The next week was the longest of Elise’s life. Also the happiest. And it wasn’t just do to with Jay. As his office and lobby neared completion, a growing sense of pride in her work took root. She’d gotten two additional jobs in the building as a result of her work on the Cohen & Smith project, and Jay swore up and down that he hadn’t put anyone up to it, that her work sold itself.

But okay, it was mostly to do with Jay. It was a strange position they were in. They had basically admitted that they were going to have sex. Just not yet. Which made for a…heated dynamic. He kept calling himself uptight, but honestly, it was sexy as hell, both the waiting itself and watching him exercise such relentless discipline over himself. Because she would have crumbled the moment he crooked his finger.

There was just something so incredibly hot about that kind of control. It literally made her feel weak in the knees sometimes.

“How many more days?” he asked gruffly, turning from where he’d been standing by his door. They’d just received delivery of the guest chairs, and he’d been seeing the delivery guys out. “You said two months, and it’s been two months.”

She sighed. She’d been doing a lot of that lately. She thought about telling him the rugs didn’t matter, that the project was as good as done, but she had tried variations on this argument all week, and she knew he wouldn’t go for it. “The area rugs are slightly delayed. They’re supposed to come in Friday”—that was two days from now—“and then you can…”

“Then I can what?”

She swallowed hard. “Then you can sign off on everything.”

He leveled the intensity look at her—the sexy-intense look had returned since their little chat at her apartment—and she thought he was going to call her on the fact that “you can sign off on everything” wasn’t how she’d intended to end that sentence. He didn’t, though. He merely walked over to the sitting area in his office—which was looking really good if she did say so herself—and said, “Scrabble?”

She laughed. “Yes.” If she couldn’t do what she really wanted to do, Scrabble was the perfect consolation prize.

He passed out the tiles, and as she assessed hers, she had to laugh again. Did she dare lay down the word that was jumping out at her? Well, hell, why not? They’d basically spent the week eye fucking each other anyway as they rode the job out, adhering to his letter-of-the-law no-sex-while-working-together hang-up.

So, trying not to blush—and judging by the rising temperature of her cheeks, failing—she laid down CLIT.

Then she lifted her gaze to him. He was already looking at her, eyebrows raised like she was a naughty school girl.

“What?” She batted her eyelashes. “It was my best option.”

He did not speak, but his nostrils flared. He looked down at his tiles for a moment. Then, slowly, he got up and walked to the door. Was he going to leave? Crap, maybe she’d gone too far. She should have been more sensitive about respecting his boundaries. She should have—

Click.

The sound of him locking the door was, objectively, not very loud. But its reverberations echoed through her suddenly aching body like it had been a bomb.

He stared at her as he walked back—still at the same measured pace—to the sofa. She felt like she was being stalked. Like they were in a nature documentary where the predator’s approach was being shown in slow motion. Except instead of getting killed, she was going to …get her comeuppance.

In a really good way.

She exhaled a shaky breath.

Once seated, he kept his attention half on her, half on the board as slowly, so slowly, building off her L, he laid down three of his tiles: LICK.

She gasped, which was silly because she had started this.

He was back to looking at her with that maddening, seemingly calm expression. But the nostril flaring was back too, in a big way.

Well, hell, if she was in, she was all in. So she looked directly at him and said, “Yes, please, if you don’t mind.”

She should have been embarrassed to be so bold. She’d never outright asked for anything like that before, but suddenly the idea of him with his head between her legs had lodged itself in her brain, and she was pretty sure it was going to stick there for a good long time.

“Not only do I not mind, I insist.” He smoldered at her. Smoldered. It was the only word for it. “The rugs will be here Friday, you say?”

Well, crap. She’d thought for a moment there, with the door locking, that he was going to give in. But no, he was still hung up on the rugs. “Give or take. You can, ah, let me know when they arrive and I’ll clear my schedule.”

He nodded, the picture of seriousness. But then his voice lowered an octave from where it had been as he asked, “And then I can lick your clit?”

A strangled cry erupted from her throat as she slumped back against the sofa. “So actually hooking up with me contravenes your personal code of ethics, but somehow talking about licking my clit is allowable professional behavior?”

She’d been kidding, but his brow furrowed. Deeply. “Shit. You’re right. This is sexual harassment territory.”

She held her hands up. “No! I was kidding! I’m the one who started this! Harass me!” He still looked unconvinced. She could practically see him beating himself up. She did not want him to get spooked and shut down the sexy talk. It was all she had to hang onto until those damn rugs arrived.

So she said the first suggestive thing that popped into her head, aiming to get them back on track. “But you’re going to fuck me too, right, not just go down on me?” She shocked herself.

She liked that she had shocked herself, though. It was reassuring, in a weird way, to be this far outside her comfort zone. If they’d been all moony and romantic with each other, she would have started to panic. That would have been too much like boyfriend territory.

She must have shocked him, too, because he inhaled sharply. “Elise,” he said, all low and irritated, kind of like he was talking to a kid. But also not.

“What?” She feigned innocent confusion. “You don’t want to fuck me?”

“I want what you want,” he said, speaking through his hands, which had come up to cradle his face, like the world was too much—or maybe she was too much. It made her feel powerful.

“I want what you want.” Because she did, suddenly. She had the distinct sense that putting herself in Jay’s capable hands would be…severely rewarding.

He looked up sharply at that, his eyes practically sparking. He liked that. Suddenly she could imagine all that control and discipline he exerted over his life flaring up in…other contexts. She squeezed her thighs together against the throbbing that had started between them. “You like being in charge, don’t you?”

“I’ve been known to get a little…bossy.”

“Hmm.” She shifted in her seat and reached for her tiles. If she wanted to keep up with the apparently dirty turn the game was taking, all she had was COY. She had a random mess of letters—two Ys, an O, an E and very few useful consonants. But COY could work. She took her time laying down the word, trying to embody it. “Bossy sounds just fine to me.”

His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “And yet, you don’t seem like the type who follows the path laid out for her.”

“Are you talking about my rift with my family?” He nodded. “Because that’s completely different.”

“Oh, so you just smile and good-naturedly take orders in other contexts?”

She leveled her own stare at him. “Depends who I’m taking orders from.”

But then she suddenly realized that he might not be teasing. It might be that he’d paid attention. That he knew about and respected her quest to remake her life. And that was the key word, wasn’t it? Respect. But she was pretty sure the gentlemanly side of Jay, the part that was making them wait until she was officially not working for him anymore, was somehow worried that he was going to accidentally oppress her in the style of her father or something.

“Jay,” she said, dropping all teasing. “I’m really excited to have sex with you. I’m not going to lie—part of that excitement is about the fact that what you’re calling your ‘bossiness’ turns me on. A lot. But don’t make this into some big psychological thing that it isn’t. Context is everything.”

“Jesus Christ, Elise.” He tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling. “I’m not going to make it to Friday.”

She chuckled. Who knew she would enjoy torturing him so much? “I was just being honest.” Which was still an unfamiliar sensation. “I’m still kind of marveling over how I can just say whatever I want to you. It’s weird.”

“You said that, but I’m still having trouble believing that it’s all that unusual for you.”

Jay pretty much said whatever he wanted most of the time. But it was different for her. Probably in part because women were socialized to be deferential, to not make waves. And in part because she in particular had been socialized that way. It wasn’t like she had a lot of practice with people valuing what she had to say. Of course, with her friends, she could be honest, but that was different. They didn’t look at her with a singular focus, like they were hanging on every word that came out of her mouth.

“It is unusual! It’s like…radical honesty.” Radical honesty. She liked that phrase. She liked the feeling of radical honesty—so much she laughed from sheer delight. “I’ve never really done that.”

“Well.” He waggled his eyebrows. “It suits you. Even if it does sort of torture me.” Then, after a wink, he turned his attention to his tiles. “I’ve got nothing. I’m going to have to do an exchange.”

As he swapped new tiles for old, she smiled at him, her client and her friend. Her soon-to-be lover. If this damn job ever got done. But given his immovable stance, there was nothing to do but take her turn at Scrabble. She studied her tiles. She had nothing that would continue the sexy theme they had going. But she could build off the Y in COY to play YET. Oh well, the suggestive streak couldn’t go on forever.

He raised his eyebrows. “As in, are the fucking rugs here yet?”

Or maybe it could. She cracked up. That was another cool thing about Jay. He could shift so effortlessly between filthy and funny.

“Pretty much.”

The rugs came two days later just after lunch.

They had been the longest two days of Jay’s life.

When Patricia poked her head in and said, “There are some rugs here. Do you want them placed now or do you want to hang onto them and do it after hours?”

Jay shot up from his desk. Rugs. His new favorite word. “Either way. You handle it.”

“Okaaay…”

He supposed it seemed a strange request. He was known for being a perfectionist-slash-micromanager. And he hadn’t involved Patricia in any aspects of the design project. No, that project had been his.

Had been—past tense.

“Cancel the rest of my appointments for the day.”

“But you have the Carlises coming in at three!” The alarm in her voice was palpable. The Carlises were multimillionaires—and high-maintenance multimillionaires at that.

“Something came up,” he called over his shoulder as he strode out of the office.

He used one hand to obsessively punch the button for the elevator and the other to slide his phone out of his back pocket.

Shit. Worst timing ever. She’d been hoping her estimate had been off and that the rugs would be even more delayed. But no. Here it was Friday, and the rugs were right on time. What was she going to say to him? She winced as she sat up enough to type a response.

Home in bed, more specifically. She’d had to cancel a consult this afternoon, and she was lying in the dark waiting for enough time to pass that she could take another dose of painkillers. How ironic that she was literally in bed when those stupid rugs arrived.

Ugh. She wanted to scream. To punch things. But she was too wiped out to do either. She tried not to let herself sink into a pit of self-pity every month, but this wasn’t fair. She started typing but then erased it. What could she say? I’m sorry, kind sir, but my rogue uterine lining will make it impossible for me to entertain any gentlemen callers this evening.

Well, okay. She’d just tell him in person. Let him see the real her. Their relationship had been characterized by radical honesty, right? He wasn’t going to be her boyfriend, but she hoped that he wasn’t thinking of them hooking up as a one-time thing. Even though they had yet to have sex, she was pretty sure that once was not going to be enough for her. And if he felt the same, which she hoped he did, he was going to have to know that she spent a couple days every month curled up in the fetal position wracked with pain. And hopefully he wouldn’t be too put off by her “lady issues,” as her father had called them.

The sound of her buzzer sliced through the apartment. When she’d been apartment hunting, part of the appeal of this particular one had been that it was in a heritage house that was more than a hundred years old. It had character.

But it did not have a doorman. Or even an intercom system. Damn, what she wouldn’t give right now to be in a high rise like her friend Wendy.

The buzzer went off again.

She heaved herself off her bed, her eyes tearing, and started plodding down to the front door.

Something was wrong with Elise.

Jay knew it the moment she opened the door. It took him only a nanosecond to go from cursing her for taking so damn long to answer the door to being seized with worry over what was the matter.

“Hi.” Her voice was scratchy—and not in a good way. Her face was pink—and not in a good way. She held one arm tightly across her stomach like she was trying to keep her guts contained.

“What’s wrong?”

Was she...crying? Worry flash froze into panic. “Elise. Sweetheart. What’s wrong?” He rested his hands on her shoulders and crouched so he could see into her eyes. Tears were indeed gathering in them.

She sort of sagged against him as she whispered, “I can’t have sex with you.”

“Okay,” he said immediately, even as, on the inside, every single one of his cells stood up and howled in protest. “I’ll go, but I need to know you’re okay before I do. Can I call one of your friends?”

She smiled weakly. “I can’t have sex with you today.” The clarification calmed those riled cells somewhat, but he was still confused. And worried. “You want to come up, and I’ll explain?”

Upstairs, she sank immediately onto the sofa. This was the first time he’d been here that she hadn’t offered him something to drink. She was a natural hostess—usually.

“I have endometriosis.” She smiled weakly, and a hint of her old sassy self appeared on her face. “I’m in a lot of pain right now in my….internal sexual regions.”

“Endometriosis,” he echoed. That had something to do with periods, he thought.

She answered his unspoken question. “It’s when the lining of your uterus grows on the outside instead of the inside. On other organs, usually. And whereas in the inside, it, uh, builds up and sheds every month… Is this too much squicky lady talk?”

He shook his head vehemently. “No. Not at all.” To his surprise, he desperately needed to know what was going on. He wanted to know everything about Elise.

“Yeah, well, so the stuff on the outside thickens and builds up like it would before a period, but then there’s nowhere for it to go. Scar tissue builds up. It…hurts a lot.”

“Can they do anything for it?”

“They have. It’s actually better than it used to be.”

That was hard to imagine. His skepticism must have shown in his face, because she smiled. “Yeah, I’ve had surgery for it, and that helped a lot, at least initially. It seems to be getting worse again now. But it used to be just horrific. For years. Nobody believed me.”

“What?” Okay, that was just dumb. Anyone could see she was in pain, and if this was a milder version of what she’d experienced before? It boggled the mind.

“Yeah, doctors would tell me it was just bad period pain—which I’ve since learned is really common with endo. Then one day in university I was hanging out with my friends when it was really bad. Gia was sort of used to it, because we spent so much time together. But Wendy was so alarmed, she called an ambulance. I tried to talk her out of it, but I’m glad she prevailed, because there was a doctor at the emergency room who finally took it seriously. I got some scans, a diagnosis, and, later, a bunch of my insides hacked out.”

Wow. It was a lot to take in. His heart broke for her, enduring all this pain, at the same time that he was pissed at all the people who hadn’t taken her seriously.

“I’m really sorry, Jay.” She sounded so defeated. “I know we were both, uh…primed for this.”

“Sweetheart, don’t be sorry.” He wanted to sling an arm around her, to hold her close, but he wasn’t sure if that would hurt. So he settled for laying a palm lightly against her cheek. There was still the low hum of attraction he always felt around her, but for the most part, his lust had dissipated. It had been replaced by something that was both softer and stronger. “There’s plenty of time.”

“You’ll wait?”

“Uh, yes.”

He would wait forever, he realized with a start.

Wow. But that was a thought to be examined later.

She blew out a breath that seemed like relief.

“Did you think it was the day the rugs arrived or nothing?”

She shrugged.

Maybe it was that her defenses were down because of the pain, but he thought he had seen a flash of vulnerability, of uncertainty, in that shrug. “Nope. We’re just going to extend our torture a little more. How long do these bouts usually last?”

“Two or three days.”

“And what would you normally do while you’re not feeling well?” He kind of wanted to march her back to the emergency room and demand relief on her behalf, but of course that wasn’t the correct course of action.

“I’d lay in my bed and watch stupid TV to try to distract myself from the pain.”

“All right, then. You mind company?”

The smile that lit her face changed it, chased away the shadows. She looked like her old self. “I would love company.”

“What’s on?” He followed her into her bedroom. She was sort of shuffling, clearly still in pain, and it damn near killed him to watch.

He’d never been in her bedroom. Like the living room, and like her personal style, it was a mixture of exuberant and restrained. The walls were a bright, almost lime green, but pretty much everything else—lamps, rugs, a small desk—were quiet neutrals or subtle patterns. The bed, sitting on a raised platform, was a messy jumble of white linens and pillows. It looked like an unkempt cloud in a green sky.

She picked up a remote and aimed it at a small TV mounted on the wall. It came to life displaying her Netflix queue. “I was watching Grace and Frankie. But we can switch to something else.”

“Nah. That sounds perfect. My mom is the world’s biggest Jane Fonda fan, so I’ve been meaning to check this show out. Mom used to try to make me do her old Jane Fonda workout videos along with her, but thankfully there wasn’t enough room in the trailer for both of us to do it.” He kicked off his shoes and bounced around in a parody of aerobics then dived onto the empty bed, hoping to elicit a laugh.

It worked. The bed dipped as she eased herself on, but her smile became a wince. Slowly, she arranged herself next to him. They were lying side by side, almost—but not quite—touching. She turned her head and aimed a smile at him so incandescent it took his breath away.

Yeah, this was not how he had imagined this afternoon going. At all. But somehow, impossibly, he wasn’t the least bit disappointed. In fact, this felt…exactly right.

Elise had never had so much fun while enduring so much pain. Well, fun wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t deep enough. Jay’s steady, solid, caring presence—his persistence—felt like mercy, like a grace she hadn’t earned. She luxuriated in it, which should have been impossible given that luxury shouldn’t be able to coexist with pain. But somehow, with him, it did.

After a bunch of episodes of the show, the room had started to grow dark as evening descended, and he insisted that she eat something. She’d tried to demur, but he wouldn’t have it. And after listening to him bang around in her kitchen for fifteen minutes, he returned with a grilled cheese sandwich.

And she felt better after eating it. Stronger.

The front door buzzer rang as she was finishing them up. Jay jumped up from his spot next to her. “That’s for me. That was the last of your bread, so I ordered a pizza for myself.” He paused. “Was that okay?” His brow furrowed like he was worried he had overstepped.

“Of course.” She grinned listening to him tromping down the stairs, thrilled that he was apparently planning to stay on into the evening.

When he reappeared a few minutes later with some pizza on a plate, he was also holding Yahtzee.

“Now this is a classic,” he said appreciatively. “I don’t think I’ve played this for thirty years.”

She scooched herself up against the headboard and made a “bring it” motion with her fingers.

“You up for it?”

“Yeah, if I get too wrecked to lift my hand to roll a pair of dice, just take me out to the pasture and shoot me.”

He frowned. He was so uptight sometimes—his friends and colleagues were right. But she loved it, as it was so often in service of her. She thought back to their confrontation with her father, when he’d gotten all weird and snippy, then to his insistence that they not sleep together until the design job was done.

Jay was a very good kind of uptight.

“I’m kidding,” She patted the bed. He sat, though he still looked overly serious. So she grabbed the game and said, “Youngest and prettiest goes first.”

That did it—he turned his frown upside down. “But of course.”

After the game—annoyingly, she lost—she laid back down. He would probably leave soon. She really, really didn’t want him to. Having him here had made the day so much more bearable.

“You tired?” he asked.

She tried to say no, but a yawn overtook her. Busted.

He would leave, now that he thought he was keeping her up.

And sure enough, he sat back and uncoiled his legs—he’d been sitting cross-legged for Yahtzee. But he merely shuffled around until he was lying back against one of her pillows. She’d been lying on her side on top of the duvet, but now he was tugging on it—he wanted her to get under the covers.

He was going to tuck her in. Of course he was. He did stuff like that.

But to her astonishment, when she got under the covers, he did too.

He moved right up next to her and opened his arms.

Tears threatened, and her throat tightened. This probably wasn’t a good idea. This was pretty boyfriend-y. But she was tired, in pain, and powerless to resist. So she surrendered. She nestled herself into his embrace and went to sleep.