Lorenzo paused in front of Stacey’s desk the next morning, and took a quick look around the waiting area. There was no flash of brilliant blonde hair or deep blue eyes in sight.

Thank fuck for that.

“She’s in Clara’s office,” Stacey said without looking up.

“Good.” Lorenzo turned in the direction of his own office. “Make sure she stays there.”

He did not want to see her. He did not want her anywhere near him. Not after yesterday.

Not after she’d sat in the chair opposite his desk, her long-fingered hands curled into little fists, and told him he was arrogant and an entitled asshole. And that, yes, she’d wanted to hit him.

He’d told himself that he was furious because no one talked to him like that, still less some blonde airhead he’d been forced to employ, and that he wasn’t going to put up with it.

But he knew that was a lie. It hadn’t been because he was furious that he’d told her to leave and to stay out of his sight for five days.

It had been because the dark, hungry part of him had wanted to reach across his desk, grab those slender shoulders, and haul her into his lap. Then maybe crush that smart, pouty red mouth of hers under his own.

An unacceptable urge to feed an unacceptable hunger, and he simply wasn’t going to give in to it. He couldn’t afford to. He knew where releasing that part of himself led and it wasn’t anywhere good.

Besides, he still couldn’t figure out what exactly it was about her that appealed to that hungry monster inside him. There had been something about her flushed face and the defiant glow in her blue eyes. About the tension in her slender body, how she’d been almost trembling with suppressed violence.

He’d felt it hit him, fast and hard. The need to pull away that prim black dress and white cardigan, let her hair down so the pale silky locks could spill all over his hands. Release all that violence, that repressed passion, watch her light up as he got her beneath him . . .

Jesus Christ. He should not be thinking about this.

Lorenzo nearly slammed his office door in an uncharacteristic show of temper, only just stopping himself. Then he threw his briefcase down on the coffee table near the sofa and headed straight to his desk, booting up his computer.

Then he plunged himself into work.

It had the desired effect, thoughts of Kira fading as the day’s usual parade of problems and issues and meetings began their onslaught.

He didn’t see her all day and by the time the end of it came around, he was pleased with himself that he hadn’t thought of her once, not since the morning.

The next day was the same, except he found himself distracted in a meeting with his legal team by a new staff member with platinum hair. As soon as the woman entered the room, Lorenzo felt every muscle in his body instinctively tense up. And not with fury. With anticipation. Then there was the strange lurch that he told himself wasn’t in any way disappointment when he discovered that of course it wasn’t Kira.

The experience shouldn’t have affected him, and yet he found himself in a foul mood for the rest of the day.

On the third day, Ivan came to see him and asked him how Kira was getting on. Lorenzo bared his teeth at his friend and told him everything was fine. He’d decided to wait before he put his plan to discover whether or not Kira was passing on information into action. He didn’t want to deal with her personally yet, not until he could be sure he wasn’t going to forget himself the way he nearly had a few days back in his office.

Ivan’s visit put him in yet another foul mood, making Stacey frown at him from her desk whenever he stalked past. She’d been trying to have a meeting with him to talk about Kira’s progress so far, but he’d told her in no uncertain terms that Kira was not a priority for him and that Stacey would have to deal with her herself.

Stacey was unimpressed and when Stacey was unimpressed, everybody knew about it.

That afternoon he went into his private kitchenette near Stacey’s office so he could get himself a coffee—Stacey was dealing with an IT issue—and came to a sudden stop as a faint whiff of an unfamiliar scent wrapped around him.

It wasn’t Stacey’s usual perfume, and since Clara wasn’t here there was only one other person’s it could be.

Kira. She must have missed him by mere moments.

The scent was warm and deeply sensual and with a heady sweetness to it, like magnolia or jasmine. Definitely not an innocent scent.

He tried to push it away as he went about the process of making coffee, but somehow the perfume got inside him. Reminding him of those pale downy curls at the nape of her neck and the stretch of cotton across her breasts. That rogue lock of hair that had grazed the delicate line of her jaw and her long slim fingers.

The burn of blue wildfire in her eyes as she’d stared at him. “Do you know how many people I’ve killed?”

He cursed under his breath as he reached for his freshly made coffee.

No, he was not interested in her. Not in any way.

That night, when he got home, he found himself reaching for his phone again to call Sian, and then, when he realized what he was doing, he put it away.

Calling Sian would be a failure, would be an acknowledgment that Kira had somehow gotten to him, and she hadn’t. He wasn’t going to let her. He would call Sian when he wanted to and because he wanted to spend some time with her, not to work out this inexplicable attraction to his new young intern. It wouldn’t do him or Sian any favors if he did.

Unfortunately, it ended up meaning another night working in his office at home, because he couldn’t get himself to sleep. A quick five minutes in the shower getting himself off would have helped, but again, in his head, that had now become a defeat, an admission that he couldn’t control his own needs and desires, and if there was one thing he wouldn’t allow, it was a loss of control.

Lack of sleep and the simmering hunger he couldn’t seem to ignore meant he went into work the next day in even more of a foul temper, not helped by the prospect of a board meeting that included his father and brother scheduled for that afternoon.

Christ, the last thing he wanted to deal with was his father talking confidently about the latest projections—which he’d no doubt doctored to hide the money he’d been funneling away for himself—and how pleased he was with DS Corp.’s current trajectory. Anything to allay the concerns of the board and make it look like everything was fine.

It wasn’t fine. Cesare thought he could manipulate anyone and anything. Use it for his own ends, the way he’d manipulated Lorenzo’s mother, the way he’d manipulated Lorenzo, too. It was why Lorenzo had never told his father about Katie, because she’d become another pawn in Cesare de Santis’s grand chess game.

A game that Lorenzo was going to make sure his father lost.

The meeting with the board was not, as Lorenzo had predicted, a comfortable one. At least for Lorenzo it wasn’t.

His father, chairing the meeting, was his usual autocratic self, rolling over the figures Lorenzo presented with a wave of his hand, turning the conversation around to the government contract Xavier had landed before he’d disappeared back to Wyoming. He placated the board the way he normally did, with charisma, down-home Western practicality, and the ability to intimidate when the need arose.

Sitting beside the old man was Lorenzo’s middle brother Rafael. Who said nothing the entire meeting, his silver-blue eyes studying Lorenzo as if Lorenzo was a difficult equation he was trying to work out.

Perhaps Rafe suspected Lorenzo had discovered their father’s illegal activities and was even now thinking of ways to cover it up, the way he always did when it came to protecting the old man.

If so, he was going to be shit out of luck. Lorenzo was going to make sure of that personally.

He stared back at his brother, giving him nothing.

Halfway through the meeting, the door opened for coffee to be bought in.

At first Lorenzo, expecting Stacey, didn’t take much notice, only belatedly realizing as the person began arranging the cups and fiddling with the coffee pots that it wasn’t Stacey in her impeccably tailored Chanel suit after all.

The woman had her back to the room, bending over the table where the afternoon tea was being arranged, and was doing a very good job of being unobtrusive. She wore a loose black blouse tucked into a light gray pencil skirt, the shape of the skirt highlighting her trim waist, beautifully rounded ass, and a pair of long, slender legs.

He didn’t normally allow himself to get distracted by women, no matter how shapely their asses were, and maybe that lingering sexual fascination with Kira had something to do with it, because he couldn’t seem to stop himself from looking right now.

The woman straightened and all thought vanished from Lorenzo’s head as he caught a glimpse of the woman’s rigidly pulled-back hair.

It was platinum blonde.

A bolt of something white hot and intense hit him, the hunger that had been simmering in his gut for the past three days, the hunger he’d been trying to tell himself he didn’t feel, suddenly flaring into life.

He froze in his chair, watching her, unable to tear his gaze from her as she added a dash of cream and two sugars to the coffee she’d poured, then moved quietly over to where his father sat and left it at his elbow.

Anger began to lick up inside him, threading through the hunger, his sleepless night, and his already toxic mood, making him even angrier than he was already.

What the hell was she doing here? He’d warned her to stay out of his sight for at least five days and yet here she was, day four, serving coffee to a board meeting she must have known he’d be at. Where the hell was Stacey? She was usually the one who did the coffee for the board meetings, because she was a control freak who didn’t like handing over tasks to others who might screw it up. And if she wasn’t here, it was probably because something important had come up.

Lorenzo stared hard at Kira as she began to head back to the doors, the blood pounding loudly in his head. Her attention was on the doors ahead of her, and yet as he watched, he saw a brilliant stain of color creep slowly over her cheeks.

She knew he was there. She knew he was looking at her.

The dark, intense hunger gathered tighter inside him, along with a concentrated fury, both at himself for the way this seemingly inexplicable attraction to her had gotten under his skin and at her because for all that she looked so pale and fragile, there was that heat to her. That energy. That smoldering flame. It warmed her skin, made her eyes glow. Made her push at him, call him arrogant and an asshole, made her want to hit him.

And you want her to try. Don’t you?

His breathing had gotten uneven, and he couldn’t hear a single fucking thing under the roar of the blood in his veins.

Then just before Kira disappeared through the doors, her head turned, and she looked at him. And it was like lightning striking him, a burst of hot electricity crackling along every nerve-ending he had.

Her eyes widened as if she’d felt it, too, the blue of her iris flaring then turning dark. And as he watched, she stumbled, managing to check herself before she lost her balance completely.

Fuck, that was him. That was all him.

Something right down low inside him, something that he’d been starving in the hope that it would die, growled in intense satisfaction.

“Lorenzo,” someone barked. “What the hell are you doing?”

Kira disappeared out of the room, the doors closing quietly behind her, and as she did so Lorenzo became aware of the sudden silence. He turned his head and found the entire board staring back at him. And not only that, he was half out of his chair, as if he’d been preparing to leave the room.

Shock gripped him. Goddammit. What the fuck was wrong with him?

Slowly, he lowered himself down into the chair, trying to get himself the hell together.

His father, sitting at the other end of the meeting table, glowered at him. “Am I going to have to tell Ivan about this? That you were too busy staring at his daughter’s ass to pay attention?”

Fuck.

Someone down at his father’s end of the table snorted.

Lorenzo swept an icy gaze over the board members before letting it come to rest on his father. “When you have something to say worth paying attention to,” he said coldly. “I’ll stop looking at her ass.”

There were no snorts now, the atmosphere in the room tense.

His father scowled and opened his mouth, only for Rafael to interject mildly, “I don’t want to derail this obviously fascinating topic, but perhaps we can leave the subject of asses out of this?” Despite his casual tone, a warning glowed in Rafael’s eyes. “I believe all Dad was asking for are the latest figures from the testing facility in Nevada.”

Lorenzo knew he should get ahold of himself. He should start the presentation he and Stacey had put together for the meeting. And most important of all, he should calm the fuck down.

But fury was burning a hole in his gut and all he could think about was how she’d disobeyed him. How she’d appeared at the meeting like it was no big deal, bending over in that tight little skirt, showing her ass off as she arranged the cups and poured the coffee before strolling calmly out.

As if she hadn’t just set him on fire with one glance.

She had to know what she’d done. And she had to pay for it.

He was tired and foul-tempered and furious. His groin ached, and if he wasn’t careful, everyone in the entire room would know exactly what she’d done to him. How dare she do that him, and in a board meeting no less.

Fuck, he didn’t care what he’d promised Ivan. He was going to fire her so fast her head would spin.

Picking up the remote, Lorenzo threw it over the boardroom table to his surprised brother, who caught it in a reflexive movement.

“You tell him,” Lorenzo said curtly, pushing his chair back and standing up. “Excuse me gentlemen. I have an urgent staffing issue that can’t wait.”

There was an eruption of sound as he turned and left the room, his father’s deep voice calling after him, but he didn’t turn. Instead he headed straight for the elevator and was back on the hundredth floor in less than a minute.

As he stalked by Stacey’s desk toward his office, he ordered, “Tell Kira I want her in my office. Now.”

“But you have Mr. Delaney and Ms. Chadwick from—-”

“They can wait.” He didn’t even look at the two people sitting in the waiting area. He wasn’t interested.

Right now, nothing was more important than getting Kira Constantin out of his company, out of his head, and out of his life.

Going into his office, he started in the direction of his desk, intending to sit, then found himself pacing back and forth in front of it instead, the intensity of the emotion pumping through him too hot to allow for sitting still.

She seemed to take forever to arrive, and by the time his office door finally opened and she came in, he was about ready to explode.

Kira shut the door with a kind of deliberate care that only pushed his fury higher. Then she stood there with her hands clasped in front of her, not looking at all as terrified as she should be considering he was going to give her the dressing down of her life before firing that pretty ass of hers.

In fact, her chin was lifted, and those big, deep blue eyes of hers held nothing but a stubborn defiance. “Before you say anything,” she began.

But he was already heading straight for her, coming fast and not stopping. Making her give a gasp and stumble back on the high black pumps she wore. And even then, he didn’t stop, not until he’d backed her up against the door of his office.

Then he put one hand on either side of her head, caging her against the wood at her back.

“You’re fired,” he meant to say. But he didn’t.

Because now he was close to her, that warm, sensual perfume of hers was wrapping around him again and yes, it was the one he’d smelled in the kitchenette the day before. He’d been right about that. And it wound through his brain, making his heart race even faster, carrying with it a rich flower scent and something else, something delicate and musky and hot. Something inherently female.

Her.

All the words vanished from his head.

She’d been getting under his skin, pushing him, infuriating him, teasing him all week and all without even being in the same room as him. And then, when she had been in the same room, all she had to do was look at him, and he was on fire, his control in pieces. In front of the board. In front of his fucking father.

It was unacceptable. She had to be taught a lesson.

So he didn’t tell her she was fired.

He bent his head and crushed her mouth under his instead.

* * *

Kira barely had time to take a breath before Lorenzo’s mouth came down on hers, and then she found herself pushed right up against the closed door, the hard heat of his body plastered against every inch of her.

For a moment she froze, too shocked to do anything more.

Then everything seemed to explode, an instant and intense hunger licking up inside her, igniting like a huge, dark bonfire.

The new Kira, the woman she was trying desperately to be, shouted a warning to push him away, not let him touch her. Not let him put her precious self-control at risk, because if she did, all her hard work over the past six months would have been for nothing.

But it was difficult to hear that Kira over the roar of her own desire.

Since she’d been a kid and he’d shown her kindness, shown her how to make that paper crane the day of the garden party, she’d been fascinated with Lorenzo de Santis. And as a teenager, that fascination had only gotten more complex, become tangled up in the passion she’d seen his eyes as he’d looked at the woman in Bryant Park, as he’d kissed her.

She’d seen his passion flame that day, a passion she’d wanted for herself.

Because it felt like she’d been born cold and only he could warm her.

Well, she had that passion now, and the low hum of desire that had hit her the moment she’d locked gazes with him upstairs had risen to become a scream that was drowning everything out.

She should really stop and think about why he was always so angry with her. Why he was pushing her up against the door and kissing her so suddenly when just days before he hadn’t even wanted to set eyes on her.

But her brain wouldn’t work, the self-control she’d practiced so diligently since the accident breaking apart under the ferocity of the need that filled her.

She felt like a starving woman stumbling over a feast set out just for her.

Her hands lifted to his face as if they had a will of their own, her fingers pushing into the thick black silk of his hair, glorying in the softness of it against her skin. Then she held on as she opened her mouth, his tongue pushing between her lips in a hard, hot demand that wanted nothing less than her total surrender.

Somewhere in the back of her head, the Kira who was trying to do better screamed louder then fell silent, flattened under the sheer weight of desire.

All week she’d been trying hard to stay out of sight, to prove to him that she could obey orders and do a good job. Then, today, Stacey had told her that she had to serve the coffee in the boardroom, because Stacey had an important conference call. Kira had almost refused, because of course she’d known Lorenzo had been in there, but she’d promised him she’d do what she was told, and so she’d sucked it up, hoping that he wouldn’t notice her.

Yet he had. And she’d felt it the very second his attention locked onto her, the intensity of his gaze making her whole body hum like she’d been plugged into a power socket. It had been all she could do not to spill coffee all over the expensive carpet of the boardroom.

She’d turned to look at him just before she’d gone out of the room, an impulse that soon proved to be a mistake. Because his eyes were silver and the expression in them was so full of heat and fury it had felt like she’d been struck by lightning. She’d stumbled and had barely managed to make it out of the meeting room with her dignity intact.

She’d been furious with herself after that, for letting herself be so susceptible to him, and when the order had come from Stacey that he’d wanted to see Kira in his office, she hadn’t wanted to go. But she’d forced herself, justifications for her presence at the meeting tangling in her head. Then she’d seen him pacing restlessly in front of his desk. And when his head had come up, she’d seen that silver in his eyes flash, jagged and hot, and she’d forgotten everything she’d been going to say.

Then he’d begun to come toward her, fluid and fast, and she’d forgotten the entire previous week.

He was the gun going off right in front of her.

He was the bullet slamming her against the wall.

Kira gripped him tighter, her head tilting back, gasping as he pushed his tongue deeper into her mouth. He tasted so good, rich and alcoholic. Like a hit of brandy in a perfect hot chocolate. So damn delicious.

He kissed her harder, his teeth grazing her lower lip in a short, sharp bite that sent a shudder of reaction straight through her. She arched helplessly against him, loving the feeling of being crushed between the door and his hard, hot body, kissing him back with as much hunger and desperation as he was kissing her.

She could smell him all around her, sandalwood and musk, and the spicy, masculine scent of his skin. And she felt half out of her mind with the need to touch him, taste him, run her fingers all over him and discover whether he was as hard and muscled as he felt under those impeccable tailored suits.

You should stop this. You know you shouldn’t be doing this.

Dimly, she knew that. This was a mistake, and the last thing she should be doing was making more mistakes, especially when she’d made so many already. But the hunger had taken hold. This need had been dogging her for years, and finally he was here. Finally, that cruel, beautiful mouth of his was on hers and she couldn’t let him go, she just couldn’t. And, Jesus, maybe she had to do this. To have him so she could finally exorcise this terrible fascination she had with him.

Maybe if she did this, she could be free of it.

Maybe then she could finally focus on the things she was supposed to.

She let go of his head, reaching for his tie, clawing at it to unknot the fabric and pull it away, get the buttons of his shirt undone so she could at last touch his bare skin. Put her mouth to his throat and taste him.

Suddenly he shifted, knocking her hands away and pressing her harder against the door, pinning her there with the weight of his body so she couldn’t move. His hand came up and his fingers closed around her throat, forcing her head back against the door.

She sucked in a shocked breath, the heat of his palm burning against her neck like a hot coal. His grip wasn’t painful, and she could breathe. But it was firm enough that she couldn’t get out of it.

A tremble shook the entire length of her body, the sensation of being pinned somehow intensifying everything, drawing her nipples into tight, hard peaks beneath her blouse, and making the ache between her thighs begin to throb insistently.

He leaned in close, the lines of his beautiful face drawn taut with fury and hunger. It glittered in his eyes, too, and she couldn’t look away.

She’d never been this close to him before, never been so near that she could see that his irises weren’t simply dark charcoal gray, but were fractured and crystalline with a much lighter silver. The effect was amazing, and with his long, thick black lashes and the straight dark lines of his brows, startlingly beautiful.

“You broke the rules,” he said softly, the cold edge in his voice feathering over her heated skin, making her shiver yet again. “You didn’t do as you were told.”

Kira fought for breath, trying to hold his gaze. He may have sounded cold, but there was nothing but furious heat in his eyes. It made her whole body tighten. “I . . . didn’t mean to.” Her voice sounded raw and shaky, but she couldn’t get it to sound any firmer. “S-Stacey told me—”

“I don’t give a shit what Stacey told you,” he snarled, leaning even closer, raw anger and white lightning swamping her. “You broke the rules. You made me fucking hard in front every single board member in that room. In front of my fucking father.” His thumb at the side of her neck moved slowly up and down, stroking her. The gentleness of the touch was so at odds with the rage in his voice she didn’t know quite how to process it.

Lorenzo leaned farther in, putting his mouth near her ear, his breath whispering over the sensitized skin of her neck, raising goose-bumps. “You know that that means, don’t you, Kira?”

The stroking of his thumb was insanely distracting, adding yet another sensation to the mix already flooding her. She wanted to do so many things to him, but he was holding her completely still. Containing her.

She loved the feeling.

“N-No,” she whispered, even though part of her did.

“It means,” he murmured, a note of heat in his cold, dark voice, “that now you have to pay.”

Her breathing hitched, her heartbeat thundering in her ears. She was shaking, and she couldn’t seem to make herself stop.

Yes, God, yes. She’d been angry before, because it hadn’t been her fault, but now her anger had changed, become something else. Now all she was conscious of was a terrible, insatiable need to prove herself to him. To show him that she was capable of being good, that she could follow the rules, that she wouldn’t disappoint him or let him down. And not only that she wanted to, she was desperate for the chance to do so.

This isn’t folding paper cranes, and you’re not ten years old anymore.

No, but she didn’t care. She’d take responsibility for her mistake. She would pay. She would pay whatever price he wanted her to.

She could feel his mouth so close to the delicate skin under her ear, his breath like the touch of a flame. His scent was everywhere, and the astonishing heat of his body was making her crazy. “How?” she forced out. “Are you g-going to fire me?”

He turned his head a little more, his thumb resuming its stroking movement up the side of her neck to the base of her jaw, then down again. “No.” His mouth was so close to her ear she almost felt the touch of it. “I’m not going to fire you.” Another minute shift of his body, his hard, muscular thigh pressing suddenly between hers. “I’m going to fuck you. Right now. Right here. Up against this door.”

Kira inhaled raggedly, a jolt of shock going through her. And then, right behind it, a blinding surge of desire, so intense she could hardly breathe.

His grip on her jaw firmed and with easy strength, he turned her head away from him, exposing her neck. “Can you deal with that, Kira?” His mouth pressed to the skin below her ear, and she gasped at the sensation, fire streaking through her. “Because that’s my price.”

She closed her eyes, her breathing getting shorter, faster. “Y-yes.”

“There will be rules, of course.” His teeth against the side of her neck, biting her, a sharp nip that made her groan. “There are people out there waiting for me so you’d better be quiet. You’d better not make a sound.”

She opened her mouth to agree, then at the last minute, gave a shaky nod instead.

“You will not touch me.” Lorenzo’s voice was icy with authority and it should have cooled her, calmed her, but it didn’t. “And you will not come until I tell you to.” Again his teeth against the sensitive side of her neck and another sharp bite that had her jerking in his hold in reaction. “Do you understand?”

She nodded, trembling all over.

“Prove yourself to me. And maybe . . .” Another sharp nip to her earlobe. “Just maybe I’ll keep you on.”

He didn’t let go of her jaw, keeping her head turned away, but she felt his other hand move, his fingers trailing down the exposed line of her neck and then farther down, to the curve of her breast. She inhaled sharply as he followed that curve, finding the hard outline of her nipple beneath the fabric of her blouse and circling it gently.

She squeezed her eyes shut, shuddering at the electric intensity of the sensation, trying to stifle the moan that gathered in her throat. His fingers lingered for another taunting second before they moved down, and she had to bite her lip to stop from protesting as they slid over her waist and hip, and down over her thigh.

He was watching her, she could feel it, and part of her wanted to hide from him and not let him see what he was doing to her, not show how desperate she was. Yet there was another part of her that just didn’t care. That gloried in her own need.

That wanted him to know.

“So far, so good,” he murmured, and she felt his fingers curl under the hem of her skirt. “But now I’m going to make it harder.”

And with one smooth movement, he jerked up her skirt.