“You want a drink?” The guy behind the desk asked me as I took a seat on the sleek red leather couch. “Coffee? Tea? Green juice?”

I itched for a shot of caffeine but decided to wait until after business. “I’m good.”

I bounced my knee and looked around as I waited to be ushered into the inner sanctum.

I’d always wanted to see Epic’s studios. This wasn’t how I figured it’d happen, but now that I was here, I was glad to have the chance.

“Mr. McKay,” the man who came out said to me. His uniform of twelve-hundred dollar jeans and a sports coat went with the straight white teeth.

“Riley.” I extended a hand.

He shook it. “David. Come on in.”

He showed me down a hall. David swiped a badge against the door and I followed him into a conference room.

“It was good of you to fly out to see us. You get the studio tour?”

“On the way in. It’s impressive.”

I’d been taken on what was clearly the ‘outsiders’ tour, designed to shock and amaze.

And it had worked.

Eleven-foot hallways were plastered with art from past films. The very costumes worn by A-list actors graced mannequins in clear plastic bubbles.

The foyer was dedicated to the latest jewel in Epic’s crown. Ninja, based on the acclaimed graphic novel, was slated for release in just a couple of weeks.

I’d had opening night on my calendar for a year.

Seeing it firsthand increased my conviction that this was a whole other world—a world I wanted to climb inside and never leave.

Titan might be in the entertainment business, but we were a tiny corner of it.

Epic was a leviathan.

“So you guys have a new game?” David asked once we’d settled in a conference room. My wheeled chrome chair looked something out of a sci-fi flick. Like it could take off on its own in a flurry of disgruntled beeps and pings if I wasn’t sitting in it.

“Yeah. Omega. It’s coming out in June.”

“David.” A man stuck his head in the door. “Can I borrow you a second?”

“Excuse me.” He shot me an apologetic look and stepped out.

I tried to gather my thoughts. I’d had some ideas on the plane for how I might convince him. But the reality was, they had no contractual obligation to take our input.

I was used to falling back on some combination of logic, rules, and reason.

In this case, the first two were useless to me.

When he returned a moment later, he dropped back into the chair, stroking his hands in front of him. “So, Riley. What can I do for you?”

“The concept art we sent through. Did you look at it?”

He frowned, his eyes glazing over. “Yeah. You sent it, and we looked at it.”

“I can show you again—” I reached for my phone, but he waved me off.

“Riley. I appreciate your interest in this project. And I get it—it’s your baby. What you need to understand is we’re all on the same team here. We want this film to be a success. And those hallways you toured are full of offices, offices of people whose jobs are exactly that—making these films successful. And coordinating all those moving parts…”

“Must be a helluva job.”

“Exactly.” He jumped on it, like I’d affirmed his entire existence. “In fact, it’s unusual for Epic to take input on art direction from those outside the fold.”

Interruption number two came to the door in the form of a stressed-out looking woman, and this time David winced. “I need to grab the phone. Give me two.”

I tapped my fingers on the table as he left, staring off into space.

This wasn’t going how I wanted.

I was drowning.

Come on, think.

Max knew the art David’s team had made wasn’t good enough. I did too. And it wasn’t because we had some kind of protectiveness over how Titan was represented.

It was because Max knew what visuals hooked people enough to play a game for weeks, and I knew what would sell.

I needed him to see the same thing.

David returned. “So are we on the same page? We’ll go full steam on this, and keep you in the loop.”

I shifted back, folding my hands. “I understand that we’re both invested in the feel of this film. We want to sell a shit ton of movie tickets, strike the kind of licensing and extended partnership deals that will have your great-grandchildren set for life, and essentially have the entire world frothing at the mouth to see this film.”

David’s eyes sparked like I figured they would. “You do know how this works.”

I shifted out of my chair and he straightened too, holding out a hand.

“Just one more thing,” I said as I shook it. He raised his brows. Indulgent. “I asked my tour guide how many game adaptations and superhero movies are slated for release in the next three years. You know what he said? Five. And that’s just Epic. Add that to the other major studios, you know how many there are?”

He narrowed his eyes but didn’t answer.

“Sixteen. Phoenix needs to stand out in a saturated market. That battle isn't going to be won in the theaters. It's over before opening weekend. The thirty second trailer has got to be pure cinematic porn if we're going to get every eighteen to twenty-five year old male to go see this. The world, the characters, the sequences… And if we do it right, it won't just be the guys coming out. But,” I said, pausing for breath, “that means we’re both going to live or die on the art for this game.

“So tell me. What’s going to get you to the theater. This?” I nodded to the sheet on the table between us, pulling out my phone and hitting a few keystrokes. “Or this.”

He took the phone from my hand, stared at it. “Who did this?”

“My artist.” David was too busy studying the image to pick up on the possessiveness in my voice.

I clicked my phone to show another image. Then the next. “What do you say, David?”

“You’d sign the rights to these over to us in full?” The words came out in a staccato, unlike the drawl I’d gotten used to.

“We’d maintain rights to the characters as stipulated in our previous contract.”

He stared at the image on the screen. “I think we can get these into the pipeline.”

“Glad to hear it.” I tucked my phone in my pocket and started toward the door.

Compromise is a beautiful thing. But sometimes it feels good to win.

I opened my laptop the second I settled into my first-class seat, one-clicking the overpriced internet package.

The more I looked at the drawings she’d done, the more I couldn’t believe Sam hadn’t done this kind of work for years. Her work was on par with the art I’d seen on Epic’s studio tour.

My fingers flew over the keys as I tried searching for Sam Martinez.

The first result that came up was her website. No picture. Just a short bio and scanned images of some of her work from the gallery show plus a dozen other pieces.

I tried pulling up a site where indie artists could post their work.

I searched for the username “Sam Martinez”. Nothing came up.

I might not be a genius coder like Max, but in high school I’d learned I was pretty good with usernames and passwords, hacking my way to a lifetime supply of licorice and an iPod shuffle using Grace and Annie’s embarrassing girl text messages about crushes as leverage.

Still, after trying a dozen or more combinations of Sam’s name, her favorite bands, movies, books, and even words, I was about ready to give up.

You don’t know her anymore. It could be anything. Some auto-generated user id you’ll never crack.

I stumbled on one last profile. My breath stuck in my chest.

I knew it was her from the first image, though there were a few pages of them.

The most recent was six months ago. The oldest four years.

There were comic frames like the ones she’d done in high school, Plus her own adaptations of popular franchises. Other characters were ones I’d never seen. Bikers. Dragon riders.

All of them were decidedly edgier than what she’d drawn in high school.

I shifted forward in my seat to study the drawings on the screen.

This was a grown-up Sam. Confidence bled through every line and had me wondering what she’d been thinking when she’d committed them to paper.

Click.

Click.

I flipped through one image to the next, feeling more like a voyeur with every tap.

And wasn’t I? She hadn’t wanted me to see these drawings, or she’d have mentioned them.

Click.

My throat tightened, my itchy hand pausing as a new image filled the screen.

A young woman sat on a rock in the middle of the ocean, her legs tucked up in front of her. She peered out it like she was looking for something.

Or someone.

The woman in the image’s dark hair fell over one shoulder in a loose braid, pieces escaping to tease the skin exposed by the top of a lace bra. The round swell of one breast.

She reached out, wrapping me around her. Whispering secrets in my ear.

My gaze dragged over the angles of her bare legs, her hips. Full lips, parted like she was about to speak.

Or to beg.

No one could see my notebook thanks to the privacy wall of my pod-like seat, but I felt guilty anyway.

I rubbed my palms against my dress pants, the burning itch of lust snaking down my spine.

Only one girl had ever left me with that feeling.

I hadn’t recognized her because of the longing in her eyes. The decidedly sensual look of unfulfilled need on her face.

It was a self-portrait. I'd have bet my damned life on it.

It was art.

And sexy as fuck.

This Sam was lines and charcoal, not flesh and blood.

Yet somehow, she filled the stale air around me, expanding until every scrap of oxygen in the first-class cabin was gone.

Her presence as the artist and the subject twined around me, inside of me.

It was the dirtiest three-way I never knew I wanted.

I rubbed a hand over my neck, the hairs standing up.

I needed an afternoon at the climbing gym where I could haul myself up as many walls as it took to leave me breathless, my muscles aching.

I needed to take this edge away that'd been building for weeks.

My gaze roamed, hungry, over the screen until I felt my cock press against the zipper of my dress pants.

I shut the lid of the computer with a click, closing my eyes as my head fell back against the leather headrest.

I remembered Sam’s expression when shed touched me at the range.

No matter how much I'd tried to keep this professional, keep it friendly…

There was unfinished business between us.

We were going to have this out. All of it.

Starting the second I landed.