When I fluttered my eyes open, the small snores of a child wafted around my ears. I looked at the clock and realized it was almost 8:30 a.m., and I smiled when it dawned on me that Clara had slept through the entire night. Over two weeks of my time, thus far, had been dedicated to getting up at least four times in the middle of the night, and I felt badly that the only thing she wanted was to be near someone.

It made sense, after going through all of the upheaval in her young life.

I lay there, looking up at the ceiling, and wondered if I should stay in bed. I’d made a habit of cooking breakfast, and I’m sure Mr. Blake would be up soon with his mouth already watering. You could train men like dogs you know, if you took the time to do it. A snap here and a call there, and you could have them begging at your feet for whatever it was you were taking the time to give them.

But all I wanted to do was take a shower.

I scooped Clara up into my arms and padded out of my room. I crossed the hallway and nudged her door open with my hip, and when I had gotten her situated underneath her fuzzy blanket in her crib, I slowly backed out and shut the door behind me. While my bedroom didn’t have its own bathroom, there was a massive one on the opposite end of the penthouse apartment that I had taken as mine to occupy. So, I grabbed a change of clothes, searched for a towel, and slowly made my way to the other end of the house.

The bathroom was massive: a stone, walk-in shower/tub that had a step down into it. Then there were three steps to get to the bottom of the shower, and if you decided to take a bath the heated stones had jets immersed in them that would make you feel as if you were sitting in your very own whirlpool jet hot tub.

My favorite thing was to plug up the tub, turn on the shower, and slowly let the water fill in as the hot, steaming water pounded onto my skin.

I sat back onto the stone level that wound around the tub while the water pummeled me with its relaxing temperature, and I closed my eyes. Every once in a while, I took the time to do something like this: take an extra-long shower or deep condition my hair. I didn’t treat myself to things very often. I thought it was vain and wasteful, considering so many people who had so little. I knew what it was like, scraping around in trash cans, hoping to find a tattered coat to put around your shoulders.

I knew what it was like to jump for joy at finding a quarter on the ground because that meant you could buy a cheap package of noodles to eat on for the next couple of days.

Mr. Blake had excess, and part of me felt guilty for indulging.

I sighed as the steam began to rise up around me. As the condensation on my chest began to drip between the valleys of my breasts, my mind wandered back to last night. I had gone out to pick up a few things for Clara, and I came back in to see Mr. Blake, sleeping on the couch, with his daughter in his arms. He had been adamant about learning childcare over the past couple of weeks, and it was finally nice to have him intrigued about his daughter. I slowly saw the way he began to smile at her, and there were even a couple of times during the night where I would be feeding her, and he would poke his head around the corner to see if we were all right.

But last night, the moon had bathed them both in its light, and I couldn’t help but stare.

I had walked around the couch and just looked at them: Clara, cradled close to his strong chest, had her feet stuck into the throbbing veins of his forearms. His chest had been rising and falling with his steady breaths as Clara shuddered into his body. At first, I thought he was going to wake up when he shifted. He pulled his daughter closer to him, sensing that she was cold even though he didn’t wake up to see it for himself.

And still, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him.

The shadows of the apartment played on his rigid cheekbones and jawline, and his disheveled blonde hair beckoned my fingertips. I wanted to reach out and trace my fingers along the ridge of his strong nose. I wanted to wrap my hands deep within the confines of his hair. Yes, he was a pompous windbag; and yes, he was incredibly privileged; and sure, he had no issues flaunting it.

But he had a soft side that was emerging because of his daughter, and his newfound love for her, and I thought the two of them looked beautiful together –

• Perfect, content, and exactly as they should be.

I cursed myself when I had felt my nipples puckering. The man had been lying there with his daughter, for Christ’s sake! But his forearms boasted of a strength that my body wanted to feel around my waist, and I couldn’t help but stare at how long his legs were… and then imagine how strong they would be pumping between my legs.

“Jesus, Madeline,” I whispered.

Beneath those pulsating muscles, that vacant demeanor, and that lofty idealistic notion of women melting at his feet because of his money, was a tender and gracious man who was finally adapting to a reality he had been unwillingly thrust into just two and a half weeks ago.

God, I wanted to know what his skin tasted like.

The water was filling up around my body in the tub as my hands made their way down my body. My fingertips pinched and massaged my painfully puckered nipples while my other hand danced slowly down my stomach. His low, commanding voice echoed lustfully throughout my mind.

I loved the way my name sounded tumbling from his lips.

Madeline…

“Oh, yes, Mr. Blake,” I whispered.

My legs were parting themselves in the hot water of the cascading shower while my back slid down the wet, dark stone. My fingers parted my aching pussy lips while I hiked my heel up onto the stone seat, anxious to spread my body for him as I imagined his pillow soft lips trailing down every inch of my body.

You taste divine…

“Oh, god,” I choked out.

My fingertips finally found that sensitive nub while my free hand gripped my breast hard. I imagined him lapping me up before sinking his teeth into the skin of my inner thigh, and just as I tossed my head back onto the stone, a series of repetitious thuds pulled me from my wanton stupor.

“Miss Madeline!” Mr. Blake called out. “Is there any more formula for Clara?”

I was panting hard before I slowly swam over and turned the shower off. I hadn’t washed my body or started in on my hair, and it was then that Clara’s crying finally fell on my ear.

Panic and guilt started to waft through my body before I finally caught my breath.

“Um… there should, uh, be some in the cabinet in the kitchen above the coffee pot!” I yelled back.

“I checked there! I didn’t see any!” he called back.

Shit.

That was just fucking great.

I unstopped the tub and piled all of my hair on top of my head. I secured it with a hair tie I always kept around my wrist before I reached for the massive plush towel, and I wrapped it around my body before tucking it in at my chest. I threw the door open, my body still dripping wet from my pointless and wasteful shower, and I started sliding across the dark wood of the hardwood floor as my body left a trail of warm water in its wake.

I began throwing open pantry doors and cabinets before closing them all. I cursed myself underneath my breath as my towel began to slip, and before it could fall to the ground I gripped it tight and went sliding over to the fridge.

“Please, let there be one left…” I begged the universe.

I dug through the cool contents as my skin began to pucker, and my towel was dropping dangerously low on my breasts as the bottom of my ass cheeks slowly began to peek out from underneath the bottom of the towel.

“I found one!” I exclaimed breathlessly before I reached for it and pulled it out of the fridge. I raised it up in victory and quickly turned towards Mr. Blake, and it wasn’t until I registered his facial expression that I realized what had happened.

I was standing in the middle of his kitchen in nothing but a towel.

The look in Mr. Blake’s eye was two ticks short of primal. His eyes were raking all along my body before they stopped to admire the bare smoothness of my legs. I clenched the bottle tightly in my hand while his eyes slowly drew upwards to meet mine; and when I finally found my voice again, I spoke.

“I found one, Mr. Blake,” I breathed.

My body continued to drip on the floor around me, and I watched him closely as he started towards me. His eyes were dark and his jaw was set, and as he cradled Clara’s little body in his arm, his long, strong legs carried him so close I could feel his body heat radiating against my cool skin. It puckered my arms and legs, raising goose bumps and causing my neck to flush. Then I heard his voice finally make sound.

It was low and gravelly, like a dark green Jaguar humming over newly-paved asphalt. I felt his hand slowly reach out towards mine as he wrapped his long, dexterous fingers around my hand.

“It’s ‘Derek’,” he commanded.

My entire body physically shivered in his presence while a shadowed grin broke out around the edges of his cheeks. He broke my gaze to put the bottle in Clara’s mouth, and while she gulped down the last of what we had in her home for her, he turned his icy Arctic eyes back to me as my knees began to shiver.

It was as if his gaze was leaching the very calcium from my bones.

“We should probably go get her some more,” he said lowly.

And all I could do was stare at him and nod.

“Why don’t you go put on some clothes and we can head on to the store?” he smirked.

And there was that same pompous windbag I knew him to be.

But somehow, even though a grin of embarrassment broke out upon my lips, it didn’t bother me.

“Give me a minute to get ready and we can head out, Mr. B-”

“‘Derek’,” he corrected.

“... Derek,” I whispered.

“Take all the time you need,” he smiled.

I shuffled out on one side of him and felt his skin brush up against mine. I swallowed hard at the electricity that went shooting through my body. Once I was a good distance around the corner from the kitchen, I braced myself against the hallway wall. I panted for air, my body swaying from the encounter of a few mere seconds ago, and in my dazed stupor I hadn’t realized that Derek had stepped around the corner and was watching me –

• Silently, like a predator stalking its prey.

I straightened myself up and rolled my shoulders back before I found my footing. I dodged the puddles of now-cold water on the floor as I made my way back to the bathroom, and I settled for washing my more private areas at the sink with a soapy washcloth. It wasn’t the best, but it would do under the circumstances. Then I dried myself off, put on the outfit I’d chosen for the day, and piled my hair one more time on top of my head before I found my way back out to the front door.

Derek already had Clara in her car seat, and they were waiting for me at the front door.

“I hope you two didn’t wait too long,” I smiled as I tried to alleviate the tension thickening between my boss and me.

I had to keep remembering that fact.

Derek was my boss and nothing else.

It didn’t matter that my skin was now crawling underneath his gaze.

It didn’t matter that my nipples were puckering at the smile he was now giving me.

It didn’t matter that my eyes were struggling not to linger on his exposed forearms.

All that mattered was that he was my boss, and I was his employee, and the intermediary that gave me this position had only one rule for her entire company:

Never get attached.

“We’d wait as long as necessary,” Derek smiled. I caught his gaze one last time before I slung my coat around my shoulders, and his eyes grazed my body one last time before opening the front door for me.

“Ladies first,” and he waved me through.