In the elevator on the way down to the lobby of HRM’s building, I put my fingers to my lips. The imprint of Quinn’s kisses is still there, down where she took my lip between her teeth and bit, hard enough to drive me insanely wild.

I sensed it the moment I saw her, but that kiss—that epic collision of a kiss—has confirmed it for me. She’s like no one I’ve ever met.

Then watching her sit through the rest of that meeting, so cool, so collected…

At least on the outside.

I saw how her breath caught in her throat. I saw the flushed color in her cheeks, the way she darted her tongue out to lick her bottom lip.

She wanted more of me as badly as I wanted more of her.

If it were anyone else, I might have taken the risk.

I might have bent her over on all fours on that little sofa in her office and fucked her until she clenched and spasmed in an orgasm around my cock, her coral dress shoved up around her waist to allow me access.

If it was anyone else, I wouldn’t care quite so much about screwing up her job for her. I wouldn’t care so much about adding yet another notch to my playboy belt. Christian Pierce can’t help himself. He takes what he wants, and then he discards the leftovers. That’s the game.

But not with her.

No, with her it’s different. This is so much more powerful. I’m swept away, and I’m the one who initiated the kiss.

It’s different—yet I’m fooling myself. I did take a risk like that. It might be an even bigger gamble than taking her from behind in her new office.

Shit. What the hell was I thinking when I told her I’d see her again before Wednesday?

There—right there. That was the biggest risk of all.

I’ve set myself up.

In so many ways.

I want to see her. I need to see her. I need it more than I’ve ever needed anything in my entire life, and it’s more than the insane attraction to her gorgeous body. Knowing more about her is an itch I have to scratch, and secondhand information won’t be enough. It would also be weird to ask Carolyn the kinds of questions I want to ask Quinn.

There’s the added complication that she’s been assigned to handle my PR. As far as I can see, there’s not a good way to get around that. My father hand-selected the firm. I don’t know his reasons, and I don’t need to, but switching firms isn’t an option. I doubt he’d accept my reasoning, which is essentially that I need to date the woman who’s handling Pierce Industries—me—as a client.

Another twist: I can’t appear to be hung up on her. I can’t appear to always have her on my mind. I can’t appear to be losing sleep because I can’t get thoughts of her smile, her voice, her curves out of my mind. That kiss. That kiss. My cock twitches thinking about the heat of her mouth on mine, and how if we’d been the only two people in the building, I would have dragged my mouth down the side of her neck, torn off her blazer and that little coral dress underneath, spread her legs, and…

And lost myself entirely.

That’s what I can’t do.

That’s what I can’t do under any circumstances, even for a woman like Quinn Campbell. Even though the world shifted underneath my feet when we kissed. Even though she responded to me like she was born to kiss me, born to touch me, born to fuck me.

I can’t treat her any differently than all the other women. Three dates maximum.

I laugh out loud. Three dates? How am I supposed to take Quinn on three dates when she works for me? That’ll be a red flag. If we’re going to see each other at all, it’s going to be in secret.

She must know that. She must know sleeping with a client is a surefire way to lose her job.

Of course she knows. She’s excellent at what she does. That’s why they assigned her to me, New York City’s most notorious playboy.

Yet she didn’t say no. She didn’t draw back. She didn’t fight it.

She pressed into me. She wanted more.

There’s a thought in the back of my mind that’s like the third rail. I don’t want to touch it, but as I exit HRM’s building and climb into the back of the Town Car, it becomes impossible to avoid.

The secret.

My secret.

That’s the real, true risk in all of this. There would be a way to find another PR firm, another, lesser version of Quinn Campbell to arrange media appearances and smooth out my reputation so that Pierce Industries isn’t ashamed of me.

But they would be—everyone would be—if they knew the truth.

Deep down, I know that if I let Quinn get too close, if I let her break all my rules, break down all my walls, she’ll eventually come to know everything about me.

Everything.

Once she knows everything there is to know about Christian Pierce, she’ll leave, and she’ll never look back.

“Back to the office?” Louis says from the front of the Town Car.

“That’s right,” I tell him. As he pulls the car away from the curb, I close my eyes and let myself go back to that kiss. To the taste of her that still lingers on my lips.

This is not going to end well. I know it in my bones.

But I can’t turn away from this inferno of passion.

I’m going to get burned.