I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking when I kneel next to the most beautiful woman ever to walk the earth and tell her that she’s going to spend half an hour every day as my personal property for the next month. Sex with my employees has always been forbidden, for a thousand reasons, not the least of which is because I refuse to have that kind of tension on the job.

I started shooting holes in that personal standard the moment I invited her to that party.

And I see something in her—something jittery, something uncontrollable, something totally at odds with the collected super-assistant who met me head-on when I strolled into her office on Monday. Who knows? Maybe that was all for show, and this is the woman behind the mask.

I don’t think it is.

There’s something weighing on her. Can it be Sarzó’s unceasing demands? The way she acts would be reason enough for most people to quit inside of a week. Cate has been here for at least a year.

There must be more to it.

Why do you care so much, Hunter? I ask myself in a jeering tone.

Why do I care? When push comes to shove, I’m going to leave Cate behind. She’s too intoxicating, too thrilling—and that makes her too dangerous to let her into my life in any real sense. She seems like a decent enough girl, but let any woman get too close and you won’t be calling the shots.

I can’t have that.

It was my stepmother’s fault, at least partially, that my dad set up his piece-of-shit scheme to take all that money. He could never say no to her, and now he’s doing fifteen years in a minimum-security prison upstate. By the time he gets out, he’ll be almost seventy years old.

I still won’t want to look at his face.

That’s the kind of bullshit I can’t set myself up for under any circumstances.

Not even with Catherine Schaffer.

It doesn’t matter that breathing in her scent turns my heart into a jackhammer in my chest. It doesn’t matter that the sight of her turns me on so much it hurts. It doesn’t matter that I want to fuck her in every possible position, every day, until I die.

Those ridiculous feelings tell me exactly why a future between us is impossible.

That’s why it’s so infuriating, this primal need to be near her, to touch her, to kiss her.

That’s why our new arrangement is so convenient.

Such a win-win, for both of us.

I’ll get her off, loosen up those shoulders, take her to some places I can guarantee she’s never been, and she’ll reward me with everything I want.

I was an idiot to think that one date would be enough.

No.

I need to take her. To have her. To get my fill before I turn her loose.

It works out that she needs something from me, too.

She hasn’t been gone for ten minutes when I realize I’m lacking a crucial piece of information: her cell phone number.

How the hell do I not have that?

I could look it up in the company directory—I have access to all of Basiqué’s files on my computer—but why do that when her voice is only a phone call away?

She answers before the end of the first ring. Cate’s standards for her own work are impossibly high, if this is how she approaches shit like phone calls—and I think it is.

“Catherine Schaffer,” she says, her tone level and professional. I almost miss the hitch in ‘Schaffer.’ My name on the screen does something to her.

“I’m going to need your phone number, Ms. Schaffer.”

“My desk line is—”

“Your personal cell.”

“Oh,” she says softly. “For…?” The way the sentence trails off tells me she might be feeling a little buyer’s remorse over agreeing to our arrangement so quickly. I bet it felt good, to relax the death grip she has on her life right now, but if the obsessive energy that radiates off her is any indication, she’s already coiled tightly around her to-do list for the rest of the evening.

“I’ll need to send you instructions for our meetings. I assume you won’t be at Basiqué all weekend.”

“No, I won’t.” I hear a single, steadying breath come over the receiver. “What kind of instructions?”

God, this woman is a dream. She might not know it yet, but she wants me to take control for this thirty minutes, totally and completely. The longing in her voice gives her away. Even if she’s torn about her loyalty to Sarzó, I don’t think she’ll be able to resist me.

“Any instructions I deem necessary. And you’ll follow them.”

I’m going out on a limb. The first time I used this tone with her, she pressed her shoulder up against the door of my Aston Martin and stopped speaking to me. If she withdraws right now, I’m not going to force her.

“I will.” It’s not a question. It’s an admission.

“Your number, Cate.”

She rattles off the number, and then her voice becomes louder, brighter. “Thank you, Mr. Hunter. I’ll schedule that for Monday.” Sarzó must have come back into the room.

“Don’t be late,” I say into the phone, then set the receiver gently into its cradle.

I have some work to do before tomorrow.

There are things I’ll need if I’m going to push Cate to her limits.