She was vaguely aware of the moans and groans, and it took a few seconds for her to connect all those sounds to her. She was making them. She was spread on his desk, heels hooked on the edge, legs wide open and vulnerable, head thrown back, hair spilling out, fucking herself with his toy as she cried out.

  She concentrated fiercely on the orgasm she felt cresting. She swore she could see it rising up on the edge of a far cliff, like a swirl of pleasure, like a drug-induced opium haze. Jack’s voice cut through her cries.

  “Stop.” His voice was firm. One word. That was all. A command.

  “I don’t want to,” she protested.

  “Do it anyway,” he said, and she somehow found the strength to slow the pace, her chest convulsing, her pussy twitching with the desperate need to come.

  He wasn’t a sadist. He surely didn’t believe in torture. He was a man of pleasure. A man constructed and outfitted, whether it was his passion or his business, to deliver endless joy to a woman. Because when she looked up through hazy, lust-filled eyes, she was greeted with the most beautiful sight. He’d unzipped his pants, pushed down his briefs, and was rolling a condom onto his long, thick, beautifully erect cock.

  She removed the toy, dropped it on his desk, and two seconds later, he yanked her by the hips, positioned himself at her entrance, and shoved into her. His breath hissed out as he filled her to the hilt. She wrapped her arms around his chest, and murmured his name. “Jack.”

  “Michelle,” he said, sliding out, then back in her. “You feel so fucking good.” His eyes were glassy with desire. “I love how you made your pussy so fucking perfectly ready for me.”

  “I’m so ready for you,” she said, reaching up to his face, cupping his cheeks, his stubble rough against her hands.

  “Are you ready to come?” he asked, never looking away as he thrust into her, sending a flurry of white-hot sparks through her body.

  “So ready. Please make me come.”

  He pumped into her, fast and then faster, and every part of her felt him. Her breasts were full and on high alert, swelling with sensations, her legs were wide open for him. Her pussy was drawing him in as deep as he could possibly be, and all the while she held his face in her hands, and watched him. Watched his eyes, those cool blue eyes that didn’t seem to want to look away either. He didn’t want to break the gaze. He stayed with her, fucking her forcefully and relentlessly on his desk as she reached the edge. “That’s right. Come on my desk,” he instructed. “Come so fucking hard that I’ll never think of anything but you when I’m trying to work here.”

  She didn’t know if one orgasm would ruin his work ethic for life. She didn’t care. All she knew was that her body was shattering, sensations rolling through her in some sort of sinful chaos of bliss and beauty. Crashing, rising, falling, exploding. And all that noise. All that shouting. His name. Her name. God’s name. Swearing. A cacophony of sounds of sex, flesh on flesh, slaps and moans and groans as she came undone for him. And the deepness. Oh, the terribly wonderful deepness as he pushed further into her, still driving, still thrusting, hard and then even harder until he collapsed onto her, his weight on her body, his loud grunts landing on her ears like a manifesto of his pleasure.

  She panted. He groaned. They didn’t move. They lay there, spent, exhausted, their breaths harsh in the silent office, sated beyond words in a heap on his desk, turning work and the business of pleasure obsolete that Friday evening.

  When at last he separated from her, he brushed his fingertips along her face. “So beautiful,” he murmured, then bent his head to her neck, layering kisses all the way to her ear. She shivered from his tender touch. “I love being with you.”

  She tensed at the words, but then relaxed into his embrace. Try as she might to hold back, to resist, she loved being with him too. He asked her for her body, but the more he took of it, the more it was a package deal.

  Which meant she was speeding straight into heartbreak. Only she didn’t have the will to press the brakes.

  She should find it. She really ought to find it. But it was nowhere nearby as he gently scooped her up from his desk, held her in his arms, and kissed her face.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Fit

  Work was out of the question, it seemed.

  After straightening up his desk, he knotted his tie, and handed Michelle her jacket.

  “I’m famished. Do you want to get something to eat?” he asked as he held the coat for her.

  “Yes, and I’ll just carry my jacket,” she said. She didn’t need it for the weather; she’d worn it for the costume. “I only had it on for the effect.”

  “I’d say it worked. So long as the intended effect was a spectacular orgasm. For both of us,” he added.

  She shot him a smile. “Yes.”

  He placed his hand on her back and led her out of the office, now bathed in the twilight glow of a building coasting into evening. Most of his employees had left for the day, and he waved quick goodbyes to the few remaining, hunched over laptops in their cubicles.

  Perhaps she should have been embarrassed to be seen leaving with the CEO, knowing what they’d just done in his office. She wasn’t, though. Maybe because she believed him when he’d said his office was soundproofed, or maybe because she was still glowing from that earth-shattering orgasm he’d delivered. Honestly, she wouldn’t have been surprised to hear a news report that one of the planet’s tectonic plates had shifted. It had been that powerful a climax. Unbidden, she shuddered, the sweet, memory washing over her.

  “Chinese? Thai? Indian?” he asked as they walked past the gleaming white reception desk with the letter J embossed in silver on the wall behind it. Joy Delivered was the Louis Vuitton of sex toys.

  An image of a Thai fusion restaurant on the Upper East Side flashed in front of her eyes. She’d been researching cool new eateries, so she mentioned the name, and some of the dishes on the menu. “I’ve been wanting to try it. Tonight seems a perfect opportunity,” she said, and he dusted her lips with a kiss saying yes.

  “Do you want to walk there? It’s not too far away.”

  “I’d love to.”

  When they reached the lobby, he laced his fingers through hers, and squeezed. A private little gesture. A silent moment. Sending a message just to her that he liked holding her hand in public. Tingles skipped through her bloodstream, so happily and so quickly that she barely noticed a familiar face a few shops down, watching her from the fruit stands outside a bodega.

  When it registered why the dark hair and thick glasses felt so familiar—like the man who’d bumped into her then held her elbow too long—he was gone. Worry shot through her bloodstream, but she quickly tamped it down. This was Manhattan, an endless island of people and faces. It was the land of the unknown, but when you live in close quarters with millions, the city has a way of fooling you. Tricking you into believing you know everyone.

  Even so, she peered into the doorway of the bodega as they walked past, but the view inside only confirmed her theory. New York was jam-packed with people. He was nobody she knew, just like last time.

  “You okay?”

  She smiled. “Totally. I just thought I saw someone who looked familiar. This guy with glasses.” She returned to far more pleasant topics. Their hands together. “I never would have pegged you as a guy who likes to hold hands in public.”

  “Why? Do I seem like an asshole who doesn’t want to have his hands all over his woman?”

  She laughed, but thrilled inside—against her better judgment—at the use of his. She wasn’t his woman. She had no plans on being his woman. But she was his woman for another fourteen days. Happily.

  “I just would never have thought you were that type of guy.”

  “You didn’t think I wanted to have you in my lap, either. But yet I did,” he said, stopping to bring their clasped hands to his mouth for a quick kiss as they passed a florist, the front of the shop teeming with flowers in bright orange and yellows—late summer shades. “How else am I surprising you?”

  How else?

  In so many ways. He was not what she would have expected from the first night, or from what she suspected people saw on the surface—his gorgeous chiseled good looks, his sharp well-dressed style, his cool blue eyes, both warm and distant at the same damn time.

  He had more contradictions than she’d ever have suspected, and she was someone who trafficked in contradictions. Who was accustomed to them. Who had come to expect them. But Jack was tender and sweet when he could have been removed; he was removed when he could have been calloused; he was self-protective when he could have been cruel.

  “Well?” he asked, prompting her as they darted past a group of teenage girls hanging onto each other and their phones outside a yogurt shop. The girls clearly weren’t going to move. And Jack clearly wanted her opinion. “How am I different than what you expected?”

  She parted her lips to speak, her natural instinct, her professional desire to speak the truth plainly kicking in. “You’re sweeter, kinder, and more affectionate than I would have thought, given why you were in my office,” she said, looking him square in the eyes.

  He stopped in his tracks, forcing her to stop too. “You didn’t think I could be affectionate?”

  “Well,” she said as if the answer were obvious.

  “I so can,” he said, and wrapped his arms around her waist, and tugged her close, dropping his forehead to hers. They stood in the middle of the crowded sidewalk. Men and women in suits and clickety-clack heels with determined looks on their faces, rushing to catch trains and buses and cabs home, were forced to walk around them. “With the right woman . . .” he said and brushed his lips ever so gently against hers so that all thoughts tumbled out of her skull, leaving her with nothing but feelings. The fresh bloom of feelings for this man.

  “Who’s the right woman?” she asked when he pulled away.

  “You,” he whispered, in a voice that was clear and direct.

  And cut straight through the walls. He couldn’t possibly be suggesting there was more to them? Could he? They were nighttime. They were deadlines. They were the city after hours. They weren’t more. They weren’t a couple. Whatever affection he felt for her was clearly borne of sex. So she turned the conversation in that much less frightening direction as they resumed their walk uptown.

  “By the way, Jack, I’ve noticed that filthy mouth of yours was much more refined the first night I met you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Now the way you talk to me is blunter. Rougher,” she said, and she’d seen the slight changes the more they were together. He seemed to let go more with that dirty mouth, using words he hadn’t used the night they’d met, asking rougher questions, demanding answers.

  “Maybe it’s part of my plan to woo you,” he joked. “Is it working?”

  “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  He leaned closer, brushed her hair away from her shoulder, and whispered hotly in her ear, “I think you’re a very dirty girl beneath that good-girl exterior.”

  His words sent a rush through her. He was right. He was so right.

  She tilted her face to him, and answered with a curve of her lips. “And you like it that way.”

  “I love it that way,” he said in a husky voice that gave away his desire.

  She tensed, wondering if he’d been like this with Aubrey. If he’d thrown her down on his desk, if he’d demanded answers about her dirty fantasies. She wished terribly that the thought had not touched down in her head, but now that it was there, it worried away at her. There was no way she’d ask him if he’d been like that with other women. That was too personal. Besides, it was a rude question. Michelle Milo aspired not to be rude.

  Instead, she simply sighed.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, as they turned the corner onto a quieter street lined with trees and a mix of pretty brownstones, some white, some brick, all beautiful.

  “Nothing,” she said, putting her game face back on.

  “I don’t believe that. And you’re too damn smart to think you can get away with that kind of answer.”

  “What kind of answer?”

  “The kind that’s a lie. There is something wrong, and I bet I know what it is.”

  “Okay. Try me,” she said and they were treading in dangerous territory, but then this was her stock-in-trade. Surely, she could handle it with him.

  “You wanted to know if I’m like this with other women I’ve been with, don’t you?”

  She gasped in surprise, and they stopped walking. She backed up to stand near the brown stoop of a building with planters in the first floor windows.

  “I’m like this with you,” he added, his eyes locked on hers as he held her hand tighter.

  “You are?” she asked carefully.

  He nodded. “Of course I like the way we fuck. I love the way we have sex. Does that mean every other woman wanted it this way?” he asked, and a part of her hoped and prayed he wouldn’t answer. He didn’t. Thankfully. “It means we fit.”

  Her heart jumped at those words, and she wasn’t entirely sure why. She wanted to swat it back into place. Hell, they were talking about sex, not matters of the heart, so why on earth should that annoying organ be doing a pitter-patter? But as he gazed at her, his blue eyes never wavering, she saw a flash of something more in his expression. He wasn’t just talking about how they fit in the bedroom.

  “I think so too,” she said quietly, as they delved into territory she usually only started to explore in a therapy session with a patient, but here they were on the streets of New York having a frank conversation about how they liked to fuck. And yet it was a conversation about more than sex too.

  “It means you’re perfect for me. And I can be myself with you,” he said, grasping her hand tighter, as he moved in closer. Heat radiated off of him.

  Oh God, her heart thumped hard now. And she couldn’t take it. She couldn’t take all this beating in her chest, this heat, this stretching and expanding inside. “So you can be the dirty guy who likes a good girl on the outside but with a filthy mind?” she countered, arching an eyebrow, and somehow successfully deflecting the deeper meaning of this conversation, even though she wanted to clasp it and hold it close.

  He threw his head back and laughed. “Come on. Let’s get that stomach fed, so I can have more of that filthy mind and hot body later.”

  * * *

  “Do you miss her still?”

  He crinkled his brow at the question she asked over dinner. “Hmm? What do you mean?”

  “Aubrey.”

  Oh. Right. The reason he’d gone to see Michelle in the first place. “Honestly?”

  She nodded, and laughed once as she lifted her wine glass. “Yes,” she said emphatically. “Of course I’m asking you honestly. We talked about it at Gia’s. It must be hard for you. I mean, that’s why you came to see me. I don’t expect you to be over her in just a few sessions with Kana, and I’m not asking you to tell me about them. I’m just asking if you miss her.”

  There was one answer. The truth. He could give her that right now. “No. I don’t miss her. Sorry if that makes me seem callous. But it’s the truth.”

  “Hey. The truth is okay. It’s okay not to miss anymore. Or even just not today,” she said, then took a drink and set down the glass.

  “And honestly, being with you helps. I like being with you.”

  “I like that you’re with me.”

  Later, he sent her home in a town car. Her choice. Not his. Someday, someday soon, he wanted her to stay the night. When he returned to his own bed, alone, he missed Michelle more than he’d ever expected to.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sooner or Later

  The ball slammed the backboard and wobbled once on the rim before sinking through the net.

  “I won!” Nate declared, thrusting his arms high in the air as the sun rose higher in the morning sky.

  “Right,” Jack said, shaking his head as he laughed, since the two of them never really kept score. He grabbed the ball and tucked it under his arm as they headed out of the court and onto the street. New York was already bustling. Families were out pushing strollers and grabbing bagels, and twenty-somethings were spilled over small tables at cafes, nursing lattes and wearing sunglasses.

  “I scored Yankees tickets from a client. Third baseline. Two rows up,” Nate said as a cab screeched to the curb to pick up a fare. “You up for it?”

  Jack’s ears pricked. He was always up for the Yankees. “When?”

  “Tonight. Game’s against Boston. It will be epic,” Nate said. The Yankees were down by two games in the division, and the pennant race was on. But none of that mattered.

  “Can’t. I have plans,” Jack said, as they neared the avenue.

  Nate rubbed his knuckle against his ear. “What’s that? I didn’t hear you. Sounded like you said you had plans.”

  “Can’t go. But thanks.”

  Nate held up his finger, his brow crinkling. “You never turn down Yankees tickets. You must really like this woman.”

  Jack slowed his pace, the observation Nate had made dawning on him. His friend was right. The Yankees were sacrosanct. You didn’t mess with a chance to go to the temple of baseball. And yet, he had no interest in the game. Time was limited with Michelle. The clock was ticking, the second hand racing by faster than he’d like. It was a Saturday morning now, two weeks after their night on the Met Life Tower when they’d agreed to a start and a finish. He could already see the end in sight, and he wanted to make the most of every second with her, especially since she’d be in Paris for some of their thirty days.

  “You never even turned down Yankees tickets when you were with Aubrey,” Nate added, and the reminder was like a slap in the face.

  “Yeah, well. It’s not like I was some role model for how to be a great fiancé,” Jack muttered.

  Nate clapped him on the back. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, man. Nothing that happened was your fault.”

  That’s where Nate was wrong. Everything was his fault. Completely and absolutely, and he was ready to linger on that reminder, let it gnaw its way through him like a daily exercise, when he heard a familiar voice.