Figuring that Deacon would come looking for me after I’d blown out of The Black Sheep like a puff of smoke, I decided the best course of action was to avoid my house at all costs.

My parents’ place was out, since all it would take was one look at my face and they’d know something was up. And my folks could be relentless in a loving, totally overbearing kind of way. I’d eventually cave to their nagging and tell them what happened, only to have to live through their crushing disappointment in me.

I couldn’t run to any of my girls, seeing as they were all blissfully shacked up with their own guys. No doubt they’d see the sex hair and rumpled clothes and dig in like a dog with a bone. I loved those girls more than anything, but they had a knack for getting into business that wasn’t theirs to get into. Hell, they’d proved that by making up the surgeon on Thanksgiving.

So a hotel was my only real option. I called into work sick the next day, then spent the rest of my weekend holed up in a cushy hotel room, trying to combat my muscle-straining guilt with spa treatments. It didn’t work. After an hour-long massage, a detoxifying mud bath, and multiple trips to the steam room, I still felt like the shittiest human being on the planet, only with smooth, soft skin and looser limbs. No amount of scrubbing, buffing, or polishing was going to wash away my shame.

I was a terrible person.

Monday finally rolled around and, sick of my own company, I sucked it up and went home to get ready for work. My staff seemed oblivious to the turmoil swirling around inside of me, and I did my best to shove my discomfort to the back of my mind and buried myself in my job. Thankfully, taking the previous Friday off to lick my wounds meant there was a shit-ton of work piled on my desk, just waiting for me.

I worked until I lost track of everything happening around me. I was so consumed that I nearly jumped out of my seat when my cell phone rang, scaring the ever-loving hell out of me.

“Shit,” I breathed, placing my hand on my chest to steady my rapidly beating heart. When I reached for my phone resting on my desk, I noticed that the sky outside my office window was completely dark. Spinning in my chair, I saw that the office had already been shut down for the night. Most of the lights were off, only a few lamps illuminating the cubicles and other offices outside my door. The clock in the corner of my laptop screen showed it was after nine. I’d worked over thirteen hours straight without much more than a bathroom break.

Snatching the phone up, I engaged the call and put it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Hey!” Daphne chirped through the line. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all weekend.”

Resting my elbow on the desk, I dropped my forehead into my hand and began rubbing at my dry, scratchy eyes. “Hey, sorry. I was… busy all weekend. Working.”

“You okay?” she asked after a few seconds of silence.

I could’ve continued lying, but the weight of this… thing on my conscience was just too much to bear. “No. I’m not okay. I’m a terrible person. A terrible, awful person. I’m the scum of the earth.”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” she said, breaking through my self-flagellation. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“I slept with Deacon,” I whispered, even going so far as to cover my mouth with my hand like there were people around who could hear me.

“You what?” she screeched, nearly bursting my eardrum. “Oh my God! Oh my God! This is so great! I knew you two were still circling each other. I knew it! I can’t wait to tell the girls—”

“No!” I snapped. “No, you can’t tell anyone. And it’s not great, Daph. Have you forgotten about his girlfriend?”

More silence, then “Oh shit.”

“Yeah. Oh shit’s right,” I grumbled. “It just… happened. We were hanging out, talking, and things just escalated. Leah totally slipped my mind. I wasn’t thinking. Then she walked in—”

“No!” she gasped.

“Yes,” I hissed. “Caught us with our pants down. Literally.” I dropped my head into my hand again as my nose and eyes started to burn. “I’m the worst kind of person, Daphne. I helped Deacon cheat on his girlfriend.”

“Wait. Hold on, this isn’t all on you. I mean, Deacon was just as much a participant as you were. What did he have to say about it?”

Collapsing back in my chair, I stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t know. I kind of ran out of there like my ass was on fire. Then I shut off my phone, avoided my house, and stayed in a hotel all weekend.”

She was quiet for so long I thought the call might have dropped. “Daph? You there?”

“I’m here.”

“Well?” I snapped when she didn’t give me more than that. “I just confessed to being a cheating hussy. Don’t you have anything to say about that?”

“Sure I do. Firstly, you’re not a hussy. And I don’t think people even use the word hussy anymore.”

I was going to lose my mind. “Can you be serious for one second?”

“I’m being dead serious. No one says that. Slut and skank, sure, but definitely not hussy.”

Groaning into the phone, I said, “I’m hanging up now.”

“Hold on! There’s just one thing I need to know. It’s super important.”

Hesitantly, I asked, “What is it?”

“How was the sex? I always imagined Deacon was a take-charge kind of guy in the bedroom. Please tell me he lives up to my imagination.”

“Ohmigod! Why are we even friends!” The faint ding of the elevators sounded after my shout, alerting me to someone else on the floor. I tuned out Daphne’s rambling as a shadowy figure appeared through the wall of glass at the front of my office. A moment later his face came into view.

My lungs froze at the sight of Deacon coming my way. After all these years, he still had that relaxed swagger that drew everyone’s attention, even in spite of the thunderous expression on his face.

“Oh shit,” I whispered. I’d forgotten all about the phone at my ear until Daphne asked, “What’s going on?”

“He’s here,” I continued in a hushed voice as a very pissed-off Deacon got closer.

“Who’s there? Deacon?”

“Yes. Gotta go.” I ended the call in the middle of Daphne’s objection, placing the phone down just as my office door crashed open.

Oh shit.

His jaw might as well have been carved out of granite with how hard it was. “Hi.”

“Hi?” he asked, the menacing growl of that one word sending a shiver down my spine. “You ran out on me four days ago, disappeared into thin fucking air, and all you have to say is hi?”

“Uh….” A trickle of fear shimmered through me, but even with Deacon practically breathing fire, I still couldn’t help but notice how insanely hot he was.

He stalked to my desk, slamming his hands onto the glass surface. “You’ve got some serious fucking explaining to do,” he barked. “What the fuck, Fiona?”

“What the fuck?” I was so taken aback at his sudden appearance that I couldn’t get my brain to function.

“Yeah. What the fuck!” he repeated on a loud boom. “You bolted so goddamn fast that my cum was still dripping out of you. So what… the… fuck!”

I wasn’t sure why that set me off, but the vulgarity and anger in his words made me snap. “Don’t be crude!”

Deacon’s chin jerked back in shock, his voice dropping ominously as he asked, “Are you kidding me?”

I stood up, mirroring his stance by putting my hands on the desk and leaning in closer. “No, I’m not kidding you. You want to be pissed at me, go for it. You want to tear into me, have at it—”

“Oh, I intend to!” he bellowed, cutting into my tirade. “Four days. Four goddamn days without a word from you. I’ve been by your house. I’ve talked to your folks. Where the hell have you been?”

Standing tall, I raked my hands through my hair in agitation. “I needed to think.”

“You needed to think?”

“Gah! Will you stop repeating everything I say? Yes, I needed to think!”

One corner of his mouth tipped in a vicious smirk as he straightened and crossed his arms over his chest. “Hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but the minute I sank my cock inside you, everything about our relationship changed. You no longer have the luxury of running away scared with your tail tucked between your legs.”

I rocked back on one foot, the waves of anger rolling off Deacon and crashing right into me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re mine,” he growled. “After thirty fucking years, you’re finally mine. You need to think, or breathe, or take the time to twist what happened between us in that head of yours and turn it into something fucked up, fine, but you do it with me. No more running away.”

Good Lord, Daphne wasn’t wrong about Deacon being a take-charge type of guy. And apparently it wasn’t only in the bedroom. I’d never seen this domineering, alpha side to him before.

I should’ve been freaked out. Watching Deacon go all caveman should’ve pissed me right the hell off.

So why was it that instead of being angry, I was more turned on than I’d ever been in my life?

Pushing that thought from my mind, I planted my hands on my hips, throwing out as much attitude as I could possibly muster, and demanded, “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he gritted. “And another thing, that bullshit blind date your girls made up? That’s not happening. So you might as well go ahead and get them off whatever mission they’re on to find you a man, because as of Thursday night, you already have one.”

My jaw dropped, and I was pretty sure my brain just exploded all over the place.