I felt Violet wake up before she moved. One moment she was curled against me like a warm kitten, her legs intertwined with mine, her arm thrown across my chest, the soft weight of her breasts on my skin. The next she went stiff, her breath catching in her lungs.

I imagined her eyes flying wide with panic. I kept my own closed.

I could have stopped her. If I’d rolled into her, pulled her to me, kissed her, I might have kept her in bed. But, I was playing a long game and this was about more than sex.

I listened to her slip from the bed, her feet padding on the carpet as she crept from the bedroom, probably in search of her suitcase.

When did I decide I was playing a long game?

Before or after I’d had her in bed?

I could be the arrogant asshole most people thought I was and say it was after I’d fucked her, but I’d be lying.

At first, when we’d uncovered her scheme, I’d only been playing with her. She was smart, and hot, and I was bored. I’d been entertained by the idea of seeing if I could talk her into bed while I figured out what she was up to.

Everything had changed, and I had no idea when it happened. In bits and pieces. The frost in her eyes when she put Elizabeth in her place. Her defiance and dignity when Gage had tried to fire her. Her ice queen and her innocence. All of it had chipped away at me until I’d known I was keeping her before we got on the plane.

And now that I’d had her?

The soft click of a door closing filtered through the hotel suite, followed by the hiss of the shower. I already knew she’d try to put distance between us after the night before.

I’d let her, to a point.

If she thought she was going to take control, she was very wrong.

Now that I’d had Violet in my bed, she wasn’t getting away.

I’ve slept with a lot of women. I’m not bragging, it’s just reality. I’ve always had safe sex, and I’ve never led a woman into thinking I was offering more than I was prepared to give. I didn’t need to lie or trick them. It was a side effect of being Aiden Winters.

The bonus was that plenty of women were more than happy to spread their legs for power and money combined with decent looks. And the downside? I was sick and tired of the kind of women who wanted to fuck power and money.

The world was filled with Elizabeths.

I wanted Violet.

She didn’t want me to spend money on her. She wasn’t angling to be my girlfriend. But when I kissed her, she turned to fire in my arms.

I’d never had sex like that before. Not once. I’d never wanted to claim a woman like that. I’d been rough with her. I hadn’t meant to. I’d had some kind of idea I’d be gentle, seduce her with smooth words and soft touches.

I’d done all right when we were dancing—until I kissed her. Just thinking about her hands pulling on my buttons, dragging off my clothes, and my cock was half hard.

I hadn’t had to seduce Violet. She knew what she wanted, and she’d wanted me. Not my wallet. Not my company. Me.

She thought this was just for the weekend, had told Dylan she’d been about to resign. He thought she was kidding, but I knew she wasn’t.

Violet thought we understood each other, but she was wrong. She needed me. She just didn’t know it yet.

I emerged from my room freshly showered to find the other bedroom door closed, her shower still running. It only took me a minute to order up a full breakfast. Violet was still in her room when it arrived.

I poured myself a cup of coffee and settled in to wait her out. She couldn’t stay in there all day. She had too much dignity to hide from me.

The door finally swung open to reveal a Violet I’d never seen before. Her eyes were cool, but this was my ice queen doing weekend casual. Like me, she had bare feet and wore jeans. Her long hair fell around her face in shining sheets. I liked it even more than I had the night before. In the daylight streaming through the windows, it gleamed silvery-gold. At the edge of the boat neck collar of her T-shirt I caught a glimpse of pale pink lace.

She was wearing the underwear I’d bought her. I was absurdly pleased. Even more so when her hair slid back off her shoulder to reveal a bite mark on her neck. I should have been remorseful. I’d been too aggressive with her, should never have marred that perfect, creamy skin.

I didn’t care.

I wanted to mark her.

I wanted every fucking person who saw her to know she belonged to me.

“You ordered breakfast?” she asked, eyeing the carafe of coffee and my half-empty cup, the trays of dishes covering half of the dining room table.

“I got a little of everything. I didn’t know what you’d want.”

Pulling out the chair catty-corner to mine, Violet sat, tucking one bare foot under her leg. I poured her a cup of coffee as she lifted the lids on the plates.

“Do you mind if I eat the omelet?”

“It’s all yours.” I said. Wanting to poke at her a little, I said, “Did you sleep well?”

Violet’s eyes flashed up to meet mine before she looked back at her plate, a flush rising on her cheeks. Refusing to let it get the better of her, she lifted her chin and held her hand out for the cup of coffee.

“I slept fine. You?”

“Great. Right until I woke up alone,” I said, giving her a pointed look. If she thought we were going to pretend nothing had happened, she was going to have to think again.

Violet didn’t apologize or try to justify sneaking out, only took a long sip of her coffee, watching me over the rim of the china cup.

That was fine. I had no interest in talking about it. Our bodies had communicated perfectly. We didn’t need words. I was fucking thrilled to have breakfast with my ice queen because I knew the second I got my mouth on hers, she’d catch fire again.

No, I wanted to talk about something else, something she’d said the night before to Leigha that I was betting Violet hoped I hadn’t heard.

“Are you going back to school to finish your master’s degree?” I asked casually, refilling my coffee and pulling the plate of French toast in front of me.

Violet let out a quick breath of surprise before she covered it and said carefully, “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” I challenged.

I loved her ice queen act, but I was tired of her hiding things from me. She raised her eyes to mine, that dusky lavender wary. Thoughtful. I stayed silent and watched her as she studied me.

Finally, she let out the breath she’d been holding and said, “I’ve been meaning to. I just—” She popped a bite of omelet in her mouth to stall.

“Is it the money?” I asked, enjoying the way her eyes narrowed in annoyance before she shook her head.

“It was, for a while. And then it was…other things.”

“Other things?” I prodded.

Something about her discomfort with the subject unsettled me. Violet did not strike me as the kind of woman who left things unfinished, especially something as important as her master’s degree. She wouldn’t have pursued graduate school unless she’d wanted to go, so why had she quit one year in?

“It’s hard to explain,” she said, cutting into her omelet with the side of her fork, separating a precise piece before she stabbed it with the tines and popped it between her lips.

“Does it have to do with the reason you took a job at Winters, Inc.?”

“No,” she said, so quickly I had no doubt she was telling the truth. “No. It’s—” Violet sighed and shook her head. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

Tough luck. I’d known there was something off when she’d mentioned it at dinner. I’d find out one way or another, but I wanted to hear it from her.

Something had happened to derail Violet’s life, and I needed to know what it was. Logic told me any damage had long since been done, but Violet was mine. If someone or something had hurt her, I needed to know about it.

I set down my fork and reached for her hand, taking it in mine, rubbing my thumb across her knuckles. “Vi, I want to know you.”

Her hand went still. She remained like that, frozen, for a long moment. So long, I started to wish I hadn’t pushed. When she moved it was to draw back, pulling her fingers from my grip and bracing her heel on the edge of her chair. She wrapped one arm around her raised knee and picked up her coffee cup.

Her defenses in place, she said, “I wanted to go to graduate school right after college. But my parents didn’t want to pay for it. They’d been unhappy that I majored in accounting. I was supposed to major in something more ladylike. Art history, or English literature. I was supposed to be in college to find a husband.”

“You’re kidding,” I said. I knew the women in my mother’s generation faced these kinds of archaic expectations, but these days?

Violet shrugged one shoulder. “My parents are old-fashioned. They’d already disowned my older brother for being a little wild. They were very strict with me. Anyway, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of taking out loans to cover the cost, so I thought I would work for a few years and save up the money. I probably wouldn’t be able to put together enough to fully cover tuition, but I could at least get a start.”

“That’s practical,” I said.

“That’s what I thought. And then my father offered me a third option. One of his good friends had an opening in their accounting department for a junior bookkeeper. The company had a tuition match program and after I’d been there for a year they would pay most of the costs of graduate school. It seemed like the perfect solution.”

“You took the job?” I asked, wondering why her father, who didn’t seem to want her to work, would have hooked her up with a job.

“I did, and for the first year, it was fine. It was great. I like bookkeeping. I’d like to be able to do more—that’s why I wanted to go to grad school—but I liked the job, the other people in the department were nice, and I was still living at home, so I was saving a ton of money for school.”

“What happened after the first year?”

Violet’s eyes darkened and her lids dropped, hiding her gaze. “After the first year, I applied and got into a graduate program in accountancy. I loved it. I went at night and worked full time. I didn’t have much of a social life, but I didn’t really care.”

“And?” I pushed.

“And then things started getting weird.”

“What do you mean, weird?” My mind raced through all of the ways work could get weird, particularly for a young woman. I didn’t like any of them. The way Violet shifted in her seat, tightening her arms around her raised knees, didn’t make me feel any better.

“The owner of the company, my father’s friend, started—” Violet paused searching for the right words. “He started taking an interest in me. It was little things at first. Stopping by my desk, emailing to ask me to pop by his office. He said he was just checking on me, that he wanted to reassure my dad that I was doing well. I didn’t think much of it.”

I was afraid I knew exactly where this was going. “And then?” I prompted.

“And then, he started doing it more. Taking me out to lunch. Other people in the office noticed, commented on it. I was uncomfortable with the attention, but I wasn’t sure what to do. It wasn’t like I could go to human resources about it. I’d known him since I was a little girl.”

“Name?” I asked, trying for casual.

Violet was too smart to fall for that. Shaking her head, she refused to answer. I let it go. For now. I’d find out later. Cooper probably already had the name in her file.

“Did you talk to your father about it?” I asked.

“I did,” Violet said. “He told me I should be happy to have the attention. That I shouldn’t waste the opportunity.” She let out a harsh laugh. “I was so stupid. I had no idea what he was talking about.”

“Did you ever confront your employer about it?”

Violet shook her head. “I should have. I was so busy between work and school, I was distracted, and I didn’t realize what was going on. Not really. It was an annoyance. Until it wasn’t.”

I did not like the way that sounded. “What happened?”

Violet laid her cheek on her knees and stared across the room, seeing the past in place of our hotel suite. “I started dodging his lunch invitations and he asked me to dinner. He was subtle, but it was obvious that he wasn’t interested in hearing a ‘no’. That should have been a red flag. But I went. And like everything else, in the beginning, it was okay. A little weird, but okay. He asked about my family, and school, and how I liked working for his company. But after a while, the conversation started to shift. He wanted to know who I was dating, how many children I wanted to have. Things that were too personal for a family friend to ask about. I thought about finding another job but—”

“School,” I finished for her.

“Exactly. I’ll give him this, he was very smart. If he’d started the whole game the first year I worked for him, I would have been out the door. At that point, by the time I started really getting uneasy, I’d been at the company for two years and was a year into my master’s program. It seemed foolish to walk away over a few dinners and a weird feeling in my stomach when he looked at me.”

“But you did leave,” I said, baldly, “so something happened.”

“Something happened,” Violet agreed. She sat up and reached for her empty coffee cup, taking her time refilling it. After she took a long sip, she said, “He maneuvered me into dinner at his house. Like everything else, it seemed so innocent. He wanted to talk about a new account, and then he remembered he’d left a file at his house. Once we were there he confessed he’d ordered dinner in.”

“Tell me you walked out, and he fired you.”

“Not exactly,” Violet said, with a shaky laugh. “Like an idiot—like the naïve, accommodating woman my parents raised me to be—I wasted time trying to figure out a polite way to go home. Before we finished our first glass of wine, he tried to kiss me. And then…and then he wanted more than that.”