gone.

“He’s trying to hit on you,” I told Jude, too pissed to look her in the eye without snapping further.

“That’s his business, not yours,” she said evenly, placing her delicate glass of champagne on a table behind her. The spring air was crisp and chilly, and her whole body blossomed into goosebumps under that dress.

“Stop playing nice with him.”

“No, you stop butting into my relationships with other people, Célian. You have no right.”

I suppose it wasn’t a good time to tell her that Phoenix Townley—who’d wandered out on the terrace mere minutes ago, probably to snort a line—was a douchebag who got sent away to the Middle East after he was caught shooting heroin with a crackwhore in his Chelsea apartment.

The last and only other time we’d been in this hotel together, Chucks and I were on much friendlier terms. Frankly, I was fed up with this entire bullshit situation where all we did was fight. We were on the same page. Both our lives were hot messes. And we could make each other forget. I brushed my arm against her shoulder while we people-watched the fancy guests, our colleagues laughing, dancing, and drinking away their long working week.

“Inappropriate physical contact? Me too,” she taunted, but the smile on her lips was pure mischief.

“Miss Humphry, please utter the entire sentence—I do not want you to touch me, so I’ll really have an incentive not to do the things I want to do to you.”

She said nothing, fingering the thin gold necklace resting against her clavicles.

Then she whispered, “Touch me how?”

Can’t stop this, huh? Neither can I.

I smirked. “You’re not very good at following directions, are you? I refuse to land my ass in hot water, even for a good lay.”

“Hot water with your company or with your date?” she snapped.

“My date is fake, but my commitment to my network is real.”

She considered it, chewing on her lip. “It won’t get you in trouble.”

“That won’t hold up in court. Say it explicitly. Use your words. I. Want. It.”

“I don’t know what it means.”

I shook my head, taking a side-step away from her.

She weighed the situation, still playing with her necklace. I caught a glimpse of Kate talking to Lily, and knew she would never initiate a conversation with Lily in a million years. She’d done it for me.

A forty-six-year-old lesbian who thought white, upper-class men were Satan was my wingman. I think I wanted that on my fucking tombstone.

Jude swallowed. “I want you to do it to me…no matter what it means. So, what do you want to do to me?”

“Well, Humphry, I really want to finger your ass,” I said conversationally, smiling to a colleague when he saluted my way and nodding at him courteously as I smoothed my ironed dress shirt. “While eating your pussy until every drop of your cum is on my tongue.”

I could see her throat bobbing in my peripheral vision, and damn if it didn’t make my cock twitch. I needed to get out of here before it became very apparent that I was talking dirty to my employee, while sporting a hard-on that could very well tear through my briefs and tux, and at this rate, perhaps even bend solid steel.

“You have a fiancée,” she murmured.

“A fake fiancée. Don’t pretend you don’t know that. Our relationship is a joke, and we only half-bother to hide it.”

Jude and I were still pretending to talk shop casually when I slipped my hand back to touch hers on the table she had braced herself against. The tip of my little finger curled against hers. I’d forgotten how good she felt, and that infuriated me, because not many things felt good these days.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“What do you want me to do? Kiss you in front of all these people? I will. Granted, we’ll both get in trouble, but I will.”

“You wouldn’t…”

I spun around toward her and pressed a hand against the small of her back, drawing her close. She nearly jumped out of her skin.

“Don’t,” she said, her voice pitching high.

I shoved my hand into my pocket, producing one of two cards I always had on me when I was in the Laurent Towers Hotel.

“Fifteenth floor,” I said. “Swipe it on the elevator screen or the door won’t open. Ten minutes. We don’t need to be here when my father talks about workplace fraternization.”

I slipped into the crowd and disappeared before Lily could find me.

And before I lost my mind.

For all the disdain I tried to muster toward Célian, I couldn’t stop my legs from carrying me down to the fifteenth floor.

Overeager, reckless, and in serious need of intervention. That’s what I was.

Besides, he said ten minutes. I’d darted straight to the elevator, not even giving it a second thought. Phoenix—who’d given me a ride to the gala but cut his stay short because he was a recovering alcoholic and didn’t like to be around booze—was nice, but he didn’t make my heart clench and stutter like a lovesick puppy. He was funny and charming, but everything about us felt casual and overfamiliar. His voice felt like feathers on my skin. When Célian talked, it was like he squeezed the back of my neck, like a predator. And as much as I hated that Célian was staking his claim on me, Mathias was, indeed, a level of creepy more fitting behind bars than behind a network president’s desk.