“Oh my God. Your mother knows too.” She presses her hand to her belly. “I feel sick.”

I reach for her hand, and close mine around it. “This does not affect your job.”

“I cannot even comprehend the words coming out of your mouth.”

I laugh and she is not pleased.

“This is not funny,” she hisses. “This is beyond outrageous.”

“My family is fucked up, Emily.”

“Won’t Derek get me fired?”

“He’s planning to feed you fake information about his takeover plans to give to me.”

“And you know this because of your mother?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re right. Your family really is fucked up.”

“They are, but there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. Frankly, this helps us both.”

“I’m back to the part where I don’t understand the words coming out of your mouth. Because if this is true, I won’t be able to give you proper information.”

I blink, stunned at her reaction. “You aren’t going to question my motives?”

“Are you kidding me? The more I get to know your family, the more I’m amazed you ever gave me a chance to prove I wasn’t working for them.”

“The truth was in your eyes,” I say softly.

“And yours,” she says. In the moments that follow, it is as if trust takes shape in a delicate slice of glass too fragile at this point to be called unbreakable. The fact that this trust is more than I have with my family is bittersweet.

“You wanted to know how this helps us,” I say, not expecting a reply. “If Derek, and my father for all I know, think they have me chasing my tail, they won’t be watching my moves as closely, or have their guard up as readily. You’re an asset they want to keep.”

“I thought you said this was a game for your father? You just made it sound like he supports Derek taking over the company rather than you.”

“He’ll play both sides because it amuses him,” I say. “Where his true allegiance lies I have no idea, and I am pretty sure he’ll go to the grave without that changing.”

“That’s how he wants to leave this world?” she asks, incredulously. “Most people try to make amends with those they love.”

“I’m sure he has the capacity to love, but whatever his agenda, you and I are simply more entertainment for him. Your job is secure and there is no reason we can’t continue to see each other.”

“Continue seeing each other,” she repeats.

“We’re good together. I want to know where that goes, but I also want to know you made a choice, not a decision.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Choices come with options, while decisions are too often forced by circumstances. I’m going to give you choices. Piss my father off? He fires you and legally gives you severance, while my brother has no reason to believe you’re anything but an informant I lost. You’ll be gone and forgotten.”

“Forgotten,” she repeats, her lashes lowering, a defensive act meant to prevent me from seeing what she doesn’t want me to see.

“Not by me,” I say.

She looks at me, and anything I could have read in her stare is no longer present. “Is getting fired what you think I should do?”

“I can’t give you an objective answer.”

“Why?”

“Because the only way we sell you being nothing more than a lost informant to me is if I stay away from you.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Stay. Now ask what I think is smart.”

“Leaving is smart,” she says. “And that would be easier if you just stop making me feel…”

“Making you feel what?”

“Something.”

“Something,” I repeat, and I weigh that word on my tongue, deciding it needs no further definition. But whatever it is, it’s pure in a way that nothing else in my life is—or has been—in far too long and I’m not letting my brother force her into hiding, when it’s clear she’s already doing that on her own.

I stand, taking her with me, my fingers lacing snugly with hers. “Come,” I command softly, leading her up the stairs, through the bedroom and into the bathroom, stopping at the glass-encased shower next to the tub.

Releasing her hand, my fingers find the hem of my T-shirt she’s wearing, caressing it upward, my fingers trailing over her skin to pull it over her head and toss it aside. It hasn’t even hit the ground when my hands are on her slender waist, my gaze raking over her high breasts and pebbled plump red nipples. “You are so damn beautiful,” I murmur, and when I look at her, I let her see the hunger in my stare, the depth of how damn much I want her.

“Shane,” she whispers. There’s no real reason, but she doesn’t need one. She just needs to keep saying it, over and fucking over.

I release her, and her lashes lower, becoming half-moons on her pale cheeks. When she lifts them again, I’ve taken off my clothes, and opened the glass door to the shower, silently inviting her to walk inside. She enters, but not before her gaze flickers over my body, lingering on my cock, and the look might as well be a lick for the way my body pulses and thickens. There is a predatory part of me she stirs, which is about far more than fucking, and when she faces me, just outside the stream of water, I stalk forward, backing her up without a touch until she is in the corner. My hands settle on the wall above her, my cock jutted, thick and hard, between us, but there is more to this moment than sex. “To hell with being objective. You rock my world and I don’t get rocked. I’m damn sure going to do my best to make you do this my way.”