I’m not back to Sandra’s office yet when the walls start to close in around me.

My muscles are relaxed—it’s been forever since I got off by anything other than my own hand—but the warm, bubbly pleasure it gave me melts away ten feet outside Jax’s door.

This is dangerous.

Jax’s office isn’t soundproof. It’s impossible to see through the doors, but anyone standing outside would have been able to hear exactly what was going on. And Sandra would have no qualms about coming to interrupt one of our meetings.

What the hell was I thinking?

This is guaranteed to get me fired. Fired. How’s that going to look if I apply for other jobs? How’s that going to keep me from being forced out of my career before I’m ready?

It’s not.

And no matter what he says, no matter how he acts, Jax doesn’t care about me.

The truth is that this is a game. This is an agreement. It’s something on the side to occupy the next month, and I was an idiot to agree to it. I cannot, cannot, let myself be overtaken by how much I want him.

Because I want more than sex, more than orgasming all over his hand while he bends me over his desk. It kills me to admit that the moment I saw Jax I started to picture him as my someday person. The person that I’ll have someday, when my career is stable, when my savings are on track, when I can finally let go a little bit.

He’s never going to be that man.

I thought I could play on his level. I said yes to his proposal on an impulse, in the heat of the moment, and now I see how shortsighted it was.

One meeting. A single meeting, and I’m torn in two.

Part of me wants to run back down the hall and throw myself into his arms, kiss his neck, nip his collarbone with my teeth, lower myself onto his cock and take him for a ride.

Most of me is sick with the risk I’ve taken.

And it is all my risk. What happens for Jax if he’s caught with me in his office? Nothing. He’s a billionaire, with homes and cars and enough money to hush the whole thing up, if he wanted. His image wouldn’t be tarnished at all. But me? I’ve been working myself to the bone every single day for a year—more than a year, if you count the time I spent as an editorial assistant at Basiqué right out of college—to get where I am today.

I clapped my hands over my mouth without realizing it, and people in the hallway are starting to take notice.

Kirk sidesteps me with a gaggle of assistants and does a double-take at my face, which must be a sickly shade of white.

“Cate?” he says, reaching out for my arm. “Are you feeling all right?”

Instantly I pull my hands away from my mouth and smile at him. Over the past year, I’ve become a master of deception. If I’m tired or irritated, I don’t let it show. I’m certainly not going to let this slip to Kirk, not in the middle of the hallway, probably not ever. “Thanks, Kirk,” I say, brushing his arm away as kindly as I can. “I had an idea come at me from a new angle. Does that ever happen to you?”

He considers me, his eyes filled with concern, and his jaw works like he’s trying to think of the right thing to say. “Of course it does,” he agrees, and then, with his assistants shifting uneasily around him, he says, “Take it easy, all right?”

“Will do!” I call brightly after his retreating back.

Enough of this.

It’s time to get my shit together. I can’t afford to slip up like this.

* * *

That night, I stay at Basiqué until ten o’clock. It’s dark when I call down to Mark to bring around the car.

Every time my attention wandered away from my computer screen, it led me straight to images of my dad’s face when he told my sister and me that his job as a schoolteacher was finished. We’d both been surprised. He loved teaching. His favorite joke was that he’d work until he was 80, and then he’d volunteer in the school library.

Sitting in his recliner across the living room from us, his face had crumpled, and he’d wiped tears away from the corners of his eyes. “After thirty years, they decided I wasn’t working hard enough.”

His words still ring in my ears.

Which is why I can’t believe I agreed to such depraved hanky-panky with the billionaire who is ultimately my boss without a second thought. There are other ways to relax.

Yes. More sessions with Carl are in order. The only way out of this is to put in more effort on every front. If I do that, I won’t have the time or energy to think of Jax, much less meet him for illicit office sex for the next four weeks.

I pull out my phone and send my trainer a text begging him for four days a week instead of three—Fridays off. His reply comes in quickly.

You’re joking! :)

No, completely serious. Are you available?

You sure you can handle that many sessions a week? You seem spread pretty thin already.

His choice of words makes me bite my lip, color rushing to my cheeks. Spread out for Jax, more like it. How I must have looked in that position…it’s embarrassing. And I will never, ever admit how wet it made me, how much I already want more.

I can’t. I won’t. It’s not an option.

God. I am terrible.

I can handle it. Are you telling me you can’t?

It feels good to slip into easy banter with Carl.

His next reply:

See you tomorrow morning. Be ready!