I wake up to Ben’s steely gray eyes. I let my eyes luxuriate on his body, on the faint two-day stubble on his chin. He is a perfect specimen of a man, the kind of guy you wouldn’t be surprised to see on the cover of People Magazine’s sexiest people edition.

He leans in to kiss me, and I let him. He stayed in my apartment last night. It was just the two of us, like he said. I felt like I was giving something up to even let him in. But when I looked at him, it was impossible to turn him away.

The taste of him is warm and rich. The arousal rises from deep within my core, spreading to the reaches of my sex. I feel the slickness start to rise as he cups one breast and then the other. His cock is hard, and my mouth waters for it.

My body feels awake, ready, lithe, and supple. And I’ve never felt that way before, not with any man. That’s why I let him come in.

In the deepest part of me, I want nothing more than to sleep with him. No, that’s too mundane a way to say it—I want to fuck him. Ride him. Take him inside of me and feel him there until he comes, warm and rich and pulsing.

I’ve never wanted anything in my life as much as I want that—not even my own freedom.

He kisses down the side of my jawline to my collarbone, tracing his tongue there. His mouth finds one breast and then the other, his tongue exploring my skin. I let out a sigh somewhere from deep inside of me.

“You want to go again?”

No. I shouldn’t. He needs to be honest with you. He hasn’t even mentioned a single friend of his. He’s never had you back to his place.

But the wet heat of my sex is greedy, needful. Now that I’ve had his fingers and his tongue, I need more. Like a drug.

He shifts his body and pushes me down on the bed, spreading my thighs apart with an expert hand. His fingers hover there, waiting, and I can feel the heat of his closeness.

“Yes,” I moan. “Again.”

“Good,” he says, kissing his way over the plane of my stomach and down toward the mound between my thighs, “because I need to taste you.”

He drops his gaze and moves his mouth toward my sex, his tongue exploring my delicate outer folds and carefully avoiding my clit. I feel his tongue dart inside of me, spreading me ever so slightly apart, and then he moves down to my ass. I spread wider, welcoming the warm waves of pleasure that roll up my spine as he licks my ass. I writhe, hands moving instinctively to his hair, pulling it as he dips his tongue inside of me. He moves upward again, pulling my clit between his teeth. He starts working, lapping and rolling just the way I like. My moans become louder, and my body quakes.

He slips one finger, and then a second, inside of me, thrusting them in and out of my pussy as he brings me closer and closer to orgasm.

No one has ever made me feel this way. Not once.

This is why people go insane over someone they let into their bed. This is what drives men and women crazy.

As my brain tips into oblivion, I moan, loud and long, not caring if everyone in my apartment complex can hear me.

I come hard as he works his magic, every doubtful thought banished from my head. He doesn’t come up for air until I’ve come once more.

By then, my legs are shaking and my body is utterly spent.

* * *

“Let’s go to that little Chinese restaurant down by the water.”

“We went there last week, Ben,” I say cautiously. “It’s in a weird location. No one goes there.”

“I like it,” he says. He has his shirt halfway buttoned up, and his sleeves rolled up on each arm. I keep looking at the contours of his muscles and imagining him close to me again. I try to push the thought out of my mind. I’m a businesswoman, from a long line of plain people, good people. And nothing about Ben feels right unless we’re in bed together.

I might not be as savvy about the world as some people are, but I know when I’m being swindled.

“What about Cafe Europa? I like their chocolate pie.” I pour Ben a cup of coffee and put it next to him. He’s scrolling through The Wall Street Journal on his phone.

“That’s downtown,” he says absently. “Loud. Noisy. Lots of people.”

“You live in New York. That sort of goes with the territory.” I pause. “Or do you? I wouldn’t know. We haven’t been back to your place.”

He raises his eyes and looks at me. “It’s not as nice as your place. It’s a bachelor pad.”

He has a response for everything, doesn’t he? He has since day one.

“Do you have roaches crawling in your couch or something?” I ask.

He frowns. “Of course not. I’m not an animal.”

Except in the bedroom. My bedroom, every time.

“So why haven’t I ever been there? I don’t care if it’s small, or in a bad neighborhood. It’s your place, which means I want to see it. To be there with you.”

He looks at me but says nothing. I can practically hear the gears whirring in his head as he tries to come up with another story, and I’m reminded of what he told me: You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met before. At the time, it made my heart flutter; now it makes my stomach sink as I realize it was just another line. Who knows how many other women he’s used it on?

“Is it because I’ll find someone else’s toothbrush on the bathroom counter?” I ask quietly.

His eyes widen. “No! It’s not like that at all!”

“Then tell me what it is like, Ben! Why haven’t I met any of your friends? And why do you always make an excuse not to meet mine? I know we said we were just keeping it casual, but this is starting to seem more like an affair.” I fix him with a look. “What is it you’re trying so hard to hide, Ben?”

He breaks away from my gaze and pulls on his shoes. The cup of coffee is still untouched on the table.

“Look, I’ve just got a lot going on right now,” he says. “There’s a lot of stuff I’m not proud of. And I don’t want you to see that stuff. Not yet.”

His eyes are pleading when he finally looks at me again, but I simply cross my arms over my chest. I didn’t let my guard down for him just to have him turn around and throw up walls around himself. This was a mistake, and I knew it from the start. A few trembling orgasms aren’t enough compensation for being strung along like a fish on a line. I did not work so hard and so long to get where I am just to turn around and have myself brought low by a guy and his cock.

His big, beautiful cock. And those rough hands running all over me. And that magical tongue—

Stop it! Focus, Sarah!

I take a deep breath as I follow him to the door. This isn’t where I wanted to go, but deep down, didn’t I suspect that this was going to happen right from the beginning? I might as well just rip off the bandage and get on with my life.

“This isn’t working for me, Ben,” I sigh. “I don’t think you should call me anymore.”

His eyes are saucers now, and the lost puppy look he gives me is like an icicle in my chest. My mind immediately goes to his stories about his childhood, and how he never had any stability in his life. But I have to stay strong—if he’s not willing to be honest with me, this thing is never going to go anywhere.

I know that in my head, and that’s what I have to listen to now. I didn’t get to where I am today by following my hormones.

“Sarah,” he pleads. “I can… I mean, it’s … look, it’s just going to take some time, that’s all—”

Time. Sure. And he’ll probably tell me the same thing when I ask him again six months from now. I hold up my hand to stop him. If I let him keep going, I’ll cave, I know it.

“Please just go,” I say. “There’s nothing you can tell me that will change my mind right now. Maybe I’ll call you sometime, but for now, we need to not be together.”

I watch his Adam’s apple bob as it works through a hard swallow, but he doesn’t reply. My own stomach is in knots as he crosses the threshold of the door and turns to face me. His hand reaches out and brushes my cheek, and suddenly me knees are water.

As soon as he takes his hand away, I close the door on him, still staring at me. When I’m sure he’s gone, I finally slump to the floor and start sobbing harder than I ever have since that day when I left my family to begin my new life on my own.

Except this time, there’s no excitement to help balance it out. This time, there’s only sadness.

* * *

I stare hard at the latest numbers on the sheet in my hand in the vain hope that it will somehow force them to make sense, or even better, change into different numbers. Beside me, Jenna looks like she’s at a funeral.

“Please tell me these were accidentally reversed,” I say, taking a seat behind my desk. Suddenly I’m having a hard time standing.

“I wish,” she sighs, sitting across from me. “Those are the real numbers.”

I’m stunned by how quickly things have managed to go off the rails. Business in the online world, especially one as tied to media as PinkBook, is far more vulnerable to the fluctuations of public opinion than other ventures. When it takes off, it takes off quickly and with a steep trajectory. And when it drops, it drops the same way.

“I honestly didn’t think the media would do such a hatchet job on the data breach,” says Jenna. “But wow, some of the female bloggers have been extra vicious. They were PinkBook’s biggest fans when we were building ourselves up, and then one mistake and pow! They’re coming after us with the long knives. We might have been able to divert them over to the new content we’ve commissioned, but we don’t have anything to show them yet.”

“I hate to admit this, but’s not their fault,” I say wearily. “PinkBook is a powerful brand among women. We knew that—hell, that was our goal from Day 1, to be the choice for women who wanted substance instead of just window dressing. And we allowed subscriber data to be stolen. That’s a cardinal sin in the online world. Those bloggers expected better from us, and we let them down.”

“You make it sound like we opened the door for the hackers!” she protests. “It wasn’t our fault.”

“It doesn’t matter; the buck stops with us.”

My father and I may not get along, but there’s no denying he taught me some of the basic beliefs that make me who I am, and that’s one of them.

Jenna sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “This all makes me feel like I did when I was a kid, and my mom would give me that look and tell me she was disappointed in me. I think that was worse than getting yelled at.”

“I wouldn’t know,” I say with a humorless chuckle. “My mother was always disappointed in me; it was her default position, and it only got worse as I got older.”

Jenna reaches across the desk and puts a hand on top of mine, and suddenly a wave of emotion up courses up inside me that brings me to the verge of tears. Plus my break-up with Ben is still raw enough that it’s tickling me behind the eyes as well.

This is a shitty, shitty day. But I’ll be damned if I let it show. I swallow back the pain and steel myself for what’s to come.

“We’re gonna get through this,” Jenna says, obviously reading my face. “We’ve come too far and worked too hard to let this stop us.”

I smile and take her hand in both of mine. Trust me, I realize how lucky I am; not many people can honestly say their business partner is also their best friend.

“I know,” I say, “but it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

She gives me a knowing look. “We’re emailing them the agenda packages this afternoon. I guess we’ll find out if any of the board members actually reads them beforehand; they’ll be the ones who come in with scowls on their faces.”

“I’m pretty sure all of them will read it, given the rumors that’ve been stirred up by the media coverage. But we’ll deal with them. We always do.”

“That reminds me,” she says. “Tyler mentioned that Darryl Lawrence asked for a last-minute addition to the agenda.”

Tyler Hart is PinkBook’s board liaison, which is a nice way of saying he’s their gopher, in addition to his other admin duties. He’s usually a pretty good buffer between them and those of us who actually run the company.

I sigh. “Darryl knows he’s supposed to run those by me before he goes to Tyler. What’s it about?”

“He just asked for time to speak; he didn’t say about what.”

Part of me wants to call Darryl and tell him to do things the right way, make him wait until the next board meeting, but I just don’t have the energy to fight right now.

“Fine,” I say, and I have to stop myself from adding “whatever.” Again, my father’s unseen presence still having an influence on me. I still don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,

* * *

I should have called him. I should have just put on my big girl panties and headed this off at the pass while I had the chance. If I’d been listening to my father’s voice in my head like I was earlier, that’s what I would have done.

But I didn’t, and now I’m having a staring contest across the table with Darryl Lawrence, while the rest of the board watches us closely. It’s all I can do to keep from grabbing my pen and pitching it right at his exposed jugular, like a ninja throwing dart.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But not much of one.

“You’re suing,” I say evenly, without blinking. “For a larger share of PinkBook. Of my company.”

I cringe inwardly as soon as I hear the words come out of my mouth. I want to take them back—it was a terrible choice of words—but it’s too late. And Darryl knows it. I can see it in his eyes.

“Correction,” he says. A smug grin creeps across his face as he sweeps a hand at the rest of the board members. “It’s our company.”

“Of course,” I say, trying to recover. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

“It doesn’t matter what you’re implying, Sarah. What matters is the company, and its future. First of all, I think I deserve more of the company, considering the fact it wouldn’t be here if not for me—”

“Excuse me?” I can feel myself on the brink of raising my voice, and it irks me that I’ve allowed Darryl to affect me like this. He’s put me off my game, knowing full well that the board is watching intently. Now I realize that was his plan, and the reason he did an end-run around me and went straight to Tyler.

“I was the initial investor,” he says in a lecturing tone, as if reminding me of something I didn’t know. “And, to be honest, Sarah, the company wouldn’t be in the situation it’s in now if I’d had more of a hand in guiding it.”

Thank God Jenna kicks me under the table and brings me back to reality, because for an instant, my body was actually tensing to leap over the table at Darryl and maul him like a panther. He must see it in my eyes, because he shuts up.

“I serve at the pleasure of the board,” I say, trying to keep my breath even. “And until I hear otherwise from them, I’m still the CEO. So, I’ll continue to run the company for now, if that’s all right with you.”

I’m spoiling for a fight now, which is probably not the best way to handle this situation. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit here and be sandbagged by a cretin like Darryl Lawrence.

Before I can say anything else, though, Linda Davies raises her hand from her spot next to me at the table. She’s a smart, capable lady who took a chance on us in the early years and has always been a staunch defender of my leadership since she was elected chair of the board. In some ways, I almost see her as a foster mother.

“Point of order,” she says. “Darryl, any lawsuits will be dealt with by the legal department. You know that.”

Of course he does, and he also knows he doesn’t have a legal leg to stand on. That’s why he brought it up at the meeting; he thinks there’s strength in numbers.

Linda continues: “As for Sarah’s leadership, I haven’t heard anything before now to imply that she’s lost the trust of this board. PinkBook is currently weathering a storm, yes, and we need to take a hard look at our plans for the future. But it’s still business as usual. If you’re calling for a confidence vote, Darryl, make the motion. Otherwise, we’ll move on to the next item on the agenda.”

I manage to keep a triumphant smile from my face as Darryl visibly slumps in his chair, but just barely. His gambit didn’t work the way he thought it would, and this moment is ridiculously satisfying for me.

Unfortunately, that’s all it is: a moment.

My cell suddenly starts to rumble on the table in front of me, and I glance down to see the Bens smiling face on the screen. I snapped the pic of him a week ago as we were walking in the park. I remember it vividly, because right after I took it, he pulled me into a copse of elm trees and kissed me so hard I thought I might melt into a puddle right there in his arms.

For just an instant, I feel the urge to answer the call and tell him I was wrong, that I want him back in my bed, that we can work things out. I just want to hear his voice again.

But it passes just as quickly and I hit “ignore.” I didn’t get where I am by giving in to girlish urges.

“My apologies,” I say sheepishly. “I should have turned it off.”

That’s when I see the stunned look on Darryl’s face across from me. Beside me, Linda’s own face is intently facing my screen. I know phone calla are considered a faux pas in the boardroom, but I didn’t expect this kind of reaction.

“I’m turning it off,” I say, thumbing the red circle on the screen. “See?”

“What the hell is going on?” Darryl snaps. “Since when is PinkBook talking to that slimy bastard?”

What? I turn to see Linda frowning at me, which causes my stomach to drop just a little.

“I’m curious myself,” she says. “What was that about, Sarah?”

My cheeks feel warm all of a sudden as confusion takes hold of me. They want me to explain what’s going on and I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about!

“It’s—it’s just an ex-boyfriend,” I stammered. “It has nothing to do with this. We should move on.”

“Ex-boyfriend?” Darryl acts like someone just dropped a live slug in his coffee. “You were dating that… that vulture capitalist?”

To my left, Linda is still glaring at me.

“Answer him, please, Sarah.”

“I don’t—what’s the big—” Finally I get ahold of myself and take a calming breath. Everybody needs to just chill out here, including me.

“I think this is a case of mistaken identity,” I say. “That was just a guy I dated for a few weeks. He’s not a, whatever you said, vulture capitalist. He’s an unemployed software designer.”

“Sarah—” Linda says, but I hold up a hand to cut her off. This is getting ridiculous.

“With all due respect, Linda, I’m entitled to my privacy. Now can we please get off the topic of my love life and get on with the meeting?”

“Justin Lucas is not a software designer,” Darryl says with a degree of venom I’ve never heard from him before. “And he’s sure as hell not unemployed. He’s the worst corporate raider in New York. In fact, he’s in the process of trying to dismantle my own company as we speak!”

“What are you talking about?” But part of me is already starting to suspect the answer. “His name is Ben Lucas, not Justin.”

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” says Linda. “But that was a photo of Justin Lucas. There was no mistaking that face.”

I barely have time to gather my thoughts before Darryl takes another shot. This time, it hits home—hard.

“My God,” he says with an incredulous grin. “You didn’t know. You were dating one of the most notorious men in the city and you didn’t even realize it because he gave you a fake first name. That’s amazing.”

Oh, shit. The full weight of what he’s saying is hitting me now, and I feel like I’m drowning. My only hope is that Darryl is wrong, that it’s just a lie to discredit me out of spite. Because the truth is too ugly to believe.

“You’re wrong,” I say, but it sounds weak even to my own ears. On my left, Linda’s expression makes me think of my mother.

“I’m afraid there are only two explanations here,” she says. “Either Darryl is right, and Justin Lucas duped you, or you’re not telling us the truth.”

“This is exactly what I was talking about,” says Darryl. “This is why I need to take a bigger role in this company!”

I turn to Linda and look her straight in the eye. “You have to believe me: I didn’t know who he was. I mean, who he really was. I honestly thought he was just a random guy I met in a bar.”

“Oh, please—” Darryl begins, but Linda silences him with a raised hand.

“We all know your thoughts on this, Darryl. But I believe Sarah is telling the truth.” She turns to face the rest of the board members. “If any of you disagree, you’re welcome to call for a vote of non-confidence. If not, we’ll move on with the meeting.”

My pulse is hammering in my ears as I look into the faces of the other members. They glance at each other, and Linda, but no one speaks. Finally, all of them turn their eyes to Darryl, who simply scowls and slumps lower into his chair. He says nothing, and I allow myself to breathe again.

“I’m going to move for a ten-minute break,” says Linda.

The motion is seconded and carried, and soon everyone is up and milling about the room. A few head for the table at the side and fill mugs with hot coffee from a large catering urn.

Jenna appears next to me, her eyes wide. “That was not good, Sarah,” she whispers furiously.

“You’re telling me,” I mutter.

The room isn’t quite spinning around me, but I feel like I’m hung over. Jenna sees Linda approaching me and heads for the other side of the table to leave us alone.

“I’m sorry about all that,” says Linda. “But this is a bad situation, Sarah. I hope what you say is true, and that Justin Lucas wasn’t trying to set you up for a hostile takeover of PinkBook.”

I muster all my courage and steel myself for an argument. Linda is the last person I’d want to tangle with, but I’m not going down in this without a fight.

“Corporate raiders prey on struggling companies,” I say. “PinkBook isn’t struggling, Linda. We’re going through some rough waters, but we’ll come out stronger on the other side. You know that. You know me.”

She nods, but the look on her face is still sad.

“I do know you,” she sighs. “I just never thought I’d be this disappointed in you.”

With that, I realize that my foster mother has now become exactly like my real mother. And it hurts. It hurts a lot.