Snow and the 7 Hunks

Do you ever get tired of being a good girl?

I know I do, with a name like Snow I guess it's expected.
But there is nothing good about my boss' new wife.
That witch took over the office.
And she's determined to turn my fairy tale into a living nightmare.
Hello, Enchanted Woods, an exclusive retreat for worn-out girls like me. 

The retreat has a saying: 
"True love's kiss will fill your heart with love, but it's his c*ck that will make you cream." 
Who knows? I might even find a prince there to give me a happy ending.
There's no room for grumpy, sleepy and dopey in my life,
not when I can have horny, cocky and lucky.
A cowboy, an athlete, and a biker... maybe even a billionaire too. 

Seven is my lucky charm.  Let's see which one is my happily-ever-after...

Chapter One

“Do you think that his dick is all shriveled up like the rest of him?”

I glared across the table at my best friend Robin, who was in turn staring wistfully at each of the waiters that swept past him without pausing. It was dessert night at The Wishing Well, our favorite hangout for as long as I could remember, and while the table in front of me was scattered with all of the sparkly, sugar-coated and cream-filled delights that I had ordered, they had somehow managed to miss everything that Robin had requested.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to answer that,” I said, reaching for one of my treats.

Robin sighed and looked back at me.

“I do. I mean, it wouldn’t make sense for the rest of him to look like one big dangly sack now that he’s ancient but for his actual dick to still be all smooth and youthful.”

Another waiter swung past with a tray held high above his head, and Robin looked hopeful, only to be crushed when the man kept going right by.

“He’s a really nice man,” I said, feeling the urge to defend my boss.

“Does that change the fact that he’s a thousand years old and has more folds on him than an origami Shar Pei?” Robin dipped the tip of his pinky into the shallow dish of chocolate sauce beside one of my plates and licked it off. He looked at his finger contemplatively. “If it is all wrinkly, do you think that it stays that way when he gets hard? I mean, is it like an accordion-type situation where it smooths out, or does it get hard and still have all the wrinkles and stuff?”

I grimaced as I took the churro from my mouth before taking a bite and settled it back onto the plate in front of me, draping a napkin over it to cover the ridges that were no longer as appealing, even covered in sugar and cinnamon.

“I really wouldn’t know,” I said.

Another waiter started toward our table, making Robin’s eyes light up, but just before he arrived, he took a sudden turn and presented a nearby table with an elaborate spread of sweets. Robin turned back toward me and sagged against the table.

“Someday. Someday my blintz will come,” he said. He pouted for a few seconds and then looked at me like he had just heard what I had said. “Of course you don’t know,” he said. “You’re as pure as the driven…”

“Please, don’t.”

“Snow.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry. I was already committed. I had to finish it.” I glared at him, not willing to let this one slide. “OK, so that probably wasn’t the best idiom I could have gone with.”

“You’re an idiom,” I muttered.

I couldn’t blame Robin entirely. When you have a name like Snow it’s kind of hard to make a purity comparison without it coming across as incredibly heavy-handed. He might as well not pussy-foot around it and go right for the brutally clichéd kill.

“Blintz?”

Robin and I looked up at the waiter who had appeared at the edge of our table and blinked at him, somewhat stunned that he was actually there. He stood staring back at us, holding a plate of cherry cheese blintzes in between us, the three of us now locked in some awkward tableau of bad service. Finally, Robin nodded and the waiter lowered the plate to the table.

“I’m really not as pure as all that,” I said. I had hoped that the waiter was far enough away from us at that point not to have heard the declaration, but by the way he glanced back at me over his shoulder I figured that I didn’t have that much luck. I leaned forward on the table so that I could speak to Robin in a more conspiratorial tone. “It’s not like I’m a virgin.”

Robin looked up at me as he deconstructed the carefully folded blintz so that he could smear the cherry sauce inside rather than eating it like a civilized human being worthy of the dainty desserts.

“You’ve had sex with exactly one person, Snow,” he said. “One. I don’t even think that counts as not being a virgin. That’s like training wheels.”

“I don’t think that’s accurate,” I said. “How many do you think it takes?”

I didn’t necessarily want to hear the answer. Robin might look sweet and innocent, but I knew very well that he was far from as pure as the driven anything. Upon further thought it might be because he looked so sweet and innocent. There could be some appeal there.

“At least three to be a bit dingy,” he said. “Eight to be really, really dirty.”

I thought about that for a moment, trying to come up with eight men whose name I could even think of, much less who I could imagine having sex with. I was unsuccessful. I returned Robin’s gesture with my chocolate sauce by swiping some of the cherry juice left on the plate. It was bright and tart, less sweet than I would have expected.

“So, what got your brain into the disturbing place where you started comparing my boss’ undercarriage to instruments and puppies?” I asked.

Robin’s eyes widened and he looked like he regretted the huge bite of ricotta cheese and cherries that he had just shoved into his mouth. He chewed frantically as he leaned back and lifted up his hips to dig his phone out of his pocket. I watched as he swiped through a few screens and then turned the phone toward me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I reached for the phone and pulled it closer to me, not taking my eyes off the screen. Robin swallowed hard.

“I can’t believe you didn’t know,” he said.

I looked up at him and then back at the screen, and then up at him again.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said. “That’s a thing.”

I looked at the screen again, hoping that it would have changed since I first looked at it. It hadn’t. Mr. Royal, the origami Shar Pei, was smiling up at me from a wedding announcement splashed across the front page of the social page of a blog. He looked so happy he was virtually glowing from above the garish red and blue bowtie tightened around his neck. The bride looked decidedly less enthralled by the entire situation. She was smiling, but the expression didn’t reach her eyes. She stood beside him, hands gripping a red rose bouquet in front of her. The matching satin dress that she was wearing was decidedly not bridal, but I was more concerned with her face.

“How did she manage to weasel her way into his life?” I asked.

“You know her?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “You do, too. That’s Lucille Verne.”

“Are you serious?” he asked, snatching the phone back from me so that he could look at the picture of Mr. Royal and Lucille again. “That’s her?”

“Yep,” I said.

I took a sip of my coffee, wishing that I had gone a bit more on the Irish side with it. I had a feeling I was going to need some of the whiskey o’ the Irish to get me through the rest of this evening. Maybe not to the Erin-go-braless point, but definitely until I could see myself dangling upside down to kiss a guy named Blarney. Robin started laughing and I slammed my mug down to the table with a little more intensity than I had intended.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“Come on, Snow, you have to admit that it’s at least a little amusing. This chick trailed your ass all the way through college and graduate school and has done everything that she could think of to beat you in the advertising industry. Now she’s married to the owner of the company you work for. That’s some serious deviousness right there.”

“I don’t think that her marrying him had anything to do with me. She wouldn’t go that far just to try to one-up me.”

Even as I said it, though, I wasn’t entirely sure that I was convincing myself. There were a lot of words that I would use to describe Lucille and devious was definitely one of them. The others are ones that wouldn’t be appropriate to say in front of pastries.

“If she did, she sure is willing to take one for the team just to piss you off.”

“What do you mean?”

Robin grabbed the napkin and whisked it off of the plate with flourish, revealing my abandoned churro.

“That woman is like a third his age. The only reason a woman that young would marry a man that old is because he’s wealthy and she’s hoping she can kill him off before too long, and the only reason that a man as old and as wealthy as Mr. Royal would marry a woman like that is if he’s hoping that if he does die any time soon it will be because she fucks him to death.”

“Well, that was a touch more graphic than I think was necessary.”

Robin shrugged.

“I speak the truth.”

I sighed and picked up a fork to poke part of a petit four on a plate in front of me.

“It does hurt a little that I wasn’t even invited to the wedding,” I said. “I thought that we were closer than that.”

“The man is grooming you to be on the board of the advertising agency,” Robin said. “He’s not adopting you.”

“But still. I’ve worked with him since I graduated. I’ve spent more time with him in the last few years than I’ve spent with my own family. Besides, aren’t the weddings of socialites supposed to be the events of the season with guest lists that are a couple thousand people long? I didn’t even get to sit at the table beside the kitchen and look at them through binoculars while people they barely know make toasts about them?”

“Apparently there wasn’t a table by the kitchen,” Robin said, looking back at the screen and reading through the announcement. “There wasn’t even a reception. There was barely a wedding.”

“What do you mean?”

Poking the cake had made me want a bite and I moved it around on my tongue so that he wouldn’t call me out for talking with my mouth full.

“It says that they had a spontaneous destination wedding on his private island.”

“Does that mean that she smuggled herself onto his jet and then plied him with little umbrella drinks until he agreed to marry her?”

“I think it might. That would explain the red dress.”

“Maybe. Of course, if she had tried to put on a white dress it would likely have burst into flames before she could get all the way down the aisle.”

“Ah. So, our friend Lucille is in the Dirty Eight Club?”

“She makes the Dirty Eight Club look like a Carmelite nun drum circle.”

Robin got an expression on his face like he was thinking through what I had just said.

“I think that we just found our Halloween costume for this year.”

“So, what am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“What do you mean what are you supposed to do? I didn’t think that you were involved.”

“Of course, I am. I have to walk into the office Monday morning and face Mr. Royal. What do I do?”

“I think that the only choice that you have is to plaster on a smile and say congratulations. Maybe bring a muffin basket.”

“A muffin basket?”

“Do whatever you would do for anyone else who suddenly got married. Do what you would do if you found out that I frolicked off to the islands and up and got married.”

“I appreciate the advice, but I really don’t think that Mr. Royal would appreciate a basket of flavored condoms and body glitter. Besides. I’d kill you if you did that so the gift wouldn’t be necessary.”

“That’s true. Alright, so we go back to the plastered smile and the muffin basket. It’s a nice gesture and he would appreciate knowing that you support him and are happy for him.”

“But I don’t support him and I’m not happy for him.”

“Of course, you aren’t. Ninety percent of people who go to weddings or congratulate people after weddings aren’t happy that those weddings happened or think that the people made massive mistakes. It’s one of the great beauties of our culture.”

“So, what am I supposed to do?”

“Lie, Snow. You lie.”

Chapter Two

I was running late when I got to work Monday morning because apparently it is far more difficult to pack fifty tiny chocolate chip and banana nut muffins into a basket than I thought that it would be and the bakery was simply not prepared to work in my timeframe. Juggling the basket under one arm and my briefcase under the other, I struggled to squeeze them against my body hard enough that they wouldn’t slip as I tried to sign the card I held. The elevator doors opened and I curled forward to try to guide the pen cap in my mouth toward the pen in my hand without dropping anything. I couldn’t quite make it work so I tossed the pen aside and spit out the cap before anyone noticed me.

Scurrying as fast as I could, I made my way down the hallway toward Mr. Royal’s office. Before I could get to the door, though, I saw Cindy, Mr. Royal’s secretary, waving me down. She had a phone pinned between her ear and her shoulder and she finished the call before dropping the receiver back to the cradle.

“Morning, Cindy,” I said. “I just wanted to bring this in to Mr. Royal.”

“He can’t be disturbed right now, Snow,” Cindy said.

I looked at her quizzically. Never in the years that I had worked with him had Mr. Royal been inaccessible. Usually his office door was standing open and more often than not he was standing in the doorway looking up and down the hallway for someone to talk to. Now I glanced over at the office and noticed that the door was firmly closed, the blinds over the large window beside it pulled down tightly.

“He can’t be disturbed?” I asked, thinking I might have heard her wrong. “Is something wrong? Is he alright?”

“He’s fine,” she said. “He just asked that he not be disturbed this morning. There’s going to be a meeting at 10 and he said that he is not to be disturbed until then.”

“But I wanted to bring him this,” I said.

I knew that I had reduced myself to sounding like a whiny teenager, but, like Robin, I had already committed and was going to see it through. I held up the muffin basket, hoping that the puffy red and blue bow I had chosen specifically to match the picture that I had seen on the announcement would sway her.

“You can put it in the first conference room,” Cindy said.

The phone on her desk rang and she picked it up, gesturing toward the conference room like she was shooing me away. I had been dismissed. I turned around and took a few steps toward the conference room. Before I even stepped inside, I got a glimpse of the table inside and sighed, hanging my head for the last few steps. Pushing a few of the other of the baskets on the table aside, I settled mine into the fray, trying to get it positioned so that Mr. Royal would see it first when he came into the room.

“Stupid Robin,” I muttered to myself.

I glanced down at my phone to check the time. Just long enough before the surprise meeting to grab a cup of coffee and scarf down a break room doughnut since I didn’t have a chance in my morning of muffin selection to eat breakfast. Fortunately, one thing that Mr. Royal did extremely well was stock the break room. Every morning the tidy little space filled with the rich, sweet fragrance of every flavor of doughnut offered by the gourmet shop just up the road almost by magic. At least, it would seem almost by magic if I hadn’t spent my first six months at the company doing the morning doughnut runs before I found out that that wasn’t actually a part of my job description and it was just Mr. Glass, the company advisor’s, way of not having to do it himself.

I adjusted my skirt as I walked into the break room, then stopped short, no longer caring that my zipper had wriggled its way from the back around to my hip. My eyes locked on the table in the center of the room and the blatant lack of light pink bakery boxes that were usually still staked high at this time of morning. I drew in a breath and noticed that there was no lingering fried dough smell that would indicate the rest of the office had just eaten all of the doughnuts before I could make it. Instead, there was a painfully clean disinfectant smell and in the center of the table a large bowl of fruit and plate of individually packaged granola bars.

What kind of shit was this?

Rosa stepped into the break room behind me and I saw her do the same scan of the room that I had. She looked at me with the expression of unique horror that came from being deprived of her early morning fat and sugar rush. I nodded at her in commiseration and we both stepped up to the table, staring down at the plate and bowl as if it was going to be one big joke and they were going to flip over and turn into our doughnuts and coffee.

We didn’t have much time to question the new craziness of the world. The crackling, old-fashioned PA system that Mr. Royal refused to upgrade told us that it was time for us to report to the main conference room for the big mysterious meeting. I had a bad feeling in my stomach as I settled into one of the blue-cushioned swivel chairs at the table and looked around at my colleagues. Everyone was exchanging questioning looks and there were a few mutterings about the wedding announcement, but it seemed that there was no indication that anyone knew why we had been brought there. We sat there for a few tense minutes, and exactly at 10, the door to the conference room swung open. I looked toward it and saw Mr. Royal step in.

“Good morning, everyone!” he exclaimed in his usual bold, jubilant style.

There was an extra sparkle in his eyes and I couldn’t help but think about what Robin had said. As much as I didn’t want to.

“Good morning,” we all burbled back to him.

“I’m so glad to see all of you here this morning because I have a thrilling announcement that I am sure that you will all be as excited about as I am.” He took a breath and I felt my stomach flip. Here it comes. “As some of you might know, life took me on an unexpected and enthralling adventure over the last few weeks and this weekend it reached its pinnacle when I married the love of my life.” The door opened again and Lucille stepped inside. “Please meet my wife. Mrs. Lucille Royal.”

My blood ran cold and I felt the same physical reaction toward her that I always did when we were in school. This was the woman who had done everything in her power to try to pull me down. From the moment that she met me, she was determined to stomp on me on her way to the top, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary. Fortunately for me at the time, that just pushed me to work harder and I was always enough ahead that she never had the opportunity. Now as I sat there at the conference table watching Lucille as she looked out over us with a stony expression on her face, I was starting to feel like her stiletto was on its way to my head.

“Hello,” she said. Her voice was just as icy as it had always been. “I look forward to getting to know all of you.”

Getting to know all of us? That sounds ominous.

“And she will have plenty of opportunity,” Mr. Royal said. “The primary reason I’ve called all of you together this morning, other than to share my wonderful news with you, is to announce that moving forward there will be a shift in the leadership of Royal and Company. I have been considering retirement for some time now and my lovely bride has convinced me that now is my chance. I will spend the next few days getting some loose ends tied up around here and then I will be leaving on a world tour. I will be handing over power of the company to your new president…Lucille.”

I felt like I was going to throw up. Lucille’s eyes seemed to darken slightly as they swept across the room toward me and a vile curve came to her lips.

“I know that we will work extremely well together and bring Royal and Company to new levels of success,” she said. “That will take effort and dedication from all of you. I know that there are certain ways and operations to which everyone is accustomed, and some of them will need to change. That means that we are all starting fresh. I don’t know you or what you are capable of, so you will need to prove to me that you are of worth to this team and the contribution that you can make. This is a beginning for all of us. Everyone is on level ground now.” She looked directly at me and I knew that that comment was for me. Lucille went back to looking at the rest of the group. “I will be shaking up things around here to make sure that we are all able to reach the potential that I know we have. You may have already noticed some of the changes that I have made in an effort to make our shared work environment healthier. A healthy work environment encourages a healthy team and I know that all of you will not just get accustomed to the changes, but will embrace them and the benefits that they will bring.”

Bitch, where are my doughnuts?

Chapter Three

Lucille

“Are you sure that these reviews are accurate?” I asked.

The papers spread out on the desk in front of me were nothing short of infuriating and I could only hope that I would find out that they were as absurd as the rest of the way that my ridiculous new husband had run this company. New husband. That made my skin crawl and a chill run down my spine. There was no romantic motivation in the reaction. I had never been one of those women who envisions the perfect wedding and the dreamy man standing at the end of the aisle. Instead, I thought only of power. I always knew that I was going to marry the man who was going to put me in the best position in life, and it just so happened that I ran across Walter Royal. I had no difficulty convincing him that we were so perfect for each other that there was no point in dragging out our courtship or engagement. He was all too eager to jump on my offer of marriage during our visit to his island over the weekend. Exorbitantly wealthy and notoriously generous, he was exactly what I was shopping for when I attended the industry event several weeks before, even if he was more than twice my age and had the type of health philosophy that led him to believe strawberry ice cream counted as a serving of fruit. It was just an added bonus that he was the boss of my biggest rival.

Snow Whitman. Just the thought of that name made my muscles tense and my hands clench. She had been the bane of my existence since the first day of college when I walked into my first class and saw her sitting in the front row, already gazing admiringly at the professor. Glossy black hair and piercing blue eyes seemed to transfix the young male teacher and I knew in an instant that she was going to be intolerable.

“Yes,” Mr. Glass said.

That was it. Just “yes”. Fantastic advisor.

“How can she possibly have this many accounts?” I asked, sifting through the pages of her file and reading the names of the companies that she had worked with in the last few years.

“She is highly sought after,” Mr. Glass said matter-of-factly. “She has been an enthusiastic contributor to projects since she was first hired and it didn’t take long for her to start getting her own accounts. Now new clients often ask for her to be involved in their campaigns.”

“Why?” I asked. “What makes her so amazing?”

I didn’t really want to hear it. Actually, I already had. I had been hearing it for years. All through that first class when the professor couldn’t seem to get three sentences out of his mouth without praising her or asking for her opinion on what he was saying. In the classes that we shared in the years that followed when the professors just mimicked what the first had done, seeming to fall deeper and deeper under Snow’s spell. Out in the world as we competed for positions at the best agencies and then feuded for the highest-paying accounts. I’d had my mind set on working for Royal and Company from even before I went into the university. Even then it was the best advertising agency in the area and I wanted only the best. Of course, it wasn’t me who got the prime position. Snow walked into the agency and charmed Walter Royal into offering her the position along with a perks package that was far beyond anything that any other entry level position should have offered.

I looked down at my hand and saw the massive diamond on my finger sparkle in the light. Now I was the one with the perks package. There might be a few elements of the – job description that I wasn’t entirely fond of, but I could deal with it to get me right where I was right then. Besides, Walter was going to be away for weeks on his retirement vacation. I was only thankful that I had been able to convince him that he should go on his own rather than bringing me along so that I could get to know the company and the employees. I realized that Mr. Glass was talking, droning on about all of Snow’s attributes, and I forced myself to check back into the conversation. As much as I didn’t need to hear another speech about her perfection and all of the ways that she made the world a better place, I wanted to know what it was about her that had lured in these clients and landed their accounts. To me, she wasn’t an asset. She was the competition and a stumbling block in the way of my success. When I could identify what about her was so appealing and reflect it for myself, then I could eliminate her and finally take the success that was owed to me.

“Her creativity is unsurpassed by anyone else. She’s the best in the industry.”

“No, she’s not,” I muttered.

“Excuse me?” Mr. Glass said.

I looked up at him again, shaking my head.

“Nothing. So, she’s creative? That’s what makes all of these people fall all over themselves for her? Isn’t creativity a basic job requirement of advertising?”

“There’s something different about her type of creativity. It’s like she sees things in a completely different way than other people. She’s able to grab the attention of the clients and convince them that she knows exactly what that specific demographic needs so that she can create a campaign that will be irresistible to them.”

“That’s it?” I asked, dumbfounded by the level of trust and confidence that that seemingly unremarkable skill had instilled in even stony, emotionless Mr. Glass. “She is considered the best in the industry because she can convince clients that she can make a good campaign? Silly me, I thought that that was what everyone in advertising was supposed to be able to do.”

“If you would like a more in-depth understanding, I can bring you the files for her most recent account.”

I felt my frustration increase.

“I thought that I specifically requested that you bring me all of the information about her. Why did you leave that out?”

“Miss Whitman is still working on this particular account. She just landed it two weeks ago and has been working on it intently since. The files on it are in her office.”

I drew in a breath to calm down, reminding myself that my goal was to try to appear as disarming and beguiling as Snow to these people.

“Could you please get them for me so that I’m able to look over them?” I asked as gently as I could. “I would really like to get the full perspective of all of the employees and projects within the company so that I can make the best plans for our team moving forward.”

Mr. Glass’s expression didn’t change. I didn’t know if it was because I hadn’t impacted him enough to have an emotional impact, or if this man simply didn’t have emotional reactions at all. He gave a single nod and turned, leaving my office without another word. I let out a sigh of exasperation as he closed the door.

I don’t think I’m cut out for this bullshit.

I heard a knock on my door and I smoothed my hair back.

“You can come back in, Mr. Glass,” I called.

“Actually, it’s not Mr. Glass.”

The voice was familiar and I felt my jaw tense hearing it. My fingers clenched around each other on the top of my desk and I debated telling her to go away, but I knew that that wasn’t going to fly. I relaxed the tension in my shoulders and leaned back in the chair.

“Come in,” I said.

The door opened and Snow looked around it at me. She looked just about as thrilled to see me sitting there as I did to see her, which was uplifting in a way. If it was going to make me miserable to have to be in her presence every minute that I was at the office, it was comforting to know that I was making her just as unhappy with my presence as well.

“Hi,” she said.

She pressed the door closed behind her, but only took half a step away from it. I couldn’t decide if it was that she was feeling intimidated and didn’t want to be too far from the door so that she could escape as soon as she wanted to, or if it was that she felt the same forcefield of negativity between us that I did, keeping her from getting any closer. I would prefer if it was the former.

“Hello.”

I could have said more, but I wanted to watch her squirm. She stared at me for a few moments as if she was expecting something else and then she took a step toward me.

“Look, I just wanted to come in here and say congratulations on your marriage and no hard feelings. I hope that we can put everything behind us and focus on finding success for the company in working together.”

“Working together?” I asked with a hint of mirthless laugh in the words. “Surely you’re kidding.”

What I could only imagine was Snow trying to look beseeching melted from her face and she tilted her head to look at me with a more quizzical expression that I knew others found adorable, but that I only thought was simpering and obnoxious.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You don’t seriously think that we’re going to be working together, do you? Like some happy little team? Like friends? You can’t really think that.”

“Well, I just thought that since you’re here…”

“I’m here for one reason and one reason only, and that is so that I can climb myself to the top where I have always belonged. You’ve been interfering with my success for as long as I can remember, and I’m not going to allow you to do it any longer, Snow.”

“You’re not going to allow me?” she asked, a sneer dissolving all of the sweetness that had been on her face. “Who do you think you are to allow me to do anything? I worked harder than any person you have ever met to get to where I am. All you did was sleep your way to a seat in this office. That doesn’t make you good at your job and doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful. If anything, it means that you are going to drag this company down in the same way you have dragged down every other agency and project that you have ever been linked to.” She put one hand on her hip and cocked it at me, looking me up and down in a scrutinizing way that filled me with fury. “Of course, you managed to use all of your…assets…to get you out of all of those situations, too, didn’t you? Or did you think that no one knew about that?”

I slammed my hands down on the desk in front of me and was starting to push myself up into a standing position when there was another knock on the door.

“What?” I snapped.

The door opened and Mr. Glass stepped in, one thin hand gripping a stack of folders.

“I retrieved those files that you wanted, Mrs. Royal.”

“Those are my files,” Snow gasped, staring at the files in Mr. Glass’s hands. “Who gave you permission to go into my office?”

“I did,” I said, not able to keep all of the smugness out of my voice. “As far as I’m concerned, every office in this building is mine. You don’t get to decide who goes anywhere, especially when it pertains to accounts that I need to review.”

“I already submitted my progress reports on this account,” Snow argued. “You don’t need my files.”

“Of course, I do,” I said. “This is my company now. Royal and Company is under my guidance now, and that means that I will do absolutely anything that I want to to make sure that I know what’s going on here and make the changes that will need to be made to ensure this company continues to thrive.”

“You mean so that you can ensure that you get to take all of the credit and look like you know what you are doing.”

“I don’t have anything else to say to you,” I said. “You can go now.”

“What am I supposed to do? You just took all of my work.”

“Figure it out. If you are really as valuable as everyone seems to think that you are, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

I settled back in my chair again, looking down at the files in my hands in a demonstration of dismissing Snow. She hesitated for a few moments and then let out an angry sigh before stomping out of the room. I hadn’t been paying attention to the words in the file until she was gone, but almost as soon as I heard the sound of the door slamming, the name of the account sank into my thoughts. I felt the anger inside me growing and heat spread across my cheeks.

“The Diamond Mine?” I asked through gritted teeth. “She is building this campaign?”

Mr. Glass nodded.

“Yes,” he said. “The client told us that Miss Whitman came highly recommended and they were extremely impressed by her initial brief. They asked that she helm their entire campaign and expanded the scope to include print media and unique boutique marketing designed specifically for them as well.”

I felt my body shaking, the anger inside me at a point now that I wasn’t able to control it. Mr. Glass had already heard the angry exchange between me and Snow and I didn’t care if he knew just how infuriated I was about finding out that Snow had landed the account that I had been courting for months. An extremely exclusive nightclub, The Diamond Mine promised to be an exceptionally lucrative account that would only become more valuable the more popular the club became. This client really only needed to advertise to the most elite of clientele due to the restrictions of the club, and what Mr. Glass was describing went well beyond that. What Snow had proposed, and was now planning on delivering to them, straddled the line between true advertising and PR, something that was more than what other advertising agencies would have ever offered, but that was exactly what had handed this highly sought-after account right into her waiting hands.

“She’s the best,” Mr. Glass said. “It is my professional opinion that you would be best served aligning with her and continuing to encourage her to expand and pursue further clients for the agency.”

I looked up at the man with fire in my eyes. He had to be fucking kidding. He wanted me to become yet another of Snow’s many admirers and admit that she was better than me? Absolutely not. That was never going to happen. There was only room for one of us in the industry and that meant that Snow was simply going to have to go.

Chapter Four

Hunter

I stepped up to the door of what was once Mr. Royal’s office and hesitated. I didn’t really want to go through it. I didn’t really want to step into the office and face the woman now sitting behind the desk. In fact, if I could have just turned around and left, pretending that I had never gotten the memo that she wanted to speak to me, I would have, but that wasn’t an option. Unfortunately, the new Mrs. Royal had inherited the entire company from her new husband and that meant that she had inherited me right along with it. I was at the mercy of her bidding.

I took a quick glimpse over toward Cindy’s desk and saw the slight woman hunched over her computer, typing feverishly. I was fairly certain that she wasn’t actually typing anything of consequence and was instead just trying to do whatever she could to look busy so that she didn’t have to face the new Madam President. This never would have been a concern if Mr. Royal was still leading the company. Cindy was his secretary, responsible for all the same things as the classic 1960s version of the position, just without the shady innuendo. She answered phones, took messages, and typed up memos. If Mr. Royal needed something more than that, he came to me. As his personal assistant, I took care of all of the other musings of his mind, either helping him to accomplish what he was envisioning or doing what I could to rein him in and turn his focus back to more practical pursuits. It had once been an ideal job. Walter Royal was as hilarious and eccentric as he was romantic and impulsive, which meant that his ideas were often far-flung and a blast to try to follow, but also that it didn’t surprise me in the least that he had gotten swept up by the thought of a whirlwind courtship and marriage to a young, mysterious woman.

Now the job was nothing short of a nightmare. Lucille Royal had been in the office for less than a week and I already hated her. She was cold and harsh, smiling only in that way that I half expected to see a forked tongue flicker in and out when she looked at certain people in the office. Her absconding with the doughnuts and coffee from the break room had resulted in a small riot, but that had gone nowhere but back into the conference room for an impromptu seminar about the importance of health and nutrition in the workplace. Being her assistant had left me feeling like a twelve-year-old hoping to get an interview for his school paper by shadowing a powerful CEO. She had me scurrying for juice and sourcing essential oils rather than doing anything that even closely resembled advertising. It had been an order to drive two hours to an herbal shop that turned out to be the tiny back room of a woman’s cottage to purchase particularly ominous-looking substances intended for “women’s uses” that pushed me to threatening to quit. Lucille had hung my contract over my head, though, and I knew that I was screwed.

Knowing that I couldn’t delay it any longer, I knocked on the door and waited for Mrs. Royal’s response.

“Yes?”

Always pleasant.

It had taken only two days for the saccharine smile and false enthusiasm to disappear and for the new president to start showing her true character. I wasn’t sure how many other people within the company had seen her the way that I had, but I knew that the changes that she had already implemented were just the beginning and that Mr. Royal would have been crushed to see even the beginning of her façade cracking.

Not bothering to announce myself, I stepped into the office and closed the door behind me. She was sitting at the desk with a stack of files in front of her. There was something in her eyes that I might have called a glint if it wasn’t so dark. With a foreboding feeling in my gut, I walked up to the desk and dropped down into the chair across from her.

“You wanted to speak with me?” I said.

Lucille looked up at me from the paper that was on the desk in front of her, then back at it.

“Yes,” she said. “I want you to bring this to H.R. for me and then assist with the removal.”

I watched as she added her sharp, severe signature to the bottom of the page and then took it from her as she held it out to me.

“Removal?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I have a feeling that this might be an unpleasant dismissal and I would prefer that the former employee not cause disruption for the rest of the team.”

I looked down at the paper she had handed me. It was a notice of dismissal letting the H.R. department know that she had decided to remove someone from their post. I glanced at the name and my eyes snapped to Lucille.

“Snow Whitman?” I asked in shock.

“Yes,” she said.

I was really beginning to hate hearing that word come out of her mouth.

“Why could you possibly want to fire Snow?”

“I have my reasons,” Lucille said. “I don’t believe that I need to justify them to you.”

I resisted the urge to crumble the notice up and turned, stalking out of the office. When I got a few steps away from the office, I looked down at the paper again, looking at the section where Lucille was supposed to indicate the reasoning behind her dismissal of Snow. This was not the first time that I had seen one of these forms, though all of the others that I had brought to H.R. had been from Walter. The others that I had seen had long explanations, detailing problems with the person and the specific breeches of contract that they had enacted to justify the dismissal. This page, though, only had one phrase. Incompatible with work environment.

The simplicity of the statement made the entire situation even more frustrating. I had been working at Royal and Company for a few years longer than Snow had, and I had never seen anyone like her. She came in like she already owned the world, yet was never oppressive or arrogant. Instead, her confidence in herself seemed to have injected the entire office with more energy and enthusiasm, and immediately everyone worked harder and pushed themselves more. I understood why the new accounts always wanted her. She had a way of looking at a company and being able to create a campaign that made them feel as though they were the only focus of her life. Her work was unique and exceptionally effective, which was why Mr. Royal had been actively grooming her to step into a higher leadership position when he eventually retired. Now that Lucille was around, however, that seemed less and less like a realistic prospect.

I took a few steps toward the H.R. office, but then changed my mind. If the She-Devil of Advertising was going to oust Snow, the least that I could do was give her a heads-up before security stalked down and escorted her out of the building. I made my way to Snow’s office and walked in without knocking. She looked up at me, more startled by my sudden appearance than she was irritated that I hadn’t announced myself before entering.

“Hi, Hunter,” she said.

I noticed that she appeared to be building a statue out of paperclips and it temporarily distracted me from my original mission.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She looked at her project and shrugged.

“Madam President confiscated my files for the Diamond Mine account and I finished my other campaign presentations, so I figured that I would design some furniture.”

“Well, not having access to your files seems to be the least of the worries that you have when it comes to Lucille.”

“What do you mean?”

I held the paper out to her and Snow dropped the paperclips before taking it. She read it in stunned silence for a few seconds before standing up sharply and glaring at me.

“Are you serious?” she asked. “She’s trying to fire me for being incompatible? She’s the one who wanders in here and starts changing things, and I’m the one who’s incompatible?”

“I’m sorry, Snow. I wish that there was something that I could do about it.”

She sat back into her chair, shaking her head with a look of pure shock on her face. There wasn’t even the anger that I would have anticipated, just an almost hollow look, as if she didn’t know what she was supposed to do and didn’t want to step out from behind her desk because if she did she was going to have to really accept what was happening. After a few seconds of processing the information, she looked up at me and shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere. She can’t just fire me. She has to have a reason for getting rid of me, and she doesn’t have one. I’m not going to let her get away with it.”

I felt a surge of hope.

“You don’t have to,” I said, thinking about one of the more eventful firings that I had been a part of in the last few years. “Do you remember when that girl Tina was fired a couple of years back? There were about ten different reasons why she was eligible to be fired, but she said that she wasn’t and threatened to bring it to court. I don’t think that it needs to go that far, though.”

“Why not?”

“Anybody with eyes can see that the two of you don’t exactly get along.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“And she wants more than anything to be more successful than you. So, let her try. Get out of her way for a while and give her a chance to see that it’s not competition with you that has kept her from being as successful as she thinks that she can be. If you just stay out of her sight for a while, I’m sure that the heat will die down and you’ll be able to come back without this turning into one big hot mess.”

“What am I supposed to do? Hide in my office and pretend that I’m not here until she figures out that the reason that she isn’t as successful as I am is because she doesn’t have the skills that I do?”

“No,” I said, my mind churning now. “You’re going to actually go away. Give her exactly what she wants. Be out of the office and out of her hair for a while.”

“How?”

“When was the last time that you took a vacation?”

Snow looked off into the middle distance for a second as if she were trying to pull that memory forward.

“Never,” she said. “Wait! Five years ago, I took three days off for that horrible christening.”

“That was over a weekend, so you took one day off, and you came in for a couple of hours that Friday morning and then stayed late Monday, so you took exactly no days off.”

Snow pursed her lips at me.

“Never,” she said.

“Exactly. That means that you have some serious accumulated vacation time. Ball it all up and take it.”

She looked at me as if she wasn’t entirely convinced.

“That would be about three months of vacation,” she said.

“We’ll call it a leave of absence. Just go. I’ll take care of getting Mrs. Royal in there to back off for a while.”

Snow nodded.

“Alright. I’ll go. But do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“Steal back the Diamond Mine files and submit my preliminary ideas to the client. Explain to them that I’m taking a leave of absence, but that I will keep working on their campaign if they want me to when I return.”

“I will,” I said.

Snow pulled a huge purse out from under her desk and emptied her drawers into it. Swiping the paperclips into the bag and scooping her empty coffee mug into her hand, she walked around the desk and toward the door.

“Thank you,” she said.

I nodded at her.

“Of course,” I said. “Go on. I don’t want her to see you before you go. Have fun while you’re gone, OK? This is your chance to be and do whatever you want. Take advantage of it.”

I watched as she disappeared out of the office and down the hallway. When I was sure that she was gone, I walked back to Lucille’s office. She looked up at me with expectation when I stepped into the room.

“So?” she said. “Did you do it?”

“She’s gone,” I said. When a cruel smile came to her lips, I stepped forward and put the paper back on the desk in front of her. “But I didn’t have her fired.”

“Excuse me?” she asked angrily. “I gave you specific instructions to have Snow Whitman removed from this office.”

“And that’s exactly what I did, but what you didn’t seem to think about was that she has a contract. There are very specific guidelines regarding termination in that contract, and if you attempted to dismiss her outside of those parameters, you would be putting both the company and you personally at risk of a nasty lawsuit. I don’t think that that is something that you are really interested in dealing with in your first few weeks leading the company. Do you want to explain to Mr. Royal why you both fired his top employee and drained the company’s insurance because of a labor suit?”

Lucille looked at me as if she was going to throttle me, but she didn’t move from her position behind the desk. I saw a glimmer of something in her eyes, but I chose to ignore it.

“Has she left?” she asked, her tone quieter and more controlled now.

“Yes,” I said.

“Where has she gone?”

“Wherever she wants to. If there’s nothing else that you need.”

Without waiting for her to come up with something else that she might want me to do, I left the office, closing the door behind me. I knew that this wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be. I might have been able to keep Snow from being fired today, but I didn’t delude myself into thinking that that was going to stop Lucille from doing anything that she could to remove Snow from her presence and her company. She was going to try to find a way to oust Snow and I worried that there was little that anybody could do to stop her. Hopefully her efforts wouldn’t be enough and that Mr. Royal would return in time to see that his blushing bride was nothing short of a scheming bitch. He might have turned over control of the company to her, but until it was fully in her name, which was something that I could never see him doing, she only had limited power. He could still come back and prevent her from causing any further damage to the empire that he had spent the vast majority of his life building.

Chapter Five

Snow

“Your boss rewarded you for not taking your vacation every year by giving you more vacation time?” Robin asked.

I nodded from where I lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling.

“So that leaves me with an even longer time than I thought,” I said. “Fourteen weeks. More than three months of having absolutely nothing to do because that crazy bitch wants to get rid of me.”

“You are the only person I’ve ever known who would complain about having three months of paid time off just handed to you.”

“It wasn’t just handed to me. I earned it. It was part of my perks package. I just happen to have never used it until I was just forced to. I don’t think that’s something to be excited about.” I flipped over on my side to look at him. “What am I supposed to do? I live and breathe work.”

“Don’t I know it.”

“I didn’t get successful because I didn’t work hard.”

“You could have taken her route and just fucked your way to the top.”

Robin suddenly dissolved into a cascade of giggles.

“What’s so funny about that? It’s disturbing.”

“I just thought about the fact that she got to the top by being on the bottom.” He giggled harder for a few seconds and then suddenly went silent, his eyes widening as if something astonishing had occurred to him. “Or maybe the top,” he said. “What do you think? Mr. Royal is pretty old.”

I tried to withhold the shudder that coursed through me at the thought.

“I would really like to not think about that any more if it is all the same to you.”

“OK.” Robin looked around the room, his expression as though he was at a loss of what to talk about if he couldn’t continue down that line of conversation. After a few seconds he jumped, the thought that snapped into his mind seeming to startle him. “Oh! I can’t believe that I forgot to give this to you.”

He leaned over and started digging through the bag that he had shoved under his chair when he sat down.

“What?” I asked.

He sat up and held a wrinkled brochure out toward me.

“Look what I found.” He said. “Alright, look what was given to me by my date last night.”

“Name?” I asked, glancing at him through slightly narrowed eyes.

“I have absolutely no idea. But that’s not the point. Look at this. I thought of you as soon as I saw it.”

I took the brochure from him and looked at it. The cover had an image of a cozy-looking cottage tucked into woods, a curving stone trail leading up to its idyllic door.

“The Enchanted Woods?” I asked, reading the words swept across the cover in elaborate script. “What is this?”

“Open it!” Robin said, bouncing slightly in his chair.

I opened the brochure and saw a picture of what looked like a luxurious hotel room and then another of a spa-like bathroom.

“A hotel?” I asked.

“A retreat,” Robin said. “It’s an adults-only wilderness retreat without all the unfortunate wilderness aspects. You get to stay inside and get pampered and I’ve heard that there are some pretty beneficial services.”

“Services?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Robin said. “I’ve heard that they are fantastic for relieving stress and planning extraordinary experiences for their guests.”

“What types of extraordinary experiences?”

“Every person gets a customized plan, so I don’t really know what they would do for you.”

“And this made you think of me?”

Robin nodded. I knew that there was something more to that than he was telling me, but the chances of him actually explaining it were next to nothing.

“And now that you have all this time on your hands, you don’t have any excuse not to go for it.”

I stared at the brochure for a few seconds, unsure of how to feel about it.

“Well, I’ll think about it. I can’t promise anything, but I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” Robin said, sounding far more delighted than I would expect him to sound about a glorified adult summer camp. “Want to go up to the Wishing Well? I’m getting hungry.”

I nodded and swung my legs off of the bed to stand. It felt strange to look at my closet door and not see the outfit that I would wear the next day hanging there waiting for me. It was a ritual that I went through each night, selecting my clothing, laying it out, ensuring that I was ready to get up and get dressed in record time the next morning so that I could linger over the starter cup of coffee that would carry me through until I reached the office and the blissful coffee and doughnuts that were awaiting me. My eyes narrowed and I felt my jaw twitch slightly.

Doughnuts.

Twenty minutes later we were sitting at the same table at the Wishing Well that we always did. It had always felt like tradition, but now it felt like routine. Predictable. As if there wasn’t any other option. Robin flipped through the night’s menu. It seemed that the dessert night had been enough fanciness for the bar for a while and everything had gone back to normal for the time. That meant that I already knew what I was going to order, and, despite all of his hemming and hawing over the menu, what Robin was going to order, too.

We made our requests of the waiter and Robin burst into an unnecessarily graphic description of the date that had resulted in the brochure now sitting on my bed. I tried to listen, but I found my attention wandering across the bar to a booth tucked in a dark corner. The couple sitting there was leaned toward each other, their hands gripped tightly together in the middle of the table. Their eyes sparkled as they murmured to each other, and every few seconds I saw the woman laugh. I felt an unexpected pang in my heart.

“And then I exclaimed ‘well, peel my dick and call it a banana.’” Robin said.

I looked at him sharply, embarrassed that he caught me drifting away from the conversation and entranced by the couple across the bar.

“What?” I said.

Robin shook his head.

“You aren’t listening to me.”

“I’m sorry. My brain isn’t here tonight.”

“What are you staring at?”

He followed where my gaze had been and saw the couple.

“Ah,” he said. “Adorable.”

There was a decided note of disgust in his voice and usually I would laugh, but this time I just shrugged.

“Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like to have that one person? Someone who you can come home to at night and rely on completely? Someone who you can talk to about anything and share all of your experiences with?”

“I have that person,” Robin said. “Me. I’m always there when I get home from work and when I want to go out at night, I always want to go with me. I never argue about where I want to go or try to get my way, and I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but I’m a sparkling conversationalist. And as if that wasn’t enough, I also have you.”

“I’m serious, Robin.”

“I am, too, Snow. You seem to think that there is something missing from your life because you aren’t dating the same person who you were three years ago.”

“I’m not dating anyone.”

“And? I’m dating a lot of people, does that somehow make me better?”

I didn’t know how to respond.

“It’s not that it makes you better or worse.”

“Of course, it does. It makes me leagues better, and you know why? Because I’m getting what I want every night of the week that I want it. I don’t sit around waiting for somebody to sweep me off my feet. I don’t define my life by another person. And I sure as hell don’t cultivate my self-worth based on whether or not I can peel the same person’s underwear off of my floor the same way every day for months at a time. I am much more interested in being able to peel their underwear off of them.”

“Robin,” I said, but he wasn’t going to let me stop him.

“No, Snow, listen to me. I’ve seen this little misty look in your eyes for months and it isn’t doing you any good. All it’s doing is making you doubt yourself and think that the only thing that you have in your life is your career.”

“So, what do you suggest?”

“Relax. Think about yourself for once. Stop always trying to please other people and figure out who you are. I bet that if you really put your mind to it, you could find out that there is a lot more to you than just that sugary-sweet persona you’ve got going on.”

“I am sweet.”

“I know, but that’s not all there is to you. You’ve spent your whole adult life thinking about other people. That’s your entire career, Snow. You figure out what other people want and what they would like and then you create campaigns that fully cater to them. You alter your own thoughts and perceptions to what they like. How many times have you pretended like you really believed in something that you thought was ridiculous, or helped a company peddle a product that you hated?”

“That’s my job, Robin.”

“I know that, but it’s just a reflection of your life. You’ve dated one person ever. You’ve had sex with one person ever. And I would venture to say that you probably figured out pretty early on what he liked and stuck with that.”

“I liked it, too,” I said, feeling far more defensive than I would have liked to admit.

“Did you?” Robin asked. “Or did you just like the fact that he liked it? You’ve got to think about yourself, Snow. Think about what you want for a change. Maybe you’ll find that when you know yourself, you’ll be able to know others even better. And then…then you’ll have a life.”

That night I lay in bed thinking about what Robin had said. I had never thought of myself as only trying to please other people or that I didn’t really know myself or my own needs. The more that I thought about it, though, the more I realized that he was exactly right. The one serious relationship that I had ever had was completely based on what my boyfriend had wanted out of it. We did what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it. I dressed the way he wanted me to and acted the way that he thought I should. Even in bed I was completely focused on his wants and needs. Maybe that was why I never understood Robin’s exuberance over his exceptionally active sex life. I couldn’t understand why he was so enthusiastic about it, and now it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t that there was something strange about him, but rather that I just didn’t know what I was missing.

I rolled over and reached onto my nightstand to where I had left the brochure that Robin had given me. I looked at it in the glow of the streetlight streaming through my window. As I read the description of the retreat I couldn’t help but allow Lucille’s voice to come back into my mind. She had been biting at my heels our entire adult lives and now she had managed to get herself into the position that she could destroy everything that I had worked hard for. She was going to climb to the power and success that she had always wanted on my back. The thought infuriated me and I knew that I couldn’t let her do it. I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of destroying my life. If she wanted to take me down, at least I was going to go out having enjoyed the months of time that I had earned working for that company.

Chapter Six

Lucille

I paced around my office feeling like I was burning a path into the bright blue carpet. I hated that fucking carpet. It was like a tangible reminder of Walter every time that I stepped into the office. It was exactly like him: garish, out of place, and wildly beneath the success of the company. As soon as I could, I was going to have someone come in and tear it up so that I could replace it with something more appropriate. Exactly as I planned on replacing Walter. If not in the place of my husband, most certainly in my bed. I couldn’t bear the thought of his dry, wrinkled skin rubbing up against mine any more without something young and smooth to replace it. Something like Hunter.

The assistant had been frustrating as hell from the moment that I first met him, but since he was gorgeous in a buttoned-up, formal kind of way, I was usually willing to deal with him. Now I had a different perception of him. Usually Hunter was quiet and out of sight until I needed him, and then he would do as I asked quickly and efficiently. Unlike Mr. Glass, who had seniority over everyone in the company except for Walter and spoke with a dull, dusty drawl that held no emotion and seemed to be uninfluenced by anything that was around him, Hunter had a voice that promised fiery emotion kept in check just beneath the surface.

I had seen a little of that fire the day before and I hadn’t been able to get him off of my mind since. I wasn’t accustomed to being spoken to in the way that he had spoken to me. Though it was obvious that he hadn’t said everything to me that he was thinking, he had spoken his mind in a way that he hadn’t before, in a way that no one ever had. I might not have ever reached the level of success that I wanted and had faced being turned down by clients, but never had someone been so bold as to show me the intensity that he had. He was brash and aggressive, forceful and unyielding in his willingness to show me that he disagreed with what I was doing. I should have been angry. I should have felt disrespected, particularly in the professional setting. But I didn’t. Instead, I was instantly aroused. It had taken everything in me not to crawl over the desk and tear the tie away from his neck, rip open his shirt, and find out just how unbuttoned he could be.

It had been months since a man had satisfied me, and I felt like I was feeling restless. I couldn’t stand the thought that Walter was going to be home from his trip in a few weeks and would expect me to be there to greet him like a happy wife excited to see her husband after a long time apart. I needed to reinforce myself with the touch of a young, powerful man to carry me through. If I could just close my eyes and think of a hot mouth on my body and a thick, young cock inside me, I would be able to get through Walter’s “affection” that had earned me my place in this office.

I paused in the center of the office and looked toward the door. It was just after noon. Most of the people in the office would have left for lunch, but I happened to know that Hunter didn’t leave until he had come to let me know that he was going to be out for his break. Just in case I needed him. And right at this moment, I most certainly needed him. I walked around the desk and picked up my phone. I hit the extension for Hunter’s private line.

“Yes?”

His voice still held some of the defiance and I felt a shiver roll down my spine.

“Can I have a word with you?”

“I’ll be right in.”

The call disconnected and I walked around to the front of my desk. I was leaned back against it when Hunter rapped on the door and then stepped in.

“Close the door,” I said.

Hunter turned and closed the door. When he turned back to look at me I had one hand on my hip and was evaluating him, appreciating how the cut of his tailored suit cupped his ass and accentuated a body that looked far more chiseled even through the fabric than I would have expected from a corporate assistant.

“You wanted to see me,” he said.

“I did. I wanted to talk to you about what happened with Snow.”

Hunter rolled his eyes slightly.

“I don’t really think that there’s anything else to say about that.”

“Oh, but I think there is,” I said, pushing away from the desk. “You see, I expected you to agree with me about my plans for Snow.”

“You did?” he asked. “Why would you think that?”

“Because it must be just as aggravating for you as it is for me to see her get all of the attention and have everyone fall all over themselves for her.”

“Not really,” he said. “I’ve never had a problem with Snow.”

“You haven’t?” I asked. “You really don’t have a problem with her having the whole world laying at her feet without her deserving it?”

“Without her deserving it?” Hunter asked, looking at me strangely. “How would you know what she deserves? You’ve been here for a week. I’ve watched her for years. She’s phenomenal at what she does and she is actually a pleasant person, which is the main reason why people respond to her so much.”

I could hear in his voice that he hadn’t said everything that he wanted to, but it was enough. My mouth was watering and I could feel my body responding to his every word.

“She is?” I asked, trying to sound as innocent and unassuming as possible. “You know, I can be pleasant, too.”

“Really?” he asked.

I gave a short laugh and took a few steps to close the space between us. I reached up and ran my fingers down his tie, flipping the end of it out of where it was tucked inside his jacket.

“I can,” I said. “I know that I haven’t really gotten off to the best start with everybody, but it doesn’t have to be that way. We can get along, you know. I think that there is so much more that we can do for each other than we’ve admitted.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I smiled at him and walked back to the desk. Hopping up onto the edge, I crossed my legs. The position caused the hem of my skirt to rise up my thigh, revealing the strap to my garter and the lace edging of my thigh-highs. I ran my fingertip along the edge and looked at him.

“Working in a big office like this is stressful,” I said. “It can make people so much more tense than they really are. You could make my day much less stressful. I bet that you could help me to be a lot more pleasant.”

Hunter looked at me with steely eyes, but didn’t step toward me.

“You’re married,” he said.

“I know. But do you see my husband anywhere around here? No. He left on a weeks-long trip around the world without me. He left me all alone here.”

“You planned that trip,” he said.

“Because I thought that he would like it.”

“Because you wanted him out of the way.” I felt heat starting to burn on my cheeks as I realized that this conversation wasn’t going the direction that I wanted it to. “Mrs. Royal, I was your husband’s assistant for years and the only reason that I am still here is out of loyalty to him and desire to make sure that you do not drive this company into the ground. If it wasn’t for that, I would have been gone the first day that you waltzed in here.”

“How dare you talk to me like that. I am still the boss here.”

“And as the boss, I’m sure that you’re familiar with the rigid stance that H.R. takes against sexual harassment. I’d be happy to swing by and visit them if you’d like a refresher.” I felt my jaw tighten and my eyes flash angrily, but I didn’t say anything. “I didn’t think so. I have work to do.”

He tucked his tie back into his jacket and stalked out of the room. My hands gripped the edge of the desk so hard that I could feel my knuckles aching. I slid down off of the desk and straightened my suit. This is not what I had intended when I stepped into the position of president of Royal and Company. I wanted power and control. I wanted to be seen for what I was: the best in the industry and the most desirable woman in any of the advertising agencies in the area. Getting Snow out of the way was the only thing that was going to give me that, and I couldn’t let anyone distract me from that goal. I knew that Hunter was right about her contract. I had reviewed it myself after our conversation, determined that I would find something in it that could be used to justify her dismissal, but I couldn’t. It was almost as if Walter had written it expressly for the purpose of her never being able to be fired.

I couldn’t let that stop me. Now more than ever I knew that I couldn’t let that stop me. Snow infuriated me in a way that I could barely even describe and she was what was standing between me and what I wanted in life. If I couldn’t simply get rid of her because I wanted to, I would have to find another way. There had to be something that I could do to get her out of the company and out of my way once and for all.

Chapter Seven

Snow

I didn’t know what to expect as the car drove up the long, curving drive toward the Enchanted Woods retreat. I had planned on driving my own car to the retreat, but the day before I told them that I was going to arrive, I got a phone call letting me know that my ride would be at my door the next morning. Though I had tried to reject the offer, they told me that it was part of the experience and included with the cost of my retreat. I agreed, but I wasn’t prepared to see the long white limousine that awaited me when I walked out of my house the next day. A uniformed chauffeur approached me and took my bags from my hands, tucking them into the trunk before opening the door for me. He didn’t say a word as I climbed into the luxurious vehicle and in a matter of moments we were driving away. I had gazed around the cabin, discovering chilled champagne and strawberries waiting for me.

A touch cliché, but a nice gesture.

Now as we had driven past the large sign that said, “The Enchanted Woods”, I was starting to feel a little nervous. The truth was I didn’t really know what I had gotten myself into. I had snatched my phone from under my pillow where I kept it and called the retreat on impulse, not really expecting them to answer the phone in the middle of the night. When they had, I felt as though I was too committed to not keep going. I told them that a friend had given me the brochure and the woman on the other end of the line told me that I should feel very lucky to have a friend like that. What was that supposed to mean? I tried to get as much information as I could about it, but the woman would only tell me that the purpose of the Enchanted Woods was to be a refuge for those looking for something, and that if I was open to it, they would help me to find it. It wasn’t exactly what Robin had told me, but I was still intrigued. It was just what I had been thinking about and this seemed to be offering it right to me.

I tried to swallow down the feeling of anxiety and second thoughts that I was feeling as the limo wove slowly down the drive. I had eaten all of the strawberries and had two glasses of champagne, but my stomach was still fluttering as we approached. I still had the image from the front of the brochure in my mind, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that that was what I was going to see when we reached the end of the drive. I was in advertising, after all. I was accustomed to the little tricks that were used to appeal to targeted demographics. Not that I was dishonest. In fact, that was something that I was extremely serious about. I never lied. That didn’t mean, however, that there weren’t other advertisers, a particular evil president came to mind, who made a habit of stretching the truth and straight out lying in order to get a point across and lure in business for their accounts. The cozy little cottage on the front of the brochure was adorable, but it also looked like something out of a coloring book and I wasn’t really expecting that that was what we were going to find.

As we turned a corner and passed through a slightly thicker area of trees, however, I saw that exact image rise up in front of me. I couldn’t help the gasp that escaped my lips as I leaned against the window and stared at the cottage and the tiny, sparkling brook that meandered along beside it and curved behind it. The limo came to a stop and I waited until the chauffeur opened the door to step out. I was expecting him to go to the trunk to get my luggage, but when I looked at the back of the car I saw another man already standing there, pulling my bags out. I turned to thank the chauffeur, but he had already gotten back into the car and started driving away slowly as soon as the trunk closed. The man who had gotten my luggage started toward the front door of the cottage and I followed him, looking around me to try to take in as much of the serene surroundings as I could.

The door to the cottage gave a low, soft squeak as it opened, but I found the sound comforting, almost as though it gave the building more authenticity. As soon as we stepped inside, the man carrying my luggage turned down a narrow hallway and I heard a few hard footsteps as if he were climbing a short flight of stairs. I was left standing alone in a small room, the smell of coffee and burning wood filling the space from a fireplace in the far corner.

“Hello.”

I jumped at the sound of the voice behind me and turned to see a woman standing at the doorway watching me.

“Hi,” I said, more a reaction to her greeting than one in return.

“You must be Snow.”

“Yes.”

She came toward me, holding out one slim hand. I took it as I nodded.

“I’m Fawn. I believe we spoke on the phone.”

“Yes.”

I felt like it was the only word that I could come up with. She had seen me. My luggage had been whisked off into the distance. There was no escape.

“I’m glad that you chose to join us. Are you ready to start your retreat?”

She just got right to the point, didn’t she?

“I’m sorry, I’m still not sure what this is all about.”

“You,” Fawn said.

“Excuse me?”

“You,” she repeated. “This is all about you. This entire experience is about you. When you’re here, and when you return home, no one and nothing else matters. This is all about you and what you want and need.”

“I don’t think I understand.”

“You read the brochure, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And I told you over the phone why we designed Enchanted Woods.”

“To help me find what I am looking for.”

“Exactly. So, what other questions could there be?”

She was right. I was done asking questions. Just like Fawn said, this was about me and for once, I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass.

“Alright,” I said.

“Good,” Fawn said with a smile. “I’ll show you to your room. Freshen up and relax for the evening. Tomorrow we’ll make plans for your experience.”

I followed her out of the room and down the hallway where I had seen the man carry my luggage. We walked up a short flight of stairs and through a doorway into a beautifully appointed bedroom. I don’t know how the man managed to get out of the room without me noticing him, but he was gone. My luggage was sitting on the floor beside a tall, canopied bed elaborately made with white bedding accented by tiny purple flowers.

“This is lovely,” I said, stepping further into the room.

“I’m glad that you like it. The bathroom is through that door. Feel free to bathe, take a nap, read. Do whatever you like. I will have dinner brought to you. I will see you tomorrow.”

I nodded, so drawn in by the room that I didn’t even bother to turn around to watch her leave. When the door closed, I walked toward the bathroom. As beautiful as the bedroom was, the bathroom exceeded it. Huge and airy, the room had a rainforest shower in one corner and a massive garden tub tucked into a bay window along the back wall. I could see the thick woods beyond the window and immediately started to undress. One thing that the home I had finally been able to purchase a few years back lacked was a decent bathtub. It wasn’t something that I thought that I was going to need, but it hadn’t been long before I started to miss a good soak in the evening. Now that I had nothing but time and a bathtub deep enough that I could probably swim in it in front of me, I wasn’t going to waste it.

Several minutes later my hair was coiled on top of my head and I was neck deep in a mound of rose-scented bubbles, my eyes closed as I reclined in pure bliss against the side of the tub. Outside, the sun had started to slip down the horizon, the early winter days short enough that the twilight came well before I even got home from work most days. Being able to relax in the bath and feel the day winding down around me was a unique luxury and I knew that I could very easily get accustomed to this. I was very close to falling asleep when I heard a low sound like someone clearing their throat.

I opened my eyes and gasped when I saw a man standing in the bathroom with me. I sat up sharply, gathering the bubbles around me and wrapping my arms around myself. I hadn’t heard him come in and his sudden presence in the bathroom was unnerving. He didn’t seem flustered or uncomfortable, however. Instead, he simply looked at me. I looked back and realized that he was incredibly attractive. Thick, silky light brown hair hung to his collar and honey-colored eyes nearly took my attention away from his full lips.

“Hello,” I said, unsure of what else to say.

“Hello. I brought your dinner. It’s waiting for you in the bedroom.”

“Thank you.”

I noticed his eyes trailing along my face and down to the bath as if he could see through the bubbles, and I brought my arms closer around me. Without another word, he headed out of the room and a few seconds later I heard the door to the bedroom close. I dropped my head back against the side of the tub and let out a sigh. I could definitely get used to that kind of scenery.

I finished bathing, rinsed off, and dressed in the plush robe I found hanging in the bathroom before walking back out into my bedroom. An ornate metal stand had been placed in front of a davenport to one side of the bed and I could see a tray laden with a delectable-looking meal sitting on it. Two glasses stood on the tray, one with sparkling water and the other with a rich red wine. I settled onto the cushion and immediately reached for the wine. My first sip filled my mouth and seemed to waken my taste buds, making me realize how hungry I was. As I ate the array of delicious food I tried not to think about the man who had come into the bathroom without any announcement. As hard as I tried, though, I couldn’t get my mind off of the way that he looked at me, or the impulse that I’d had to ask if he was going to stay for dinner.

It was still early when I finished eating, but the combination of the filling meal and the long hot soak had relaxed me to the point that I felt like I could barely keep my eyes open. I changed into my nightgown and pulled back the corner of the bedding, appreciating how crisp and fresh the sheets looked. They exactly matched the color of the tiny flowers and something about that relaxed me even further. I slipped into the bed and reached beside me to turn off the lamp on the nightstand. I rested my head on the thick pillows and drifted away into sleep, the last thought that I had before disappearing into oblivion was about Fawn and what she meant by planning my experience the next day.

Chapter Eight

Snow

I woke up before dawn just like I did every morning. It was something that I had taught myself to do when I first left home and no longer had my mother to wake me up for school. I hated the sound of my alarm and lost sleep dreading being startled awake by it. I tried everything from an old-fashioned alarm clock that rattled bells to every option on my phone. No matter what I tried, whether it was singing crickets, barking dogs, or whimsical music, it had the same jarring effect, and eventually I trained myself to wake up ten minutes before it was supposed to go off just so that I didn’t have to hear it. The challenge then was learning not to just let myself roll over and go back to sleep, but several missed classes and a particularly regretful speech done in my slippers because I ran out of time getting ready taught me to climb out of bed even before I turned off the alarm. That was still the way that I started each day, but that morning as I was starting to get out of bed I remembered that I didn’t have an alarm set and there was nowhere that I needed to be. Smiling at the simple indulgence of it, I tucked myself back into the soft bed and let myself fall back to sleep.

I didn’t wake up again until I heard the click of my door and sat up, pulling the blankets up to my chest in the same way that I had the bubbles. I looked around, but the room was empty. The dinner tray from the night before had been removed from the stand in front of the davenport and replaced with one containing an abundant breakfast. I at once wondered if the man who had brought me dinner the night before had been the one to bring me breakfast, and hoped that it wasn’t him so that he hadn’t seen me sprawled in the bed, no makeup and likely snoring considering the incredible depth of sleep I had reached. It was an unexpected thought and I didn’t understand why I cared if he had seen me that way. He was gorgeous, there was no doubt about that, but that shouldn’t really have had any impact on me other than the brief but explosive dream I’d had about him before waking up to what I now assumed was the sound of him leaving the room.

I lingered over the breakfast of eggs, bacon, pancakes, fruit, and then stood staring through the back window at the woods as I slowly drank the succulent coffee. I always drank my coffee black, but there was something special about this coffee that made it taste almost as though it had been swirled with dark, rich chocolate. I didn’t even miss my doughnuts.

Once I finished my coffee, I took my time getting dressed and putting on my makeup. It felt foreign to have nothing but time on my hands, but with every minute that I was able to relax and do exactly as I wanted, I was feeling more liberated. I took a few extra seconds to add another coat of mascara, and then a few more to wipe away the smears beneath my eyes. I pondered over what clothes to wear, even though the wardrobe that I brought was quite limited. I even took the time to stare into the mirror and sweep my hair into a complex braided style rather than simply wearing it down because it was easier. Though it took me five times as long to get ready as it usually does, I felt calm and put together when I walked out of my room and started down the hallway toward the front room of the cottage.

I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to do that day. Fawn had said that we would meet to discuss my retreat, but she hadn’t told me when or where. I figured that I could probably have stayed in my room and she would have come for me when she wanted to talk, but I didn’t want to just sit around. I had time and I wanted to use it.

I looked around as I walked through the cottage, trying to find indications of other guests that might also be staying at the retreat. I didn’t notice any, however, and soon found myself lured outside to explore the lush surroundings again. The air was chillier than the day before and I wrapped my arms tightly around myself to ward off the cold. Layers of crisp, spicy, and earthy smells surrounded me with the essence of fall and I suddenly felt the urge to do all of those fall nesting activities that you see in magazines or TV movies. I wanted to wrap up in a wool blanket with a mug of hot cider and watch leaves fall. I wanted to pick a pumpkin and put it on the porch. I wanted to start thinking about Thanksgiving even though it was still months away. The impact of the woods was strange, but I welcomed it, telling myself that getting out of my routine and doing something new was exactly what I had intended when I made plans to come here. This felt like just the beginning and I needed to be open to whatever it was going to bring me.

The driveway in front of the cottage that the limo had brought me up the day before was still empty and I stepped off of it onto a narrow walkway that appeared to be made of large flat river rocks. The walkway led me around the side of the cottage and to the back into the woods that I had seen from the windows in my room. The leaves in the trees had started to change colors and the variety of hues throughout the woods gave them more depth so that they seemed to go on forever into the distance. Tucked close to the house was a small garden containing the last lingering vestiges of the late summer harvest and a coiling pumpkin vine with ripening fruits nestled among the deep green leaves.

“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

The same voice that had startled me in the front room the day before showed up behind me again and I whipped around to see Fawn. It seemed that she only knew how to approach me by sneaking up behind me.

“What’s amazing?” I asked.

“That something so beautiful can just grow out of nothing. I didn’t even plant those pumpkins. I just tossed one of my pumpkins from last year out into the garden to nourish the soil for the vegetable garden this season, then early this summer I noticed that there were sprouts and now look. I’ll have enough pumpkins to decorate and cook with later this fall.”

I nodded at her.

“That is amazing,” I said. I looked at the pumpkins for a few more seconds before turning back to Fawn. “I noticed that there aren’t any other rooms in the cottage,” I said. “Where do the other guests sleep?”

“No other guests,” she said.

“None?” I asked.

Fawn shook her head.

“No. We only welcome one guest at a time. Like I told you, this is all about you. No one else. Everything is intended to allow you to focus on your own experience and making the most of it. Speaking of which, are you ready to plan?”

I nodded, unsure of what to think about being the only guest at the retreat. How did Robin get the brochure for this place? I hadn’t even bothered to ask him. And how did I manage to get in so fast? It felt like there was something else in play, but I didn’t know what it could possibly be. Fawn started back up the path toward the front door of the house and I followed her. When we got inside, she led me into what looked like a parlor off of the main front room. A table had been set up between two overstuffed chairs and it held a tray with a steaming teapot, two tea cups, and a plate of cookies. Fawn settled into one of the chairs and reached for the teapot. I watched as she poured the tea into both cups, breathing in the warm smell of apple and cinnamon that filled the steam that rose up from them. When she sat the pot back on the table, I picked up the cup closest to me and took a sip. The tea had all of the flavors that I had been thinking about when walking outside and I felt myself relax even further.

“Have you given any thought to the type of men you would like?”

Until then.

I nearly spit out my tea. I struggled to swallow it and sat the cup back on the table, hearing it shudder slightly as my hand shook.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

Fawn didn’t look at all thrown off by my reaction. She took another casual sip of her tea and reached for one of the delicate cookies on the plate.

“The men,” she said. “Did you have time to think about the type of men who you would like to encounter during your retreat?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head as I tried to process what she meant. “I don’t think that I’m following you. I thought that this retreat was meant as a place to relax.”

“It is,” Fawn said. “But I told you that its main purpose is to help you find what you have been looking for. Look into yourself, Snow. What have you been missing in life? What do you want to find?”

I drew in a breath.

“I don’t understand what men have to do with that.”

Fawn laughed slightly.

“I think you do,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with it, Snow. There’s nothing wrong with you wanting to break out of what has always been expected of you and find what is really inside of you. Have you ever thought about your fantasies? Like really thought about them?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do, Snow. You don’t have to pretend with me. I’m here to help you find what you enjoy and what that means for you both when you are with men and in your life outside of those relationships. Whether you are with the man for one night or the rest of your life, what really matters is that you know yourself and stay true to that. That’s why I’m here. I’m going to help you find yourself.”

“How?”

“You tell me what you like. Tell me your fantasies. I’ll find men that fit those fantasies and you will get to experience them. They will come to you and bring you on the date of your dreams. What you do on that date is up to you, but I suggest you live it to the fullest. When you’re finished with your experience, you will know far more about yourself and what you want out of your life.”

“These men,” I said, trying to understand the details. “Who are they?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Fawn said.

“Yes, it does.”

“Does it? I told you. This is about you. All about you. The men are just instruments. They’re there to show you what’s possible. What you do with it from there is up to you. You won’t know the men’s real names. They all have aliases. You won’t talk about your real life and they won’t tell you about themselves unless it has something to do with the date.”

“I don’t really know how to feel about all this. I thought that I was just going to come here and spend a few days relaxing. Maybe meditating a little. Just getting away from everything.”

“What are you trying to get away from?”

I thought about Lucille and everything that had happened, then what she and Robin had said to me. Each of them had their own perception of me, but in the end, it was the same. I had let my life pass me by thinking about everyone else and doing what I thought would make them happy. It had been so engrained in me, so much of a routine, that I didn’t even think about it. Once it occurred to me, however, I realized that I was really sick of it and didn’t want to let it happen anymore.

“You asked me about my fantasies,” I said, skirting the question.

“Yes,” Fawn said. “Tell me about them. Don’t be shy. The more that you tell me, the better I’m going to be at finding the men who are going to make this the best experience for you.”

“That’s the thing,” I said. “I don’t really know.”

“Oh?” Fawn said, setting her cup down as if she wanted to give me her full attention. “You’ve never thought about your fantasies?”

“No,” I admitted, deciding that this was the time to be as honest as possible. “I’ve only slept with one person in my life, and our sex life was always…less than satisfying.”

“He wasn’t a good lover?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t even know. I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I can tell you that it was never something that I was terribly enthusiastic about.”

“If you don’t know if he was a good lover or not, I can tell you that he wasn’t. That makes your experience even more important. You deserve to know what it’s like to completely lose yourself in sex. To enjoy it with every bit of your mind and your body. The men I find for you can help you with that, but first, you have some discovering to do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Beyond the vegetable garden behind the cottage is another path. Follow it. We’ll have dinner together tonight. We’ll talk then.”

“What’s at the end of the path?” I asked.

Fawn stood and gestured to the door to the parlor. I could only assume she was indicating that it was time for me to go to the path.

“You’ll find out,” she said. “Enjoy.”

I got the distinct impression that the conversation was over and that she wasn’t going to give me any more insight into what was awaiting me down the path. I stepped out of the cottage and followed the path to the back, then found the second path that led away from the vegetable garden. This path was smaller and not as well maintained as the first. Not that it looked abandoned or neglected. It simply looked like it was not used anywhere near as often as the path that led to the back of the cottage. I felt strangely special as soon as I stepped onto the path, as though I was getting a privilege that few others were given. That feeling fueled me on and I followed the path curiously. It wove through the small lush yard and into the thick woods just beyond. All of the wonderful fall smells were intensified here and I filled my lungs with them, getting the same intoxicating feeling as I had before, somehow nostalgic for something that I hadn’t even really experienced before.

The path led further and deeper into the woods than I would have anticipated that it would and I was starting to get nervous when I finally saw another small cottage appear several yards ahead of me. I climbed the few steps that led to the front door and hesitated. I didn’t know if I should knock or just enter. Finally, I decided to just go in and pressed the ornate metal handle, pushing the door into the building. I had expected this cottage to be much the same as the first, but what greeted me was completely different.

I stepped immediately into a large room that appeared to take up the majority of the building. There was a single door to either side of the room, nearly hidden against the rich purple brocade wall covering. The wall in front of me, however, was completely mirrored. A few pieces of furniture were scattered through the room, with a single large chair the same shade as the walls, positioned so that it faced the mirrored wall. I looked around, unsure of why I was there or what I was supposed to be doing. I noticed a table a few steps away and saw that there was a piece of paper on it. Walking toward it, I realized that it had writing on it.

I picked up the paper, surprised to see that it was addressed to me. I didn’t know if that meant that it had been waiting for me all along, or if Fawn had somehow arranged for it to be put into place while I was still on my way down the path.

“ Snow,” I read, “ on your journey to find yourself you must start by discovering yourself. Be open. Be unafraid. Allow yourself to explore and remember, this is about you.”

Feeling even more confused than before I had started reading, I put the paper back down and turned to leave, intending to go back to Fawn and tell her that I wasn’t sure that this was right for me. Before I could get to the door, however, one of the doors to the side of the room opened and a figure stepped into the room with me. He was shirtless, low-slung black pants revealing his chiseled body. I was so focused on his muscles that it took me a few moments to register his face. It was the same beautiful man that had brought me my dinner the night before and, I assumed, my breakfast that morning. His eyes locked on me as he stepped up closer.

“Should I help you undress?” he asked, his voice as rich and creamy as his eyes.

My mouth fell open slightly in shocked response to the question.

“What?” I asked.

“Should I help you undress or would you prefer to do it yourself?”

I felt a shiver ripple through me and a spark of desire in the back of my mind that I hadn’t felt in as long as I could remember. I thought of the words in the letter and what Fawn had said to me. I had been so unsure of what was happening and the purpose of this retreat, but instead of explaining it to me, she had sent me here and told me to be open. I was still unsure, still nervous. I didn’t know what to do. Part of me wanted to run out of the cottage and go back to my house so that I could pretend like none of this had happened. Another part of me, though, was curious in a way that I could never remember myself being. Not wanting to speak for fear of what I would say, I nodded.

The man stepped closer to me and brought his hands to the hem of my sweater. I lifted my arms to allow him to lift the sweater up and off of me. He folded it carefully and rested it on a nearby couch, then returned to remove my camisole. Once I was in my bra, he opened the button on the front of my pants and began to ease the zipper down. I stepped out of my shoes and socks as he opened my pants the rest of the way and brought them down my hips. He lowered himself to his knees in front of me so that he could bring my pants to my ankles and helped me step out of them. When they were on the couch with my shirts, the man came back to my side and took my wrist, he guided me across the room, stopping when I stood beside the chair facing the mirror, then turned me so that I faced the same way.

“Go ahead,” he said.

Knowing what he meant, I released the hooks on the back of my bra and let it slide down my arms, then removed my matching panties. It was an incredibly strange sensation standing in the room completely naked in front of a stranger, but at the same time it felt liberating.

“Look at yourself,” he said. “Really look at yourself.”

At first it was an odd instruction. I looked at myself every day. When I turned my attention fully to the mirror, however, I realized that this was different. Looking at myself each day was usually about doing my makeup, styling my hair, or making sure that my outfit looked right. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had taken the time to just look at myself, especially naked, if I ever had.

Squaring my body to the mirror, I let my eyes start at my shoulders and trailed them down my body. I examined the swells of my breasts and the pink of my nipples, noticing how they had hardened slightly in the cool air of the cottage. My eyes moved slightly lower and I turned, tilting enough to see the ridges of my ribs become visible under my skin. This led into the dip of my waist, then the curve of my hip. I had always felt somewhat self-conscious about the soft swells of my body, but as I looked at them this way I started to see them as feminine and attractive. My eyes slipped lower to the wisps of fine hair nestled at the apex of my thighs. Heat rose to my cheeks, but before I was able to look away, the man stepped up behind me and I felt him wrap his arms around me. I drew in a breath, expecting him to touch me. Instead, he rested his hands to the back of mine so that he could pick them up and bring them up to my breasts.

I allowed the man to guide my hands to rest on my breasts and felt him give a slight, leading squeeze. His hands fell away, but I left mine in place, massaging into my breasts and running them across my nipples. I felt the peaks tighten even more in response to the touch and an unexpected sensation rush through my body. My ex had never spent much time focusing on my body, giving any time or attention to giving me pleasure he didn’t think would benefit him. Now I was discovering that even that slight touch was enough to cause anticipation to build in my belly.

I traced my body with my hands in the same way that I had with my eyes, feeling the texture of my skin and the contrast of the bones beneath in some areas and the softness in others.

“Sit down.”

I had nearly forgotten that the man was in the room with me and I glanced over my shoulder in my reflection to look at him. He was standing beside the purple chair, smoothing what looked like a silky blanket over it. I took the few steps over to the chair, aware of the tingling between my thighs that had started under my touch and increased by the thought of the man there with me. I sat on the chair and felt the smooth fabric of the blanket tease my skin. As soon as I had settled into place, the man walked around to the back of the chair and reached down on either side of me to tuck his hands between my thighs. He applied pressure until I complied with it and allowed him to part my legs. I felt a twinge of nervousness and resisted the pressure. He responded my pressing a little harder. I didn’t feel forced, more encouraged, as though he wasn’t going to give me the chance to give up on what I had started.

When my legs were open, my feet curved so that just my toes touched the floor in front of the chair, he brought his mouth close to my ear.

“Look at yourself,” he whispered.

I did as he said, bringing my focus down between my parted thighs. I had never looked at myself that way and though there was a hint of discomfort in the newness of it, the longer I looked, the more intrigued I became by my own body. I tried to remember what it felt like when my ex had touched me, trying to link those sensations to what I was seeing now, but I couldn’t bring any memories forward.

“Are you wet?” he asked.

I drew in a shuddering breath.

“I don’t know,” I said.

He walked around the chair until he was in front of me and lowered back down to his knees the way that he had when he was helping me undress. Without warning, he leaned forward and drew his tongue up my core. I gasped at the intense, unknown feeling and watched him climb back to his feet.

“You are now,” he said. “Feel.”

I brought my hand down between my thighs, hesitating for only a moment before I let my fingertip slip down into my folds. I felt the wetness there, the combination of his incredibly sexy lick and my body’s own fluids. I touched the swollen pearl at the peak of my core and nearly cried out at the intensity of the sensation.

“Watch,” the man said to me. “Watch yourself.”

Feeling bolder, I looked into the mirror and watched as I explored myself. I felt the curves and dips of my petals, intoxicated by the combination of feeling intricacies of my body that I had never known were there while watching myself create the powerful pleasure. The more I touched, the more my body responded, offering up more of the silky fluids. I gathered them with my fingertips to allow them to move more easily as I experimented with different patterns and pressures to create different sensations. I was learning myself, finding things that I enjoyed that I had never known, and stirring feelings within myself that were beyond anything that I had ever experienced. A compulsion washed over me and I brought two fingers down to press them inside me. I felt the heat and wetness of my walls around my fingers and I plunged them deeper, enjoying the slight stretch they caused.

I could feel tingling heat sweeping over my skin as my breath grew faster and more shallow. I wanted to close my eyes and give myself over completely to the sensations that I was feeling, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to miss watching for even a second. Pressure was building through my hips and stomach, and I pressed my thighs further apart, opening myself more and allowing my fingers to go deeper. I turned my hand slightly so that I could touch the pad of my thumb to my clit. It took only seconds of stroking for all of the pressure within my body to surge up until it was almost unbearable and then it crashed. I screamed at the powerful explosion of sensation and pressed my fingers as hard into myself as I could, feeling my walls spasming frantically around them.

This was something that I had never felt, an all-encompassing, breathtaking experience that seemed to bring me out of myself yet connected me more with my body than I had ever been. As my body relaxed and I felt the contractions slow and stop, I let my fingers slip out and my hand rest against my thigh. My eyes drifted closed and I concentrated on the rhythm of my heart and my breaths evening out again.

I didn’t know how long I reclined there, but when I opened my eyes again, there was a warm damp cloth and a fresh towel beside me and the man was gone. I took my time to freshen up and get dressed, then started back down the path toward the main cottage at a faster pace. Fawn was sitting beside the vegetable garden, slowly watering the pumpkin vine. She looked up as I approached.

“I’m in,” I said breathlessly.

A smile came to Fawn’s lips and she stood.

“Do you know your fantasies yet?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“No,” I said. “But I want to know.”

“Alright. Then we’ll try a little of everything. How many men would you like me to find for you?”

I thought about her question for a moment. My mind felt clear but also like it was rushing, spinning as I contemplated the possibilities that lay ahead of me. I remembered what Robin told me and felt a smile come to my lips. If I was going to do this, I was going to do it right.

“Seven.”

Chapter Nine

Snow

“Seven?” Fawn asked. “I arrange dates every two weeks. Are you prepared for that type of investment?”

She sounded surprised at the declaration, and I had to admit, I was a bit surprised at myself. The answer had just come out of me without me thinking through what it really meant for me to commit to three months of going down the road of being truly dirty. Now that I had said it, though, and heard Fawn repeat it to me, I knew that I was making the right decision. The thought of what I had experienced in the other cottage sent another thrill of arousal and desire through me and I felt my body starting to heat up again. If I could create this type of feeling in myself, I wanted to know what it was like to let a man explore my body the same way and nurture it beyond what I could accomplish on my own. The realization was powerful, finally helping me to understand exactly what Fawn had meant when she insisted that this experience was all about me.

“Yes,” I told her. “Is that alright?”

“That is more than alright. I always appreciate when my guests are truly committed to the experience and what they can achieve here.”

“Good,” I said, feeling a sense of relief just knowing that I had made the decision and given myself over to the possibilities ahead.

“Now, I have to be honest with you. I have strict rules and regulations when it comes to how I manage this retreat and the experiences that happen here. I will give you a contract and you will be bound to it and its expectations. The most important is anonymity. I’ve already told you that the men will each plan fantasy dates for you and that their personal lives don’t matter. This is not just a platitude. They, too, have signed contracts agreeing not to discuss their personal lives in any way that does not directly connect with the date. The contracts on both ends will also include agreeing that you will not attempt contact or to spend additional time with each other outside of your assigned and appointed date. You are not to share last names, in fact the men will utilize aliases, and you will not exchange any form of contact information. Do you understand?”

I nodded.

“Yes,” I said.

While part of me felt as though I should have been bothered by the restrictiveness of Fawn’s contract, I couldn’t help but be relieved by it. Not being able to make any personal connections with the men meant that I was going to be able to focus entirely on myself and what I was going to be able to get out of each date. No names. No connection. No emotions. No people-pleasing. Just indulgence, fun, and sex.

My mouth watered at the thought and I couldn’t wait to get started.

“Did you think about the fantasies that you would like fulfilled?”

I tried to think, tried to bring my brain to a place where I could imagine fantasies, but I couldn’t. The truth was that I had never thought about it. Maybe that was part of the reason that I had never experienced the type of satisfaction and pleasure that Robin had always talked about. I felt like I should have been embarrassed to admit it, but at the same time, Fawn struck me as the kind of person who would never judge. She was there specifically to help me and if I was open and honest with her, she would. I shook my head.

“I have no idea.”

“Alright,” she said. “Then I will create a sampler for you.”

“Like a box of assorted doughnuts.”

Fawn smiled.

“So much better.”

“Then I will take the sampler.” I hesitated for a moment, unsure of how exactly to phrase the question that I had on the tip of my tongue. “These men,” I finally said, “how many other women have they been…assigned to?”

“None,” Fawn told me, her face suddenly serious. “Each man that I bring into the retreat is only assigned to one woman. I maintain a database of applications and background information for men who are interested in being a part of the experience, and when a woman comes here, I select the men who correspond to her needs.”

“Are they actors?”

I wasn’t sure if that idea bothered me or not. On one hand, it seemed that professional actors would be able to make the experience as realistic as possible, but on the other it could end up being incredibly awkward and part of me hated the idea of feeling like I was being pandered to.

“Absolutely not,” Fawn told me. “Even though your experiences with these men are limited, I can assure you that everything that happens is completely by choice. They are not given instructions for what to do or say or how to interact with you. These are real men and the time that you spend together is as real as if the two of you met in a bar or through friends or on a dating app. The only thing that’s different is that you know these men have been carefully screened, are safe, and know that they are there for you rather than trying to get anything for themselves out of the date. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they won’t enjoy having sex with you if you choose.”

“If I choose?”

Fawn looked at me strangely.

“Of course. This is your experience, Snow. Just because the men will be chosen for you doesn’t mean that you have to do anything with them. You might not be attracted to them. You might not like their personality or the date that they bring you on. If that’s the case, that’s fine. You just let them know that you are done for the day and they will bring you back here and leave. No hurt feelings. No negative thoughts. This is stress relief and personal discovery, not an obligation. If you are interested, however, you can do, say, and experience anything that you please with these men. They will only say and do what is natural and real for them, so you can trust the authenticity of every moment that you spend with them.”

“When is my first date?”

Fawn smiled again.

“It will take me a little time to go through the men I have on file and select the ones who are right for you. For the next day or two, I invite you to stay here, relax, enjoy some pampering. When I have chosen your first date, I will let you know.”

I liked the sound of just enjoying the retreat for a couple of days, even if the anticipation of meeting the first man who Fawn chose for me might keep me from really being able to relax. Fawn and I spoke for a few more minutes about my taste in men and the types of activities I enjoyed. After giving her what was likely far less information than she would have wanted, I headed back to my room. I felt suddenly tired, as if the tension that was coiled tightly within me had started to release, leaving me relaxed but sleepy. When I stepped into my room the man who brought me my breakfast and who had been in the cottage was placing a large platter of fruit on the table. I immediately felt heat come to my cheeks thinking about our brief interaction in the cottage, but he didn’t react as though anything had happened between us. I didn’t know how to react to him or if I should mention our brief but powerful encounter. The longer that he went without acknowledging the cottage, the more I started questioning if it had even happened and soon I came to the conclusion that I must have imagined him there.

Or it was another man and I just superimposed this man’s face onto him.

“Thank you,” I said as he finished arranging the platter and straightened to start toward the door.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “I hope you enjoy it.”

He stepped past me, but I called out to stop him just before he left the room.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

He turned and looked at me as if he wasn’t sure that he had actually heard me ask the question.

“Noah,” he finally said.

“Hi, Noah,” I said. “I’m Snow.”

“It’s nice to meet you.”

“You, too.”

He started for the door again.

“Everything has been really delicious,” I said.

Noah turned and I saw a slight sparkle in his vibrant green eyes. He gave a single nod.

“I’m glad that you liked it,” he said.

There was a short pause and then he turned and left. It was reassuring to know his name. At least there was a sense of connection now that made it somewhat less strange that he came into my room several times a day. Not to mention the delectable long lick that made me tremble even though I was still trying to put it out of my mind.

For the next two days, I spent my time relaxing in my room, reading through some of the books that were displayed on a shelf across from the bed, and visiting the spa rooms that I discovered positioned throughout the cottage. Though I tried to keep myself distracted, every few minutes I found myself thinking about the date that was coming. I didn’t know what to expect. Fawn had told me that I would find out about my date soon before it happened and that I should just go along with the information and instructions that I received. That was a somewhat intimidating suggestion, but I agreed. I had already committed myself to going through with this every step of the way and I figured that that meant letting myself get taken away by whatever date the men had planned for me.

I was starting to feel as though Fawn had gone through what paltry information I was able to give her and decided that she wasn’t going to be able to help me when I finally heard a quick knock on my door. I knew that it couldn’t be Noah, since he never knocked and had a few times now walked in on me in partial undress or while I was in a bath. Feeling suddenly nervous, I hesitated to approach the door. Finally, I took a few steps toward it and turned the handle. A large white box sat on the floor with a note secured to the top with red ribbon. I leaned down to pick it up and scurried back into my room, closing the door quickly as if protecting whatever it was that was waiting for me in the box. Settling onto the edge of the bed, I rested the box beside me and slipped the envelope out from under the ribbon. I opened the envelope and pulled out a thick white notecard.

“ Take me out to the ballgame.”

“That’s it?” I asked the card.

I tossed it aside and untied the bow so that I could take the top off of the box and look into it.

Oh, you have got to be kidding me.

I felt incredibly ridiculous walking out of the cottage in preparation for a date wearing the black stretch pants, tight white tank top, miniature baseball jersey, and tennis shoes that had been waiting for me in the box. Usually getting ready for a date would have required hoping that I would fit into a dress, squeezing into heels that might be too tight but looked too good for it to matter, and teasing my hair to the point that it may justify turning me into the antibullying groups. It was an ordeal that took a few hours. Preparing for this date took less than half an hour, several minutes of which were taken up trying to keep a curl in my ponytail. There was a somewhat anticlimactic feel to stepping out of the cottage now, as if I had built myself up so much for this elaborate fantasy date and now didn’t feel like my sprucing-up ritual had really justified the date.

The same white limo that had picked me up from my house to bring me to The Enchanted Woods was waiting for me outside and I allowed the chauffer to help me into the back seat. We drove away from the cottage without him saying anything and I let the silence remain for several minutes.

“Have you worked for Fawn for long?” I finally asked.

“Six years.”

“So, she doesn’t cycle out drivers like she does dates.”

I had meant it more to myself, but he heard me.

“No.”

“Have you ever brought another woman to a date like this?” I asked.

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Oh, good.”

I turned and looked out the window, watching the scenery as it went by. We left the quiet peacefulness of the wooded area around the cottage and started down a larger road that quickly turned into a highway. We had been traveling for nearly half an hour when we entered the city and turned onto a smaller street that led into the back lot of a minor league baseball stadium. The limo pulled to a stop and I suddenly felt a flock of butterflies swarm into my belly. They flew around frantically, some seeming to try to get up my throat. I didn’t want to get out of the car. As long as I stayed right where I was, all of this could stay just a fantasy, just an abstract idea of something that I could do to improve myself. I wouldn’t actually have to face the man who was waiting for me or push myself out of my comfort zone as much as I had promised myself, and Fawn, that I was going to do.

The door to the limo opened and the chauffeur peered in at me.

“We’re here,” he said.

I nodded.

“I noticed.” I took a deep breath and blew it out. “Alright. Here I go.”

I stepped out of the car and looked toward the stadium.

“Lee will be waiting for you inside,” the driver said.

“Thank you.”

I started toward the stadium feeling slightly unsteady on my feet. I couldn’t remember the last time that I had even been to a baseball game much less did any type of activity that involved baseball. The outfit that was sent to me was worrisome and I had the sinking feeling that I was going to be expected to participate in something athletic. I crossed the small amount of the parking lot and passed through the first arched door that I saw. It led me into a wide corridor studded with concessions stands and merchandise booths all advertising the local team. There was an eeriness about how empty and quiet the stadium was and I felt glued to my spot. A few moments later I heard the slight crackle of an announcement system coming on.

“Good evening, Snow. I will meet you at the beer stand.”

Elegant.

I was feeling that I might need to take advantage of Fawn’s reminder that what happened on the date was up to me and that I could request to go back to the retreat at any time when I turned the corner and in the direction that the signs on the wall sent me and saw the man standing in front of the beer stand. Clad in the tight pants and buttoned jersey of a baseball uniform, he was leaned back against the counter with a tall cup of beer in either hand. He held one out to me as I approached.

“My name is Lee,” he said as I took the beer from him.

I knew that that wasn’t his real name. It was an alias that had been assigned to him by Fawn. It fit him, though, and it didn’t even occur to me to wonder what his real name might be. It did, however, make me wonder why Fawn insisted that the men change their names but she was permitted to keep hers.

“Snow,” I said, accepting the beer. “Thanks.”

He gave a single nod and brought his own cup to his lips for a sip. I followed his lead, sipping some of the malty foam into my mouth first and then tipping the cup further to take a full sip. It was a darker brew than I would have expected to be sold at a baseball stadium, but I supposed things might have changed in the years that it had been since I had been anywhere near such a stadium. I took another sip and then brought the cup down to hold it in front of me, staring at him expectantly. I knew that he was supposed to have planned a date for us, and I hoped that standing in an empty stadium drinking beer wasn’t it.

That would most certainly not be one of my fantasies, if I had any.

“As you might have guessed,” he said, “I’m a baseball player.”

“I gathered that,” I said.

He took another sip from his cup and then turned to put it on the counter behind him before reaching for mine. I gave it to him and he put it in place with his.

“I thought that tonight we could have a little fun on the field,” he said.

I now knew for certain that the decidedly un-datelike clothing that had been sent to me had been selected to ensure that I was able to move easily. It was intimidating to think about. I prided myself in being many things, but sporty was not one of them. It wasn’t that I was the kind of person who would fall over my own feet when walking down the street, but I also wasn’t going to be the first one chosen for a team if a spontaneous game of dodgeball broke out somewhere. I was thankful then that this date was not with a man who I had been lusting after or even knew. It would be too embarrassing to even contemplate attempting to be athletic if I was also trying to impress a man who I was attracted to. That thought struck me, and I smiled, understanding more now what Fawn intended when she created the retreat.

Lee started toward the field and I followed him. We stepped through the arch that led to one of the towering flights of steps that rippled through the seats positioned on tiers around the diamond. It looked cavernous, far larger than anything that I remembered. We walked down the steps and out of a gate that led down onto the field.

“What position do you play?” I asked.

I knew that it was a relevant question, even though no response would have had any significance to me. I was only ever a casual baseball watcher and had never really caught on to all of the nuances of the game.

“Catcher,” he said, “and Designated Hitter.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

We were walking through the dirt of the infield out toward the grassy expanse of the outfield and when we got there, he sat down.

“That means that if a player who doesn’t have very good batting skills comes up to the plate or the team is down and really needs a score, I take the batter’s place and hit for them. We’ll do a little practice in a bit and see if you could be a DH, but first we have to stretch. I nodded and followed his lead as Lee guided me through a series of stretches. It felt awkward at first, but soon I found myself settling into the process, pressing deeper into the positions, and feeling my body start to come awake. I stretched my legs out in front of me and reached forward to grasp my toes. A moment later I felt Lee walk around behind me and his hands come to the center of my back. He applied pressure, easing me deeper into the stretch. It burned in my hips, but I held it.

When Lee released the pressure, he placed his hands on my ribs and guided me around to lie on my back.

“Bend your knees,” he said.

I complied and he grasped one of my ankles, picking my foot up off of the ground. He straightened my leg and pressed it straight up, then starting guiding it toward my face. His body rose up slightly to create leverage as he continued to press my leg. Though we were both dressed, the suggestiveness of the movement didn’t escape me. I felt like my body was waking up even more and I focused in on the feeling, wanting more. Lee had me switch legs and I tried to stretch further this time. Just when I felt that I couldn’t go any further, he released my leg.

“Your turn to help me now,” he said.

Lee put the soles of his feet together and leaned forward.

“Press down on my back,” he said.

I got behind him and pressed down. He barely moved.

“I don’t think I’m strong enough,” I said.

“Then lay on me.”

I turned around and rested my back on his.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Go ahead.”

I pressed into the ground with my feet, stretching out over Lee so that I could press him further down into his stretch. The warmth of his body seeped through his uniform even in the cool air of the late afternoon and I felt attraction building. We continued stretching for a few more minutes before he told me it was time for batting practice. I surprised myself at actually feeling excited about the new experience and followed him to a cage on the far side of the field. A bat was lying on the ground and Lee leaned down to pick it up.

“Have you ever done this before?” he asked.

“No.”

“OK. Well, you hold it like this.”

He demonstrated the grip on the bat and the stance of a batter. My eyes drifted over to the way that his tight pants cupped around his round, muscled ass and I smiled in appreciation. I didn’t care what he wanted to teach me, I was happy to learn if I got to keep looking at him in his uniform. He straightened and held the bat out toward me. I accepted it and tried to take the same position that he had assumed. A slight smile came to his lips and he stepped up behind me. His body molded to my back and he wrapped his arms around me, his hands coming over mine to adjust my grip and the position of my body. He helped me take a few practice swings and then stepped away from me. He pressed a button and the small yellow machine at the far end of the cage whirred to life before spitting a ball at me.

I shrieked and jumped out of the way, watching as the ball zoomed past me and smacked into a net behind me. Lee laughed and took me by my shoulders, guiding me back into the batting position. I braced myself, waiting for the ball, but when it came, I jumped out of the way again. Pressing my hand to my erratically beating heart, I turned to Lee.

“You know what? Let’s pretend that I hit it really, really well,” I said.

“OK,” he said through his continued laughter. He came toward me and took the bat out of my hands, dropping it back to the ground. “If you hit the ball really, really well, that means that it’s time to run the bases.”

“That’s something I think that I can handle.”

Lee guided me out of the cage and back to the infield. We stood on home plate and he pointed toward first.

“That’s first base,” he said, “you go there – “

“Tag! You’re It,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder and starting at the fastest pace that I could toward the base.

“That’s not the way it works!” Lee protested, but when I looked back over my shoulder at him, he was chasing me.

I jumped onto the base and turned, starting toward second. He was gaining on me and I felt his hand touch my back.

“Got you,” he said.

I turned around laughing and shrugged.

“I guess I’m not going to be a very big help to the team.”

“I don’t know about that,” Lee said. “Let’s try again. We’ll run them together this time.”

Lee brought me back to home plate and reached down to take my hand. I realized that I enjoyed the feeling of our palms touching and our fingers intertwining. There was a slight flutter in my belly, a moment of excitement that I hadn’t felt in so long. We took off running toward first base. When he got there, Lee took me by my hips to stop me and pull me closer to him. He looked down into my face.

“It looks like we got to first base,” he said.

There was something slightly smoky in his voice, as if the words were holding more meaning than they initially seemed to. I nodded and he tucked one finger under my chin, using it to tilt my face up to him. He leaned down toward me and his mouth pressed against mine. The kiss surprised me, but in a sweetly exciting way and I returned the kiss. It lasted for several seconds longer and then he pulled back to look into my eyes. He hesitated only briefly and then ducked his head down for a deeper, more intense kiss. Our mouths opened and his tongue entered mine, stroking first across the inside of my bottom lip and then delving further. His hands moved to my lower back and he pulled me up against him. I was breathless when the kiss finally ended.

“And again,” he said.

I smiled at his joke, but then felt him tugging lightly on my wrist, guiding me to start running toward second base. When we got there, he stopped me again and turned me toward him.

“Second base,” he said.

The lightness was disappearing from his voice, replaced with something richer, an attraction that was almost tangible. Though the joke had felt silly and teasing at first, it felt distinctly less childlike now as Lee kissed me again and then brought his mouth down to run along the side of my neck, kissing his way to the neckline of the jersey I wore. He unbuttoned it and pushed the sides out of the way. I could feel my chest rising and falling with sudden nervousness and my skin tingled when his fingertips touched the neckline of the tight tank top. He pulled it down, slipping it down over my breasts. Cupping both of his hands under them, Lee leaned down and swept his tongue down the swell of one breast into the valley between them, and then up over the other. He brought his tongue to the edge of the cups of my bra and let it dip beneath the fabric so that I felt the tip just brush over each of my nipples.

I was softening under his touch, already wanting more, when he stood, straightened my bra and tank top, and then buttoned my jersey again. Without hesitation, he took my hand again and we started running toward the next base. When we stopped, Lee immediately captured my mouth, kissing me with more intensity this time. I felt his hands coming to the waistband of my stretch pants and my mind starting spinning. This didn’t feel like a high school game anymore. The euphemisms didn’t seem as playful, but boldly serious.

“Third base,” he murmured against my lips as he pushed my pants down over my hips.

He removed them only to my knees, but it was far enough that he could discover that I had worn nothing beneath them. Lee’s hand came between my thighs and he pushed them apart a few inches. I felt the cool air sweep over my core and it became immediately obvious how much he had already aroused me. He lowered down to his knees and his face settled onto my thighs before his tongue dipped into my folds. It was only the second time I had ever felt that sensation, the first being Noah’s unexpected touch in the cottage, and I was still shocked by it. Lee lavished the blissful attention on me for several seconds, bringing me tantalizingly close to the explosive climax that I had experienced in the cottage, but then pulled his mouth away, stood, and straightened my clothing just as he had on second base.

I expected him to start running again, but instead, he wrapped his arms around me and looked down into my face.

“So, what’s next?” he asked.

“Hmm?” I asked, unsure of what I was supposed to say.

“You’re the one who hit the ball,” he said, teasing back to my fear in the batting cage. “How well did you hit it? Right now, you’re sitting on a triple. That’s a pretty good hit. But is it good enough? Did you hit it better than that?”

I nodded and a mischievous glint came to Lee’s eyes. We started running toward home plate, but when we were nearly there, he turned and grabbed me up against him again.

Chapter Ten

Snow

Lee wrapped one arm tightly around my waist, throwing me slightly off-balance, and we took several unsteady steps backwards, stumbled, and landed on the dry red dirt of the field. I immediately rolled him onto his back and climbed over onto him so that I was sprawled across his chest looking down into his face. We both lay still for a few seconds, our hard, uneven breath getting lost in the openness of the stadium around us, before I dipped my mouth down to his and caught it in a deep, passionate kiss.

Lee kissed me back with intensity, using one hand to hold the back of my head so he crushed our mouths together as if seeking even more of the pressure and connection. Our tongues tangled, massaging against each other and tasted each other’s mouths deeply. The exploration drew unchained sounds from deep within us as we put all of the attraction and tension that we had felt since meeting into the kiss. It was liberating and unusual, frightening and yet thrilling, to not think about anything but the immediate physical reactions and needs that I was experiencing. I didn’t have to think about what he was thinking or what it would mean if I went through with each compulsion that I experienced. This wasn’t about thoughts, emotions, or questions about what would come next. I didn’t care how he was going to perceive me or if he was going to call me the next morning, because I knew that he wasn’t. This was about my body, my pleasure, and I felt hungrier with each step that we progressed.

I felt his hands come to the backs of my thighs and pull me forward, causing me to straddle his hips. The tight, stretchy pants that he had selected for me to wear allowed me to settle onto him and feel his body fully beneath me almost as though there was no fabric between us at all. Rather than the slight embarrassment I had felt at Lee’s discovery that I had elected not to wear anything beneath the pants, I felt grateful for it now as my core cradled against his surging erection and my lack of panties allowed me to build the delectable pressure throughout my body as I rocked my hips against him. I wondered if Lee could feel my wet heat through the fabric of our clothing and I pressed down harder, hoping to show him my reaction to him, and to coax him to touch me.

Lee unbuttoned my jersey and pushed it back over my shoulders. I could feel my nipples straining against the thin satin bra I had chosen to wear beneath the tight white tank top, and I arched slightly to push my breasts toward him, wanting him to touch me. His hands came to the hem of the tank top and he whisked the shirt away. The soft coolness of the air tightened my nipples even further and I reached behind my back to release the clasp of my bra, dropping it out of the way to expose my breasts fully to him. Lee moaned and reached up to cup my breasts, filling his hands with them and kneading his fingers into the supple flesh. His palms stimulated my nipples and I felt the sensation course through my body, shooting between my thighs to further arouse me. In one movement he sat up, wrapped one arm around my hips, and flipped me onto my back so that I landed on the ground as he had been moments before.

Not taking his eyes away from my face, Lee grasped the waistband of my pants and started to pull them down off of my hips. As he pulled them down, I kicked off my shoes and peeled away my socks so that when he got the pants totally off of me and tossed them aside so I was bare in front of him. Before the date, I had expected that it would be strange and even uncomfortable to be naked in front of someone I didn’t know. Now that I was laying there with Lee gazing down at me, though, I felt sexy and desirable, open and willing the way that I had when I was in the cottage in front of the mirror. It was a connection to myself and my own sexual experience that I had never had with my ex, and I was becoming intoxicated by it, wanting more with every moment.

The sun had completely set around the diamond now, but I could see Lee in the silvery light from the moon that flowed through the stadium and pooled on the infield around us as he sat back on his heels and peeled off his jersey and then his shirt. I watched hungrily as he kicked out of his cleats and then released his pants. Once they were loosened, he raised up and shook them off, kicking them aside so that there was no longer anything between us. I reached for him and Lee came forward over me, propping himself up with his hands on either side of my shoulders so that he could spend another few moments kissing me before pushing back onto his knees again. There was no going backwards now, no reversing the progress that we were making. Nothing was going to keep us from rushing headlong into exactly what both of us wanted.

He moved with directed, unflinching determination and I complied with the rapid guidance of his hands as he pulled my legs apart, positioning them on either side of his. He grabbed my thighs and yanked me forward so that my hips lifted slightly off of the ground. Lee slowed and brought one hand forward to glide his fingers down through my hot, wet folds. He was gazing down at my body, his eyes filled with appreciation of what he was seeing, and I pushed my thighs further apart to give him more visual access. I had hoped for some lingering attention, but after only a few seconds of massaging, he took his hand away and leaned slightly to grab onto his pants. He pulled them toward him and I saw him rummage in the pocket of his pants to withdraw a slim black case. He withdrew a condom from the case and tossed the case and his pants aside again. I squirmed with desire and anticipation as I watched him tear open the packet and then roll the condom down the delectably thick, straight length of his cock. When he finished, Lee grabbed my thighs again and pulled me a little closer so that my hips lifted and rested into his lap. Suddenly he was inside me and I cried out with the fullness of him burying himself deep within my body.

He didn't pause at my reaction, but withdrew slightly and slammed back into me with even greater intensity, bringing another sharp cry from my lips. The sounds only seemed to spur him forward and Lee held onto my hips tightly as he thrust into me so hard and fast I felt like I could barely catch my breath. The feeling of him stretching my walls, plunging further than I thought possible, was dizzying and I felt my eyes close briefly so that I could lose myself in the feeling. Finally having his almost impossibly hard cock inside me gave me a tremendous sense of fulfillment as all of the anticipation that he had built as we ran the bases was met. His low, rhythmic grunts caused me to open my eyes again and I allowed myself to watch in erotic fascination as he closed his own eyes and increased his pace a little more. My fingertips dug into his arms as he arched back, roaring with release as he pulsed against my aching walls. He straightened and stared down at me again, bringing his hand between us so he could touch me. The combination of his thumb swirling into my swollen, hypersensitive clit and the pulsing of his cock within me sent me crashing over the edge and I gasped, breathless at the consuming power of the climax that milked him.

When our bodies finally relaxed, I straightened my legs and opened my arms so that Lee could rest down on top of me. He buried his head in the crook of my neck and trailed lazy kisses along my skin. This was the moment in my relationship when my ex would have let out a self-satisfied sigh and climbed out of bed, heading for the shower and then to the living room to watch TV, leaving me alone in the bed to convince myself that I had enjoyed it and contemplate what to do next. There was none of that now. Lee was completely relaxed beside me, as if there was nowhere else that he wanted to be and nothing else that he needed to be doing. It was reassuring in a way that I couldn’t quite put into words. It wasn’t that I was feeling anything for Lee. In fact, I was totally and completely confident in the reality that I felt nothing but deep satisfaction and a sense of friendly gratitude. Instead, there was a sense of camaraderie, as if we were sharing in this moment but also simply enjoying it for ourselves. Right then I knew that I was going to be able to invest myself in this process and was willing to let it take me anywhere it wanted to.

Chapter Eleven

Snow

The day after my date with Lee, Fawn let me know that I would be returning home in between dates rather than staying at the retreat. Because I had chosen a longer experience, this would help me to keep up with the rest of my life and also create a distinct separation between each of my dates so that I could immerse myself completely in each one. I went home the next day with the instruction that I would receive another box just before the next date. I would usually spend Friday through Monday at the retreat for each date, so that I could totally remove myself from the real world for each experience.

There was a slight sense of disappointment as I returned home that day. Though I loved my house, I had enjoyed the retreat so much and expected that I would have been able to spend more time there rather than having to return so quickly. The evening after I returned, I walked into my living room and set a bottle of beer on the top of the entertainment center. It was the same brew that Lee had chosen for us, a subtle reminder of that night, my first leap into my journey of discovery.

“Snow?”

A familiar voice came from behind me and I turned around to see Robin letting himself into the house. He’d had a key to every home that I had lived in, from the most meager of apartments when I was in college until this house. My ex had hated it, but that was something, possibly the only thing, that I had refused to change for him. It was reassuring to me for Robin to have a key and to know that even if he wasn’t there yet, I could feel like I wasn’t really alone in my home. The only compromise that I had made was to text Robin any time that my ex was at my apartment so that he would know not to let himself in until I told him that I was by myself again. Those restrictions were gone now and several times a week Robin would appear in my house, ready to share a bawdy story or hoping that I had ordered something for dinner so we could sit on the couch and veg out with terrible TV.

I realized in that moment how much I had missed him. It had only been a few days since I saw him, yet it felt like a tremendous relief to see him again. I rushed across the room and gathered him into a tight hug.

“It’s so good to see you,” I said.

Robin embraced me back.

“You, too,” he said. “So…. how is The Enchanted Woods?”

There was a devilish lilt to his voice that told me he knew more about the retreat than he had initially let on and I smiled.

“You knew, didn’t you?” I asked. “You knew all along what you were sending me into.”

“I might have had the tiniest little inkling,” he said. “I thought that it would be perfect for you. Exactly what you needed. So, tell me, tell me, tell me. Is it amazing?”

My face fell and I shook my head.

“I hated it,” I said.

I saw the joy melt out of the expression on his face and his hands dropped down to his sides.

“You what?” he said, sounding dejected.

“I hated it,” I said again. “Why do you think I’m back here so soon? It was awful. What were you thinking, sending me to a place like that? That brochure was total bullshit. I rode up to a gravel lot and a double wide with broken windows, and some disgusting woman who looked like she hadn’t bathed in a month offered me her stepson for a romp in the hay.”

“I’m so sorry,” Robin started, then he paused, his head tilting as a confused expression crossed his eyes. “Wait. You’ve been gone for days.”

I started laughing and pulled him in for another hug.

“I’m kidding,” I said. “It’s wonderful there. It looks exactly like the brochure.”

“I want to know everything,” he said. “ Everything.”

Just then the doorbell rang and I walked over to it. I paid the delivery man on the other side and turned around to present the pizzas that I held to Robin. His eyes lit up and we rushed into the living room, taking our customary positions on the couch. I glanced up at the beer as I put the pizzas on the coffee table. Maybe I would tell him everything.

Maybe.

The time in between my dates went by even more tortuously than the first days that I waited at the retreat. Without a job to go to each day it felt as though I was just kind of drifting through them. I cleaned the house and rearranged the furniture, then rearranged it again, and then again. It ended up back in the same positions that it had originally been in, but I had the satisfaction of knowing that the space under it was clean. I remembered the stretches that Lee had guided me through and started going through them each morning. By the time that two weeks had passed, I was noticeably more limber and feeling a new appreciation for the way that my body could move.

I was gripping my ankle, working toward pulling my leg down toward my face, when my doorbell rang. I peeked out of the peephole and didn’t see anybody, but there was another white box sitting on the ground in front of my door just as it had been in the retreat. I opened the door and looked around to make sure that none of my neighbors were watching before snatching up the box and dipping back inside. This box was larger and heavier than the one for my first date and I was immediately intrigued. Sitting on the living room couch, I pulled the envelope out from beneath the satin ribbon, green this time, and opened it.

“ Practice and repeat.”

“Perfect. Even more vague.”

I tossed the note and envelope onto the coffee table and opened the box. When I opened it, I found that there were two outfits nestled inside. Small cards on top said “first” and “second”. I hadn’t expected the box to arrive at my house, thinking that it was more likely that it would arrive once I had gone back to the retreat, then it occurred to me that I wouldn’t have known which Friday to arrive if I hadn’t gotten the box. It was still the middle of the week, but that meant I only had a couple more days until I was back at the retreat and preparing for another date. I went back to my stretching, feeling more optimistic and excited than I had felt in several days.

Chapter Twelve

Snow

Saturday afternoon I stepped out of the cottage and saw the limo already waiting for me. I was wearing the outfit that had been indicated as being first, a pair of tight jeans and a tank top with the name of a band that I had heard of in passing emblazoned across the front along with a pair of black boots. I had worn my hair down straight, not knowing what I was going to be doing so not having another idea of what to do with it. I had nearly brought the second outfit with me, but Fawn caught me in the front room of the cottage and told me to leave it in my room, that I would be returning to the retreat to change if I chose.

Even though I had only done it twice, the chauffeur helping me into the limo felt normal now and I settled back against the seat comfortably, reaching for one of the bottles of chilled sparkling water that were waiting for me. We drove in nearly the same direction this time that we had when he was bringing me to the stadium, but we took a turn that led us further into the city rather than skirting around the edge. We zig-zagged our way through some of the small streets until we reached a low building. There was a crowd gathered outside and the people in it seemed to perk up when the limo approached. I could hear women screaming even through the doors and my curiosity increased.

The chauffeur opened the door and leaned down to look in at me.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked.

I wondered if he was going to ask the same question at the beginning of all of my dates, but right then, it felt highly applicable. The screaming was only getting louder and I still had no idea why. I finally drew in a breath and reached for the hand that the chauffeur offered. He helped me out of the car and I straightened the hem of my shirt, looking over the crowd as they continued to scream. I could see a door on the building through the crowd and looked at the chauffer.

“I think that’s where you’re going,” he said.

“Any tips?” I asked.

“Act like you’re supposed to be here and walk.”

I turned back to the door and straightened my shoulders, lifting my chin to try to exude as much confidence as I could. The crowd was louder now, but the screams no longer seemed excited. Instead, they were shouting questions, demanding the presence of the band on my shirt. I felt nervous, suddenly unsure of myself, but I refused to step back. I took a step forward. I almost immediately ran into a person’s back, but I didn’t give up my space.

“Excuse me,” I said, raising my voice up loud enough that she would be able to hear me above the chaos.

She looked over her shoulder and saw me. To my surprise, she stepped out of the way. I continued this way, forcing my way through with declarations that I was expected, and by the time that I reached the building the crowd had parted ways and allowed me through easily. I knocked on the door and it opened a few inches.

“Snow?” a man I couldn’t see said.

“Yes.”

The door opened just enough for me to step inside and then the man slammed the door, nearly catching the arm of someone leaning from outside.

“What in the living hell is that all about?” I demanded.

The man who had let me in, a massive man that reminded me of a stone wall, expressed absolutely no emotion.

“They’re here to see the band.”

“The band?” I looked down at my chest and saw the name on my shirt again. “Oh. The band. I’m not really familiar with them.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

I wasn’t sure what the man who I could only assume was a bodyguard meant, but I knew that I didn’t like the way that he had said it. There was a long silence and I didn’t know if I should say anything about the date. The secrecy that seemed to hang over The Enchanted Woods made it seem that I should probably not mention it, but at the same time I didn’t want to think that this man might be my date and all that he had planned for us was listening to the muffled screams of apparently frantic fans while watching over a band that played a type of music I would never voluntarily listen to. I had prepared myself to come up with a creative way of asking when another door opened from across the room.

“Did she get here yet?”

The bodyguard gestured toward me without saying anything. I looked at the man who had spoken and smiled.

“I’m Snow,” I said.

“Sam,” he said. “I’m glad you got through the crowd alright. I would have met you at the car, but I would probably still be out there signing autographs.”

He had started walking toward the door that he had come out of and I fell into step behind him.

“What exactly is it that’s going on out there?” I asked.

“Somehow the location of our practice space got leaked online,” he said. “Those are some of our more rabid fans. They’ve been camped out there all day waiting to see us.”

“How did you get in without getting mobbed by them?” I asked as I stepped through the door and into a listening booth.

“There’s a secret entrance,” he told me. “It’s all very secret agent.”

He leaned toward me conspiratorially and I felt an immediate attraction to him. He wore a pair of form-fitting dark jeans and a white button-up shirt untucked over them, the first three buttons unbuttoned. Several woven thread bracelets encircled his wrist. It was something that I never would have said that I thought was attractive, but I was oddly drawn to him, as if the fact that he was something so different was what made him interesting.

“I promise I won’t tell,” I said, mirroring his lean.

We laughed for a second and then he straightened, gesturing at the large glass panel in between the listening booth and the rehearsal space beyond.

“These are the guys,” he said by way of introduction. “We’re rehearsing for a show tonight. Want to sit down and have a listen?”

“Sure,” I said, even though I was less than excited about listening to his music.

Sam guided me to one of the stools near the listening booth counter and handed me a pair of headphones. I was genuinely surprised to find that the music was more enjoyable than I thought it would be and even found myself dancing slightly throughout the last song. When it ended, Sam came back through the door into the listening booth and looked at me expectantly.

“So?” he asked.

“I liked it,” I said.

“Good,” he said. “I hoped you would. Does that mean that you would be interested in accompanying me to my show tonight?”

I considered it for a second and then nodded.

“Absolutely.”

Sam wrapped his arm around my waist and yanked me up against him, crushing his mouth against mine in an almost startling kiss.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he pulled back from the kiss. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s alright,” I told him, my mind spinning a little from the kiss.

He had said it as if he thought that he was going to break me, that I was delicate in some intangible way. I appreciated the apparent respect, but his hesitation was too close a reminder to who I was before I agreed to all this and I wasn’t interested in letting that continue if I had anything to say about it.

“Should I go back to the retreat and change clothes?” I asked, trying to exude the same confidence that I had to get through the crowd.

“Yes,” Sam said, taking both of my hands in his. “The driver will bring you to the venue and make sure that you get in safely. I’ll meet you inside.”

I nodded and turned to the door of the listening booth, walking out and back toward the door where the bodyguard was stationed. I couldn’t hear the screaming on the other side anymore and I looked at him questioningly.

“Police,” he said.

I nodded.

“Thank you for the elaboration.”

I felt a hint of disappointment when I stepped out of the building and the crowd was gone. There was a thrill to being linked to someone who created such a fervor in so many people and I found myself looking forward to being seen with Sam at the show. It was a drastically different experience than the complete solitude of my date with Lee, and I was curious about what discoveries there were to be made with him there to show me his corner of the world.

As soon as I got back to the cottage, I rushed into my room and opened the box again. I pulled out the second outfit and felt a touch of nerves return to my belly. This was something that I would never wear, even when I first starting dating my ex. It was completely out of my comfort zone and I questioned whether me wearing it would have the intended effect. The door to my room opened and Noah stepped inside carrying a glass of wine. His eyes settled onto the dress I was holding.

“Is that for your date?” he asked.

I nodded.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to a concert. The man is a musician.”

Noah nodded as I took the glass from him.

“You’ll look incredible in that,” he said while walking toward the door. “He’s a lucky man.”

Chapter Thirteen

Snow

An hour later I walked down the stairs of an elaborate concert venue that had been crafted out of an abandoned vintage theater dressed in a short black dress, spike heels that buckled around my ankles, and a heavy application of makeup. My hair was curled and teased, creating a look that was a far more over-the-top than I was accustomed to, but after Noah’s comment I had made the decision that I wanted each of my date experiences with these men to be completely different than the others, and I was committed.

I spotted Sam across the room talking to a group of guys that looked like the quintessential image of roadies. As if he could feel me looking at him, he glanced up and caught sight of me. His eyes stopped, his expression changing, and his attention completely taken from the conversation. I appreciated the slightly startled look in his eyes, but then the confident, smoldering look returned and I felt nervousness roll through me. Sam was more intense than Lee, his personality almost volatile in its energy, and I couldn’t fathom what he might be thinking. I kept looking at him as I started down the stairs again.

By the time I reached the bottom step, Sam had left the men he was talking to and was waiting for me. He reached out to wrap one hand around my wrist and pulled me close so that I pressed against his chest and he could place his mouth close to my ear.

"Either dance with me or let me bring you to my VIP lounge right now. Your choice."

My breath caught in my throat and I could feel him smile. I reminded myself of the purpose of this retreat and some of my confidence returned. I didn’t want to give Sam the satisfaction of feeling like he was totally in control and I pulled back slightly so that I could look into his face.

"I guess that means that we’re going to dance."

He released my wrist and turned his hand to take mine so he could lead me toward the dancefloor where people had filtered from the tables surrounding it and started dancing to the music of the warmup band. Sam stopped in the middle but continued to lead me so that I walked around him as if he was showing me off to the people who had gathered around us. Suddenly he pulled me into his arms, crushing my body against his, and caught my eyes. There was a look of unfettered desire and unashamed intention there. It was less playful than Lee, but no less entrancing. I felt like I was at the beginning of a game of chess, jockeying for position and power while also aware of simmering desire that was building in my belly and making me eager to find out what was his next move.

Sam seemed to feel the same simmer as he placed his hands lightly on my waist and began to dance. He moved slowly and subtly, rolling his hips against mine as if guiding me again until I began to respond with movements of my own. I watched as the tip of his tongue slipped out to slick across his bottom lip and he tightened his grip on my waist. He leaned his head forward to tuck it close to my ear again.

"You don't look as inexperienced as Fawn told me that you are."

I tilted my head to look up at him. I was stung by the unrestrained honesty of the statement and the confirmation of what I had thought when we were in his practice space, but I quickly recovered, reminding myself that that was exactly what she was supposed to do – find the men who would be right to help me overcome my limitations and discover myself.

"I don’t?" I asked coyly, the music, heat of the bodies around them, and lust in Sam's voice making my arousal start to creep higher.

"No. You look like pure sex and if all of these people weren't here right now I would make sure that you understood exactly what I mean by that.”

"If all of these people weren't here, I wouldn’t be either, and I definitely wouldn’t be wearing this."

"Exactly. That dress would be on the floor and I would be showing you that this body was made for much more than what you’ve been using it for."

"Oh really?" I asked, made almost breathless by his powerful, dominant stance.

He made an affirming sound and I felt him slide his hands up my body. His hands slipped over the curve of my waist and the sides of my breasts to lift my arms up and drape them around his neck.

"What is it that you would show me?" I asked in a heated whisper, still wanting to maintain the soft coyness in my voice but feeling more wanton with each word.

I felt a suggestive twitch against my hip and his dancing seemed to become more intense.

"I would teach you like I know that Fawn had you teach yourself in the cottage.”

My mouth fell open slightly. I knew that Noah had been in the cottage, but I didn’t know that anyone else was going to know about what happened there. For a moment I felt embarrassed, but then I realized that I was holding the power in my hand again.

“There something else for me to learn?”

Sam slipped his leg between mine and pulled me further up so that I rode his thigh. The dress of the skirt was short enough that it bunched nearly to my hips, causing me to straddle his thigh with nothing but my panties between me and his leg. The friction created by his pants against the lace of my panties built a strong pressure deep in my belly and I relaxed into the flow of the music.

"There is so much more,” Sam told me. “I would teach you to touch me. I would wrap your little hand around my cock and show you how to stroke me."

I whimpered at the thought and Sam nudged my forehead with his so that I arched backwards. He touched his lips to the swell of my cleavage above the neckline of my dress and moved up, trailing kisses to the soft dip at the base of my neck before guiding me back up to standing.

"Then when I had taught you how to get me good and hard, I would tuck it right into your pretty mouth and teach you to suck me."

He leaned down again to lick the side of my neck, the feeling of his tongue across my skin making me shiver. I knew that by now he would have to be able to feel the wet heat on his thigh where I danced and I could feel a strong erection straining against his pants. I rocked against his thigh, wanting him to feel more of it.

"Then I would lick you until you couldn't take any more, until I had you right on the edge of your control.”

"And then?" I breathed.

Suddenly Sam's mouth crushed down on mine, claiming my lips and drawing my tongue hard against his own so they tangled. I moaned into the kiss and Sam pulled his mouth away, meeting my eyes with a melting chocolate-colored stare.

"And then I would fuck you so well you will remember me for the rest of your life."

I was starting to say something back to him when he stepped back and I noticed one of the men he had been talking to when I first arrived standing close behind him, tapping on his shoulder.

“What?” he snapped.

“Some of the sound guys need to talk to you.”

Sam looked back at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve got to handle this.”

Before I could say anything else, he started away with the man. In that moment, I had no interest in sitting around listening to his band play. I had already heard the rehearsal and I didn’t have any interest in being by myself throughout the rest of the concert.

I paced around the empty lounge, my mind racing. My thighs were damp and I could still feel Sam's hard cock pressing against my hip as we danced. I had never danced like that and it made my body feel alive. His touch made me keenly aware of every inch of my body and curious about what else there was to discover with this man.

Sam's words seemed to swell louder and louder in my mind and I felt my stomach tighten as I replayed them. He spoke to me with such intensity and yet such incredible control that I wanted to give myself over to him, yet it also made me want to find the power that I held within myself and see what I could accomplish when I tried to control him.

His attention had been taken away from me so quickly, though, and I felt the sinking sense of disappointment as I thought about him turning away from me to talk with the guy. I knew that he was here to perform and that he had to handle what had come up, this was still a date and I craved more attention from him. The music was pounding loudly enough that I could feel the vibrations coming through the floor beneath my feet. That suggestive sensation brought me further into my desire, and I thought back to the way I had learned to touch myself in the cottage, and the passionate experience I’d had with Lee. The plans that Sam had whispered to me fell into place with these and I knew that I couldn’t just remain unsatisfied for the night.

Slipping my dress off over my head, I tossed it aside and stood in front of the full-length mirror hanging on the wall to watch myself slowly peel my damp black lace panties off of my hips. I bent over slowly to guide them down my thighs so that I could feel the sensation of the warm fabric grazing down my skin. The cut of the dress hadn’t allowed me to wear a bra so I was left in nothing but the strappy black heels. They were unlike anything that I had ever worn before, but they spoke to the sexy, uninhibited feeling that I had gotten from that evening’s experience. Leaving them on, I walked across the room to the light switch and flicked it down.

I settled onto the large couch on one side of the room and leaned back so I reclined against the pillows piled into one corner. I rested one hand to my stomach and paused for a moment to feel it rising and falling with my deep, somewhat ragged breaths. I parted my legs and slid my hand down between my thighs to discover my luscious swollen pearl again. I gasped, my head arching back and my eyes closing at the feeling. I explored with my fingertip, gradually moving lower and gathering my silky fluid to allow it to slip more freely across my body as I visualized Sam and the things he said that he wanted to do with me. I bent my legs, pulling my thighs further apart and opening me more to my own touch.

Suddenly I heard the sound of the doorknob turning and saw a splash of light as the door opened part of the way. I saw the silhouette of someone standing in the doorway and from the broadness of the shoulders and the slope of the hips I knew it was Sam. My voice whimpered from my throat as the sight of him caused the sensations to spiral and my arousal to reach a new level of intensity.

"Hello?" he said into the darkness and I reached beside me to turn on the small lamp on the end table by the couch.

The light cast a soft yellow glow over me, fully illuminating my body, but I did not stop the intoxicating movements of my hand. A look of surprised pleasure washed over Sam's face and he stepped the rest of the way in the room, reaching back to close the door behind him and turn the lock.

"Well, here you are," he said, his voice silky and low, "I was wondering where you disappeared to. Apparently, the issue with the sound system wasn’t fixed. Half of our equipment went out in the middle of our second song. I keep saying that we shouldn’t let our bassist book the gigs. They’re using the speaker system to stream a few of our tracks, so I’m taking a bit of a break.”

As he spoke, Sam unbuttoned his shirt, his eyes moving from my hand to my face, then back to my hand.

I whimpered in affirmation, knowing that he had some time making me even more eager for him to see how much he had turned me on.

Sam tossed his shirt aside and unfastened his belt.

"Maybe you aren't as innocent as I thought you were," he said approvingly.

I looked up at him and bit my bottom lip.

"Does that feel good?"

The question came out sounding like sex and power, and it made me moan as I responded to the ache in my core by moving my fingers down and slipping two into my body.

Sam lowered his zipper and let them fall to his feet so he could kick them aside. In one swift movement, he pushed his trunks off and his erection sprung away from his body.

"It feels so much better when someone else does it," he whispered and climbed onto the couch with me.

He paused at my feet and ducked his head to kiss the side of my ankle right beneath the buckle of my shoe.

"You should never, ever take off these shoes,” he said.

The way that they were making me feel, I couldn’t help but think that I agreed with him.

He kissed his way up from my ankle along the inside of my leg until his mouth nestled on the juncture between my hip and my thigh. Sam's teeth nipped lightly at my skin and I felt my hips rise in response, encouraging him to touch me. He took his mouth away and brought it to my hand. I felt him gently take my fingers in his teeth and then draw them into his mouth, sucking away my fluids.

I withdrew my hand from his mouth and Sam dipped his head forward, allowing his tongue to replace the movements of my hand. I cried out at finally getting what I had wanted, my hips bucking up into his mouth to encourage more of the attention. Sam responded by tucking his hands under my pelvis to take hold of my ass and hold me in place so he could push his tongue deeper and harder into the curves and tucks of my body. The tension in my belly and thighs was becoming nearly overwhelming and I lifted his chin to pull his mouth away from me.

"I thought that there was more to this lesson plan," I panted.

Sam smiled and moved up the couch to briefly stretch his body across mine. I felt the length of his erection brush against my clit and I arched toward him.

"You're right," he said through his own deepened breath. “Should we continue?”

"Yes."

He dropped a kiss to my mouth and I returned it passionately. Sam slid off of me to tuck himself at my side. He took my hand and dipped it down between my legs to collect more of the hot, slick fluid. Once it was slick and shimmering, he brought it to his erection. I sighed as he tucked my palm against his hard shaft and wrapped my fingers tightly around it. He used his hand to guide mine, moving slowly, allowing me to feel every velvety inch of his hardness beneath my hand. It was hot and impossibly hard, and I concentrated on each of the veins and ridges.

"You like that, don't you?" he murmured and I moaned in affirmation. "Do you want my cock in your mouth?"

"Yes, please."

I surprised myself with my immediate answer, but Sam groaned and pumped my hand harder.

"What a good girl," he said and pulled my hand away from him.

He pulled my hand until I sat up and then guided me off the edge of the couch. Turning, he draped his legs off of the side so they were positioned on either side of me. He leaned forward and kissed my stomach, then brought his mouth to one of my breasts, drawing the hardened nipple between his teeth and biting down on it so that a deliciously new blend of pain and pleasure coursed through me. I buried my fingers in his hair and let my head fall back as I enjoyed the feeling of him immediately switching back to soothing my skin with soft sucks and kisses.

After a few moments, Sam rested his hands to my hips and pushed me down to my knees. I complied willingly, the excitement building in my belly as his long, beautiful cock came level with my face. I didn’t need to wait for instructions. I drew my tongue quickly along the underside, smiling when his erection jumped in response to my touch. I licked again, slowing down so I could enjoy the taste of his skin as I traced from the base to the tip. Then I remembered that I was supposed to be allowing him to teach me and I looked up at him.

"Open your mouth," Sam whispered, returning to his role as my instructor.

I did as he asked, parting my lips and allowing him to touch the smooth, silky head of his cock between them. I left it where it was for a moment and flicked my tongue along the slit at the tip, savoring the salty taste of the drop of fluid there. Craving more, I parted my lips further and he pushed forward until I held him fully in my mouth. He whispered instructions to me, cupping his hand around my head to guide the movements of my mouth until I was sucking smoothly and quickly, reveling in the feeling of his erection against my tongue and lips.

"Stop," Sam gasped suddenly, and I pulled my head back.

"Did I do something wrong?"

Sam growled low in his throat and pulled me to my feet by my shoulders. Though he had sounded frightening, there was nothing but arousal in his eyes when I looked at him and I felt at ease again.

"Not at all," he answered, the smoothness gone from his voice so that it now sounded gravely with desire, "but if you keep going like that, I won't be able to move on to the final lesson."

Sam reached over toward a box sitting on the end table and withdrew a condom. As he opened the package I noticed it declared that it was ribbed. As he put it on, I saw that the texture of the surface of the condom was different from the one that Lee had used, intriguing me. I reached forward and brushed his hand away, taking control over the process and rolling the condom into place. When I was finished, I lowered my mouth to his, gaining courage from the pressure of his lips and the indulgence of his tongue sliding across mine. Sam pulled back and looked into my eyes.

"How do you want me?” he asked.

I tilted my head at him.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

All I knew is that my body was aching for him and I desperately wanted him inside me. Sam slid further back on the couch and he used one hand on the back of my hips to pull me forward toward him. He led me until my knees hit the cushions and buckled slightly. As my knees bent, he caught the backs of my thighs and guided me up so I straddled his thighs. My core cradled his erection and I rocked my hips slightly to glide along it.

"Do you want me to make love to you, or do you want me to fuck you?" he asked and my stomach clenched.

My body was trembling and I felt like I was on the brink of losing control.

It was a question that I fully understood, but one that I wasn’t going to answer.

"You are supposed to be the one who is teaching me," I said, trying to control the shaking in my voice.

Sam smiled.

"I am. I'm teaching you to know what you want and how to ask for it so that you can get every bit of pleasure and enjoyment that you deserve.”

"I want you," I said.

"You could lift your hips just a little right now and I could plunge right inside. Or I could lay you on your back and take it a little slower."

I brought my mouth to his ear and licked his earlobe.

"You can do anything you want to me," I said.

As soon as the words were out of my mouth Sam's hands clamped down on my hips, lifted them, and brought me down hard on his erection. I screamed at the sudden mixture of pain and pleasure so much like him biting down on my nipple as he suddenly filled me. I could feel every ridge of the condom as it stimulated my walls, creating unique sensations that made me more aware of the depth and shape of my body.

"Then I am going to fuck you like I promised I would," he growled against my ear, reaching up to grab a handful of my hair and he wrapped his other arm around my waist to hold me in place.

I felt my pleasure spiraling upward as he used his hands to bring me up and down in hard, intense thrusts. The speed gave my body little time to stretch to accommodate him and each stroke brought both delicious pleasure and sharp pain. I stopped trying to control my reaction and let out a sharp cry. Sam slowed and I opened my eyes to look at him.

"No. Don't stop," I said, grinding down against his pelvis to bury his cock deeper inside me.

"Don’t worry. I'm not going to stop," he said. "Wrap your legs around me."

I did as he asked, and Sam stood, bringing me up with him, then turned to lower me to my back on the couch. He took my legs from around his waist and placed them on his shoulders, immediately driving him deeper into me. I gasped as he leaned forward to rise over me, his hands coming to rest on the couch beside my shoulders.

I groaned at the incredible sensation this completely new position created. Sam withdrew slightly, then plunged forward. At the sound of my pleasure, he started to move at a frenzied pace, pounding into me harder and faster. Suddenly I felt the tension building in my thighs and stomach again. I moaned and writhed against the bed.

"Don't fight it," Sam whispered.

I let myself surrender to him and almost immediately my body contracted around him. A loud scream poured from me as tremors rolled through my walls, drawing him deeper into me. That moment pushed Sam into his own oblivion and he let out an animal cry, slamming into me a final time as he spilled hot streams into me with a series of hard pulses.

When his body relaxed, Sam lowered my legs and rested his head to my chest briefly before looking up at me and laughing. I could feel his sweat dripping off of his face onto my skin and his breath rippling down my chest and stomach. I felt a laugh bubbling up from my chest. I wasn’t sure why I was laughing, but it felt like a release as much as the orgasm.

Noah was leaving my room when I finally got back to the retreat that night. He looked me up and down before he said anything.

“I baked some cookies today,” he said. “I left some for you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“How was the concert?”

“Loud,” I admitted. “The type of music wasn’t really my cup of tea.”

“Oh, I also left you a cup of tea.”

I laughed and Noah joined me. Our voices quieted and I suddenly didn’t want him to walk away. I gestured toward the door.

“Do you want to come share the cookies with me?”

Noah’s eyes slid toward the door as though he was tempted, and then he shook his head.

“Thanks, but I should probably get to bed. I have to get up early to bake bread in the morning. Maybe tomorrow, though.”

I nodded.

“I don’t know anybody who makes bread. My mother never even made bread. I look forward to trying it.”

Noah gave a slightly tense smile.

“Good night,” he said. He started down the steps and then turned back to me. “I was right about that dress, by the way.”

Chapter Fourteen

Snow

I took the dress that I wore the concert out of the dry-cleaning bag and hung it in my closet beside the jersey. Someday I might wear it again. Maybe. One of the songs that Sam had played at the concert echoed through the house, streaming off of my tablet where I had placed it on my bed. I still didn’t love the genre, but I was getting used to it. There was something different about it having witnessed the musician himself perform the song. I thought back to the rehearsal that I had watched. Sam had been confident and sexy as he gripped the microphone and sang, his body moving in time to the music that played around him. I hadn’t known it then, but it was a preview of what I would experience that night, his hard body pressed against mine on the dancefloor, and then filling me in the lounge.

When I closed my eyes, I could still feel the adrenaline rush of standing in the crowd after the power problem was fixed and the band was able to take the stage. The fans around me screamed and reached up toward them, some of the women calling out suggestive pleas of what they would like the men to do to them. I hadn’t been able to withhold the smile that came to my lips as I thought about the fact that, if even for that one night, I was the woman that they all wanted to be. At the end of the show I had joined them in the lounge and then enjoyed the rush of running out of the venue with Sam’s hand gripping mine, the fans screaming and cheering around us.

I was still dwelling on the memory of the cheering when I heard a knock at my door. I turned off the music and walked toward the door, expecting to see my new date box waiting for me. Instead, when I peeked through the peephole I saw Lucille standing on my front porch.

“What are you doing here, Lucille?” I demanded through the door, not bothering to release the chain lock or the deadbolt.

“Aren’t you going to open the door, Snow? I just want to talk.”

I was familiar with the saccharine-sweet tone that she was using. It was the same manipulative way that she had spoken to every man I had ever heard her interact with and the way that she tried to convince people to trust her. Unfortunately, there were times when it worked, but I knew it too well to be swayed by it.

“I have nothing to say to you,” I said.

I was starting to turn away from the door when she spoke again.

“Open the door, Snow. You don’t want your neighbors to see me standing out here and hear me demand to know why you’ve been sleeping with my husband when I’m pregnant with his child.”

She had lifted her voice slightly to emphasize her point and I tore the door open, the fury pushing in my chest until I felt like it would burst through.

“You are a fucking liar, Lucille.”

She flattened her hand on my door to push it open further and stepped into the house, forcing her way past me.

“Am I now?”

“Who told you that I’m sleeping with Walter?”

“Walter? Don’t you think that’s a little bit personal for a subordinate? You should probably get accustomed to referring to my husband only as Mr. Royal.”

“You might be pregnant, but I’ve known your so-called husband for far longer than you have.”

Lucille scoffed as she perched herself on one of the backed stools that stood at my elevated dining room table.

“Get serious, Snow. I’m not pregnant. Do you honestly think that I would let that man get anywhere near me without a condom? I might have to suffer my way through the occasional wifely duty, but I can guarantee you that I won’t be producing any heirs for him. That won’t stop me from telling him that I will, though.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Am I? I’ve gotten everything that I’ve wanted so far. Why not go for a little bit more? He’s more than happy to give it to me.”

“Almost everything,” I said.

“What do you mean ‘almost everything’?”

“I still work for the company.”

The smug expression that her face had held since she stormed the house faded away, replaced by searing anger.

“Not for long, Snow.”

“There’s nothing that you can do about it. You already tried.”

Lucille stood and took a threatening step toward me, but I refused to back down.

“Why don’t you just give up, Snow? I’ve won. You may have been Walter’s pet, but I’m his wife. He’ll do what I say eventually, and if it takes too long, it’s not like he’s going to live forever. I can make your life miserable until then. Why don’t you just make it easier on yourself and go away?”

“You haven’t won anything, Lucille. You might think that you have, but you haven’t. You’re going to ruin your marriage just like you have ruined every other opportunity you’ve had because you are a greedy, conniving bitch who nobody can stand to be around. I’m not going to give up my chance to watch you crash and burn.”

For a brief second, I thought that Lucille was going to attack me and I could only hope that one of those neighbors that she had just threatened me with would be able to hear me screaming if it happened. After a tense moment, though, Lucille brushed past me and left, the squeal of her tires against the road the final punctuation on the conversation. I strode over to the door and closed it. I had just turned the deadbolt when I heard another knock on the door. My fists clenched beside me and I wrenched the door open, ready to confront Lucille again. Instead, I saw my date box sitting on the porch and the tail end of a car sliding down the street.

Letting out a breath to try to blow away the aggression, I reached down and picked up the box. I carried it back inside and immediately brought it to the living room, feeling like I needed this little bright spot to get over the confrontation. The customary white box was tied with a brown satin ribbon that held the note in place. I took the envelope and opened it.

“ Saddle up”

“Well, that could go a couple of different ways.”

Chapter Fifteen

Lucille

I wove in and out of traffic, pushing my foot down harder and harder on the gas pedal, forcing my car along the road at ever-faster speeds. The growl of the engine and the pull of the wheel in my hands helped to draw the anger out of me, the frantic reactions of the other drivers as they swerved to get out of my way assuaging me as I went. I didn’t care about any of them. They were less than me and they knew it. Just a look at our cars or their appearances could tell anyone that. They should get out of my way when I wanted them to and let me go first. At least they knew their place.

I couldn’t believe the way that the confrontation with Snow had unfolded. I wanted her to fold beneath me. I wanted her to recognize once and for all that I was far superior to her in every way and that the life that she had been living her entire adult life was rightfully mine. She refused now, but I wasn’t going to stop. I was in the place of power now and I would do whatever it took to ensure that I didn’t have to deal with her anymore.

I heard the wail of police sirens behind me and I glanced in the rearview mirror to see the squad car gaining on me, drawing up close enough that they were able to see my license plate. I didn’t bother to slow down. Just as I expected it to, the police car fell back, its lights and sirens turning off. I laughed, pushing the gas pedal a little harder to force my car to the limit of its capabilities. As with any other police officer in the area, the one behind me had run my plates and seen who I was. My marriage to Walter had linked me to one of the most powerful men in the area, even if he didn’t always act like it, and, as the ubiquitous “they” always say, money talks. I was untouchable.

I skidded to a stop in my private parking deck beneath the Royal and Company building and walked through my entrance. Cindy looked up as I came down the hall toward her.

“I have a message for you,” she said.

“Save it for later,” I said, starting past her.

“He said that it was urgent, that he needed Walter to get back to him immediately.”

“Oh, he did, did he?”

I paused by her desk and reached for the paper that she held, swiping it out of her hand to look at the message. I felt my stomach sink when I saw the name on the paper. I quickly straightened and offered a smile.

“Thank you, Cindy,” I said. “I’ll take care of this right away.”

I stepped into my office and closed the door, leaning back against it as I looked down at the message again.

He wouldn’t. Would he?

Robin

“Hello? Snow? This is Robin. You remember? Your nearest, dearest, and most devoted best friend? Just thought you might need a little reminder. I haven’t heard from you in a few days. Call me. Email me. Tweet me. Like me. Poke me. Swipe me. Smoke signal me. Do something.”

I ended the voice mail and dropped my phone to my kitchen counter. Turning back to my stove, I took hold of the wooden spoon and stirred slowly. The rich aroma was starting to fill my lungs and I was eagerly anticipating the concoction when I heard a key in the lock to my apartment and the door opened. Snow stepped in and looked at me strangely. I noticed that she was holding her phone to her ear.

“Did you just tell me to swipe you?” she asked as she closed the door and locked it.

“Well, since guys are apparently your life now.”

“And you know that you will always be my very best guy.”

“No, I don’t know that,” I snapped, a little more aggressively than I might have wanted to.

“What’s that all about?” Snow asked as she came into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry. I’ve just missed you the last few days. I haven’t even heard from you this week.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She sniffed the air. “What is that?”

“My specialty,” I said.

“Packaged hot chocolate with crème de menthe?”

“Only the classiest.”

“Pour me a cup.”

I looked at Snow a little closer as she climbed up onto one of the bar stools positioned around the kitchen island. There was something different about her. She had only been to the retreat a few times, but I could already see it changing her. She had always been sure of herself with a personality that could fill a room, but her confidence was stronger now. She held herself differently, as though she had become more acquainted with her body and knew better how to hold and move it. The way that she was looking then, though, didn’t seem that she was enjoying the change as much as she should.

“What’s going on with you today?”

“Lucille came over.”

“She what?” I asked, ladling the hot chocolate into two mugs and sliding one over to her. “I thought that the two of you hated each other and now she’s stopping by for a friendly chat and afternoon tea?”

“Well, there was no tea and I wouldn’t exactly call the encounter a friendly chat.”

“How did she even know where you live?”

“She’s running the company. She can look in my personal file and find out anything about me that she wants.”

“That’s not frightening at all.”

“I know.”

“So, why did she come over?”

“To demand that I submit to her.”

“Excuse me?”

“Maybe that wasn’t the best terminology. She showed up and told me that I needed to just give up and go away because she won and she was going to make sure that my life was miserable for as long as it took to get rid of me.”

“What did you say to her?”

“That I wasn’t going to do what she wanted.”

“Good for you. What are you actually going to do?”

She glared at me.

“I’m not going to do what she wants. I’ve had to claw my way past her my whole career and deal with her shit every step of the way. I’ve never been able to accomplish anything without having to fight through her first.”

“That makes it even more impressive,” I said. “You’re where you are and you’ve done what you’ve done in spite of her, and there’s a lot to be said for that.”

“What if she’s serious?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if she really is going to make my life miserable until she’s gotten me out of the way?”

“What do you think that she could possibly do to get you out of the way?”

Snow shrugged.

“I don’t know.”

“Nothing,” I said. “That’s what. You are flawless in your career. You’ve never disappointed a client. Never used unethical practices. You don’t even show up late to work. There’s nothing that she can do, Snow, and she knows it. She’s just running scared, now, and she’ll keep talking a big game as long as she can until someone calls her out on her bullshit or she talks herself out of her cushy little marriage and then everything will go back to the way that it should be. So now all you need to do is sit back and let it happen. You still have weeks of vacation to go. Relax. Enjoy. Everything is going to work out fine.”

“Do you really think so?” she asked.

“Of course, I do. The world is yours, Snow, and now that you are doing this retreat, you are actually going to figure that out. And once you do, you’re going to be unstoppable. There won’t be anything that anyone will be able to do to stand in your way. I just hope that you don’t forget about little old me when you shoot off into the stratosphere.”

Snow laughed and reached over to squeeze my hand.

“I could never forget about you,” she said. “Remember, you’re why I’m doing all of this.”

Chapter Sixteen

Snow

The limo arrived to pick me up for my date just after breakfast and I was immediately intrigued, wondering what type of date could be planned for that early in the day, especially with the first of the outfits that had been sent to me. The jeans I wore were tight, but lacked the splashy brand name of the ones I had worn to Sam’s rehearsal, and they were topped off with a black tank top and flannel shirt that I tied at my waist, unsure of anything else to do with it. I wore work boots on my feet and my hair hung in a braid down my back. Something told me that there were going to be no VIP lounge or screaming crowds involved with this date.

The limo turned in the opposite direction away from the retreat than it had the last two dates and soon we were wandering along narrow, twisting backroads. It seemed that my body had gotten too accustomed to the lazy mornings and lack of structure and I found myself getting sleepier the further that we drove. I had drifted off by the time we arrived and the car stopping startled me back into consciousness. I peered out of the tinted window and saw that we seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere. The door opened and I looked out at the chauffer.

“Are you sure that this is the right place?” I asked.

“I’m sure.”

I stepped out and from the vantage point of being out of the car I saw that we weren’t really in the middle of nowhere, but appeared to be on a farm of some kind. I stood on a dirt path that led down in between to large wooden fences and I could hear the low rumble of an engine somewhere in the distance. The driver got back into the limo and drove away, leaving me, yet again, to wonder where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. I was sorely missing the idea of being picked up at my door for dates, though there was something nice about knowing that my room at the cottage was my space and I didn’t have to share it with anyone, not even for a few minutes.

Not knowing what else to do, I started toward the sound of the engine. The further that I walked, the more I recognized where I was, and after a few minutes a man on horseback coming toward me all but confirmed it. He slowed the animal and looked down at me.

“You must be Snow,” he said.

“We’re on a ranch,” I said.

I hadn’t really intended on saying that. It had just kind of tumbled out of my mouth when I opened it to introduce myself.

“Yes, we are,” the man on horseback said.

I looked around and then back at him.

“Like a ranch-ranch. Like a the-only-place-it’s-appropriate-to-say-dude, I might as well dip my veggies in it ranch.”

“Again, yes.”

“And you’re a cowboy. Like a – “

“As much as I would like to sit here and listen to you process through all this and give me the rundown of things that I already know, I have a lot of work that I have to get done.”

I was stunned by his response and fell silent.

“I’m sorry,” I said with a slight edge of sarcasm in my voice. “I’d like to point out that you are the one who started the listing of already-known facts. Yes, I am Snow.”

He gave a single nod.

“I’m Shane,” he said. “Do you ride?”

“Do I what?”

He patted the side of the horse beneath him.

“Do you ride?”

“Not since the fair when I was ten.”

“Perfect.” He jumped down from his horse and looked me over. “You look adorable, by the way. Useless as all fucking hell, but adorable.”

What was with this guy? He’s supposed to be my fantasy date and he’s acting like I’m getting in his way.

“You know what? I think I’ll just head back to the retreat now. I appreciate it.”

I turned to start back down the path, but I felt his hand wrap around my wrist.

“Wait,” he said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have talked to you like that. It’s just that I got started late this morning and I haven’t gotten as much done today as I wanted to.”

“But it’s still early,” I said.

“Early for me is still dark for you.”

Damn.

“If it’s alright with you, I can help you with your work.”

“I had a date planned.”

“I’m sure you did. So, what are you doing?”

“I have to feed the herd.”

“Sounds great. How do we do that?”

He gestured toward a pile of hay bales against a fence and I walked over to it, grasping the twine around the bale and giving it a hard tug. It didn’t even move an inch and I lost my grip, falling back and landing directly on my ass. Shane walked up to me slowly.

“Please don’t try to do that again,” he said.

“Those things are not light,” I said.

“No,” he said. “They aren’t. They also aren’t what we feed the herd.”

“Then why did you point to them?”

“I pointed at the horse behind them. You need to ride if you’re going to help me.”

Well, damn-shit-hell.

There is a reason that the old adage is about riding a bicycle and not about riding a horse and I learned that reason very quickly. Sitting in the saddle felt awkward and I felt like I had to grasp the reins for dear life just to keep me in place. Fortunately, I had only had to attempt to ride for a few minutes before a large truck came into view. It eased to a stop beside Shane and the window rolled down. A weathered face looked out at us.

“Hey, son, I called in some extra hands for the day if you want to go ahead and take off.”

“Are you sure?” Shane asked.

“Yep. I know you were looking forward to your date.” The old man’s eyes came to me and he grinned. “Hi, there.”

There was something queasy in his voice and I was relieved when Shane leaned to block his view of me with his body.

“That’s enough of that. I really appreciate it, Greg. I’ll make it up to you.”

The window rolled up and the truck drove away slowly.

“Now that we’re off for the day, do you want to take a ride through the ranch?” He looked at my position on the horse. “Do you want to take a walk through the ranch?”

“I would love that.”

He jumped down off of his horse and came to the side of mine, reaching up for me. I let him grab onto my waist and help me down. My body glided down his as he lowered me to my feet and I felt a flutter in my belly. We brought the horses to the stable and he showed me how to brush them and tuck them into their stalls with fresh water. He reached into his pocket and drew out a palm full of sugar cubes. He offered a few to me and then held the others flat on his palm under the mouth of the horse he had ridden. I followed his lead and smiled as the horse I had ridden quickly ate the treat from my palm.

Shane gave a hint of an approving smile and then led me out of the stable. We walked along slowly and I enjoyed the scenery in the silence before Shane spoke again.

“So, I’m guessing that this is your first visit to a ranch.”

“Are you allowed to ask me that?” I asked, tilting my head at him.

“Grey area,” he answered.

“Then I’ll be risky and say yes, this is the first time that I have been to a ranch.” I looked back ahead and then back at him. “Wait. Does a pumpkin patch that advertises itself as a real working farm count?”

“No, it does not.”

“Then, yes, this is the first time that I have been to a ranch.”

“Do you have any other plans for the day?” he asked.

I was slightly startled by the question and shook my head.

“No,” I said. “I had it set aside for you.”

“Would you mind if I planned a different date for us?”

He spoke slowly with very little inflection, but I could still sense the slight shift in emotion in the question.

“What did you have in mind?”

“I’ll get it set up. Come back before supper. Wear the dress.”

Without even the most subtle of shows of affection, Shane walked away from me. Feeling confused, I reached into my pocket and withdrew my phone so that I could call for the limo to come back for me. There were still hours to kill before I was to be back at the ranch and I spent the drive back to the retreat thinking about how to spend the time. I was thinking about curling up with a book when I saw Noah standing in the front room of the cottage.

“Hey,” he said. “Back so soon? What was wrong with him?”

I laughed.

“There was a little change of plans, but I’m going back to the ranch tonight.”

“The ranch?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “I tried my hand at cowboying today.”

“Wouldn’t that be cowgirling?”

“I guess you’re right.” I glanced over my shoulder at the steps leading to my room and then back at him. “Do you have time for a snack?”

“How do you know that there’s one there?”

“You’ve become a bit predictable.”

Noah gave a mock gasp but then followed me. After sharing the cup of tea the day after my date with Sam, Noah had come by my room a couple of other times for a snack and chat, and I was really beginning to look at him as a good friend. In all of the questions and unpredictability of what was happening around me, it was nice to feel like there was a friendly face I could rely on when I got back to the cottage.

We had been laughing and eating our way through the plate of chopped vegetables and cheese in my room for almost an hour when I heard Fawn’s voice calling from the main room.

“I should go,” Noah said. “I hope you have fun tonight.”

“Thanks.”

I watched him leave, the bright green of his eyes seeming to still sparkle in mine even when he was gone.

This time when I arrived at the ranch, Shane was waiting for me. He held what looked like a pile of blankets in one arm and a truck was parked to the side of the trail. Instead of the driver helping me out of the car, Shane offered his hand and I climbed out. He led me to the truck and opened the door for me. I contemplated the vehicle for a moment, trying to come up with the most appropriate way to climb up into it wearing a skirt. I finally pressed my skirt down to my legs and hopped in sideways, gliding across the leather seat. Shane closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side.

“Ready?” he asked.

I nodded and the trucked roared to life.

The sun had set completely and we were surrounded by dark blue night two hours later as we sat beside a glowing campfire. The smell of chicken and vegetables he had cooked right in the flames was still lingering in the air and Shane was holding a stick with a marshmallow in the flames. He pulled it out and I saw it engulfed in flame, the fluffy white sides quickly blackening. I jumped back away from it, causing the blanket I had around my shoulders to fall off and I caught it, tugging it back into place as I laughed at Shane’s efforts to blow out the flames. When he had finally succeeded in extinguishing the fiery confection, he grasped it with two fingers and peeled it away from the stick. He took a bite of it first and then pulled off more for me. I opened my mouth and accepted the soft, melted marshmallow. I reached up to catch a string of the marshmallow that clung to my lip and saw Shane staring at me. His eyes were smoldering nearly as much as the embers of the fire and I felt the energy between us change.

The blanket slipped off of my shoulder again and Shane drew it back into place, letting his fingertips trail along its edge before bringing them up to rest on the curve of my jaw. I looked into his eyes and saw them flicker down to my lips and back. He leaned forward slowly and I tilted my face up until our mouths met. Shane’s lips were tender and soft on mine, unhurried as if that kiss was all that he wanted. When it ended, he rested his forehead against mine.

“There’s something else I want to show you,” he said. “It’s one of my favorite places on the ranch.”

I nodded and let him help me up off of the log where I sat. Shane used a bucket of water that he had brought with us to douse the flames and then to scoop dirt over the embers. When the fire was completely extinguished, he took my hand and guided me back to the truck. We climbed in and he started to drive further away from the main path that we had walked down earlier. His eyes flashed over to me every few seconds as he drove and I found myself smiling at the subtle attention. Finally, we drove out of the trees and into what looked like a huge, empty field. It was slightly overgrown, as though it hadn’t been used for crops or grazing in some time, and I heard the whishing sound of the grass on the tires as we drove into the center of the field. Shane stopped the truck and turned it off. He got out, taking the blanket I had brought with me from the campfire. A few moments later he opened my door and helped me down. We walked around to the end of the truck bed and he put the tailgate down. I noticed that he had spread the blanket out along the bottom of the bed, creating a cushion for us. I crawled onto it and turned to look at him.

“Lie down and look up,” he said.

I did as he said and couldn’t withhold my gasp as I saw the breathtaking expanse of stars overhead. Shane lay down beside me and gazed above us.

“This is incredible,” I said.

“I come out here sometimes when I want to think,” he said.

I pointed up at the cluster of stars above us.

“The Pegasus,” I said. “It was always my favorite when I was a little girl. My mother used to tell me that the star at the very tip of its wing was the Wishing Star. I have made a lot of wishes on that star.”

I let out a sigh and looked over at Shane, who stared back at me.

Chapter Seventeen

Snow

Shane rolled over onto his side until he was facing me and I did the same so that we were looking at one another, our bodies only inches apart. We weren't touching, but we were close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off of him and the ripple of his breath sweeping down between my breasts. He reached forward and cupped his hand around my face, tilting it so that he could better look into my eyes.

"You look incredible," he whispered.

"Not adorable?" I teased, remembering how Shane had reacted to me when I had tried to help him with his ranch chores earlier in the day.

He shook his head and licked his lips as his eyes traveled along by face, down to the swell of my cleavage, and then further along my body. He eased his body closer to mine until the hands that were supporting us on the floor of the truck bed were pinned tightly between us.

"No," he breathed, his face coming closer to mine, "Definitely not adorable." He drew closer and nuzzled my nose with his, "Sexy," he whispered, "So sexy I could barely keep my hands off of you while I was driving out here.”

"Really?" I asked breathlessly.

The softness that was starting to show through Shane’s rugged exterior was enticing in a way that was completely different from what I had experienced with the first two men. With them, the attraction and sexual spark was sharp and explosive. With Shane, the burn was slower, the sense that he desired me making me feel more feminine and beautiful than wild and erotic.

He nodded.

"I am having a hard time keeping my hands off of you now."

I lifted my eyes to his. They looked slumbering, holding a gentleness that seemed to correspond with the rich, slow quality of his voice.

"Then why are you?" I whispered.

Shane leaned forward to touch his mouth to mine in the same soft, natural way that he had as we sat beside the campfire that evening. I felt him ease his hand away from where it had meshed lightly with mine between us so he could bring it to my thigh. I parted my lips beneath his to welcome his tongue into my mouth, sighing as I finally tasted him. His hand slipped under the hem of my skirt and I felt him pause as he discovered the top of my thigh highs and the garter belt that held them in place. It hadn’t been included in the clothing that had been in the date box, but I had packed it anyway. Wearing it tonight had been a risk, but the slow, gradual attraction between us had left me wanting to do something special for Shane, to primp myself a bit more, and the lacy white lingerie had seemed the perfect choice.

He groaned, pulling his mouth away from mine and looking down so he could push my skirt up around my hip and watch as his fingertips traced along the lace at the top of one thigh-high.

"Do you like it?" I asked softly.

He kissed me again, nipping lightly into my bottom lip.

"Let me take off your dress.”

I rolled onto my back and sat up, lifting my hips so that he could ease my skirt out from under me. His hand went to my back and I felt him lowering the zipper on my dress. It went all the way to the bottom, so when he finished I was able to peel the fabric away. He took it out of my hands and leaned around to toss it through the driver's window into the cab of the truck. I shivered in the cool air of the night and Shane opened the large black case that we had been leaning against to pull out another blanket. He draped it over the side of the truck, a promise of cuddling up later. For now, we didn’t need the blanket. There was plenty of warmth coming soon.

My hair tumbled around my shoulders and pooled around me on the worn quilt as I lay back. Shane took a breath as he looked down at me, taking all of me in, and I had never felt so beautiful. His fingers moved quickly down the buttons on the front of his shirt and he let it slide off of his broad shoulders before tossing it into the cab of the truck like he had with my dress. My breath caught in my throat as I saw the moonlight shining down on his sculpted body. All of those days spent working on the ranch had done amazing things to him and the only word that I could think of to describe him appropriately was magnificent.

I reached up and touched my hand in the middle of his chest, flattening it and letting it run down his hard belly to pause at the front of his belt. The heel of my hand brushed against his fly and I could feel the swell of his hardening erection straining against the denim. He shifted and I heard the thud of his boots hitting the ground as he kicked them off and let them tumble off of the edge of the tailgate.

He eased himself back down beside me and cupped his hand at my waist, stroking my skin with this thumb for a few moments before bringing his upper body up to hover over mine. I arched slightly to touch my skin to his, seeking his warmth, and he gently pressed me back down into the softness of the quilt beneath me.

"Slow," he whispered, and lowered his mouth to brush against mine.

His lips moved down to my neck and he created a gradual, torturously slow path to the hollow between my collarbones. The tip of his tongue slid across the tender skin there before he continued his progress down the center of my chest toward my breasts.

"Patient," he whispered.

I was feeling many things at that moment, but patient certainly wasn’t one of them. I could feel his control, however, and knew that if I maintained myself and allowed him to set the pace, there would be something truly luscious to discover. He kissed along the white lace edge of each cup of my bra, then followed the path again with the tip of his tongue. I gasped when he lifted his mouth to blow a stream of air across the damp area, chilling me even further yet illustrating how much my body had heated up since he had come to lie beside me. I writhed beneath him and he lifted his mouth away until I calmed again. He was committed to this slow progression, allowing the burn that had been smoldering to continue to grow naturally. I told myself to savor it, to appreciate every moment of what we were creating together. Once I was still, Shane's lips rested on my stomach. He continued to kiss until he reached my navel, and then drew his tongue back up to the underwire of my bra. I could feel the heat building between my thighs as he continued to coax me.

"Sit up."

I did as he asked so that he could reach behind me to unhook my strapless bra. It immediately fell away from my body and I tilted my head back to enjoy the now-familiar feeling of the cool night air grazing my nipples. It was something that I never would have expected would seem comforting and familiar, but it had become another way that I had become more aware of my body and the sensations it was capable of enjoying. Already taut from Shane's touch, they hardened further, sending a thrill through my core.

Shane's hand cradled one breast and he drew the nipple in between his lips. I whimpered, clutching the back of his head as he suckled me. He brought the same attention to the other breast and I pressed up into the touch. I had never been treated with such reverence and my body was tingling with anticipation, ready for the next delectable attention he would give.

Shane gently led me to lean back against the box at the back of the truck bed and rolled onto his knees. I felt him release the hooks of my garter belt and slide it down my hips and off of my legs. He ran his fingertip down the front of my panties and then further, encouraging me to part my thighs. His finger slid under the edge of the lace and I gasped, closing my eyes to revel in finally feeling the intimate touch. He eased the panties out of the way and suddenly his tongue was on me.

I cried out and let him lift my hips to remove the last bit of fabric that kept my body from him, leaving me in only my white thigh highs, which he peeled off tenderly. I looked down and watched as Shane drew a long lick up through my folds. Watching the act was intensely stimulating and I felt my hips buck. This gave him the chance to catch them and tilt my pelvis up so he could hold it against his mouth. His tongue dipped inside me and I felt my body completely give in to him, readying with a wash of hot, slick fluid. I watched without shame as he continued to explore all of the intimate folds and crevices of my core, then focused on my clit for a few, powerful seconds. One of his hands left my hips and went to his belt so that he could release the buckle and draw the zipper down.

He rose up over me, his forehead pressing against mine so he could look into my eyes. Our breath lingered, twisting and blending between us, and for a moment everything was so still I could nearly hear our hearts beating. I lifted my mouth to his and we kissed languidly for several long seconds. I became suddenly aware that I could taste my own body on his lips and tongue and felt myself react even more.

"Touch me," he whispered.

That was all of the encouragement I needed. I reached down and ran my fingers along his thick, hard length. They found a drop of silky liquid at the tip and I swirled it into the tender head. One of his hands came to mine and led me to grip him tighter, stroking him so I could feel his full length as it continued to grow harder with my touch. I bit my bottom lip, whimpering at the feel of his powerful cock in my hand and the surge of desire to have him inside me. Shane dipped his fingers into his pocket and withdrew a condom. He started to open it, but I reached out and took it from him. I ripped open the package and pulled the condom out. It felt slick against my fingertips like the head of his cock and I rubbed it for a few seconds before settling it onto his erection. Using one hand to hold his shaft steady, I slowly unrolled the condom with my fingertips, applying gentle pressure as I went. When it was fully in place, I stroked my fingertips up his length again.

Shane lowered his mouth to my ear.

"Let me inside you."

I didn't realize that my thighs had closed until then and I opened them so that he could settle between my legs. The hot, swollen head of his erection slid down over my clit and I moaned as a wave of pleasure rolled through me. He paused at my opening and groaned.

"Can you feel how much I want you?" I whispered breathlessly, drawing my knees up beside his hips.

The movement opened me further and brought my hips closer to him, causing him to dip inside me. He drew in a sharp breath and I closed my eyes, my mouth opening, but no sound coming out.

"Open your eyes. Look at me."

I opened my eyes to meet his slumbering gaze and Shane pushed forward, sinking the rest of the way inside me. He didn’t hesitate, but started to roll his hips, the movement keeping him close to me while still nurturing my walls with intense strokes. Each thrust seemed to press a little deeper and I wrapped my legs around his hips to hold him closer to me. Shane tucked his head into the curve of my neck and shoulder and kissed softly. His skin was warm as if it had absorbed the heat of the sun and I ran my hands along his muscular back as he continued to stroke within me.

Though his movements were slow and measured, the pleasure that he was creating within me was intense and soon I felt myself building toward a powerful peak. I squeezed my eyes closed and tucked my head forward so my forehead rested on his shoulder. Shane increased his pace only slightly and I heard his breaths becoming ragged. We climbed together, our bodies sharing in the feelings. Shane pressed into me as deeply as he could and held himself there. The pressure within me suddenly crashed and I felt Shane’s cock give a hard pulse inside of me at the same moment that my body started spasming around him. We clung to each other, riding our climaxes until they slowed and eased, and then Shane eased down beside me. He reached beside us to pull the blanket down and draped it over us. I curled up against him, not fighting the sleep that settled over me beneath the warmth of the quilt and the beauty of the stars.

I didn’t wake up until the next morning when the movement of the truck startled me awake. Shane had tucked the blankets close around me and we were driving slowly back toward the main path. The limo was waiting for me when we got there and Shane led me over to it, offering a gentle kiss before walking away into the predawn purple. I knew that he would be changing his clothes and heading to work the ranch, but all I could think about was going back to sleep, which I did promptly upon settling into the backseat of the limo. I woke up again when we stopped in front of the cottage.

Noah was walking toward the short hallway that led to the kitchen when I stepped into the cottage. He turned and looked at me, shock registering in his eyes.

“You’re just getting back?” he asked.

I nodded sleepily.

“I think I’m going to go try to get a little more sleep.”

“I won’t bother you by bringing breakfast,” he said.

“No,” I said quickly. “It’s OK.”

Noah shook his head.

“It’s fine. You need your rest. I’ll just have something waiting for you in the kitchen. You can let Fawn know when you wake up.”

He disappeared into the hallway and I started to my room, hoping that the strange feeling I had in my chest was just the tiredness.

Chapter Eighteen

Snow

Thursday two weeks later I still hadn’t gotten my box for my next date and was starting to feel anxious. I lay in bed and stared up at the ceiling of my bedroom, watching the gentle swirl of light that emanated from the lamp that I had gotten. It looked like a wash of tiny stars. I let it soothe me to sleep and by the next morning I was filled with resolve. Packing my luggage, I headed to the retreat even without a date box. It was my weekend there and I wasn’t going to be swayed from going.

I had left for the retreat slightly later than I usually did, which got me there after supper. I wasn’t surprised that Fawn wasn’t there to greet me, but I was when I found a small box sitting on the table in my room. It was pink rather than the usual white of my date boxes and tied with white string. I opened the card on top.

“ Tomorrow .”

I’ve been reduced to a single word.

I untied the string and opened the pink box. I couldn’t imagine what type of clothing might be tucked down into the tiny box, and was relieved when I saw that it wasn’t clothing at all. Instead, there was a small chocolate cupcake. I lifted it out of the box and admired the perfect swirls of frosting and tiny pink sprinkles. My heart suddenly felt like it skipped. There was only one person who I could think of who would have left this for me.

I looked at the clock and settled the cupcake back into the box before leaving my room and scurrying toward the kitchen. Noah was wiping one of the brushed metal tables when I peered inside.

“Noah?”

He looked up at me.

“Snow,” he said, his voice holding a hint of the surprise that I had felt when I found the cupcake. “I thought that I wasn’t going to see you until tomorrow.”

“So, you did leave that cupcake for me.”

He nodded and I stepped into the kitchen with him. I hadn’t been all the way inside it and was temporarily silenced in awe of the pristinely clean, sparkling space.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t have time to get one of the usual boxes to you. I was hoping that you would come here this weekend anyway.”

“I’m confused,” I said. “You’re my date?”

“I am now,” he said.

“What do you mean ‘now’?”

“I’m kind of a fill-in,” he said. “Your original date had to cancel. Fawn wanted to find a replacement, but she didn’t have time to go through all of her files to find someone she thought would work for you, and she was running out of time. I volunteered.”

“You did?” I asked, my heart leaping slightly. “Isn’t this incredibly against my contract?”

Noah shook his head.

“Fawn said that it was extenuating circumstances. To be fair, though, I don’t think that she knows how much time we’ve spent together.”

I didn’t want to contemplate that too much and I moved ahead.

“Does the date you have planned have anything to do with that cupcake?”

“You already know that I’m a baker. I thought that you might like to see some of that.”

“You’re much more than a baker,” I said, thinking about all of the delicious foods that he had prepared for me over the weeks. “Maybe,” he said, “but baking is what really matters to me. Tomorrow I’ll teach you some.”

He walked out of the kitchen behind me and I said goodnight to him at the door to the cottage before rushing to my room, wanting to spend as much time as I could pampering myself before the date.

Noah came to my room early the next morning and I was waiting for him.

“You’re up early,” he said. “I thought that I was going to have to wake you up.”

There was a hint of disappointment in his voice and I briefly regretted that I had gotten up. The thought of waking up to him seemed like a wonderful start to the day. He offered me a cup of coffee and I sipped it happily.

“What are we making today?” I asked. “Cupcakes?”

“I thought that we would start with bread since you apparently believe that it springs out of the air fully risen and baked.”

I made a face at him, but then smiled.

“I would really like that.”

We walked out of the room and went into the kitchen. He took one of the aprons from a hook on the wall and draped it over my head, reaching around my waist to tie it in place. I felt my breath catch slightly but I tried not to show it. Noah slipped into a white chef’s jacket and buttoned it. I followed him around the kitchen as he gathered ingredients, trying to make note of them in my head as if I would be able to recreate it later. Finally, we had everything and I stood by his side at the table as Noah guided me through adding the ingredients into a bowl and mixing them. Dough formed beneath the wooden spoon and I felt strangely accomplished when he turned it out onto the counter, sending up a slight puff of flour. He told me to knead the dough and I pressed into it. Noah laughed quietly and stepped behind me. He wrapped his arms around me and rested his hands over mine.

Noah’s body pressed against mine as he used his hands to help me knead into the dough. We massaged it deeply, turning and folding it. I let my hips push back slightly so that they could nestle harder against him and was rewarded by him pressing slightly closer to me. The muscles in his arms tensed and relaxed as he kneaded the dough and his breaths became deep and suggestively rhythmic. I could feel those breaths on my neck and my lips tingled in desire of his kiss, but he didn’t lean in. Too soon, the kneading was finished and Noah stepped away from me. He scooped the dough off of the counter and put it into a bowl that he had oiled before we started.

“This has to rise for about an hour now before we bake it.”

“What are we going to make in the meantime?” I asked.

“I was planning on making ice cream for dessert tonight. Would you like to help me make that?”

I nodded.

“That’s another one of those magical foods that no one makes.”

“Well, I do,” he said.

Again, we gathered ingredients and then stood side-by-side by the stove. It had never occurred to me that ice cream was cooked in any way and I watched in awe as Noah stirred sugar into cream and vanilla. He took a tasting spoon out of a metal canister beside the stove and dipped it into the mixture, tasting some of what was on the spoon before offering the rest to me.

“It could be sweeter,” I said.

He nodded and reached into a bowl of sugar. The granules sprinkled down from his fingertips like snowflakes and the thought crossed my mind that sugar had never been so sexy. We combined the mixture with lightly warmed eggs in a huge glass bowl and then Noah lifted the bowl to pour the mixture into the ice cream machine attached to the wall. I thought that he was going to guide me into another project, but instead he turned to look at me, his face slightly drawn.

“I need to talk to you,” he said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I just need to tell you something.”

“OK. Go ahead.”

“I didn’t just volunteer to do this as a favor for Fawn.”

“You didn’t?”

“No. I’ve been attracted to you since the first moment that I saw you. I was jealous when you spent the night with that other man and when I heard that there was an opening in your experience, I didn’t want to think about another man taking it. I wanted the chance to spend more time with you.”

I stared into his emerald eyes, my breaths feeling shallow.

“I wanted to spend more time with you, too.” I gathered my courage and took a step toward him. “You were in the cottage the first day that I was here,” I said.

Noah nodded.

“I wasn’t supposed to be,” he admitted. “I had gone in there to look for something, and when you came in, I didn’t want to leave.”

“But you…” my voice trailed off.

“I couldn’t help myself,” he said. He was starting to come closer, but he suddenly cleared his throat and stepped back. “We should get back to the dessert. I just wanted to tell you that. I felt like you needed to know.”

“I’m glad you did,” I said.

Noah started guiding me through making a burnt caramel sauce for the ice cream, but I was barely listening to him. All I wanted to hear was his words over and over in my mind.

“Nope. I’m not going to eat it.”

Noah backed away from me, but I pursued him, holding a bowl of ice cream in one hand and a filled spoon in the other. My face ached from laughing throughout the morning as we baked the loaf of bread that we had made and then cupcakes and cookies while the ice cream solidified in the freezer. We had poured the thick ribbon of rich-smelling caramel into the container with the newly-churned ice cream so that it swirled through the finished scoops. I had dished out a large bowl for us to share, but Noah had turned me down, telling me that while he loved creating the decadent desserts, he rarely ate them.

Noah took another step back and his leg hit one of the chairs that were clustered in one corner of the kitchen, creating an area where he could sit to take a break without being too far from whatever he was making in the kitchen. Before he could correct himself, he stumbled and sat down hard. I laughed at the surprised look on his face and stepped up close to him to prevent him from standing up. I leaned forward to bring the spoonful of the ice cream to his lips.

"Don’t you want to try any? Just a little bite?" I asked, my voice falling to a soft, powdery half-whisper as I brought the spoon to nearly touching his lips.

"Just a little bite," he finally replied and opened his mouth so that I could slip the spoon onto his tongue.

His eyes closed and he made a moaning sound in his throat at the flavor. The sound went straight between my thighs.

"Would you like another one?" I asked.

Noah nodded, opening his eyes. I scooped up another bite, making sure to gather up a large portion of the thick ribbon of burned caramel and held it to his lips. He kept his eyes locked on mine as he pulled the spoon into his mouth and swept the dessert onto his tongue. I had dipped the spoon back into the bowl and was lifting it to his mouth for another bite when I felt his hands touch my thighs. In one swift movement, he grabbed onto my hips and pulled me forward, parting his thighs so that I stood between them. I gasped as the sudden movement at once startled me and caused me to splash some of the ice cream onto my cleavage.

I looked down and watched the white drops trail across my skin. Though the trail was cold, as it meandered along between my breasts I couldn't help the thoughts conjured by that image. Holding me still in his strong hands, Noah leaned forward and licked the melted ice cream from my skin, lingering for a few seconds as his tongue darted between my breasts to ensure he gathered every drop.

I whimpered and felt myself arch slightly, pushing my body closer to his. The spoon dropped from my hand and I felt Noah take the bowl out of my other hand. My arms fell to my sides as he dipped the pad of his thumb into the cream and stroked it across one of my collarbones.

"Another little taste," he said, letting his tongue follow the trail he had created.

He repeated the process, using his thumb to trace a line of the cream along the side of my neck. His mouth nibbled along the sweet trail and by the time he had gotten to the soft dip behind my ear, I was trembling.

"Another?" he whispered and I nodded, surrendering myself to him and to whatever game he was playing.

I watched him through lowered eyelashes as he slicked the cool ice cream along my lips. A second later, his mouth touched mine. It was the gentlest of kisses and I admired his control as he held his lips just above mine so that they barely brushed against each other as he let his tongue gather the melting treat. He dipped forward and drew my bottom lip into his mouth, giving it a suck as if seeking out every drop of the sweet liquid and tasting me mingled with it.

"Maybe just a little more?" he whispered again.

I nodded. My eyes had fallen nearly closed and I wasn't able to see what he was doing, but a moment later I felt Noah's fingers press against my lips so that I opened my mouth. He placed a piece of praline on my tongue and slowly withdrew his fingers. I sucked on them gently as they disappeared and felt Noah's breath against me as he leaned forward to replace his fingers with his tongue against mine. The caramelized saltiness of the praline and the rich silkiness of the ice cream mixed with the taste of Noah’s mouth lit my body on fire and I wrapped my arms around his neck to draw myself deeper into the kiss.

Noah place the bowl on a nearby table and his hands returned to my hips so he could pull me forward even closer to him. I complied with the pressure of his hands, giving myself over to him as he led me off of my feet and into his lap. My knees settled onto the chair on either side of him and my pelvis touched his. Noah tightened his grip and led me down until I settled into his lap, cradling the erection I could feel building beneath me with the heat of my core. He flattened his hands on my back and drew me closer to him.

Noah drew his tongue along the opening between my lips and I parted them willingly, coaxing his tongue into my mouth again so that he could explore me deeper. He broke the kiss so that we could catch our breath and a moment later I lifted my mouth toward his, craving the taste of him again. Not showing any signs of urgency, Noah trailed his mouth down the center of my chest until he reached the deep scoop of my neckline. He ran his tongue along it, tracing the curve of the fabric against my body so that he licked the swell of one breast and then the other. When he finished this blissful torment, he ran his fingers from my ankles up my legs to my hips. He let them trace their way back down again, stopping at my feet to carefully remove my shoes and toss them aside.

“Stand up,” he whispered.

Though I didn’t want to relinquish the deliciousness of my seat in his lap, I complied. When I was on my feet in front of him, Noah eased off of the edge of the chair so that he was on his knees in front of me. He leaned forward and nuzzled my stomach with his face, then suddenly paused. His head hung and I felt a sinking feeling in my chest.

“I think that you should go,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

He climbed to his feet, straightening his coat before combing his fingers back through his hair. The expression on his face said that this was actually the last thing that he wanted to do, but there was something burning in his eyes that made it very clear it was the only choice he was willing to entertain at that moment.

“I don’t think that I thought this through enough when I told Fawn that I would do it.”

“What do you mean?”

Noah looked at me beseechingly, as if he didn’t really want to have this conversation, but I needed to know what had changed.

“I can’t look at you the same way that the other men can,” he said. “They don’t know you until you meet them on your date. I haven’t spent much time with you, but I feel like I know you.”

“I feel like I know you, too,” I said, stepping closer to him. “Why is that a problem?”

“You already mentioned your contract. I signed one, too. I can’t honestly say that I’m here right now thinking about only your pleasure and knowing that we aren’t going to see each other again. That’s not what’s on my mind and I don’t think that it’s fair for me to continue if I’m not doing it for the reasons that I told Fawn that I would do it. She hired me for a specific purpose, and I’m not fulfilling that purpose.”

“I thought that you wanted me,” I said, almost embarrassed by the statement as soon as I said it.

“I do,” Noah said. “That’s the problem. I wanted you before I came here, and that’s not why you’re here. You signed up for this for a reason, and you don’t deserve to have someone distracting you from that.”

“But, Noah,” I started.

He turned his back to grab the bowl from the table, immediately silencing me.

“Come on. I’ll walk you to your room.”

It had been a surprise to know that Noah was my date and to hear everything that he admitted to me, but I hadn’t expected him to cut off our date so abruptly. In my mind, I knew that he was right, but that didn’t change the disappointment that I had felt. We had been having so much fun together. It was different from the other dates. With them, I had been thinking about the men in visceral, sexual terms from nearly the first second that I saw them. I had fully embraced the exploration that was intended to be part of the dates and though it had been interesting and illuminating to go through the different types of dates that the men had planned, I had looked at each of them as a different form of sexual being and weighed our activities and interactions on a scale of the effectiveness of the seduction and what it had taught me about myself and my tastes.

It wasn’t that way with Noah. Instead, the time that we had spent together had been about just that. I had enjoyed his company and felt present and engaged in the moment throughout the evening, truly having fun with the activities that he had planned. Now I was back in my room, Noah having left me at the door, trying to really wrap my head around what had happened and what it meant. Though it was still early, I decided to go to bed. I kicked my clothes off in the bedroom and walked into the bathroom. Positioning the shower on to the hardest massage setting, I turned the heat up until it filled the room with steam and stepped around the gauzy curtain into the stream.

I had only been standing in the water for a few moments when I heard the distinctive click of the door to the bathroom opening and I felt my stomach tighten.

Chapter Nineteen

Snow

"Noah?" I asked, knowing that he was the only person who could come into my room like that, and the only person who would have reason to.

He said nothing and I tucked my head around the edge of the shower curtain to look into the bathroom. My wet hair clung to my skin, but I had yet to wash my makeup off, and I saw him let out a long breath as if the image had struck him far more powerfully than I would have expected it to. Keeping his eyes locked on my face, Noah grasped the bottom of his shirt and pulled it off over his head, tossing it aside. I drew in a breath. We had tried to stop ourselves, but the expression in his eyes told me that he had no intention now of hesitating. What had started between us couldn’t be denied and he had made the directed, intentional decision that he wasn’t going to let us even try. He released the button on his pants and let them drop to his feet. When I didn't ask him to stop, Noah looped his thumbs into the waistband of his trunks and eased them off of his hips.

As Noah stepped out of his trunks and kicked them aside, I slipped back behind the curtain. It was as much an invitation as it was a moment to myself to breathe. He walked up to the edge of the tub and spread his hand against the curtain. I brought mine up and meet his, my fingers spreading slightly to match the expanse of his and my palm pressing into his touch. We both breathed into the cautious, measured contact for a few moments before I took the side of the curtain in my other hand and slowly eased it back so that I could look at him again. Noah took hold of it just above my hand and opened it further to create enough space for him to step inside with me.

Neither of us spoke as Noah stepped and into the water with me. His eyes traveled along my body, appreciating every lush curve and full, delicious swell. He reached forward and brushed his fingers back through the wet strands of my hair and then let them trail down onto my shoulder and along the edge of my neck. I shivered slightly beneath the touch and Noah stepped up closer. His fingers traced my collarbone and rested briefly in the soft dip at the base of my throat as his other hand came up to rest on the full curve of my hip. There he paused again as if he was feeling my pulse, bringing another moment of connection between us.

I reciprocated by running my hand down the center of his chest, moving slowly as I allowed my fingertips to memorize the ridges and planes of his muscles. Even that simple touch seemed to send shivers through him and Noah closed his eyes briefly. I didn’t know if he was doing it to enjoy the feeling of my touch or if he was trying to bring himself under more control. Noah bent down and pressed the stopper into the drain to allow the deep tub to start to fill with the water streaming from the showerhead. When he straightened and turned back to me, I had washed away my lipstick. It left my plush lips slightly swollen, and he tilted his head forward to brush his lips across my mouth. It was less a kiss than a gesture of tender, cautious appeal, reaching out to me to ask me to see that he was offering himself to me and to accept him simply as he was. I tilted my mouth into the touch, seeking more of it, and Noah obliged, pressing his lips against mine with more pressure. My eyes closed as I felt his lips part on mine and the tip of his tongue dip inside to taste the soft, delicate inside of my mouth.

We both eased a step closer to one another and the front of my body brushed against his, tightening my nipples and causing my belly to tremble. He rested his hand on the back of my hip and pulled me close so my breasts crushed against his chest and the barely-there wisps of downy hair at the apex of my thighs teased his legs. I knew that he was growing harder and thicker and he tightened his hips slightly to nestle his erection into the softness of my belly. I gasped slightly and Noah deepened the kiss. I relaxed into him, wanting to bring him with me into the same euphoric desire where my mind and body were existing. My mouth opened further and our tongues tangled. I ran my hands along his arms and up over his tight, hard shoulders to wrap my arms around his neck, tightening to stabilize me as my body shivered with anticipation of more of his touch. Though I desperately wanted him, I didn’t feel urgent. We had so far to go, so much more to discover, and I didn’t want to sacrifice even the smallest detail of it.

I broke the kiss and turned to take a bar of soap from the dish attached to the wall. I rubbed it between my palms, bringing the translucent bar into a rich, fresh-smelling lather. I touched it to his chest and ran it along his body, wanting to nurture him in a way that I had never done for anyone else. When I finished and placed the soap back in its dish, Noah stepped forward again and captured my mouth with his.

He lowered himself to his knees in the several inches of water that had gathered in the bottom of the tub and used his hands on my hips and the pressure of his mouth to guide me down with him. As we nearly reached the bottom of the tub, he turned me so that I settled between his legs and rested back to lie on his chest. I tucked my head back against him and he leaned down to touch a kiss to my cheekbone. Wanting to feel more of his skin, I rested my hands on his thighs on either side of me and ran them down to his knees and then back up to his hips. Noah reciprocated by resting his hands on the front of my shoulders and easing them down so that the tips of his fingers brushed the swells of my breasts. He moved them down to cover both with his palms and knead into my soft flesh.

I turned my head and pressed a trail of kisses along the side of his neck, occasionally allowing the tip of my tongue to glaze across his skin. Noah continued drawing his hands down my body, feeling the soft wetness of my skin beneath his palms. They glided smoothly and easily, promising me deeper and more luscious indulgence. His fingertips touched the valley between my hipbones and I felt my belly tremble. I parted my legs slightly and his fingers dipped lower, slipping across my tight pearl. I gasped and Noah ran his fingers lower. I was already hot and open, my body becoming wetter with each second that he touched me. He gathered some of my hot fluids and brought it to my clit, concentrating his attention in small circles that left me gasping and clutching at his thighs with my fingers, trying to hold onto my control and keep the experience going.

The writhing of my body caused my back to rub against his hardened cock, stimulating it even further until it felt harder, only pushing me further into my nearly overwhelming arousal. His hand slipped through my delicate folds, coaxing me forward, and I grabbed his wrist to still his hand.

"Is something wrong?" he whispered.

I shook my head.

"No," I said, barely able to catch my breath enough to speak. "I just don't want it to be over yet."

Noah smiled and leaned down to kiss the curve of my shoulder.

"It won't be," he said softly, drawing his lips up the side of my neck to nibble lightly on my earlobe. "I promise."

For a few moments, we lay still in the water, allowing the hot stream to rain down on us. We were silent as if lost in our own thoughts of what was happening. I reached forward and turned off the shower, then pulled the stopper out of the drain. The water began to slip away, and the more that disappeared, the higher my anticipation crept.

I stood and carefully stepped out of the tub onto the soft bathmat. I reached for one of the towels stacked on a wooden shelf along the wall. Noah followed close behind me and I drew in a breath as he stepped past me toward the towels, letting his body brush against mine. Now dry, I dropped my towel to the floor and took the one out of Noah's hand. I dried his shoulders and moved the towel down each arm. As I reached his hands I turned each over in mine, carefully drying along his fingers and kissing the center of his palm.

I could feel his breath becoming shallower and his heartbeat against his chest as I ran the towel across it, drying the droplets that clung to his skin. His erection was pressing toward me as I dried his hips and I couldn't pull my eyes away from it as I slowly lowered myself to my knees to dry his thighs. My heart was drumming so hard in my chest that I could feel it in my throat as I dried down to his ankles and along his feet before coming up and focusing my attention on the thick, beautiful cock that seemed to be waiting for me. I heard Noah draw in a breath.

I touched a kiss to his belly and nuzzled my nose into the trail of thick, coarse hair that ran from his navel down to the apex of his thighs. The lightly sweet smell, clean of the soap I had used to wash him mixed with the unmistakable scent of his skin. Noah's hand touched the back of my head, his fingers lightly combing through my hair. It wasn't a demand, but I craved what the touch suggested just as much as I knew he did. I rested the towel to the floor and ran my hand up the back of his leg to hold the backs of his thighs, stabilizing myself while also drawing closer to him. I stroked along his length with my fingertips, starting at the base and traveling up until they reached the engorged, shining head. A droplet of crystalline fluid had gathered there and I couldn't resist touching it. It gathered on my fingertips and I massaged it into his skin. The soft groan that escaped his lips made my desire even more intense and I rested his thick shaft on my palm, wrapping my fingers around it to hold it firmly. I glided my hand along it in long, firm strokes and my mouth watered.

I let my tongue touch the base of his erection and drew it up along the bottom to the tip, swirling it around the head before tracing the same path back down. I looked up, expecting to see Noah with his eyes closed or his head thrown back as he lost himself in the attention that I was giving him. Instead, he was gazing down at me, watching me softly and intently. It made him seem fully engaged in me and the connection that was building between us rather than just the pleasure that I was giving him. I opened my mouth and took his cock in until I couldn’t accommodate more, then grasped the base and withdrew it slowly.

Noah cradled the base of my head with one hand and I allowed the gentle support to guide me into the smooth rhythm that he desired. The tip of his erection touched my throat and he let out a grunt, tightening his grip on my head so that I pulled my mouth away from him.

"Now you're the one who needs to stop," he said breathlessly.

My body stroked his as I rose to my feet and the tips of our noses touched. Noah nuzzled mine and I ran my tongue along his lips. Beside us, our hands met and our fingers intertwined. Our breath mingled and I looked into his eyes, waiting for him to guide me further, to show me what incredible discovery he could introduce me to. Noah released one of my hands and led me out of the bathroom and into the room that had been mine for several weeks now. I relished the private world that I knew we were sharing without any other guests so that I could indulge completely in Noah.

Noah stepped up behind me and molded his body to mine, making me feel enveloped by him and I melted into the warmth of his skin. He took my hips into his hands and turned me in them so that I wrapped my arms around his neck, catching his lips with mine. Our mouths opened and we explored each other, becoming more passionate with each passing moment. I felt Noah walking backwards, drawing me toward my pristinely made bed. I gasped as he pulled away from the kiss and turned me so that he could lay me down.

Noah lowered himself to his knees on the floor and I felt his hand touch the center of my chest as if feeling for my heartbeat. He stroked down my body until his fingertips settled into the valley between my hipbones. His thumb dipped into the hot, wet folds of my core and he massaged my clit with the pad. The sensation rocketed through me and I cried out. Almost instantly Noah's mouth replaced his thumb. His tongue delved into me, then he slowed down again, tracing through each of the tender petals to ensure that the tip of his tongue stroked every accessible inch of me.

I dug my fingers into Noah's hair, at once holding him closer to my body to create more of the delicious sensation and pulling him away to provide relief from the intensity of that same feeling. My legs shook on either side of him and I felt nearly overwhelming pressure starting to build through my hips, thighs, and stomach, telling me I wouldn't be able to maintain my control for much longer. My back arched and I let out a sound between a gasp and a scream. Noah responded to my desperation by standing and turning my body so that I lay with my head rested on the pillows. I opened my arms to him and he stretched his body across mine, pressing our skin together from shoulder to entangled feet.

Noah slowed down again, spending a few minutes kissing me languidly, his hands stroking through my hair as he balanced with his elbows on either side of my head. I drew my legs out from beneath him and parted them so that his hips could settle between my thighs. I could feel the tip of his erection nudging at my core and I tilted my hips toward it. Noah gave a soft moan and rested his forehead against mine. I ran my hands along the firm muscles of his back until he opened his eyes to look at me.

He gazed at me for a few seconds and then climbed off of the bed. I watched as he walked back into the bathroom and then returned holding a condom. It was already out of the package and Noah came to the side of the bed so that I could watch as he settled it onto the head of his erection and eased it down. Watching him created a stronger reaction in me than it had before and I bit down into my lower lip. He climbed back onto the bed and positioned himself over me.

I stroked his face with mine, encouraging it upward until our eyes met again. Remaining propped on his elbows so that our bodies created a close space of indulgence, Noah flexed his hips and sank into me gradually. My eyes fluttered closed at the pure, visceral delight of my walls welcoming him. I felt Noah's mouth come to the soft place beneath my ear, close enough that I could feel his lips brushing against my skin.

I shuddered with pleasure as my body relaxed around him and Noah started to move. He rolled his hips slowly, sinking into me a little deeper with each stroke. When he was fully within me, I could feel his hipbone grinding against mine. His pace increased only slightly as my body molded to him and my hot, slick fluids made his thrusts smooth and dizzyingly intense. The attention that he had lavished on me with his fingers and his tongue had left me just on the brink of oblivion and now he felt masterful and strong over me, starting my intense spiral upwards within moments.

Noah's velvety, rhythmic sounds told me that he was there with me, seeming to transcend what was happening around them until it was only us, existing on a separate plane from everything else. In that moment, everything felt right. In the chaos that I felt like my life had turned into, it seemed I had found my calm.

I dug my fingers into Noah's back as the sensations within me continued to grow more and more powerful, going beyond anything that I ever thought was possible, until I could no longer control my shaking. Noah lifted up so that he balanced on his hands to give himself more leverage. This allowed him to pump into me faster and harder. A final thrust hit the most sensitive point within me and I screamed out as my orgasm tore through my body and the tension that had built within me shattered and dissolved in a cascade of tremors. Almost immediately Noah let out a deep growl and I felt his cock throb inside me. Each of my contractions met one of his pulses, drawing him deeper as he spilled into me, corresponding our pleasure until it seemed that we were melded on a level beyond just the desire of our bodies.

Noah lowered himself carefully so that he stretched fully over me again. His weight pressing down on me was soothing and I drew in another breath, filling my lungs with the smell of him, now mixed with the smell of our bodies together. I could feel his heartbeat reaching out to mine through his chest and it acted like a lullaby, soothing and quieting me into a blissful sleep.

Chapter Twenty

Snow

I stared through the window on my oven door at the dough that was trying to rise. It didn’t look like it was changing much and I tried to figure out what I had done wrong. I gave a sigh of frustration and stomped back into the living room, tossing myself onto the couch. It had been a longer stretch between stays at the cottage because I had left immediately after my date with Noah, returning home two days sooner than I usually would have. It wasn’t the date that had made me leave. That had been the most wonderful date that I could have imagined and I had revisited it several times in my dreams since leaving. It was the conversation when we woke up that had pushed me to leave and return here so that I could hide.

Waking up in Noah’s arms had felt incredible. It simply felt right to feel his skin against mine and to roll over and look into his face in the first moments of the day. Almost immediately, though, things had changed.

“ Tell Fawn that you don’t want to finish. Tell her that you’ve decided that it isn’t right for you and that you’d rather just go home and not come back.”

“I can’t do that, Noah.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? You know why not. I signed a contract.”

“So? Just like Fawn said, this experience is supposed to be all about you. It’s not for anyone else, including her. You’re calling the shots, which means that you can leave at any time.”

“What if I don’t want to leave?”

“What?”

“Noah, I didn’t sign up for this retreat on a whim. It might seem like I did, but it wasn’t an easy decision for me. I thought a lot about it and I am very serious about my decision. This is something that I need to do. I need to see it through.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about the pain in Noah’s eyes as he got out of the bed and dressed, leaving the room without even saying goodbye. It saddened me to see the hurt in his stare, but it also made me angry. I had started this quest with a specific purpose in mind, and I felt like Noah was trying to lead me away from it. I wanted him to understand what I was doing and that it didn’t have anything to do with him.

The knock on my door startled me and I had to look through the peephole before I realized that with all of my concentration on why I had made the right decision to start this experience and to continue it, I had lost track of the days and forgotten that it was nearly time to return to the cottage. I brought the box into my house and sat down to read the note.

“ Shine like a diamond.”

I opened the box and found a long white dress. A slit that looked long enough to come up to my hip was accented by a glittering rhinestone brooch and the same light-catching details lined shoulder straps that created a complex web pattern at the back of the dress. The shoes that were into the bottom of the box had the stones along all of the straps, completing the theme. I carried the dress into my bedroom to hang it up and started to pack my bag for the next day’s journey to the cottage. I didn’t know what to expect when I got there. For the first time, I hoped that I wasn’t going to run into Noah.

“Oh, no,” I murmured as the limo pulled to a stop.

The door opened but I didn’t move.

“That’s where I’m going?” I asked, pointing to the building in front of us.

“Yes,” the chauffer said.

“It doesn’t happen to say the name of the man I’m supposed to be meeting, does it?”

“No, just the address.”

“Great.”

I swung my legs out of the car and let him help me stand up. The dress was tight at my waist and then grazed along my legs to my ankles, but just as I had expected, the slit was long enough to nearly reach my waist when I sat down. I adjusted it carefully, feeling incredibly self-conscious and aware of the eyes that might be on me now. I stepped onto the red carpet that led down between rows of plush velvet ropes and took a step toward the building. As if someone had been watching, the door opened and a man stepped out. I didn’t want to look like I was staring at him, but I needed to get a better view of his face. The lights outside the building hadn’t been completely turned on yet, though I knew that soon they would be as this area filled with crowds of hopefuls wanting to get inside the exclusive, hallowed walls of The Diamond Mine.

The man took a step toward me and I nearly sobbed with relief at seeing that it was not Anthony, the man who had dealt with me while I was building the marketing campaign for this nightclub. He came closer and I saw that this man was slightly older than Anthony and darker in coloring than Anthony’s hazel eyes and light brown hair.

“Good evening,” he said. “I’m Damien. Welcome to The Diamond Mine.”

“Thank you,” I said, accepting the quick, friendly embrace that Damien offered.

“This is truly my labor of love. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do.”

He crooked his elbow and I took it to allow him to escort me up the red carpet to the door.

“Do you own this place?” I asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Yes,” he said. “It’s only been open a few months, but it has already been extremely successful.”

Yeah, because I created the advertising campaign for it.

I thought back to my interactions with Anthony and realized that he had never actually said that he owned The Diamond Mine. I had just assumed that he was and never mentioned it to give him the chance to correct me. Anthony had only showed me pictures of the club as I built the campaign and it felt strange to be actually walking through those images now. I had to admit as Damien guided me through the first large room that the pictures didn’t do the actual club justice. Though he had put effort into capturing the theme and showing me the exquisite custom details that had been installed in the multiroom space, he hadn’t been able to show me just how much they had made the club resemble the network of chambers and corridors of a diamond mine. The walls were textured to look like rough carved stone and illuminated faceted glass embedded within them created the appearance of gems while casting mysterious ambient light throughout the space. I was genuinely in awe as we walked through it and felt even more proud that the campaign that I had created was bringing success to this extremely worthy venue.

Damien gave me a tour of the club, including the bar that appeared to be carved entirely out of raw diamonds, and then guided me toward a particular wall. He reached up and pressed his fingertips into the center of a blue gem in the stone. After a few seconds, the gem glowed brighter and the wall popped forward slightly. Damien tucked his fingertips into a seam that had appeared along one side and tugged, opening the section of wall to reveal a hidden room behind. Damien stepped out of the way to allow me to enter first and then followed me, guiding the wall back into place behind us. A large table was positioned in the center of the room, tall candlesticks along the middle spreading light along the table and into the area immediately around it. I saw two place settings on the table and Damien escorted me to one of them. He pulled my chair out for me and I sat down, allowing him to help me pull closer to the table before he walked over to the setting across from me and sat.

“You look truly stunning tonight,” he told me. “That dress is fortunate to have you to wear it.”

I looked down briefly, feeling flattered heat come to my cheeks.

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”

Two men suddenly appeared, stepping out of a door that I hadn’t even noticed, and carried cut crystal glasses over to us. Their movements were synchronized as they placed the glasses to our sides and filled them with wine.

“I’ve planned dinner for us,” Damien said as he lifted his glass in a slight toast to me. “I hope that you enjoy it.”

“I’m sure that I will,” I said, returning the gesture.

I brought the glass to my lips and sipped it, savoring the complex wine as it swirled through my mouth and down my throat. The door opened again and the men returned, this time carrying plates. I watched as the waiter serving me set an elaborately plated salad on the gold charger in front of me and then a smaller plate with a roll and butter to one side.

Over the next few hours we made our way through more than a dozen courses. I was more impressed with each sultry, masterful dish that came out, but Damien seemed utterly casual, as though this was something that he did regularly. The budget for his marketing had already given me a hint that he was exorbitantly wealthy, but now that I knew he was the sole owner of the club and had built it purely out of a dream that he’d had for many years, I was certain that he had even more money than I had originally believed. As he talked about the club, carefully skirting around personal details about his life to make sure that he adhered to the anonymity his contract demanded, I tried to imagine why Fawn would have selected him for one of my dates. He was sexy, certainly, and had a confidence that made him even more attractive, but there had to be a specific reason why she thought that he would be right for me. It occurred to me that she might have chosen him because of his money, creating for me the fantasy of a man who held the world in his hands and could literally do anything that he wanted. I pondered that as I finished the small gilded dish of crème brulee that finished our decadent meal.

Does his money make him a fantasy for me?

“That was delicious,” I said. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad that you enjoyed it. Now if you’d like to follow me, I have something else planned for our evening.”

He was walking toward me and I waited until he pulled out my chair and reached his hand to me to help me stand. I rested my fingertips to his palm and allowed him to help me to my feet. I had to admit that I was reveling in this kind of treatment. I enjoyed the attention and the sense of opulence that surrounded us, and looked forward to what he had planned next.

Damien continued to hold my hand as we walked through another hidden panel in the wall and made our way through lantern-lined halls.

“These are our elite lounges,” he explained to me as we passed by a few ornate doors set back in the walls. “They are for our most discerning guests who are interested in a more personalized experience.”

“So, the most exclusive of the exclusive.”

“Exactly.”

He led me toward a door at the end of the hall and typed a code into a keypad concealed behind another of the gems. The door lock clicked and he held the door open for me. I stepped through it and found myself outside, not quite able to believe what I was seeing. A helicopter sat several yards ahead of me, the blades already spinning. Damien stepped out of the building and rested his hand on my lower back, gesturing for me to go ahead. The sound of the blades was too loud for me to say anything to him, so I gathered the end of my skirt up away from my ankles and ran toward the helicopter. We ducked inside and Damien closed the door, dulling the sound.

“I thought that you might like to see the lights of the city from a different vantage point,” he said.

I looked around the inside of the helicopter. It wasn’t like anything that I would have imagined. Rather than just being a cockpit, there was a small cabin separated from the pilot with a wall featuring a movable glass panel. The cabin was decorated in a way that mirrored the feeling of The Diamond Mine and I looked at him with widened eyes.

“Is this yours?” I asked.

“It is,” Damien said with a smile. “My own little mining cart.”

I laughed and settled onto one of the plush seats, fastening my seatbelt over my lap in anticipation of takeoff. Nearly the entire cabin was made up of windows that allowed me to look out over the city as the helicopter rose into the air. The view was breathtaking and I felt transfixed by it the higher we rose and the further we traveled. Soon we were so high above the city that it had been reduced to only glittering lights beneath. I glanced over my shoulder at Damien.

“Like diamonds,” I said.

He nodded, making a sound of agreement. I could feel myself getting swept away by all of this. It was like I was suddenly existing in a different world, a world where I could do and be anything. The thought was oddly sobering. Rather than giving me a sense of thrilling liberation, it firmly grounded me, reminding me sternly of the life that I did have outside of this experience. As much as I felt that I was walking around in another life right now, I had to remember that this wasn’t reality. This wasn’t going to continue even after tonight and I was still going to have to exist in my own reality when I returned from the retreat and started rebuilding my life.

I realized that the helicopter was lowering and soon it landed. I looked to Damien.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Another little surprise,” he said.

We got out of the helicopter and entered a luxurious hotel lobby. Immediately a sharply dressed man rushed up to us.

“Good evening, sir,” he said. “We’ve been preparing for your arrival.”

“Thank you, Timothy. Is everything ready.”

“It is.”

“Good.”

Damien subtly slipped a tip into the man’s hand and we continued across the lobby and down a short hallway to an elevator. Rather than the usual up and down buttons that I would have expected to see beside the door, there was another keypad. Damien tapped a code into it and the elevator opened. We stepped inside and the elevator closed. We rose up several floors before stopping and the elevator doors opened again. We walked out into a foyer and approached a tall, arched door. Damien withdrew a black card from the pocket of his suit jacket and used it to open the door. I stepped through into a lavish hotel suite. To one side I could see a winding staircase that led up to another floor and to the other a sunken room with a sparkling pool surrounded by glass walls on three sides.

A rush of excitement coursed through me and I felt Damien step up behind me. His hands came around to rest on my stomach, subtly pulling me back against him, and I felt his face nuzzle into my hair.

“Would you like to take a swim?” he murmured.

“I didn’t bring a bathing suit with me,” I responded.

He turned me in his hands and wrapped his arms around my waist.

“You don’t need one,” he whispered.

His mouth dropped to mine and he pulled me into a deep kiss. I felt myself melting into it, my mind fogging with the strength and taste of his mouth. My hands touched his arms beside me, feeling the muscles beneath the fabric of his pristinely tailored suit. I wanted him. I could feel my body responding and my mind trying to push away the thoughts that had pricked through the fantasy created for me when we were in the helicopter. As Damien’s hand came to the zipper on the back of my dress, though, those thoughts came surging back. I reluctantly pulled my mouth away from his and stepped back from him, my head shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t do this. I need to go back to the retreat.”

“Is something wrong?” Damien asked. “Have I done something?”

He looked genuinely concerned and I reached up to run my hand along the side of his face. I shook my head again, this time trying to reassure him.

“No. Tonight was unbelievable. I had a wonderful time and I really would like to stay.”

“Then stay,” he said, trying to pull me back into his arms, but I pressed against his chest to step away again.

“I can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry. I wish that I could explain it to you better, but right now, I just need to go back to the cottage before I do something that I know that I will regret later.”

Damien still looked upset, but it was disappointment rather than the anger that I would have anticipated. He nodded.

“I’ll call for your driver,” he said. “If you change your mind before he gets here, you are welcome to stay.”

I knew that I couldn’t change my mind, but I still went outside to wait rather than remaining in the room with Damien. Leaving was the only decision that I could make. I told myself that it was completely professionalism. Damien didn’t know who I was and as much as I felt like I could use a fantasy to whisk me out of the thoughts that had been holding me down for the last couple of weeks, I knew that I couldn’t break my professional ethics by having sex with him. Soon I would have to return to my real life and he would eventually figure out who I was. It was potentially awkward enough for both of us when we did inevitably come face-to-face as I continued to work on his marketing campaign, and sleeping with him would only complicate it further. In my heart, though, I felt like it wasn’t the only reason I had to say goodbye.

I peeled myself out of the gown as soon as I stepped into my room. I doubted that I would ever have the opportunity to wear it again, but once I put this experience behind me, I knew that I would enjoy seeing it hanging in my closet. Bathed and changed into a pair of lounge pants and shirt, I sat down on the window seat looking out over the back lawn and held the book I had been reading in my lap. I couldn’t focus on the words, though, and my eyes wandered to the windowsill. I don’t know how long I stared at it, lost in my thoughts, before trying to pull myself back to the book.

I turned away from looking at the windowsill and found Noah standing in the center of the lawn staring up at me. In the next instant, I was running through the cottage and out of the door that led out into the yard, running toward him. Noah took several long strides toward me to close the space between us. When I got close enough, he reached forward and I felt him sweep me into his arms. We were fully visible to whoever might be watching as our bodies crashed together, but I couldn’t think about that in that moment. All that mattered was the feeling of his arms around me and his mouth coming down onto mine in a kiss that seemed to pull every emotion, every thought, every compulsion out of me.

My mind was reeling as he held me closely against him and carried me toward the cottage where we’d had our first, if brief, encounter when I was just at the beginning of my journey. Noah brought me to one of the large cushions on the floor and lowered me to it so that he sat facing me and pulled me forward, draping my legs over his thighs so that I could settle close to him. I reached up and touched his face, his hand immediately raising to mirror my movements as I gently traced the curve of his jawline.

"Noah," I whispered.

As if hearing his name on my lips broke any control that he had, Noah pushed forward to kiss me again, wrapping an arm around my waist to pull me into his lap. I gasped at the swell of his erection beneath me and he held me down harder, lifting his hips slightly to rock against me as his mouth played across mine. My need for him felt intense and primal, and I reached down to gather the hem of his shirt in my hands and pull the fabric off over his head.

I leaned down and drew my tongue across his skin, gathering the taste of him. My teeth nipped at his chest and I felt his hands pulling at my shirt. Even with the questions and hesitations that we’d had still hovering in the back of my mind, I knew I couldn't have resisted him. I needed Noah in that moment in a way I felt like I had never needed anything, and I eagerly gave myself over to him as he reached behind me to open my bra and release my breasts into his waiting hands. His thumb rubbed across one nipple as he brought his mouth down to the other, continuing to nudge upwards with his hip as he sucked the taut peak between his teeth.

He repositioned me so that I was sitting in front of him. My body shook as he removed my remaining clothing and then brought me up to my knees before he tenderly ran his hands down me, following every curve as if trying to memorize me beneath his palms. He followed his hands with his mouth, trailing kisses along me with such control and purpose it was as though he had been imagining this very moment, planning everything that he was going to do if he got me in his hands again. By the time his mouth reached my hipbones, I was trembling nearly uncontrollably. He moved it down to draw his tongue slowly and deeply through my core. It created concentrated, intense pleasure, but it was also a message, a reminder of the first time that he had touched me that way, the impulse that had brought him to his knees in front of me to nurture me as I cautiously, nervously began to learn my own body.

He rose up onto his knees and guided my hands to the front of his pants. I released the row of buttons down his fly and peeled away his pants, revealing that he wore nothing beneath them, and eased them as far down as I could. I wrapped my hand around his surging erection as he finished taking his pants the rest of the way off, and I indulged myself in the feeling of running my fingers along its hard, beautiful length. Noah groaned at my touch and my body clenched as if already seeking him. I stroked his luscious cock for a few moments, offering him back the pleasure he had given me. When I couldn't handle the empty ache any longer, I looked into his eyes, evaluating him, wanting to see that he needed me in the same way.

Noah didn’t respond, but grabbed me by my hips and pulled me forward so that my pelvis came up on his thighs and my legs draped around his hips. The movement settled the tip of his erection at my core and he took a moment to stroke me, sending a shock through me. He suddenly paused and eased me off of his lap and stood. I was briefly worried, but then I saw that he was walking toward a cabinet hanging on the wall. He opened it and pulled out a condom, slipping it on without ceremony. He returned to the cushion with me and brought me back into his lap, catching my mouth to rebuild the heat that had been lost.

We kissed hungrily, almost frantically, then he was inside me and I gasped at the intense, full feeling of him plunging so deep I felt him hit the furthest point. He held my hips tightly as he began to thrust into me in a fast, hard rhythm that told me he didn't want to hold anything back.

I gripped his arms to give myself greater stability and planted my feet on either side of him so that I could lift my hips higher. It was an open, vulnerable position that I never would have even considered before coming here, but it felt natural and real now. Noah growled in his throat and rose up slightly more on his knees. The leverage allowed him to pick up even more speed, and within seconds I could feel myself losing control. I dug my fingernails into his arms and let my head fall back, screaming as my body contracted around him and held him tightly within me before crashing into fast, intense spasms that milked him until he let out a deep grunt and released into me. I threw myself forward so that I was wrapped around Noah and focused on the feeling of his cock pulsing against my walls. I closed my eyes to savor the feeling of my body massaging him, accepting the hot steams he poured into me.

When it was over, we lay tangled on the cushion, our bodies wrapped around each other and our hands lazily stroking each other’s sweaty skin. I kissed his hair and his forehead, holding him against me as tightly as I could. Even in those first moments, clarity was coming into my mind. I knew that this couldn’t last. This shouldn’t have happened. I closed my eyes and held him closer, needing just a few more seconds before I let reality completely set in.

Noah lifted his head and kissed me, then stared down into my face. He stroked his fingertips along my cheek and jawline, and then traced my lips. I kissed them softly.

“You came back,” he whispered.

“Hmmm?”

“You came back. You didn’t sleep with him.”

I felt like a rock had fallen into my stomach.

“No, I didn’t, but Noah…”

“I knew that if you thought about it…”

“Noah, nothing’s changed.”

He stared at me, blinking as if he thought that he hadn’t heard me correctly.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re right. I didn’t sleep with Damien, but that was my choice. He doesn’t know it, but he has involvements in my life outside of all this. In my real life. I couldn’t go through with it and put that at risk later.”

Noah climbed to his feet and pulled his pants on, whipping around to face me.

“That’s it?” he demanded. “That’s why? Because he might at some point interact with you after this, that’s the only reason why you didn’t sleep with him?”

I wriggled into my pants and dropped my shirt down over my head, not bothering to put my bra back on.

“What do you want me to say, Noah?”

“I want you to say that you’ll stop this. I want you to say that you’ll leave and won’t go on anymore dates.”

I waited for more. I waited for him to say the words that I needed him to say, the only words that would convince me to end my retreat, but he didn’t. He just kept staring at me, the demands in his eyes telling me that he didn’t understand, and I felt the softness that had come over my heart harden.

“I’m going to see this through,” I said, making sure that each word was fully enunciated so that my message was clear.

Noah looked at me for a long, steely moment. Without another word, he stormed out of the cottage, leaving me alone, overwhelmed with the conflicting, battling emotions that filled me.

Chapter Twenty-One

Snow

Any questions that I had about my continued investment in the retreat were gone by the time that I returned home. The unexpected encounter with Noah had worked to confirm that this was what I was supposed to be doing. I was finally doing something for myself and following through with what I had intended from the beginning rather than allowing the will of someone else to control me. I had looked into Noah’s eyes, hoping to see there what I now knew was the only thing that could supersede the valuable personal and sexual discoveries that I was making with each new date. This wasn’t just about the sex, though I definitely felt like I understood Robin’s fascination now. Continuing the retreat was about me connecting to and honoring myself, accepting that my own needs mattered, and that I deserved to focus on not just knowing myself, but knowing how to look beyond everything else to live the life that I deserved. In those last intense moments in the cottage I hadn’t seen in Noah what I needed to, so I made the decision that I needed to and was more determined now than ever to see this through.

Friday morning had come again and I got into the shower to ready myself for my journey back to the retreat. My date box sat in the living room, waiting to be brought along with my luggage. The card had been the same cryptic, vague message that I had become accustomed to over the last several weeks.

“ Express yourself”

I had just rinsed the shower gel from my skin when the temperature of the water suddenly shifted to scalding. I pressed myself back against the wall, trying to stay out of the blistering water, and pushed the door open so that I could climb out. My skin stung as I reached in to turn the faucet off. Shaken, I picked up my towel and dried off. I dressed and stepped out of the bathroom, turning toward my bedroom to get my luggage. Moments later I heard the high-pitched scream of the smoke detector. I ran into the hallway and immediately smelled smoke. Rushing toward the grey trail I saw forming near my ceiling, I found a small fire burning on the carpet of my living room. I ran into the kitchen to grab my fire extinguisher, but I couldn’t activate it. Feeling panicked, I ran out of my house and into the yard, shouting for help.

My hand touched my pocket and I realized I hadn’t grabbed my phone. I had no way of calling for help. I was tempted to go back inside, but even from this vantage point I could see that the fire was building in my living room. Tears were forming in my eyes and I felt my chest crushing. Suddenly a figure rushed past me and into my house. A few moments later I saw the glow of the fire stop and the windows open to allow the smoke to stream out. The chauffer’s face appeared in one of them and I felt myself sag with relief. I glanced behind me and realized that the limo had pulled up behind me without me noticing.

“Philip,” I said, the tears trickling down my cheeks now. “Thank you.”

“It’s alright, Snow,” he said. “The damage isn’t too bad. I’ll make some calls and make sure that it is fixed for you before you get back.”

I heard the wail of sirens and looked to the street to see a fire truck zooming toward me. The men rushed out and streamed into my house where Philip reassured them that he had the situation under control. They did a quick scan of the house and then came out to tell me that I could go in if I wanted to.

“I can get your things for you if you’d like,” Philip offered.

I nodded, not wanting to face whatever damage the fire had caused before he was able to extinguish it. A few minutes later he came out of the house carrying my luggage and my date box. He tucked them into the trunk and then went back inside the close the windows and lock the door. With another promise that he would ensure that everything was fixed when I got back from the cottage, he started on the now-familiar drive to the cottage where I hoped that I would be able to calm down and relax before my date the next day.

Lucille

I sat in the upstairs window of the house across the street from Snow’s, my anger tightening in my jaw until it hurt. I had been watching Snow’s house for the three weeks since I discovered that it was for rent and in that time, I had watched her come and go in that limo twice. Not knowing where she was going or what she was doing made me angrier with each passing day. The time away from the company was supposed to be giving me the opportunity to figure out a way to get rid of her. Instead, it seemed to be giving her even more of the adoring worship that she constantly received. It was sickening and more than ever I wanted to destroy her. The end of her leave was coming up quickly. I was running out of time before I was going to be forced to let her back to work and have to deal with her every day. Something had to be done.

I watched as the firefighters took a final sweep of the perimeter of her house and started packing up their truck. All of the fuss surrounding the tiny fire seemed ridiculous, just more of the pomp and circumstance that seemed to define Snow’s life. More people falling all over themselves to ensure that her life was nothing but rainbows and butterflies. It’s not as though I had meant for the fire to get out of control. I didn’t want to kill her. Ruin her day, yes. Piss her off, sure. Scare her and hope that it would make her want to cut her losses, go somewhere else, and start again where she could ruin someone else’s life, absolutely. It was a controlled burn, just like the shift in temperature in her water. Harmless.

My phone rang and I glanced down at it, rolling my eyes before answering it.

“Hi, Honey,” I said, trying to inject as much pleasantness in my voice as I possibly could.

“I just got a call from the fire department. They responded to a fire at Snow’s house. Do you know what’s going on? Is she OK?”

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

He sounded nothing short of frantic and it took everything in me not to throw my phone across the room.

“What do you want, Walter?” I snapped.

“I’m worried about Snow. You said that she’s on vacation.”

“Yes, she’s on vacation. She has been for weeks.”

“But there was a fire at her house.”

“And I’m sure that the fire department handled it. They are the professionals. Speaking of which, do you want to explain to me why they would be calling you to tell you about a fire?”

I was hoping to deflect the situation, make him feel guilty so that he would leave me alone.

“Any time that there is an emergency at the home of one of my employees, I’m notified,” he said. “It’s part of our insurance policy. They all agreed to my notification when they started working for me.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” I said, giving a sniff for extra emphasis. “You shouldn’t be thinking about her when you are away. You should be thinking about your wife.”

“I am, Darling. I’m always thinking of you. I miss you so much. In fact, I’m thinking about cutting my trip short and coming home to you.”

“No,” I snapped, a bit too quickly. “I mean, no, don’t do that,” I said more softly, trying to recover. “You’ve been so looking forward to this trip. Don’t give it up. We’ll have plenty of time when you get home.”

“Our whole lives,” he said.

I felt my stomach turn but I forced myself to make an affirming sound. I ended the call and tucked my phone into my pocket. Across the street a white van had pulled up in front of Snow’s house. A team of men in white jumpsuits climbed out and started carrying equipment into the house. More heroes already swooping in to rescue her.

This had to end. I couldn’t stand the thought of her coming back to work and having to look at her every day. I already heard her name enough just with people missing her and clients asking when she would be back. I couldn’t tolerate having to hear even more about her. Grabbing my keys, I left the house through the garage door and drove out of the neighborhood, heading for the Royal and Company offices. I wanted to do some more digging into Snow’s files. There had to be something there, something that I could use.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Snow

I was still unnerved by the fire at my house the next day when I arrived for my date. I was trying to get it out of my mind so I could concentrate on the experience that was waiting for me, but it was still frightening. When the limo stopped, I looked out and saw that we were in front of a converted industrial building. Intrigued, I let Philip help me out of the backseat and started for the door. I stepped through it into a large open space that I could only assume used to be a factory floor. Any manufacturing equipment that used to be there was gone now, replaced by paint-splattered tables, drop cloths, and stacks of crates filled with art supplies.

A man sat astride a stool in the center of the room, slashing at a canvas with a narrow paintbrush. He seemed unaware that I was in the room with him and I didn’t know if I should approach him. I took a cautious step in his direction, watching as he continued to create seemingly abstract lines across the white surface with black paint. It was the type of art that I could never decide if I liked it or not. On one hand it was fascinating, the often contrasting colors and harsh shapes juxtaposed with soft curves seeming to embody something that only the person who created it could understand. On the other hand, this caused the pieces to be confusing, sometimes unnerving, making me feel like I was somehow out of the loop and missing out on something that others could see.

I was nearly to his side when the man looked back and noticed me.

“Hi,” he said. “I’m sorry, I should have met you outside.”

“That’s alright,” I said. “I’m Snow.”

“Michael,” he said, coming toward me and embracing me.

I returned the hug, immediately feeling at ease with him.

“This place is amazing,” I said when we stepped out of the hug.

“Thank you,” Michael answered, looking around. “It’s my own little world.”

“What are you painting?” I asked.

He looked at the canvas and laughed.

“Nothing,” he said. “I’m just got new brushes and I’m trying to get used to them.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling embarrassed.

I looked away so that he wouldn’t see the redness that came to my cheeks, but he cupped his hand under my chin to turn my face back to him.

“Don’t,” he said. “You should never feel that way about your thoughts. Art is different for everyone. I was trying out my brushes, but this might be art to someone else. It might be to you.”

“How could it be art if you didn’t make it to be art?”

“That’s a common misconception about art. Art does not exist because it’s created, art exists because it’s perceived. I can make something that I think is the most beautiful and meaningful piece that I have ever created, but if you look at it and see nothing but colors on a piece of paper, it’s not art to you. Likewise, I might not think that this canvas is art, but if it speaks to you when you look at it, then it is.”

His words struck me and I felt the worry and discomfort disappear from my mind. Michael started guiding me around the studio, giving me a tour of the pieces that he had been working on. I was fascinated by the pile of discarded partial sculptures that occupied one corner and several torn canvases that lay nearby.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Graveyard,” he said with a hint of a laugh. “The corpses of pieces that will never be.”

“Maybe you can resurrect them some day,” I suggested.

“Ooo, zombie art,” he said. “I like it. A new genre.”

I laughed and continued on toward a row of easels that were facing the opposite direction. I walked around them and was confronted with a row of nude sketches. The extremely detailed pictures featured both men and women in various positions, most alone but some together, their bodies meshed in different ways. I gasped slightly, more startled than embarrassed.

“Do they make you uncomfortable?” Michael asked.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s just….” I looked back at the sketches and then at him, “do you use live models?”

“Of course, I do. There’s no better way to learn the human form than to recreate it. It’s the most spectacular of all subjects. No artist can ever create anything as beautiful and meaningful as a human being. Each one is different, completely unique in its details, and yet so similar. It’s like my paintings. At their core, they are all just canvases. All the same. It’s what I do with them, the ways that I enhance and differentiate them, that make them what they are.” He reached forward and took my hands in his. “Come here. Let me show you.”

He guided me to the other side of the room where a section of the floor was covered with a rug and held a wooden chair, an old side table, and several empty crates that created a makeshift sitting area. Michael started to undress me, stopping when I wore only my bra and panties. He stepped back and looked at me, his eyes traveling along my body appreciatively. Taking my hips in his hands, he took me with him as he walked back a few steps to sit in the chair. He touched a kiss to my stomach and then reached behind me to unhook my bra.

The lace fell away and I felt the air against my bare breasts. Michael opened his mouth and covered one of my breasts. His tongue encircled the taut pink nipple and drew it into his mouth so he could suckle me, bringing his hands to my waist to hold me still. My breath caught in my throat and I let my head fall back as I closed my eyes to enjoy more of the sensation. Michael mirrored his attention on that nipple on my other breast, and then let his mouth wander further until it touched the front of my panties. I could feel the warmth of his breath through the lace and a strangled gasp built up in my throat. His teeth grasped the elastic of the waistband. I parted my thighs to allow him to remove the scrap of damp lace and drop it to the floor. Suddenly I was completely naked in front of him and he hadn't even taken off his shoes.

I started to protest, but Michael lifted his eyes to me and shook his head as if he knew exactly what I was thinking.

“This isn’t about me,” he said. “You should appreciate yourself. Every part of you.”

Tightening his grip on my waist, he dipped his head forward to slip his tongue between my thighs. I cried out and grabbed at his shoulders as the tip of his tongue flicked the tip across my swollen, sensitive pearl of flesh.

“You are like a piece of my art. Beautiful. Completely unique. So many details to discover if you simply take the time to find them.”

He drew his tongue along me a few more times in long, tantalizing licks, and then I felt him turn me. He lowered me down to sit on his lap as he eased back to sit on his heels. The denim of his jeans felt soft and worn against my exposed flesh and I wiggled against the ever-hardening swell beneath me.

Michael lifted my arms so that he could drape them back around his neck. For a few seconds, he explored the underside of my arms and the ridges of my ribs with his fingertips. It reminded me of the first night that I was at the retreat and I stood in the cottage, touching my body in much the same way.

“Each of the curves and dips of your body was created for a specific purpose,” he whispered. “There is nothing about you that is accidental. Each hair, each vein is like a brush stroke.”

He slid his hands down my body and onto my legs so that he could gently part my thighs. I allowed him to position my legs so that I straddled him backwards, my legs tucked tightly on either side of him. His mouth came to the curve between my neck and shoulder and he tasted my skin. I felt a shiver ripple across my skin as he brought his hand down the front of my body to my hot core. I moaned at the first intimate touch and lifted my hips to intensify the sensation he was creating.

He slid his other hand up my arms to behind his head so that he gripped my wrists, pinning them together so I was completely at his mercy. He continued to explore my body, letting his fingers follow the dips and curves of my slick folds, showing incredible appreciation for every bit that he discovered. I moaned and rocked against his hand, dropping my head back against his shoulder. Michael turned his head to catch my mouth in a deep kiss, meeting each of my high, nearly frantic sounds with his tongue. He plunged his fingers into me and began to massage deeply.

"Are you ready to explore with me?" he whispered into my ear.

His teeth nipped at my earlobe and I nodded breathlessly. Michael released my wrists and eased me off of my lap. I lowered myself to recline on the floor and watched as he stood, starting to undress. Finally, the last piece of his clothing fell to the ground and I spent a few indulgent moments drinking in every inch of his beautiful, sun-kissed skin. Vibrant tattoos covered nearly his entire back and over both shoulders, spreading down his arms and over his chest. Almost unconsciously, my hand drifted down my stomach toward the wet heat he had created between my thighs.

“Do you like them?” he asked.

I nodded.

“They are one of the ways that I express myself. I’m going to teach you to express yourself.”

I was expecting him to come down onto the floor with me, but instead, he reached his hand down toward me. I put my hand in his and allowed him to pull me up off of the floor. We walked across the open space and around a partially completed mural into the smaller section of the room that it had created with its presence. What looked like a tremendous piece of canvas was spread across the floor and I noticed small pots of paint positioned around the edge, brushes resting across the open mouths of each.

“What’s this?” I asked.

Michael guided me into the middle of the canvas on the floor. He gestured at the paint.

“I told you that your body is like a piece of art. I’m going to prove that to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I create art, I put myself into it. I’m expressing everything that I’m feeling and thinking. You’re going to do the same thing. We are going to create a piece of art together as an expression of what we’re going to experience.”

He walked over to one of the pots of paint and picked up the brush, dipping it into a bright shade of blue. Stepping back up to me, he ran the brush from my shoulder along my arm. The paint was cold and slick, the contrast in temperature creating a shiver through me. When he was finished, he offered the brush to me. I took it and created a blue streak along the center of Michael’s chest. He nodded and picked up another brush, gathering deep purple paint and using it to coat my breasts. Each color that he added to my body broke through the veil of inhibitions that I realized were still in place and made me more and more aware of how my arousal truly existed throughout my entire body.

I picked up a brush and dipped it into red paint. I walked around Michael and used the brush to create swirls over his ass that I mirrored with green paint and then with yellow. He reciprocated with swathes of other shades until my entire body from my neck down was coated with a rainbow of colors. The final bit complete, Michael stepped up to me.

“Lay down and let’s play.”

I let out a whimper as I eased myself down onto the canvas and laid down. Michael had walked over to a small table to the side of the canvas and picked up a condom. He tore the package open with his mouth and gestured with one finger for me to come closer as he stepped back onto the canvas. I rose up onto my knees and crawled toward him. He offered me the package and I took it with my paint-coated fingertips. For a moment, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I didn’t want to get paint on the condom by touching it with my hand. I thought of how Michael had opened the package and dipped my mouth to the open corner. Grasping the condom in between my lips I eased it out and brought it onto my tongue. I was rewarded for my creativity with a wash of bright, sweet fruit flavor. I hadn’t even realized that flavored condoms existed, and was enthralled by the novelty of it.

I brought my mouth toward Michael’s cock and positioned it so that I could settle the condom onto the tip. He grasped his erection at the base to hold it still as I used my mouth to unroll the sweetened condom into place. I played as I did it, sucking along his length as I pushed the edge down with my lips, taking my time until it was secured against his hand and I held his erection fully in my mouth. I spent a few minutes sucking his cock, reaching up to cup his balls and leave my fingertips along them in several hues.

When I withdrew his erection and lay back, Michael immediately came down over me. He settled his mouth over mine again, kissing me languidly as he brought his hips forward to nestle the tip of his cock against my opening. Michael paused where he was and opened his intoxicating eyes to gaze at me. This was a moment that had been building over the entire time that we had been painting each other and I was more than ready for him. I ran my hands back through his hair and settled them on his back. Michael let out a breath and sank into me, drawing a gasp from my throat.

Michael groaned in pleasure, his eyes drifting closed as he seemed to give himself over completely to the sensation of my body enveloping him. I felt a smile come to my lips at that sound, and I drew my legs up to encourage him to settle deeper inside me. Michael opened his eyes and returned my smile as he started moving his hips, pushing deeper inside me with long, intense strokes. He dropped his mouth to kiss me again, tangling our tongues as he rolled over to position me on top for a few moments. We moved in a steady, continuous pattern, rolling and changing positions every few moments as we savored the luscious feeling of his length massaging my walls.

We had been moving over the surface of the canvas for several minutes when suddenly he thrust into me harder and faster, bringing me out of my peaceful state and eliciting a sharp cry with each intense stroke. He flipped onto his back again, bringing me up so that I knelt over him. I rolled my hips, riding him as hard as I could. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and dampened the edges of his hair, making him look wild and even sexier. The colors of paint that I had spread across his body had blended and swirled as he fucked me, creating new shades and streaking across his face like war paint. I gripped the strands at the nape of his neck and leaned forward to grab his bottom lip between my teeth. Michael growled and slammed me down onto his cock a few more intense times before I felt him shudder as his body tightened and a roar poured from his throat. I could feel his hot streams pouring into me as he throbbed and pulsed. He reached up and pressed the pad of his thumb to my clit, swirling it relentlessly into me until I screamed out in pleasure and grasped at his chest in response to the powerful orgasm that hit me.

Michael held my hips and rocked them slowly as I rode out the final waves of my climax. I draped myself forward on him, resting my head on his shoulder for a moment before climbing off of him.

“You want to see what we created?” he asked.

I felt like I perhaps should have rested in his arms for a few more moments, but the reality was that I wanted to get a glimpse of the painting, to see an actual visual expression of explosive sex crafted uniquely by our bodies. Michael and I walked off of the canvas and stood at the edge to look down at it. The painting was exactly as I had hoped it would be. It looked like sex: bold and vibrant, soft and smooth in places and sharp and harsh in others. The colors mixed until they were barely decipherable from one another in areas, while staying distinct around the edges, mimicking the way our bodies interacted, sometimes mingling and blending and other moments separated to concentrate on precise, undiluted acts.

“It’s amazing,” I said, not knowing how else to describe it.

“Yes, it is,” Michael said, wrapping his arm around my waist to turn me into him for one more kiss.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Snow

The small section of the painting that I had framed seemed to put the perfect accent on my living room wall. I tilted my head, trying to orient it as how it would have been in the original painting so I could figure out what parts of our bodies had created the abstract shapes and unique, blended colors. I smiled at the memory of creating the painting, the way our bodies slipped and moved against each other as we rolled across the canvas, the more passionate the sex, the more expressive the painting. No one would ever have to know how that painting was made, but I would always know and any time I needed a reminder that my body was beautiful and unique, all I would need to do is look at it.

It was only a few days until I would return to The Enchanted Woods for the final time and the reality of it was setting in. I could hardly believe that it had been more than two months since I had started my journey, but as I looked around my house at the tangible reminders of my dates, I knew that I had come so far. I could feel the changes that had come over me and knew that when this was over, I would carry those changes with me into whatever the rest of my life held.

Philip had a hint of sadness in his eyes when he looked at me as I climbed out of the limo in front of the cottage.

“The team did a wonderful job fixing my house,” I told him. “I really appreciate you doing that for me.”

“Of course,” he said.

“What is it, Philip?” I asked.

“This is the last time that I’m bringing you here,” he said.

It was the most emotion that he had ever shown and I felt my heart squeeze a little.

“Not the last time,” I told him. “You still have to bring me on my date and then bring me back here after.”

He shook his head.

“No. Your date is picking you up here.”

“Oh. Well, you’ll have to bring me back to my house when I leave Tuesday.”

He gave a single nod.

“Yes, Miss Snow.”

With that, he got back into the limo and drove away. I turned to start up the stairs and caught movement in the corner of my eye. I looked to the side and saw Noah. His arms were full of grocery bags and he was looking at me as if I was the last person that he wanted to see. I turned away and ran inside, not wanting that confrontation.

It was almost surreal getting ready for my date the next day. I knew that this was the last time that I was going to take an outfit selected for me out of one of the boxes and wait to meet the man who had chosen it. It was the last time that I was going to come face-to-face with the embodiment of a fantasy and get swept into a date they had planned specifically for me. Holding this knowledge somewhat heavily within me, I went through the process of preparing for the date almost like a ritual. I took the note from the box again and looked down at it.

“ Get your motor running.”

I couldn’t help but hum “Born to be Wild” as I withdrew the clothing from the box and spread it over the bed.

Fucking nerd. That is something you will not be doing on this date.

As I looked at the clothing, though, it didn’t miss my notice that it looked like something that might be worn in a music video for that song. All leather and rivets, the skirt and corseted top were the furthest from what I would usually wear of anything that had been chosen for me on these dates. That very fact, though, made me more excited to try it on. This was the last time that I got to be someone other than just me and from the look of the outfit, it was going to push me all the way out of my comfort zone and into some new realm of experience.

Right at the time that I was supposed to be picked up for my date, I heard the roar of a powerful engine outside. It sent a shock through me and I felt my heart pick up speed. I took a last glance into the mirror, fluffed my hair and smoothed my vibrant red lipstick, and headed outside. The day was cloudy and held the threat of rain, but it only worked to set the atmosphere for what was waiting for me outside.

A sleek black motorcycle sat in the drive, a man in black leather straddling it. His helmet entirely encompassed his head and when he turned to look at me I could see my stunned reflection in the visor. He reached up and took the helmet off and instantly I knew that I wanted this man to fuck me. He looked like sex personified and I had absolutely no need to go through the small talk.

“I’m Grey,” he said.

Of course, you are.

“Snow.”

“Get on.”

Straight to the point. I like it.

I grabbed the second helmet that was behind him and put it on, securing it in place before hiking up my skirt and climbing onto the back of the hot machine. The position spread my legs so that my center nestled against his ass and my breasts pressed into his back. I wrapped my arms around his waist and in an instant the bike roared to life and shot down the driveway. The speed was exhilarating and the vibration of the bike beneath me stimulated my clit, pushing my arousal further. I lowered one hand to the inside of Grey’s thigh and he immediately grabbed it, moving it over so that I cupped his cock through his tight pants. It felt thick and delicious already and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it more.

We rode through the woods and along several open roads before dipping back into the trees. Finally, I felt him pull the bike to a stop and climb down. I was taking the helmet off when he grabbed me by my waist and picked me up off of the motorcycle, setting me on my feet beside it. Anticipation was building in my belly, but he didn’t even touch me before getting back on his bike and pulling away.

“What are you doing?” I shouted after him.

As he started to disappear I heard another roar behind me and I whipped around to see a different bike coming at me. My heart beat with such ferocity it felt like it might crack through my ribcage, but I stayed in place, refusing to let the fear take over. The motorcycle came closer and before I knew what was happening, I felt the ground disappear beneath me as a strong arm looped around my waist and swept me up and onto it. Suddenly the roaring bike was between my thighs and my back rested against the hard, warm chest of another man. His body rocked against mine as we rode and his hand rested low on my belly, holding me in place as the feverish pace of the bike threatened to throw me off as he turned sharply and started up another path through the woods.

My mind went to Grey. I could hear the powerful sound of his motorcycle behind us and I had the distinct feeling that this was not a surprise to him. This was something that he had planned. We rode until the path grew narrow and the trees thicker, and the man pulled the motorcycle to a stop. In one motion, he climbed off and swept me down into his arms. He carried me off of the path and lowered me to my feet beside a tree. The rain continued to stream around us as he stood over me and I looked into his face for the first time. I saw familiar eyes staring back at me with intensity that kept me still even when his hands left my hips and my breath caught in my throat. Before I could say anything, his mouth crushed down on mine, his tongue tempting my lips apart. Instinct took over and I kissed him back with intensity, seeking out some of the pleasure that he had already given me just a few weeks before. Shane’s hands slid up my ribs onto the sides of my breasts, then came to the front of my corseted top where narrow leather laces held the fabric together.

His mouth lifted from mine as he straightened slightly to make it easier for his hands to untie the leather laces and pull the fabric away from my breasts. Rain glazed my skin and I drew in a breath.

"What are you doing here?" I managed to say through the tightness in my throat.

Shane brought a finger to my lips to stop my words.

"Be quiet."

Shane lowered his head and I gasped as his mouth closed over one breast, his tongue flicking at my nipple. The dominance that he was showing only intensified the powerful arousal that I had felt as soon as I saw Grey, and even though I didn’t understand what was happening, I didn’t want to fight it. My hands dug into his hair and I closed my eyes against the feelings washing over me. He took his mouth from me and blew a gentle stream of air against me that cooled my skin as it touched the wetness from the rain and his tongue before repeating the lavish attention on my other breast. One hand came to my leg and started to lift my skirt, gathering the fabric in his fingers to inch it up.

I had been so enthralled by what was happening that I hadn’t noticed the sound of Grey’s motorcycle grumbling only feet away. The sound stopping is what brought my attention to it and I looked over toward it. Grey took of his helmet and settled it into place on the back of the bike. The rain had all but stopped and as he started toward me I could see that the expression on his face was somewhere between amused and hungry.

“I see that you met my friend,” he said.

“We’ve already met,” I said. Shane’s mouth had found its way to the inside of my thigh and I moaned as he kissed his way to the juncture between my hip and thigh. “I didn’t think that this was allowed.”

“Don’t worry,” Grey said. “Fawn gave us permission.” He peeled off his gloves as he approached, then reached into his pocket. “She agreed that your final date should be something that you wouldn’t soon forget.”

He had withdrawn a condom packet from his pocket and tossed it to Shane, who caught it easily and had it in place in a matter of seconds. I gasped as he entered me, easing the ache between my thighs but bringing even more questions to my mind. Shane held me in place for a moment, allowing me to turn my attention back to Grey. It was me who started moving first, rolling my hips against his to make the hardness of him massage against my walls as I watched Grey unbuckle his pants and draw down the zipper, pulling out his enormous cock and starting to stroke it as he watched Shane fuck me. The visual was so indescribably erotic I instantly reached an indescribable peak and my body contracted tightly around Shane.

Screaming at the wave of pleasure, I dug my fingernails into Shane's shoulders and let him lift my hips up slightly so he could plunge into me as everything within me released and I rode the tremors that seemed to draw his cock deeper into my body.

I was breathless as I came down from the climax, but I was far from finished. There was a reason that Grey had invited Shane along, and I didn’t think that it was so that he could have his own private entertainment. He had been right. This was my last date, the final experience in my retreat, and I was going to make the most of it. Feeling as though all of the inhibitions and questions about myself that I might have had before had finally shed away and I had absolutely nothing holding me back, I reached out for Grey.

He walked up to me, still stroking the length of his cock, and reached for my head. Tucking his hand around the back of it, he pulled me forward, thrusting his erection into my open and waiting mouth. As I sucked him eagerly into my mouth and brought him as deep into my throat as I could. Behind me I felt Shane take hold of my hips. He pulled me back, forcing me onto my hands and knees. I continued to suck Grey even as Shane plunged into me again. The sound of my ass smacking back against his still-clothed thighs reverberated through the trees and I gave up trying to control the pattern of my mouth, allowing Shane’s thrusts to guide me.

“My turn,” Grey said after a few minutes.

I felt Shane pull out of me and turn me around. I heard the sound of another condom package opening and lifted my hips slightly to present myself to Grey. I looked over my shoulder at him and watched as he leaned back to admire the view for a few seconds before positioning the head of his cock right at my opening. Grey grabbed my hips and pulled me back so that he sank into me, as he moved his hands up to grasp my breasts. He used this hold to pull me up onto my knees so that my back molded to his chest. The feeling of so much of our bodies still being clothed somehow made the encounter even sexier and I reached down to stroke my hands along the leather of his pants. His arm wrapped around my waist so he could hold me steady and pound into me. A moment later I felt one of his knees come in between mine and force them apart so that my legs were spread.

Shane rested on one hand in front of him and brought the other in between my thighs to part my lips and expose my still-throbbing clit. His mouth closed over it and he alternated flicking the tip of his tongue across it and sucking it. The combination of Grey slamming into me and Shane worshiping me with his tongue was all-consuming and it took only seconds for me to explode into another ground-shaking orgasm. Grey pushed me forward so that I landed with my hands on Shane’s chest as he rose up to kneel in front of me. He looked into my eyes and I saw a flicker of the more gentle, slower-moving man who I had met on the ranch crack through the aggressive, dominant man who was with me now. Shane caught my mouth and we kissed urgently until Grey let out a shout and came hard, pushing me harder against Shane with the force of his body pushing deeper into me.

I felt both relaxed and exhilarated as we disentangled ourselves from each other. Shane immediately righted his clothes and reached out to shake Grey’s hand.

“Thank you, buddy,” Grey said.

Shane grinned.

“Absolutely.”

He climbed onto his bike and roared out of the trees. Grey and I took a few more minutes to redress ourselves and then he gestured toward his motorcycle.

“Can I interest you in another ride?”

I nodded and we climbed back onto the bike. The air felt heavy as if it was still holding more rain and it was as if we cut through it as he pushed his bike to higher and higher speeds down the road. I held him tightly around the waist and let my head fall back, relishing the feeling of my hair streaming through the air. I don’t know how long we raced along the roads, weaving in and out of the woods, zipping along beside vast fields, and even spending a short time blistering along the streets of the nearby city. Grey had slowed, however, by the time that he started down the curving road back toward the cottage. The power of the motorcycle between my legs had taken away the languid feeling and turned me on again so that by the time we stopped somewhere along the path I didn’t even wonder why we hadn’t gotten close to the cottage.

“I like sharing sometimes,” Grey said, climbing off of the bike, “but now I want you all to myself.”

“Oh, really?” I said.

“Mmmmm-hmmmm,” he said, reaching for me.

I stepped out of his reach and shook my head.

“Well, I’m not going to make it as easy for you this time.”

Not waiting for him to respond, I took off running into the woods. The rain was starting up again and by the time that I was several yards into the trees it was pouring down on me, soaking through my clothes. I laughed into the sound of the rain and Grey’s footsteps following me. I wove through the trees, trying to make my path as meandering as I could so it would be hard for the much larger, much faster man to catch up to me. Just as I expected he would, he drew close to me quickly and I felt his hand brush against my ass as he tried to grab onto the back of my skirt. I let out a high-pitched scream and jumped away, running faster.

We were far enough into the trees that I could no longer see the path when I glanced back over my shoulder and Grey finally caught up with me. I felt his arms wrap around my waist and he picked me up. An instant later he was carrying me and my back slammed against a tree, but I didn’t care. There was no buildup, no teasing this time. Our hands tore at each other and in seconds my panties were on the ground and the coiled end of a twisted-texture condom had impaled me. The rain pelting down on us was cold but it was a relief through the feverish heat of our bodies. My bare breasts, exposed over the neckline of my shirt, bounced with each intense thrust and Grey growled so loudly I could imagine that Fawn would be able to hear him back at the cottage.

My legs were still shaking slightly from the intensity of the quickie against the tree when I climbed off of Grey’s motorcycle and started toward the cottage. He had promised me a final date that I wasn’t going to forget, and all I could think was that he was absolutely right. I couldn’t imagine that I would ever forget how it felt to have the powerful machine beneath me or to be passionately, aggressively yet reverently enjoyed by two men at the same time. Though it wasn’t something that I could ever see myself doing again, it had unlocked a part of me that would otherwise have remained untouched, and the memory of it would ensure that that part remained unlocked rather than hidden away. I could sample it whenever I wanted to, whether I was alone or invited another man into my bed.

I turned to watch Grey disappear down the path and was starting up the steps when I heard my name. I looked to the side and saw Noah standing at the side of the cottage. I felt a shock through my heart, the memory of our last conversation still raw. The rain streamed over him, making his eyes stand out, piercing through the gloom around me. He closed the space between us and grasped my wrist, pulling me toward the side of the cottage. He led me around toward the back of the cottage until I dug my heels in, forcing him to stop. He whirled around to face me and for an instant, nothing else in the world existed.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Lucille

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. So that was where Snow had been all this time. I closed the email and opened the next one, reading another of the messages between Snow and someone named Robin. It was embarrassing to admit that it had taken me this long to think of reading her email to try to track where she was and what she had been doing since going on her leave of absence. Her office was still sitting untouched since she left and company policy dictated that all information on the computer be accessible by the president, meaning that I was able to use a password breaker to access any account or site that she had visited. While she had been smart enough not to access any of her social media or financial accounts on her work computer, keeping those inaccessible to me, she had checked her private email, enabling me to read through her inbox.

Even though there was nothing that was going to keep me from reading anything that I wanted to on Snow’s computer, I recognized that this was a touch of an overstretch of my authority and that if I was seen I would likely have to contend with more fuss and hassle than I felt like facing. Particularly from Hunter. He had been tense and edgy since our unfortunate encounter after Snow left and I knew that he was just waiting for something that he could tell Walter about me that would be traceable, like reading through her personal emails when she had been out of the office for weeks. I had decided to avoid all of that by staying late after everyone else had already left the office so that I could explore Snow’s personal life at my leisure. And I had certainly been rewarded for my efforts.

“The Enchanted Woods,” I muttered to myself as I opened another email that contained the same three words I had seen in the last several messages. “What is that?”

Whether it was because she knew that her messages might be monitored or simply because she didn’t want to share any information over email, Snow had been stingy with details about this place, wherever it was, but there was enough to tell me that it was where she had been spending a considerable amount of her time since leaving the office. I had gone through several messages when I noticed that she mentioned she wasn’t staying there at all times, but instead was visiting for several days every couple of weeks, returning to her home in between. I already knew where she lived. Now I wanted to know what this place was that had grabbed her attention so much that she was spending so much of her time there. The messages mentioned that she was having an incredible time and that Robin wouldn’t believe the stories that she had to tell. Each message intrigued me further and I had the feeling in my gut that this was what I had been looking for. This was what was going to help me destroy her.

I closed Snow’s email and opened the browser. I typed “The Enchanted Woods” into the search engine and waited for the results to populate. The first several pages were primary home improvement and literary sites, but when I had nearly given up, I found a site that seemed promising. One of Snow’s messages to Robin had included a picture of a cottage and mentioned that it looked just like the brochure. An image very similar to that one appeared on the site that I found and I clicked on it. The description inside was nearly as vague as her infuriating emails, but from what I read, this place was some sort of exclusive retreat. I jotted down the address on a notepad and closed the site, going back after myself to clear the search history so that if someone else looked at her computer they wouldn’t be able to tell what I had been doing. I closed up the office and rushed home so that I could pack a bag. It was Friday evening which meant that I had two days to go find out what Snow was up to before anyone would need to know that I was gone, and, if her emails were any indication, she only spent Friday through Monday there every two weeks.

It was dark when I started driving and well after midnight by the time that I had reached the hotel where I had made a reservation for the night. It was only a few miles away from the Enchanted Woods, which meant that I would be able to get there early in the morning.

My mind was spinning by the time that I got into my room. What could Snow be doing? What about the Enchanted Woods lured her there for all of this time? Why did she keep going back after returning home each time that she went? I hoped that this was one of the weekends that she was going to be there. Even if I could find the retreat and figure out why she went there, her actually being there would give me more of an indication of why she had chosen it. Maybe I would even find something that could enable me to make her leave of absence permanent.

I barely slept that night. I spent the few hours between tucking myself into the bed and getting up staring at the ceiling and running through all of the things that I wanted to say to her, all of the ways that I wished that I could destroy her. I couldn’t wait for her to be gone. I couldn’t wait for people to finally see me for what I really was without living in her shadow any longer.

Later that morning I drove up to the address of the Enchanted Woods slowly, not wanting to miss anything. When I reached the end of a long driveway, I saw that there was a massive metal gate crossing the drive, preventing me from approaching. I leaned out of my car window, looking for an intercom system that would allow me to connect with someone inside so that they would open the gate. I saw no such system and realized that there was no way of announcing my presence and getting the gate opened for me. I backed my car out of the entrance to the driveway and drove back down the street a short distance before turning off of the road and parking. Grabbing my hooded cloak from the passenger seat, I climbed out of the car and swept it around my shoulders, securing it into place with the brass clasp that had been the primary appeal of this particular garment.

It was still early and the temperature was unseasonably cool. I could feel the storm threatening, but I didn’t care. Now that I was here, I wasn’t going to stop. I jogged up the road back to the closed gate and then followed it into the woods on one side of the driveway. When I felt that I was far enough away from the main gate that I wouldn’t be seen, I forced myself through the bars. It was a tight squeeze, but I made it through to the other side. Pulling my hood up over my head, I started through the woods. I tried to move in as straight a path as I could, hoping to follow the driveway so that I could get to whatever lay at the end of it. Soon I felt the first rain drops beginning to fall. I pulled the cloak closer around me and ducked my head to keep the rain from my face as I kept going.

The farther I walked, the angrier I felt toward Snow. If she had just gone away. If she had just not pushed and manipulated and insisted on being perfect every moment of our lives, it wouldn’t be this way. I would be on top, just the way that I should be. I wouldn’t be creeping through the woods in the rain, ruining my shoes and getting more and more supremely pissed with each step.

I didn’t know how far I had gone, but I was beginning to feel turned around. The trees continued to stretch ahead of me without any change, creating an unbroken wall of woods on all sides. It seemed that I should have gotten somewhere. I should be able to see something that would indicate what this retreat was or why Snow would have come here to spend her leave. I reached for my phone, but realized that I didn’t have anyone to call. Walter was still on some other continent and there was no one else who I would be willing to have come search for me. When I thought about it, it occurred to me that there was no one who I trusted would be willing to come even if I did call.

Feeling even angrier now, I paused and looked around me. Somewhere in the distance, I thought I heard voices. My ears pricked up and I strained through the sound of the rain pounding down on the leaves on the ground to hear them better. There was a high-pitched sound somewhere between a giggle and a gasp, and then a deeper, more masculine sound. This was definitely a man and a woman, and they were somewhere close by. I continued in the direction that I had been going. The voices continued and I let them lure me deeper into the woods. Finally, I saw a flicker of movement among the trees ahead of me. For a moment, I thought that I might have been some of the wild animals that I could only assume were living here.

I stopped behind a large tree and peered gingerly around it, careful not to bring any attention to myself. The rain was coming down harder now and for a moment I wondered if I had just imagined that I had seen the two figures. An instant later, though, I saw them again. The first could only be Snow. Even in the greyness of the day I could see her thick black hair and the paleness of her skin. She was running, but the occasional laugh told me that she wasn’t afraid, even as I saw a large figure chasing her. They ran for a few feet and I ducked behind the tree again so that they wouldn’t see that I was watching. I turned and leaned around the other side of the tree to continue watching them.

The man caught up with her and reached forward to wrap his arms around her waist. She screamed playfully as he scooped her up off of the ground and spun her around to face him. Pulling her up against his chest, he crushed his mouth down on Snow’s. She responded by wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Gripping her ass with both hands, the man carried Snow a few feet to a thick tree and pushed her back against it. They kissed hungrily for a few moments, the rain pelting them not seeming to deter either. I watched as the man lowered Snow to her feet and grabbed the neckline of the tight shirt she was wearing. He tugged it down and her breasts spilled out into his waiting grasp. He ducked his head and caught one in his mouth, massaging the other with one hand. The other hand moved to her thigh and ran up, shoving her skirt up and then disappearing under it. A moment later his hand came back into view, now gripping a tiny scrap of black panties. He dropped the panties and his hand moved to his belt buckle.

I knew what was coming, and frankly I didn’t need to be there to witness it. My frustration was only creeping higher and here Snow was with a man so hungry for her that he didn’t care that they were out in the woods in the pouring rain. I stepped back from the tree and started back through the woods toward my car. Suddenly a thought crossed my mind. If she was returning to this place every other weekend, maybe this wasn’t the only man who she’d had an encounter like this with. I looked around myself at the woods, thinking about the description of the retreat that I had read on their website. It hadn’t mentioned anything about an apparent flow of men available to the women coming to stay here, but it had said that it was designed for personal reflection and relaxation.

That was one way to put it.

I decided I needed to know more about this place and started across the woods, moving sideways in the direction that Snow and the man had come from. They had come from somewhere, and I wanted to know where. I had crept through the woods for a few moments when I noticed that the trees ahead of me seemed to be thinning out. I moved a little faster, grasping the trees and brush on either side of me to keep from slipping on the leaves and dirt that were quickly turning to sludge and mud beneath my feet. When I reached the edge of the trees I saw that I was a few yards away from what looked like a small house. The cottage had the thatched roof and square, shuttered windows of a time long past. I didn’t see anyone around the cottage so I stepped out from the shelter of the trees and ran to the back of the small building. There was a narrow door in the back and I crept up to it to look through the curved window at the top, but I couldn’t see anything but an open room with a desk inside. I stepped back and shielded my eyes from the falling rain to look up at the windows that were several feet above. They didn’t seem high enough to be an actual second floor, as if the cottage was designed so that the back portion was elevated by just a few steps.

Looking around the back of the cottage I noticed a rain barrel positioned to one side. It went along with the rustic, natural surroundings, but it also presented me with a means of hoisting myself up to the window. I gripped the edge of the barrel and tried to pull it. The rain had filled the barrel so much, however, that it was too heavy to pull. I climbed up on it and turned to look at the window so I could gauge how far I was. The barrel brought me to only a few feet from the window and close enough to a tall domed trellis I assumed held a rose bush earlier in the year that I was able to stretch my leg over to it and use it to balance myself as I leaned to the window. My fingers slipped slightly on the windowsill as I tried to grip it, but I was able to keep myself in place enough that I could peer into the window. A darkened bedroom was on the other side, the bed pristinely made and everything neat and clean enough that it looked like a hotel room. There was only one personal item visible, a pair of shoes that I knew to be Snow’s. I looked to the side, wishing that there was a way that I could get to the large bay window several feet away.

I was starting to ease my way down from my position when I heard voices coming in my direction. I jumped down, catching my leg on the trellis as I went. I winced at the pain of the wood scraping my skin through my pants, but made my way as quickly as I could to the other side of the house. Stepping behind the side of the house, I leaned around just enough to peek back to the yard. A woman was coming around the side dragging another barrel. The gesture had the same sickening compassion and tenderness as something that Snow would do, making this woman instantly distasteful to me. As she put the barrel into place a few feet from the other, a man came rushing toward her.

“I told you no,” the woman said without even looking up at him.

“That’s not fair, Fawn.”

“Of course, it is,” the woman said. “Fair and legal. You’ve signed a contract. You know the rules. They were put in place for situations exactly like this.”

“You can’t tell me that you’ve never had this happen with any of the men you’ve brought in.”

“Of course, it has.” The woman he had called Fawn looked at the barrel I had managed to wiggle slightly out of place and cocked her head at it as if she noticed that it had been moved, then looked back at the man. “That’s precisely why I made the rules that I did. This is not the point of the Enchanted Woods. Women come here for relaxation. For fun. To find out about themselves and to improve their lives. This is about them, not the men. I’ll remind you again that you signed a contract. That’s all I have to say about it.”

I was so fascinated by the exchange that I didn’t even care about the rain anymore. Fawn walked away from the man, but he stayed in place, the rain pouring down on him as he stood, now fully soaked, and stared out into the woods behind him. Finally, he turned and walked the same way that Fawn had around the side of the house. I started to follow him, then heard the sound of wet footsteps coming toward me. I ran back to my position on the side of the house and watched as the man reappeared, pulling Snow behind him. I straightened, leaning further to make sure that I didn’t miss anything.

“What are you doing?” Snow asked.

“Shhh,” the man said. “I don’t want Fawn to hear you.”

“It’s raining. I need to get inside.”

“It was raining when you were out here with that guy,” the man said.

Even from my distance I could see Snow take a slight step back from the man and give him a look that bordered on disgust but held a hint of emotion.

“I have to go inside,” she said, her voice low and controlled.

She stepped around the man and jogged around the side of the cottage. The man watched her go, his hands lifting slightly as if reaching for her, then clawed back through his hair as he let out what sounded like a growl of frustration. He turned and as he did, his eyes locked on me. I ducked behind the house and ran into the woods, cutting across the front of the cottage and disappearing behind the trees. I ran until I was confident that he wasn’t following me anymore and slowed, contemplating what I had just seen.

I continued on toward my car for a few moments before I stopped as if I had walked into a wall. A realization had hit me hard and I suddenly felt like the sky was clearing even though the rain was pouring down even harder now. Ducking my head into the rain, I ran back toward the gate, squeezed my way through, and got back to my car. In that moment, I was suddenly grateful for the absurdly in-depth reading into the policies and regulations of the Royal and Company Advertising Agency that Walter had insisted on before he would agree to put me in charge. He had wanted to make sure that I understood the company that he built and the corporate culture that he had intended from the beginning of his dream. What he had actually given me was the insight that I needed to destroy Snow in a way that I would never even be able to imagine.

Enjoy your little fun now, Snow, I thought, it’s about to all be over for you.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Snow

I could feel tears stinging in my eyes when I got into my room and I slammed the door behind me. The sound reverberated through the cottage, but I didn’t care. A torturous blend of emotions was coursing through me and I felt like I couldn’t breathe if I didn’t get it out somehow. I kicked out of my shoes and tore the leather clothing away from my body before stalking across the room and drawing a bath. It was to be my last bath in The Enchanted Woods and I ran the water as hot as I thought that my skin could handle it before pouring in shimmering iridescent bubble bath and a handful of oil beads. I felt suddenly chilled as if my body had just noticed the rain, and my muscles relaxed as I lowered myself into the deep tub. The water rose up to my chin and I leaned back against the side of the tub, wishing that I could disappear into the mounds of bubbles that were building up around me. I had just turned off the faucet when I heard the familiar sound of my room door opening. My body tensed as I waited for the bathroom door to open and to see Noah’s face again. Seconds passed and the door stayed closed. Then I heard the room door close and I realized that he was gone.

When I felt that I had hidden in the bath for as long as I could, I stepped out, dried off, and slipped into the plush bathrobe that I had used every night that I had spent at the retreat. I knew that I would miss the feeling of the fabric against my skin and the warmth and relaxation it represented. I stepped out of the bathroom, expecting to see a tray with dinner on it sitting by the window. Instead, there was only an envelope in the middle of the bed. It had my name across the front, but no other identifying marks. I picked it up, suddenly experiencing a feeling as though I could sense Noah’s touch on it.

I settled onto the bed and held the envelope in my hands for a few moments. These were his final words to me, sentiments that he sent after our clash in the lawn. I didn’t know what it could hold and the emotions that might be expressed through those words. As long as I didn’t open the envelope and read the note inside, I didn’t have to know. I could pretend that it said whatever I wanted it to say, though even as I sat there, crystallizing the moment around me so that I could hover in it, not allowing the potential pain of what the words might say to reach me, I didn’t really know what I might want them to say.

Finally, I knew that I couldn’t put it off any longer. I opened the envelope and pulled out the note inside. Rather than being on the thick cardstock of the notes that accompanied my date boxes, the note was written on plain paper as if it had been hastily torn from a notebook.

“ Snow – I wanted to tell you that no matter what I’ve said, I understand why you came here and that you made the decision that you think is right for you. You did what you had to do and I hope that you found what you were looking for. I only wish that things could be different.”

The words were simple and there was nothing in them that expressed any form of anger or hurt, but I could feel it. I knew that Noah was struggling when he wrote the note, and that it was all that he could manage, all that he could do to express the last message that he could send to me. As soon as I got dressed, I would be leaving the retreat, and him, behind.

It was late when I got back home from my last night at the Enchanted Woods and even though I had been there only a few days before, I felt like I was walking into a strange place. It was like something had changed in me in the last few days, as though I had achieved what Fawn had promised and found something within myself that I didn’t know, and that it had somehow changed how I saw everything else around me. Even as I stepped into my living room and dropped my bags to the carpet, however, I couldn’t identify what it was that I had discovered about myself. I had found far more about myself sexually than I would have ever imagined that I would have, and even some things that I wouldn’t have believed I would have done or enjoyed if someone had told me about them only a few weeks before. That, however, didn’t seem like enough. There had to be something else. There had to be more to justify everything that I had gone through and how different I felt. My home used to be the place where I was most comfortable. It wasn’t elaborate or big, but it was mine. It represented everything that I had worked so hard for and the time, energy, and effort I had put into my career. As I was standing there, though, it didn’t feel like that anymore. Suddenly it felt like it represented everything I had done for everyone else. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my house. It was still the same place that I had slid around in in just my socks when I had first closed on it and it was still empty. It was the same place where I had pored for hours over carpet samples only to settle on oatmeal. I loved this house, but it was something that had come from exactly what Robin told me I did…worked to please others.

I walked over to the sliding glass door that led out onto the patio to the side of the house and pulled the curtains tighter, then glanced across the room to make sure that the blinds were closed. When I confirmed that they were, I kicked off my shoes and stripped down to my lingerie. This was one of the things about myself that was definitely different. Before visiting the Enchanted Woods, I would have been standing there in a pair of white panties and a matching boring bra. Maybe beige. Now I was wearing delicate confections of mint green lace that brushed my body and made me feel feminine and beautiful even standing alone in the living room. Taking a moment just to enjoy this feeling, I finally released the clasp on the back of my bra and released my breasts to the cool air of the living room and then peeled my panties down my hips and off.

I stood in the middle of my living room completely naked. It was something that I had never done and something that I never would have thought that I would have done. My nudity was generally restricted to my bedroom and the bathroom. Sometimes the short hallway in between. Now I was standing here in absolutely nothing, enjoying the sensation more than I probably should have. I took off running and did a few laps around the house, weaving in and out of the rooms. I didn’t bother to check the windows when I went into the guest room and temporarily flashed everything to the neighbor on that side of the house, but since it was so late and so dark, I felt fairly confident that I went unseen, and even if the 80-year-old woman who lived there had been peering out of her window at precisely that moment, she would have only seen a silhouette of me running through. With any luck, she would just assume a killer was after me and go for cover.

When I finished my nude jog through the house, I stopped back in the living room to get my luggage. It had been liberating to do that, as silly as it had seemed. I might not know exactly what walls I had broken down, but they were definitely breaking. I climbed into bed that night without bothering to get into pajamas. I thought that it would be relaxing, but almost as soon as my body slipped in between the chilly sheets of the bed, I felt the emptiness of my house and of the bed. My mind went back to the cottage and the last time I had seen Noah. He had surprised me at the end of my final date, but now that I was back at my house, I regretted the way that I had left things between us. I knew about the contract that he had signed, and I had made a similar agreement with Fawn. It didn’t matter what we felt, or what we thought we felt. What we had done had been completely against those agreements and I felt incredibly guilty about it. I had gone into this with the agreement that this was not about emotions and that I wasn’t to think of anything with these men beyond the end of the dates that I shared with them. Even the brief conversations that we had when he brought me my meals had been bordering on breach of contract, but having sex with him on the night of my date with Damien had severely crossed the line. Even if I had acknowledged the feelings that I had for Noah, I never should have allowed myself to act on them. I was, above all else, a professional, and my contract and the objectives of the time at The Enchanted Woods should have surpassed them. I had absolutely no guilt about the dates that followed my impromptu encounter with Noah. For once, I was thinking about myself and my own needs.

Perhaps if things had been different…

I stopped that thought pattern as quickly as it had started and pushed it out of my mind. Things weren’t different. They were exactly what they were, and there was nothing that I could do to change that. I agreed to the retreat for my own specific reasons and I accomplished what I went there to do.

I tried to convince myself that it was good that I even got to have these feelings. Before I agreed to the retreat at the Enchanted Woods I had convinced myself that I might never feel like this ever again. My breakup had nearly destroyed me and there were plenty of times when I felt like my heart had closed off completely. It was as though it was so afraid of being hurt again that it just refused to soften for anyone. Now, though, I knew that I was capable of having feelings for another person again. I wasn’t sure what those feelings were and it wasn’t as though I would ever be able to see Noah again, but just knowing that they were there, that there was a place of my heart that was willing to be vulnerable and to welcome someone else in. It was reassuring, though in that moment, no matter how hard I tried, it made me feel hollow and sad.

The next morning, I was still thinking about Noah when I pulled into the office parking lot for the first time since Hunter had sent me on my leave of absence. My stomach felt oddly nervous and I paused for a moment after pulling into my usual parking space. The tiny sign that had my name was gone from the front of the spot and I felt a clench of anger in my chest.

Lucille is a real piece of work.

I climbed angrily out of the car and was striding toward the front door of the office, ready to confront her about my spot, when my phone rang. I stopped and dug through my shoulder bag to find my phone. It was on the last ring when I finally found it and answered without looking at the screen.

“Hello?”

“Snow?”

The voice would have been a welcome surprise after so long, but Brandy sounded strained and upset, taking the happiness out of hearing from her for the first time since I left.

“Brandy? What’s wrong?”

“Am I seeing you in the parking lot right now?”

I looked around, somewhat unnerved by the strange question. Finally, I looked up at the building and saw some of the blinds in one of the windows were being held apart. I could only imagine that Brandy was on the other side of the small gap, staring down at me. I waved and the blinds snapped shut.

“Yeah,” I said. “What’s going on?”

“You’re still coming in today?”

“Yes,” I said, starting toward the door again. “Why wouldn’t I? I’ve been away for three and a half months. Don’t you think it’s about time I get to work again?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line that slowed my steps until I stopped on the small patio at the front of the building.

“I guess that means that you haven’t seen this morning’s edition of The Apple?”

The bi-monthly newsletter had been one of Mr. Royal’s efforts of love in the company. Written entirely by him, it usually contained a few announcements, acknowledgements of accomplishments or special events such as birthdays, anniversaries, years of service milestones, or births, and a pep talk in the form of a personal note from Mr. Royal. Though it was far more quaint than it was actually helpful, the newsletter was something that everyone in the office looked forward to each edition. It was heartwarming and offered a little bit of an emotional boost if any of them us was feeling down. I had actually found myself missing finding the letter on my desk during my time away from the office, but the way that Brandy had mentioned it didn’t sound as though it was something that I should be looking forward to.

“I haven’t,” I said.

“You probably should before you come in here. Wait just a second. I’ll bring it to you.”

“Alright,” I said through the lump that had formed in my throat.

I hung up without saying goodbye and dropped my phone back into my bag. It only took a few moments for Brandy to get to me, but I spent them pacing back and forth across the patio nervously. I really didn’t like the tone in her voice and the fact that she thought there was something in The Apple that I needed to read before going into the office.

When Brandy arrived, I stepped up to her probably a bit more aggressively than I needed to. She was gripping her copy of the newsletter in her hand and looking at me with a veil of fear and devastation over her eyes. I reached for The Apple and she hesitated for a few seconds before handing it over to me. I noticed that the template was exactly the same as it had been when Mr. Royal wrote them, but the byline had been changed to read Lucille Royal. Just seeing that sent a chill through me. Anything that Lucille had written couldn’t mean good things. I scanned the first few chunks of text, quickly recognizing that it was just a regurgitation of the calendar reminder email that I knew Mr. Royal got every month to make sure that he remembered all of the events that he wanted to include in the next couple of newsletters. I was starting to feel that maybe Brandy had overreacted about the newsletter not mentioning my triumphant return to the office when I unfolded the page and my eyes fell on the bold headline that sliced across the newsletter.

Snow Whitman Fired After Moral Indiscretions Flout Company Policy

My heart started beating so hard it felt as though it were trying to keep time with the words of the text as I read them. The article outlined in scathing detail how Lucille had uncovered the “lewd and lascivious behavior” I had indulged in while out on leave, scorning me for my “lack of standards” and stating in no uncertain terms how humiliating it was to be associated with someone of such low moral fiber, particularly considering the closeness of my relationship with Mr. Royal. I felt my stomach turn at the implication that I had done exactly what she had and as my hand clenched around the newsletter, crumbling it, I stomped past Brandy and through the front door to the office.

I stalked past the security guard posted in the front, ignoring his pleas, albeit half-hearted, for me to stop, and moved directly to Lucille’s office. Too infuriated to care what anyone thought of me and fully embracing the idea that I wasn’t going to walk out of this office with my career intact, I planted a brutal kick into the middle of the door. The heel of my shoe splintered through the cheap wood that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn had been there since the day that the company opened. It was something that I had mentioned to Mr. Royal before, telling him that the appearance of his office was a major part of the impression that he made on prospective clients, and that that started with his door. It was one of the few suggestions of mine that he hadn’t heeded, but as I listened the satisfying sound of my foot cracking through the door and the gasp of surprise from inside, I was happy that he had ignored me.

Lucille was on her feet when I pushed the door the rest of the way and stepped inside to face her.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

So, we have dispensed with the decorum all together.

“Me?” I said, taking a step closer to her. “Me? What am I doing? What do you think you’re doing writing something like this about me?”

I tossed the newsletter to her feet and saw a sickening smile come to her lips.

“Oh, that,” she said. “What? You don’t like it? I know that I don’t have the same quirky little style as my husband, but hopefully everyone will be able to rise above their seventh-grade reading level to understand without all the colloquialisms.”

“How dare you say those things about me?”

“What things, Snow? That you went to a retreat that specializes in giving you men to fuck? Is there something about that that is not correct?”

I felt a shudder go down my spine. The reality was that that was absolutely the truth. It may have been put into cruder terms than I would have appreciated, and she completely missed the point of why I was there, but I couldn’t argue that she was wrong.

“I earned the time off that I took,” I said, deciding that I was going to skirt around what she had said. “What I did during my leave has nothing to do with you and is none of your business.”

“Oh, but you see,” she said, walking around to the back of the desk and settling down into the chair slowly, “that’s where you’re wrong. What you did during your leave has everything to do with me. When you started working here, do you remember being given a personnel handbook?”

She looked at me with an expression of mock curiosity and reached down to one of the drawers beside her.

“Of course, I do,” I said though my gritted teeth.

Lucille withdrew a worn copy of the same handbook that I had been given when I first started working at the agency many years before. She set in on the desk and rested her hand flat on top of it.

“So, I can assume that you read it?”

“Yes, I read it.”

The condescending tone of her voice was making my blood boil and my fingers were clenched into my fists at my sides. This wasn’t the first time that Lucille and I had butted heads. It wasn’t even the first time that she had done something shady in an effort to humiliate and discredit me. This time, however, she had gone too far.

She turned her head to the other side, continuing to look at me in that sarcastic, simpering way.

“Really?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said with a hint of a hiss in my voice. “It was part of the orientation process.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem that you read through it very carefully.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because if you had, you would remember the morality policy.”

“What morality policy?”

Her expression turned to a slight grin.

“I’m glad you asked that.” She flipped through the handbook and slid it across the desk toward me. “Why don’t you give yourself a little refresher.”

Mr. Glass was standing a few feet behind the desk, positioned diagonally from Lucille as if he didn’t want to be close to her even though he knew that he couldn’t just walk away. I looked up at the advisor, hoping for some kind of encouragement. He only stared back, his face stony, his eyes registering no emotion. I stepped up to the side of the desk and looked down at the handbook. The text was old and nearly faded into the page, obviously printed decades before I even came on the scene. I felt like I read by the words too quickly for them to really sink into my brain and I went back to read them again. As I did, they started to swim on the page.

“ In an effort to preserve the wholesome and family-focused corporate culture of Royal and Company Advertising Agency it will be policy that no employee shall engage in relationships with more than two persons in any given six-month period. If it is found that this policy has been broken, or if it is suspected that any employee has engaged in inappropriate or egregious sexual practices, it is cause for immediate and unnegotiated dismissal from the company.”

I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The sickness in my belly had increased to the point that I was afraid I was going to throw up. I straightened and stared directly across the desk at Lucille, refusing to show any emotion.

“I know for a fact that you couldn’t know what I was really doing.”

“Are you sure about that?”

I had to try to cling to the hope that the same vagueness and ambiguity that I had found in the information I could locate about the Enchanted Woods was all she knew, and that she had taken it and used a flight of fancy to bring her to her conclusions. Though they might have been right, at least in the fact that I had engage in sex with multiple men in less than the six months permitted, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of admitting it.

“Yes,” I said.

“You were at a retreat called The Enchanted Woods. It is located, appropriately, in the middle of the woods and services only exclusive and limited clientele. You were provided with a selection of men to have sex with, presumably on a paid basis. Is there anything that I missed?”

I was shaking, the humiliation and anger that I was feeling starting to make cracks in the hardened shield that I had put up on my way to the confrontation. I didn’t know how to respond to her. Part of me wanted to deny it, to tell her that she didn’t know what she was talking about and that she was completely wrong about my activities during my leave. I knew that if there was some way for Lucille to check back after me, Fawn would protect my privacy and not offer any information. There was another part of me, however, that refused to lie, that refused to back down and hide behind the same demure cover I had hid behind for so long.

“That policy hasn’t been enforced in years, not since I’ve been working here, and you know it.”

“It doesn’t matter if it hasn’t ever been enforced,” Lucille said. “The point is that it is policy, and you went against it with your little escapade. That means that I have every right to do exactly what the handbook dictates and dismiss you.”

“I find it incredibly ironic that you are trying to fire me for doing nothing more than exactly what you have done every single time you have wanted to get a little bit higher in a company.”

“I’m not trying to fire you, Snow. I have fired you. Your ID chip will no longer allow you in the building as of tomorrow. I could have deactivated it today, but frankly I was looking forward to seeing the look on your face when you found out. Face it. There’s nothing for you to look down on me about anymore. We are exactly the same.”

The thought curdled my blood and I shook my head at her.

“No,” I said. “We’re nothing alike.”

Lucille nodded slightly.

“You’re right. We aren’t. At least I married the man.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Hunter

It had been two weeks since Lucille had finally succeeded in getting Snow out of the company and I was still struggling to deal with it. The office just wasn’t the same without her there. She brightened up the entire space, seeming to bring happiness and levity to any situation that we might find ourselves in, whether it was a client who decided last-minute that they needed their entire campaign redone to suit the marketing epiphany that they experienced in their tequila-fueled dream, or the fact that our doughnuts and coffee had still not made their return to the kitchen. When it came to the clients, Snow was always thinking a step ahead of everyone and ensuring that the accounts were managed in the best way possible, even when she wasn’t a formal part of the team working on it. She was always willing to offer a thought or give a bit of constructive criticism, but was just as fast to tell the team that the campaign they came up with was phenomenal and that she never would have been able to come up with it, even though the truth was more likely that she would have been. Now the clients were upset and accounts were threatening to leave the firm because Snow was no longer there to handle their campaigns and give them exactly what they wanted.

Beyond that, though, just being in an environment that was completely controlled by such a vicious woman as Lucille who had been handed everything that she wanted was intolerable. Her mere presence hung over the office like a thick, dark cloud, and everyone had seemed to shut down, pulling in within themselves more with each passing day with Lucille at the helm of the company. I had held out hope for a few days that Mr. Royal would catch wind of the firing and make a valiant return from his vacation, snatch back his company from his evil wife’s claws, and send her back into the smarmy corporate swampland from whence she came. A postcard that I received halfway through the first week without Snow, however, destroyed that hope for me and I was forced to confront the reality that this was what we were going to have to deal with throughout the course of our contracts. Unless we could find legitimate reason to sever our agreements, quitting would mean giving up our severance packages and all of the benefits we had been promised when we started working with Walter. It felt oppressive and frustrating, sucking the life and the motivation out of everyone in the office.

I had just returned from a run to the coffee shop for lunch, the one break that I was able to get during the day, when I noticed a man standing in the lobby. I didn’t recognize him as anyone who worked with the company or as any of the clients that we had been working with recently, so I stepped up beside him. I purposely stayed several feet away from him so that I could try to see his face without him noticing what I was doing. As I masked my curiosity by shifting through some of the magazines piled up on the table in the reception area as if I was checking the dates, I noticed that the man was staring through the glass case hanging on the wall at the pictures of employees who had been honored with awards and superlatives over the years.

I stepped a little closer and noticed that his gaze didn’t seem to be moving as though he were looking at all of the different pictures and plaques, but rather that he was staring at one specific one. He glanced slightly to the side as if he had noticed that I was looking at him and then turned to look at me fully.

“Hey,” he said, gesturing for me to come closer. “Who is this?”

I walked up to him, thankful that his interest had glossed over the fact that I was at least slightly stalking him. He was pointing into the glass and I followed the gesture. Snow’s face smiled at me from behind the glass, her eyes sparkling from a picture taken when she earned special recognition for being the top account earner the year before. It made me feel even sadder to look at her face shimmering there behind the glass, her presence there in the office and yet gone.

“That’s Snow Whitman,” I said. “She used to work here.”

“Used to?” the man asked.

“Yes. She…stopped working here recently.”

I hesitated to tell him what really happened. I still didn’t know who he was or why he was there so I didn’t want to give too much personal information about Snow and her situation. The man nodded as he continued to stare at her picture.

“Did the current acting president of the company have anything to do with her leaving?” he asked.

Well, since he asked.

“Yes. Lucille Royal stepped into the role of acting president a few months ago after she married Walter Royal, the owner of the company. She is the one responsible for dismissing Snow.”

The man nodded again, and something about his expression told me that I wasn’t really giving him any new information. He stared at the picture for a few seconds longer and then turned to look at me.

“Will you please show me to Mrs. Royal’s office?” he asked. I was slightly taken aback by the request and I hesitated in saying anything. He gave me a slightly quizzical expression. “She’s expecting me.”

I nodded.

“Oh,” I said, feeling like that was all that I could manage to get out in that moment. “Sure. Right this way.”

I led him in silence through the quiet, depressed-feeling floors of the building until we reached Lucille’s office. The door that had to be replaced after its unfortunate encounter with Snow’s shoe looked dramatically out of place and I felt the urge to knock more formally on its elaborate carved wood surface than I would have on the simpler door that Mr. Royal had had on the office ever since I had worked with him. I withheld the formality and rapped on the door twice.

“Yes?” Lucille said in the annoyed, burdened tone that had become her usual approach since before Snow’s departure.

I opened the door without bothering to announce myself.

“Your appointment is here,” I said, realizing that I didn’t get the man’s name and feeling as though I was failing in the assistant department.

“Hello, Lucille,” the man said as he stepped around me and into the office.

Lucille’s face dropped when she saw him and I noticed her grip on the pen that she was holding tightened.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

Ooo, not a pleasant meeting, I see.

Feeling the hint of a smile coming to my lips knowing that this man was able to fluster and unnerve Lucille so much while remaining absolutely calm and collected, I turned and started to pull the door closed.

“You know why I’m here,” the man said as I stepped out into the hall and closed the door.

I didn’t know at that time what was happening, but somehow I felt a bit more optimistic.

Robin

I watched Snow as she peeled out of her sweater and draped it over the back of her chair. In one smooth movement she walked around the side of the chair, dropped down into it, and collapsed forward onto the table as if her spine was suddenly made out of ribbon. I pushed a cup of coffee toward her with my fingertips, but she didn’t respond.

“Snow? Are you still in there?”

“I don’t know,” she muttered back.

“Well, you spoke. That’s a plus. I haven’t heard actual words come out of you in a while.”

She looked like someone had grabbed onto her spine and pulled up, lifting her off of the table and unfolding her until she leaned back against the chairback.

“What am I going to do?” Snow asked.

“What do you mean?” I asked, taking a sip of the sweet hazelnut coffee in front of me.

Watching me take the sip seemed to bring Snow into the reality of the coffee in front of her.

“Since when does The Wishing Well serve coffee?” she asked.

“I think that they always did,” I said, looking down into the light brown swirl of my coffee, “but tonight they are trying specialty coffee.”

“Interesting,” she said.

A waiter was roaming past and Snow reached up to touch his elbow to get his attention. He looked down at her expectantly.

“Is there something I can get for you?”

“Ice cream,” I said. “Please. Just a…” I gestured with my hands, indicating the sheer size of the bowl I wanted, “a big ass bowl of ice cream.”

“Flavor?”

“Vanilla bean if you have it. Chocolate. Anything, really. Just ice cream.”

The waiter gave a short laugh and walked away toward the kitchen.

“What am I going to do?” she asked.

“Oh, we’re back to this now,” I said. I took another sip of my coffee and set the mug down resolutely. “Ok. What do you mean?”

“Without my job.”

“Snow. Seriously. I know that you’re sad about your job. I know that you’re extra sad because it was Lucille who was able to fire you and you feel like she finally got the one-up on you after all of these years.”

“She did get the one up on me,” she snapped. “She humiliated the living bejeezus out of me and then fired me. Well, technically she fired me and humiliated me simultaneously and I just didn’t know what was happening at first.”

The waiter returned with approximately half a gallon of ice cream piled into a serving bowl and placed it on the table in front of her.

“I gave you half vanilla bean and half chocolate,” he said.

“Bless you,” Snow said.

The waiter walked away and Snow picked up her mug of coffee and poured it over the ice cream.

“I just can’t believe that this happened. I worked so hard. So…hard. For so long. I always thought that I would be able to stay one step ahead of her.” She scooped up a spoonful of the ice cream-swirled coffee from the bowl and shoved it in her mouth. “Even when I left for that stupid leave of absence, I was pissed off but I thought that I was going to figure something out and be able to get back to where I was supposed to be when it was all over.” She stared down into the bowl and shook her head. “I never should have gone. I never should have let her run me out of the office.”

“What exactly did you think that you were going to do? She’s the president of the company. She’s also a crazy bitch. If she couldn’t figure out how to get you out that day, she would have just kept going and figured out another way to get you gone.”

“But it didn’t have to be this way. It didn’t have to go down this ugly path. I should never have gone to that retreat.”

I hated hearing her say that. It didn’t escape my awareness that I was the one who was responsible for sending her to The Enchanted Woods. I had made it seem that I had just happened upon the brochure for the place, but the truth was that I had sought it out for her. I knew someone else who had spent some time there and thought that it could really benefit Snow. She needed to relax. Like I had told her, she needed to learn more about herself and what she really wanted in her life. I hadn’t necessarily expected her to go straight for seven guys, but in a way, I was proud of her. I thought that if she went along with the situation at all that she would choose one or two types of men, then be finished. When I heard that she had chosen seven, bringing her right on up to the Dirty 8, I had been shocked, but also proud that she was willing to put herself out there like that. She was nothing if not committed.

“Yes, you should have,” I insisted.

“It did nothing but ruin my life.”

“Do you really believe that?”

Snow poked the ice cream coffee soup with her spoon a few times and then shook her head.

“I guess not,” she said.

“Are you still thinking about Noah?”

She looked up at me as if asking the question was some sort of betrayal, but I didn’t back down. I hadn’t heard her talk this way about anyone since she had met her ex. In fact, she didn’t even talk about him that way. This was new. There was something sparkling and glowing in her eyes even in the brief times that she had talked about him and I couldn’t understand why she was insisting on pushing the feelings away, especially now that she felt as though the rest of her life was falling apart around her.

“I told you. There’s no point in me thinking about him. It can’t go anywhere.”

“But why not?”

“I already explained that to you. We each signed contracts. We aren’t allowed to share any personal information or enable each other to get in contact outside of the retreat. I’m not even supposed to know that his name is Noah. All of the other men used their aliases throughout the entire time that I was with them. Even if I wanted to contact him again, I wouldn’t be able to.”

“But you do want to,” I said.

Snow sighed and I took that as confirmation. Suddenly I felt envious of Snow. Though she was hurting now, she was feeling something that I never had. I was about nothing more than sex. I rarely had the same partner more than once, and if I did, I was very careful to make sure that there was a clear understanding that it was not a relationship. We were not a couple. We would not be going on romantic getaways. We would not be having breakfast together unless it was snatching a granola bar off the grab-and-go counter at the hotel where we spent the night. While it was fun and I never had to deal with the type of pain that Snow was feeling, I never got to experience whatever it was that made it worth it to risk that type of pain.

It seemed that Snow was about to say something, but her phone jangled in her purse and she leaned down to fish it out. She looked down at the screen and clicked through the screen to check the text that she had just gotten. She read through it a couple of times and let out an exasperated sound.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Apparently, I’m supposed to go into the office tomorrow,” she said.

She filled her spoon with another huge bite of her ice cream concoction and put it in her mouth. I had to give it to her, she certainly knew how to girl.

“Why?” I asked, picking up the spoon from my place setting and snagging some of the goo for myself. It was so delicious I felt like I could probably go through a little heartache if it meant that I could stuff myself full of caffeinated ice cream. “I thought that you had been in no uncertain terms banned from the office.”

“I thought that I was, too,” she said, dropping the phone back. She rolled her eyes and let out a groan. “Maybe they’ve decided that I’m in trouble because of the door.”

“What did you do to the door?”

“I thought I told you about that,” she said in that way that meant she was trying to scoot past something without really acknowledging it.

“Um, no,” I said. “You told me that your coworker brought you a copy of The Apple and that you barged in to Lucille’s office to confront ----oh, lord. You bashed her door down, didn’t you?”

“Maybe,” she said.

“Snow...”

“Alright, yes. I kicked the door down. And they didn’t really say anything about it.”

“You are going to walk in there and the police are going to be waiting for you.”

“I would hope that Hunter would have mentioned the intention to throw me in jail in his text,” she said. “He might be Lucille’s assistant now, but he knew me first. Besides, he can’t stand her any more than any of us can.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

She nodded, taking another bite, but her eyes reflected worry that she obviously didn’t want to talk about.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Snow

I didn’t know what I should wear to the office the morning that I was to report after Hunter’s text. Should I go for business attire, like I was going back to work? An everyday outfit because, clearly, I was not going back to work? Business casual, whatever the hell that is?

What is the best outfit to wear for jail intake?

I finally settled on a pair of fitted black slacks with a yellow and blue sweater and my favorite red heels. It was appropriate enough that no matter who I was facing in the office, I would feel comfortable, but also versatile enough that if I was being hauled off to the hoosegow at least I would be able to climb in and out of the backseat with some of my dignity intact. When I arrived at the office, I had my old ID badge at my hip like I had every other morning I had worked there. Though I expected it not to work, the door clicked and swung open just as it always had. I stepped into the lobby and saw Hunter waiting in the center of the space. He had a hint of a smile on his lips and he opened his arms as I approached.

“It’s so good to see you, Snow,” he said. “We’ve missed you around here.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” I said as I accepted his friendly embrace. “I’ve missed all of you. Well,” I hesitated, looking toward the door that led onto the work floors, “maybe not all of you.”

“I guess that that is as good a segue as any,” he said, gesturing for me to head in that direction.

We walked together through the door and onto the first floor. There was a feeling of more energy in the air and I noticed that I could hear the low chatter of people talking and laughing, a sound that had all but died out by the time that Lucille fired me.

“Things seem to be better,” I said.

Hunter shrugged and guided me onto the elevator. As soon as we stepped out, I knew that he was leading me toward Lucille’s office.

“You can wait in the reception area,” Hunter said.

I reached out and grabbed onto his elbow.

“You would tell me if something horrible was about to happen, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “I mean, if you knew that I was about to walk into an ambush or something, you would let me know. Send a code or something?”

Hunter laughed and peeled my fingers away from his arm.

“I sincerely doubt you are going to be ambushed,” he said. “To be honest, though, I don’t know why he specifically asked to speak to you.”

It took a second for what Hunter had said to sink in.

“He?” I asked. “What do you mean, he?”

“You haven’t heard?” Hunter asked.

“Heard what?”

“He’s ready for you,” Cindy said from the desk beside the office.

“Heard what?” I asked again even as Hunter put his hand to my back and started guiding me toward the now-repaired door to the office.

“Lucille is no longer in control of Royal and Company,” Hunter said.

“What happened?”

I didn’t put voice to my somewhat shameful hope that she had met some kind of horrible demise, or at least that she had caught something miserable and was holed up in the hospital for the next few years or so.

“The company was taken over,” Hunter explained “It turns out that Walter Royal had been considering selling the company for some time and had been negotiating with the owner of another agency a few cities over. He had been grooming you to act as vice president under the new owner so that the company would continue to run as it always had. When Lucille came along she thought that he was giving her the company for good and was going to go off and retire while she worked. In reality, though, marrying her only convinced him even more that he was ready to go ahead and retire. He put her in control for the time that he would be enjoying his retirement trip, assuming that she would take care of the company and make sure that everything went smoothly in preparation for the transition to the new owners and to your promotion before they both retired to enjoy their life together.”

“Somehow I don’t think that she took it well when he told her.”

“Well, what went worse was when she told him that you had been fired. He felt horrible that he hadn’t told you about his plan and that his decision had cost you your position and the future of your career. He came back from his trip immediately, removed her from her position, and finalized the sale to the new owners. One of his conditions was that the new owner’s son consider bringing you back in.”

“His son?”

“Apparently, he wants to have more responsibility in his family’s business so his father handled the negotiations with Mr. Royal, but he is the president now.”

“So that’s why I’m here? Walter pleaded my case to the new owners of the company so they’re calling me in to let me down easy? That should be my second favorite thing that has ever happened in this office.”

“He specifically asked to see you. I don’t know why.”

I nodded and took the few steps to the door. Before I knocked, though, I turned back to Hunter.

“What happened to Lucille?” I asked.

“You didn’t hear it from me, but Mr. Royal had me put in a call to his attorney for a little chat tomorrow afternoon.”

I nodded again and turned back to the door.

Bitch owes me doughnuts. Put it in the settlement terms.

I knocked, but Cindy gestured for me to go ahead in. I turned the knob and stepped inside, stopping short before I was even all the way into the room.

“What are you doing here?” I asked breathlessly.

“Come in,” Noah said from where he sat behind the desk.

I stepped further into the room and closed the door behind me. When I hesitated, he gestured for me to come closer. I took a few steps toward the desk, hesitated again, and then lowered myself into the chair across from him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked again.

I didn’t know what I was supposed to be feeling. I was delighted to see him, but I was also extremely confused and couldn’t seem to make all that was happening fall into place in my mind.

“I promise I didn’t mean to startle you,” Noah said. “I didn’t even know you when my father started negotiations with Walter.”

“Your father?” I asked, things starting to clarify a little. “You’re the president of the company now?”

He nodded.

“My father has been negotiating to buy Royal and Company as the first company that I would run for almost a year.”

“I thought that you were a baker,” I said.

“I am,” Noah said. “That is my passion. Advertising has been my family’s business for generations. As long as I go along with it and do my share of the work, I can bake on my free time. I paid my own way through culinary school and bought my own kitchen.”

“And your foray into The Enchanted Woods?” I asked.

I was inexplicably feeling angry, as if he had somehow betrayed me with decisions that he made before he even knew me, decisions that were truly no different than ones that I had made for myself.

“I wanted a chance to cook,” he told me. “I’m too well-known around my city to work in a kitchen there. I’ve kept in touch with one of my mentors from school and he told me about an opportunity that he knew about…”

I held up a hand to stop him. I couldn’t have this conversation right now. Seeing him without warning had hit me with far more emotion than I was prepared to experience, and I couldn’t handle it right at that moment. It was too much. I stood up, shaking my head.

“I can’t do this, Noah. I don’t know you at all.”

“Wasn’t that the point?”

I felt tears spring to my eyes at the comment and turned away from him, starting to the door.

“Snow, please,” he said. I paused, but didn’t turn back around. I closed my eyes, trying to control the emotion that I was feeling. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I only meant that neither of us really know each other because that’s the way that it was supposed to be, but that’s not how I want it to be. Please. Come to my house tonight. Talk to me. I can’t just let you walk away without having a chance. That’s all I’m asking. Just a chance.”

I hesitated, unsure of what I was supposed to say. My first impulse was to just keep going, to put it all behind me and try to find a new life bolstered by what I had learned and experienced at the retreat. I realized, though, that if I was truly going to follow what I had learned, I was going to be true to myself and to my feelings and push ahead, ready to find whatever might be waiting on the other side.

I turned to face him and nodded.

“Alright,” I said.

He smiled and I felt my heart flutter. He scribbled something on a sticky note and offered it to me.

“Here’s my address. Eight?”

I took the note.

“I’ll see you then.”

I wanted to hug him. I just wanted to be close to him. Instead, I turned back and rushed out of the office, moving past Cindy and Hunter before they could ask me any questions and left the building, dialing Robin even before my feet touched the pavement.

“Somehow I was expecting something else.”

I reached for another slice of pizza and pulled it toward me, dropping it onto the plate in my lap before taking up the shaker of parmesan cheese and giving the slice a liberal coating.

“I’m sorry,” Noah said from the carpet where he sat. “I was planning something more elaborate, but I ended up at the office longer than I thought.”

“No,” I said, sinking my teeth into the slice and sighing at the rich flavor that filled my mouth. “This is perfect. It’s the most incredible pizza I’ve ever had.”

“I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

We ate in silence for a few more moments and then I dabbed my mouth with a napkin before slipping my plate onto the coffee table in front of me.

“Why did you ask me here tonight, Noah?”

He glanced over his shoulder at me and lowered his plate to the table beside mine.

“I wanted to see you again,” he said. “I needed to give you an explanation.”

“You don’t owe me an explanation.”

“Yes, I do. I did everything that I could at the Woods to tell you how I feel about you. You rejected me at every turn.”

“I didn’t reject you, Noah. I acknowledged that both of us signed contracts that prevented us from spending any more time together than was arranged. That’s it.”

“Look, I told you that I was a last-minute fill-in for another man that was supposed to be in your experience.”

“Yes,” I said. “I remember.”

“That’s the truth. I was there because I wanted to cook. That was it. I found out about the position there and I went for it. I knew that it would only be a matter of time before the deal with the agency was finalized and I would have to spend most of my time at the office. It was my last opportunity to really indulge myself cooking and baking for a while. When I met you, though…. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Then Fawn mentioned that one of the men chosen for you hadn’t shown up and I offered to step in. I wanted to have a chance to spend more time with you than just when I brought your food, but there was more than that.”

“There was?”

“Yes,” he said, turning so that he was on his knees beside the couch where I sat, looking into my eyes. “I offered because I couldn’t stand the idea of another man taking that place. I knew why you were there. I understood. But that doesn’t mean that I wanted someone else to come in and take the time that I wanted.”

My heart clenched at his words. I felt a wave of guilt through my belly.

“I’m sorry,” I started, but Noah shook his head, stopping me.

“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he said. “What you did was courageous as hell. When you left, though, it killed me. Then I saw your picture at Royal and Company when I went for a conference with Lucille to tell her that the final negotiations had started. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. All along, I was delaying getting to where I would have found you.” He stood and reached down to take my hands. “I never want another man to touch you. I never want you to have to search for anything. I want to be able to give it all to you.”

He started backing up, gently pulling me along with him. Staring into each other’s eyes, we made our way through the house until we reached the tall, curving staircase. Noah turned, continuing to hold one of my hands, and guided me up the stairs and down another hallway into a massive bedroom. Without another word, he brought his hands to the sides of my dress and gathered it, peeling it up off of me and dropping it.

The way that Noah looked at me sent a thrill through my body. The green of his eyes had darkened until they looked like velvet and his long dark eyelashes were hanging low with desire. This wasn't what I had anticipated when I had agreed to come to his house to talk with him. I had truly thought that even with his declarations in the office, I was going to be able to maintain a distance from him, to temper my emotions and accept that whatever had happened between us couldn’t possibly be real. Until this moment, standing in his bedroom with my clothes at my feet, I had thought that I had control over the desire that had been increasing within me since the first moment that I had seen him. I believed that no matter how intensely attracted to him I was, I could resist Noah and keep our relationship at a professional level. Maybe one day we could learn to be friendly.

Now that I was allowing myself to simply experience what was happening, I couldn't deny my need any longer. I couldn't pretend that my heart didn't race when I looked at him or that my body was already hot and wet waiting for him, that it had been since I saw him in the office. I wanted to give myself over to him and experience the luxuries that we hadn’t permitted ourselves. We weren’t held back by anything anymore, and I was ready to explore all that could be cradled right between us, just waiting to be discovered.

Noah reached to unhook my bra, but I shook my head. He paused, looking at me questioningly, and I brought my hands to the buttons on the front of his shirt so that I could slowly reveal him in the same way that he had undressed me. I wanted to savor this. We had already gone so far and been through so much, but this was different. I wanted to slow it down and let myself really enjoy every moment. Everything had changed. This could never be just this one night.

Right here, right now, it was just the two of us. We existed together in the private world of his home, away from everything else, and I could pretend that there was nothing else in the world, that we were even more isolated than we had been in the Enchanted Woods.

My fingers worked their way down his shirt and then pushed it out of the way, revealing his sexy, chiseled body. He stood still as I ran my hands down his chest and belly to bring them to his belt so I could release the buckle, then the button of his pants. Noah drew in a breath as I lowered his zipper, my fingers brushing against the firm swell that was becoming more obvious with each passing second. It was making my mouth water and all I could think was that I couldn’t wait to suck that cock into my throat. Noah's pants dropped to the floor and he stepped out of them. My eyes locked hungrily on the distended fabric of his trunks and I licked my lips as I forced myself to look up at his face again.

Noah suddenly captured my mouth in a possessive, insistent kiss. I offered myself over to it, wrapping my arms around his neck to enjoy the warmth of his skin pressing against mine and the pressure of his erection on my belly. After a few moments, he swept me up into his arms and started back toward the bed. I felt small and protected in his grip, but feminine and sensual as I let him lower me onto the mattress. As he straightened to stand by the side of the bed, Noah's hand came to the side of my face and his fingertips traced along the curve of my jaw. He ran his touch down my neck and then along my chest, applying light pressure as his hand teased between my breasts and onto my stomach. I arched my back toward the touch and let my eyes close.

The touch of his hand gave way to the heat of his mouth and Noah followed the same tingling trail with his lips. He occasionally let his tongue slip between his lips to glide along my skin and I ached to feel that tongue between my thighs. He lifted his head and blew a stream of cool air along the damp skin, making me tremble. Dipping his head again, Noah kissed his way to the waistband of my panties. He was nearly there and I could feel my thighs shaking with anticipation, but before he went any further, he lifted his head again. I felt his breath grazing across the heavy swells of my breasts and teasing the sensitive tips of my hardened nipples.

I opened my eyes and saw his eyes running along my body, taking me in with admiration. There was an expression in his eyes that bordered between pleasure at revisiting my body after leaving it so completely satisfied during our date, and a flicker of something new, as if he, too, could sense that something powerful had changed. He ran his mouth along both breasts, his mouth open slightly so that he nuzzled them instead of trailing individual kisses. When it seemed that he had offered enough reverence, then brought his fingers to the front clasp. The cups popped open, allowing my full breasts to spill out toward him and I moved my arms to get out of it.

The moment that the lace touched the floor, Noah's mouth was on my breast. I gasped as he pulled my nipple in to swirl his tongue around it. His hand slid along the curve of my waist and onto my other breast, kneading into it as he continued to suckle at my nipple. His teeth sank lightly into my flesh and then he moved his mouth to the other breast, lavishing it with the same attention.

I was writhing against the bed by the time that he was finished, brought to a level of arousal that I would never have thought possible just with those simple movements. He had gotten nowhere near touching my core, yet I felt only seconds away from climax. I craved the feeling of him plunging inside me, but Noah was far from finished. Instead, he kissed along the center of my belly back to the waistband of my panties where he dipped the tip of his tongue beneath the elastic and ran it from one hipbone to the other. He was getting closer, driving me further and further to the bounds of my control, but not far enough to release the ache that he had built between my legs.

I felt Noah's hand run along my thigh and then to my hip. He climbed onto the bed with me so that he stood on his knees and looked down at me, groaning as he traced my garter belt with his fingers. He leaned down and ran his tongue beneath the garter on one inner thigh and then pressed my legs apart so he could climb between them and repeat the lick on my other leg. His hands worked at the clasps on my outer thighs and then inner thighs, releasing the garter belt completely from my black thigh-highs. These were another of the tangible reminders of the changes that had come over me during my time at the retreat. Like the lacy lingerie, knowing that I was wearing the garter and thigh-highs, even if I didn’t think that anyone else would see them, made me feel sexy and confident, powerful enough to take on any challenge that I might face. Right then, they heightened my arousal, especially when I saw the way that Noah looked at them.

His fingers gripped the top of one thigh-high and Noah rolled it down my leg carefully, following the progress of it with his mouth. He continued until the kisses reached the arch of my foot and he tossed the delicate silk away. He repeated the process on my other leg and then slowly released the hook-and-eye closures along the front of my garter belt so that he could peel it away from my body. Every step slowed him, but made each touch more delicious, each breath more laden with anticipation and need. Finally, the tight belt was gone and I was in nothing but my barely-there panties.

Noah cupped his mouth over the front of my panties and I moaned at the heat of his breath and pressure of his tongue as it nudged and teased me through the fabric. He sucked at me through my satin and lace and ran his hands up my outer thighs until he gripped the delicate fabric so that he could whisk it away from my body. I was fully bare stretched out in front of him, my body primed for whatever he wanted from it, and Noah gazed down at me with hunger and admiration in his eyes.

In one fast movement, his hands came to the backs of my thighs and he pressed my legs back and apart so that I was completely open to him. His breath ran along my wet, ready core and my back arched, my toes pointing so that they touched his shoulders. Noah didn't move away, but instead brought his mouth closer, touching a gentle kiss to the taut peak that he had coaxed forward with the gradual, patient attention to the rest of my body. He knew exactly what he was doing. He had been there from the moment of my awakening, the earliest moments of my discovery of my body, and he knew me in a way that no one else ever could. I whimpered and opened my legs further, trying to encourage him further. The tip of his tongue flicked through my folds and I gasped. The sound fueled him forward and Noah lowered his mouth to open it over my center and draw his tongue deeper through me.

Noah focused the tip of his tongue on the dripping, sensitive pearl of my clit, swirling it masterfully so he brought me just to the edge of my control and then eased me back, allowing my body to rest slightly so that he could just continue on and build me up again. Just before I completely lost myself, Noah lowered down to press his tongue deep inside me. I reached down and buried my fingers in his thick hair, at once holding his head closer to me to intensify the feeling and pulling back on it trying to relieve the incredible pleasure that I knew I wouldn’t be able to withstand for long.

Noah flattened his hand on my belly, pressing down to hold me in place. I rested my hand on top of his, intertwining our fingers to find more connection and strength. His thumb moved down, brushing across my clit in the same rhythm of the movements of his tongue deep inside me. In seconds, the pressure that had been building through my hips, thighs, and belly spiraled up to an intense peak and then shattered into a cascade of frantic spasms. He moved his mouth away and plunged his fingers deep within me, pressing them as far as he could as I came around them.

Finally, my body calmed and my screams quieted, but I wasn't yet fully satisfied. I needed his hard, thick cock inside me. Fortunately, Noah didn’t seem interested in hesitating for even a moment. I watched as he climbed off of the end of the bed and stood. His eyes continued to travel along my flushed body as he tucked his thumbs into the waistband of his trunks and pushed them down. His thick, delicious-looking erection sprung out and I reached for it hungrily.

Noah

Still tasting Snow on my lips and feeling the ridges of her walls on my tongue, I climbed back onto the bed and crawled over her so that she could wrap her hand around my cock. I moaned at the touch and pressed my hips forward to further it. She wrapped her entire hand around me and started to stroke my shaft, giving tiny twists with each glide that made me so hard it almost hurt. Her palm rose up over the head and I felt her soft skin gather the drops of fluid that formed at the slit to make her long strokes faster and smoother.

The pressure of her hand changed to create a slight pull and she reached up with her other hand to press against one side of my ass and guide my hips forward. I allowed her to position me until my hands were above her head and my pelvis was hovering over her chest. Snow brought the tip of my cock to her lips, tracing their luscious softness slowly. It was delicious torture and a deep moan wrenched from my chest as I bit down on my lip to try to control myself. Finally, she opened her mouth and took me in fully across her tongue. Her hand gripped my ass harder to stabilize me and I reciprocated by lifting one of my hands off of the mattress and tucking it beneath her head to hold it up more comfortably.

Snow’s mouth glided along my cock skillfully, sucking with just enough pressure and strength to drive me toward the brink of oblivion without allowing me to tip over. I began to move my hips, thrusting into her mouth. She accepted the movements, relaxing her mouth so that I could slide deeper, dipping into her throat as her tongue massaged the underside of my cock. The sensation was incredible, and finally I couldn't take it any longer. I withdrew from her mouth and lowered her head back to the bed.

I moved backwards to position over her and leaned down so that my chest brushed against the hardened tips of her nipples. She licked her lips and I touched them with mine, taking the moment to calm down slightly so that I could allow my excitement to slow and my body to cool so that I knew I wasn't going to come within seconds. When I felt like I had a grasp on my control again, I reached down to touch her thigh. I met her eyes and she stared back, the expression in her eyes open and unwavering. We didn’t need words and I knew that things had shifted, taking away the need for anything else. I eased her thigh up slightly and tilted my hips forward to touch her hot, wet opening with the tip of my erection. Snow was still dripping from the orgasm that I had felt around my fingers and tongue, and that had nearly sent me over the edge. I couldn't wait to feel her surrounding me. It wasn’t the first time that I would be inside of her, but this was different. I wanted to feel the hot wetness of her walls against my skin and let her feel my skin stroking her.

Snow drew her leg up further and I knew that she wanted the same thing. The movement opened her further, allowing me to sink slightly into her. I drew in a breath at the feeling of her slick body embracing me and pushed forward, plunging fully into her as I kissed her passionately. She was incredibly hot and tight, making me feel fully enveloped by her, and I felt her link her leg over my hip to intensify the grip.

We remained in that position, still for several seconds as we got accustomed to the feeling of our bodies melding with nothing between us. Our breath synchronized and the patterned flow of it was the only sound that I could hear in the room around us. I allowed my body to lower slightly so that my chest rested against hers. I could feel the beat of her heart against my ribcage and I took my mouth from hers to touch a kiss over her heart. I felt her body relax and I started to move. My hips rolled against hers allowing me to sink deeper and deeper into her. Snow whimpered and writhed as I stroked deep inside of her, and I watched her eyes close as she seemed to lose herself in the luxurious, indulgent feeling of our bodies worshipping one another.

Snow's hands touched my back and glided along my skin. She pressed into my muscles with the tips of her fingers, drawing me down onto her so that my weight pressed her into the bed. Having her completely open and enjoying my body with abandon beneath me made me feel strong and powerful in a way that I had never known. Just as I had imagined that it would be, this was an experience unlike any that I had ever had. Rather than just me having fun with the willing body that was handed over to me, I was connected to Snow, linked to her as we experienced this together, and I craved giving her pleasure and showing her the love that I felt for her just as much as I craved my own satisfaction.

In that moment, I stopped thinking about what I was feeling and experiencing, and instead just gave myself over to it. I closed my eyes and focused in on the nearly overwhelming sensation of being inside of her. Snow lifted her head and kissed my shoulder, grazing at my skin with her teeth, then brought her mouth to my ear. She traced it with the tip of her tongue.

"Let go," she whispered.

The words shot me to a new level of arousal and my pace became faster and more intense. She whimpered and moaned beneath me and she drew both of her knees up so that the tips of her toes were the only thing touching the mattress. The position gave me complete access to her and I thrust within her harder, pounding so deep I could feel that I couldn’t go any further. I could hear the sounds pouring from within her growing louder and deeper. I opened my eyes and looked down at her, finding her staring up at me with a look that was an erotic balance between vulnerability and wild abandon. Our eyes met and I couldn't control myself any longer.

I roared as I rushed headlong into climax and felt it crash over me with blinding intensity. As soon as I gave my first hard throb within her, Snow let out a cry and I felt her body clench down around me as she tumbled into another orgasm. The contractions of her body around me met each of my pulses, drawing me in deeper as I spilled into her. I stayed in place, held as deep within her as I could push myself, until our bodies had quieted and deep relaxation began to settle through my muscles.

Finally, I withdrew from her and slid over onto my side. She curled into my body, settling in against me as if crafted specifically to fit into that spot. I kissed the top of her head and her hand came up to rest on my chest. There was so much that I wanted to say, but before I could, the relaxation took over and I slipped away into sleep.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

THE APPLE

In this edition of our newsletter we are thrilled to acknowledge the upcoming wedding of our very own president to Miss Snow Whitman. After one year of courtship and a six-month engagement, the pair will finally exchange vows this weekend. After their honeymoon, they will return to lead the company together as we move forward with plans to acquire several other agencies in our continued efforts to build an advertising empire.

Reception to follow the ceremony. Guests are invited to join the couple for a celebration Friday night at The Diamond Mine.

I scanned the rest of the blurb, smiling at the playfulness that had returned to the newsletter now that Walter had come on as our official writer and co-advisor to Mr. Glass. Everyone knew that he didn’t in any way need the money that came from the position. It was more honorary, allowing him to remain a part of the company that he had built through his love, dedication, and sheer determination in times when things weren’t going as well as he wanted them to. Giving up the company had been incredibly difficult for him, even when he thought that he was doing it for a young, passionate new wife who was going to make it worth it with a life of adoration and excitement. Once Lucille was completely out of the picture, which was fairly easy, fortunately, thanks to the sheer amount of money that he had and the abundance of character witnesses willing to paint truly unflattering pictures of her and her behavior during their marriage, Walter had seemed a bit lost. He frequently showed up at the office just to roam the halls and check in on everyone. There was never the sense that he was trying to interfere, or even that he regretted his decision to retire and live a more leisurely lifestyle. Instead, it seemed that he was just lonely, missing the companionship and energy of the office where he had spent virtually every day of his life for decades.

It had been a few months after everything exploded that Noah and I agreed we should ask if Walter wanted to help us out by rejoining the company. He was delighted, more, even, than I thought that he was going to be, and soon the office felt like home again.

Speaking of home, I looked around the living room of the house I was now sharing with Noah and tried to figure out what I could do to make it feel more like home. It was several times larger than the little house that I had purchased for myself, which left me with many more cavernous rooms to fill with details and décor that would hopefully transform the space into something that reflected us. I hadn’t sold my house. I didn’t know if I was ever going to. Not that I wanted to hang onto it so that I had a place to run away to, but more so that I could occasionally go visit it and remind myself that I was more than just the girlfriend of a wealthy executive, that I had worked hard and achieved success on my own.

The soon-to-be wife of a wealthy executive.

An executive’s wife.

Whoa.

My wedding gown was hanging in the closet of an empty bedroom upstairs, my veil beside it and my shoes on the floor beneath. Another room was filled with other gowns, shoes, and accessories, waiting for my bridesmaids to arrive later that morning to get ready for the wedding. Noah had gone to spend the last few days at his parent’s house so that we could preserve some of the excitement of the first time we would see each other at the ceremony, and I was already feeling lonely for him. It was strange to miss him so much even though I had seen him at the beginning of the week, but it was also thrilling. I couldn’t wait to see him. I couldn’t wait to say those vows and link us together.

The doorbell rang and an instant later Robin swept into the room carrying a bottle of champagne in one hand and a pair of flutes in the other. He poured me a glass, settled onto the couch beside me, and poured himself a glass. We sat together, sipping the bubbly drink in silence with our heads leaned in to rest on each other. We didn’t need to say anything. It felt like it had all been said, and anything else that might need to be said was expressed just through the touch of our heads and the sound of each sip. It was enough. I just needed him there with me. His presence was calming, taking the edge off the nervousness that I was feeling thinking about the ceremony ahead. He had been there with me always, seen me through everything. It was because of him, even though there was a time that I resented him for it, that I had found Noah when I did. Even if I had stayed around the office long enough to be there for the buyout and met Noah anyway, I doubt that I would have had the confidence to even consider approaching him, especially considering he would be my boss.

Now he was going to be my husband.

Noah held my hands tightly between us as we gazed into each other’s eyes. I was so lost in the green expanse of his gaze that I barely heard the officiant as he started our ceremony. We had spent many long nights planning the ceremony, piecing together different traditions and integrating some of our own favorite readings and quotes to make a wedding that was exactingly ours. We had carried that theme throughout the entirety of our wedding weekend. Friday night’s party at The Diamond Mine had initially struck Robin as strange, considering my very close, personal knowledge of both the owner and the back room, but it had felt completely natural to choose the club as our party venue. Not only had Damien’s account with the agency funded a large portion of the wedding through my commissions and bonuses, but it seemed right to include places and people that had proven significant to the building of our relationship. The weekend before our wedding our bridesmaids and groomsmen had faced off in a fierce baseball game umpired by Lee and had a lunch catered by Grey, whose hidden talent as a barbecue master had recently resulted in him and two of the other bikers in his gang teaming up to buy a food truck. A large, whimsically wrapped wedding gift had arrived at the house the week before and I could only imagine that it was a painting from Michael. Shane had sent a congratulatory letter and an offer for us to join him on the ranch for a weekend anytime and another envelope that had arrived the same day contained a thumb drive that held a song Sam had recorded during his latest performance, a cover of my favorite song.

I knew the real names of these men now, but I rarely thought of them with those names. To me, they would always be their aliases, integral elements of my journey to self-discovery and to the altar where I now stood with the man of my dreams, the only man who had ever been able to look into my soul and see who I really was and could be.

“Do you, Snow Whitman…”

I drew in a breath as I heard the officiant starting my vows. My heart was trembling in my chest and I felt tears slipping out to rest on my cheeks.

“I do,” I said when the moment came.

I didn’t know if I had managed to get my voice loud enough, but Noah smiled and I knew that he had heard me. I tried to focus as much on the rest of the ceremony as I could, wanting to remember every moment and how I felt. Suddenly the officiant was declaring us husband and wife and I felt a surge of pure joy through my heart.

“You may kiss the bride,” he said.

Noah reached forward and took my waist. He drew me close to him, gazing into my eyes as he slowly lowered his mouth to mine. The kiss was tender and sweet, but passionate in a deep, unexplainable way that went beyond just the public expression of our union to something within us that was now fully linked to one another.

The kiss hadn’t ended when our guests burst into applause and cheers and Noah and I laughed, causing our mouths to part, but our foreheads to touch. The officiant presented us and we turned to our guests briefly before running down off of the altar and up the aisle toward the waiting horse drawn carriage that would bring us through the sprawling, beautiful grounds and to the reception venue.

The next hour was a blur of pictures before it was finally time for us to enter the party that was already in full swing. When we stepped inside I gasped at the sight of the tables arranged throughout the space, each one arranged abundantly with decadent desserts. The center of the room held an elevated table featuring a towering cake decorated in sparkling sugar flowers and ribbons crafted out of fondant in pale, pearlized shades of lavender and blue.

I turned to Noah who smiled back at me.

“Do you like it?” he asked.

“You did this?” I asked breathlessly.

“I knew that you wanted a reception with only desserts. I’ve been planning the menu for months and baking for the last two weeks. It’s killed me to keep it a secret.”

I was mesmerized by the elaborate display of desserts and I started to walk around the edge of the room so that I could look at each table. I had seen three sweets-laden tables when my eyes widened at the sight of the table ahead of me. I gathered the gauzy layers of my skirt and rushed toward the table, turning to stare open-mouthed at Noah, who laughed back.

“Doughnuts!” I gasped.

My new husband nodded and came to my side, wrapping his arm around my waist to cuddle me up against him.

“I know that we have your doughnuts back in the breakroom now, but I figured that you could never get enough.”

“Never,” I said, tilting my head to look up at him.

Noah pressed a quick kiss to my smiling lips, looked at me for a moment, and then captured my mouth again. The pressure of his lips parted mine and our tongues lightly massaged each other. Both of his hands wrapped around my waist and he turned so that I pressed to the front of his body. My hand slipped away from my skirt and I felt it swirl around my legs then pool at my feet as I ran my hands up Noah’s chest and settled them at the back of his neck to hold myself into the kiss. This was everything and I couldn’t wait to share forever with Noah.

And a doughnut.

THE END

P.S - Next Page is Hunter’s Story!