About the Authors

CLARE CONNELLY was raised in small-town Australia amongst a family of avid readers. She spent much of her childhood up a tree, Mills & Boon book in hand. Clare is married to her own real-life hero and they live in a bungalow near the sea with their two children. She is frequently found staring into space—a sure-fire sign that she’s in the world of her characters. She has a penchant for French food and ice-cold champagne, and Mills & Boons continue to be her favourite ever books. Writing for Mills & Boon is a long-held dream. Clare can be contacted via clareconnelly.com or her Facebook page.

ANNE MARSH writes sexy contemporary and paranormal romances because the world can always enjoy one more alpha male. She started writing romance after getting laid off from her job as a technical writer—and quickly decided happilyever-afters trumped software manuals. She lives in Northern California with her family and six cats.

Also By Clare Connelly

A Week to be Wild by JC Harroway Legal Seduction by Lisa Childs Ruled by Anne Marsh

Also By Anne Marsh

A Week to be Wild by JC Harroway Off Limits by Clare Connelly Legal Seduction by Lisa Childs

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Off Limits

Clare Connelly

Ruled

Anne Marsh

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09578-5

OFF LIMITS & RULED

Off Limits © 2018 Clare Connelly Ruled © 2018 Anne Marsh

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Off Limits

Back Cover Text

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Ruled

Back Cover Text

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

About the Publisher

Off Limits

Clare Connelly

“I want to taste you tonight.”

With chemistry this hot, it’s worth getting burned...

Billionaire Jack Grant is totally off-limits to Gemma Picton. He’s wild, deliciously dangerous...and her boss. When working late turns X-rated, it’s better than her wildest imaginings—and Gemma’s imagined a lot! But Jack has major emotional baggage, so when Gemma starts wanting to heal his heart as well as enjoy his body, she knows she’s in big trouble...

“Dare is Harlequin’s hottest line yet. Every book should come with a free fan. I dare you to try them!”

—Tiffany Reisz, international bestselling author

This book is for romance readers everywhere, who fall in love again and again with the characters of our creation.

You give our stories life just by reading them.

Thank you.

Prologue

‘YOU’VE GOT THE Prime Minister calling in ten minutes.’

Jack nods, showing not a flicker of response at the prospect of this. Then again, nothing about Jack Grant is what you’d expect. For a self-made billionaire-investor-cum-philanthropist-cum-sex-god, he is wild, disrespectful of authority and the establishment, and rough around the edges. Deliciously so.

Take this situation: Jack, in his bed, naked as the day he was born, uncaring that he should have been at his desk an hour ago. That I can see most of his beautiful back and backside. That my insides are clenching with hot, steamy lust.

‘About...?’

It’s a lazy drawl as he flips over and pierces me with those intelligent green eyes. His accent is pure Irish brogue. Like Colin Farrell after a night of cigarettes and booze: deep, hoarse and throaty.

‘The latest episode of The Great British Bake Off.’

I roll my eyes. We’ve been negotiating to buy a huge swathe of Crown land for the last six months; it’s at the highest level of negotiation and, given the media interest, the Prime Minister has become involved.

‘What do you think?’

His laugh is a rumble that barrels out of his chest. ‘Well, every man needs a good scone recipe.’

‘And you’ve got one?’

‘Sure.’

He grins. It’s a grin that is at once devilish and charming, and I know how easy it must be for him to get women into bed. And that’s before you factor in the body, the money, the power.

‘Nine minutes,’ I snap.

His grin unfurls like a ribbon on his face. My heart kerthunks. I ignore it. Stupid heart.

‘Did you book Sydney?’

‘Yes.’

He arches a brow at my impatient tone and, as if to contradict it, stretches in the bed, his arms high over his head, his body gloriously on display for me.

‘And, Amber?’

I don’t mean to sigh but when the Prime Minister’s office is calling I feel there should be some air of responsiveness. Jack, apparently, doesn’t agree.

‘All arranged.’

Lucy’s sister is taking a year’s sabbatical from her job as an executive at a bank to manage the foundation’s start-up year. She’s insanely qualified and personally motivated.

‘Salary agreed; she’ll be based out of Edinburgh, as we discussed.’

He nods, but makes no effort to move.

‘Seriously, Jack. Eight minutes. Get the hell up, already.’

‘Ouch. Did you get out of the wrong side of bed this morning?’

He runs his fingers down his chest, drawing my attention to the ridges of his abdomen, the flesh so perfectly smooth and sculpted. My mouth is bone-dry.

‘No.’

‘You’re even crosser than usual,’ he teases, and my lips tighten impatiently.

As it happens, he’s right. I got The Invitation this morning. The one that arrives every year, beckoning me to come and pay homage to my parents’ marriage.

Ugh.

It’s my least favourite social event—and the one time I’m forced to remember who I really am. The one time a year my parents recall me to the mother ship, reminding me that no matter what I do, professionally or personally, I’ll always be Gemma Picton. Lady Gemma Picton.

Ugh.

‘Sit down. Tell me all about it.’

He pats the bed beside him and I roll my eyes again, hoping he won’t know how sorely I’m tempted. Just once I imagine giving in to this—the electrical current that is arcing between us. I never would...never could. He is as off-limits as hell is hot—the stuff of fantasies and nightmares.

‘No, thanks.’

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Personal stuff,’ I say, and he shrugs.

But there’s curiosity in his eyes. A curiosity I have to ignore. Along with desire. Lust. Want. Need.

We have our boundaries and we definitely know better than to cross them.

Jack pushes the sheet off, exposing the tattoo that curls across his lower back and snakes around his hips to the tops of his legs. It must have hurt like hell to get it done—especially on the skin of his thighs, right near his cock.

I asked him once why he’d got it. His answer? ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time.’

He doesn’t care that I see him naked. It’s not the first time and undoubtedly won’t be the last. Sometimes I wonder if he’s goading me, waiting for me to react. After all, it’s classic workplace sexual harassment.

Except it isn’t. Because I’m not harassed.

I’m amused. And more than a little turned on.

In the two years since I started working for Jack I’ve probably seen him naked on average once per week. That’s over a hundred stare-fests and he is totally worth staring at. I don’t think he used to be like this. Before this there was her.

Lucy.

His wife.

But she got sick and died, and two months later I came to work for him and he was like this. Dark and brooding and desirable and sexy and messed up and mourning and fascinating.

This sleeping with anything in a skirt is post-Lucy. Same as the copious Scotch-drinking afterwards. It’s sensual self-flagellation but he won’t see it that way.

So, no matter how much I want to stare at his naked arse, I know he’s for looking at—not touching. Like when Grandma used to take me shopping at her favourite Portmeirion boutique and I was allowed to stare at the intricate floral and botanical artwork for hours on end, but never, ever to touch.

Because touching might lead to breaking—and, yes, touching Jack would, I fear, break me.

‘See something you like?’

Another drawl—he’s so good at that. He lets words slide out of his mouth like liquid chocolate.

‘Nope.’ My smile is saccharine. ‘Seven minutes.’

I spin on my heel and leave, a smile playing around my lips as desire pools between my legs.

* * *

Gemma is staring at me, and the mood I’m in I feel about two steps away from going all ‘Me Tarzan, You Jane’ on her. I want to grab her round the waist and pull her down on my length. No foreplay. No teasing. Just her...taking me deep.

In my fantasy she’s not wearing panties and she’s left her brain at the door—because real-life Gemma would quote me a thousand reasons not to have sex even as she was moaning in my arms.

Last night was fun. At least, it started off as fun. But the woman I brought here...Rebecca? Rowena?...talked too much.

She’d wanted to be romanced.

I wanted to screw.

So I gave her cab fare and showed her the door.

And now I have a raging hard-on and an assistant—she hates it when I call her that, so I do it often, even though she’s technically my in-house counsel—who seems to have moved into my sexual fantasies permanently. When did that happen?

I rack my brain, trying to pinpoint the moment I went from observing her to obsessing over her. From looking dispassionately at her in those suits she wears one day, and the next imagining how long it would take me to strip her out of one.

I don’t think it was one day, though, because that implies some switch was flicked. No, I think it was a look as she got into my helicopter in Spain. A laugh over dinner. Hearing her hum as she stared out of a window, her mind obviously running at a million miles an hour.

Then there was that blackout we were once caught in at the City office. The fire alarm shut the place down, closing us inside an elevator for close on an hour, with just the dim flicker of emergency lights that made her legs look so long and smooth. By the time they cranked the doors I was about ready to pin her to the carpeted floor and screw her senseless.

Yeah, that was probably the moment I realised how much trouble I was in.

I’m not interested in a relationship. But I do want to fuck her. And I think she wants it, too. I’ve seen the way her caramel eyes drop to my arse when she thinks I’m not looking.

But I’m always looking lately.

Chapter One

SHE MIGHT AS well be naked. The dress is skin-tight, bright red and low-cut. Tiny straps slip over her shoulders. The dress is short, too. Not indecently short but, Jesus, her legs are long and smooth, and while she’s wearing that dress I find it impossible to look away.

She’s hotter than any woman here—and that’s saying something, given that this launch event has brought together most of London’s elite. There are models, actresses, singers, athletes, and lots of those women who’ve married for money and now make it their life’s work to live up to their husbands’ expectations.

And then there’s Gemma.

Her blond hair is pulled into a ballerina bun, her face is serious and her body is like pale silk that I want to wrap around me.

She’s said something funny, going by the way the guy with her leans forward and laughs. Is he her date? A frown pulls at my brow. I stare harder. Did she bring a date? Isn’t she technically here as my plus-one?

Seeing her with another guy does something dangerous to my equilibrium. A possessive impulse threads through me, knotting at my chest.

I pull a couple of champagne flutes from a passing waiter and cut through the room. I’m aware of people trying to get my attention but I have no time for them. Gemma is in my sights.

‘Jack...’

Her lips purse as I approach; her eyes flick to me in that way she has. How is it possible for one person to imbue a simple gesture with a measure of cold disdain even when there’s the hint of a smile somewhere in that symmetrical face of hers?

I hand her a glass of champagne and she takes it, her fingers briefly wrapping over mine. Immediately my mind puts them elsewhere on my body.

‘You remember Wolf DuChamp?’ she says. ‘He manages our accounts in New York.’

I remember his stupid name, but not the man himself. Nothing memorable about blond, pretty-boy looks and that air of Ivy League he seems to wear like a coat.

‘Sure.’ I extend my hand, knowing I have to meet the convention even when my body is singularly focussed on Gemma.

‘Good to see you again, sir.’

Gemma’s lips quiver. I hate being called ‘sir’ and she knows it. Out of nowhere I have an image of her saying it to me, bent at the knees, her eyes moving up my body to meet mine as her lips clamp down on my length. Okay, maybe in some circumstances I could make an exception...

What the hell am I thinking? These fantasies are one thing, but screwing Gemma cannot happen.

Cannot happen. Might as well get that tattoo added to my collection.

‘I was just explaining the software overhaul we’re looking at to Gem.’

Is he trying to piss me off? First of all by removing the very nice image I was enjoying by talking about software. And then by referring to Gemma as ‘Gem’—as though they’re best buddies who paint their nails together.

‘I’ll summarise it for you later,’ she says, sensing my impatience though I suspect not the reason for it.

‘It’ll make a huge difference to our operations,’ Wolf pushes.

‘Gem’ angles her body a bit, turning away from me, giving me a chance to escape.

‘I’ll look into the feasibility. The problem is going to be short-term. We’ll need to make sure the systems are protected during the transfer of data. You handle some of our most sensitive work—a data breach would be unacceptable.’

‘I’ve thought of that, too,’ Wolf carries on—and I am dismissed, it would appear.

Across the room a platinum blonde with a sensational rack and legs that go on forever is trying to catch my eye.

I want Gemma, but I can’t have her. And I’m not one to wallow in self-pity. There’s plenty of fish in the sea.

I have two rules when it comes to the women I fuck.

No commitment.

No redheads.

Commitment was for Lucy.

And Lucy was a redhead.

I freeze. A vision of Lucy is in front of me, a scowl of disapproval on her face. I messed around a fair bit before we met, but nothing like this. I’ve taken it to a whole new level and I don’t care. Except for that scowl. Even in death I don’t want to upset Lucy.

What did you expect, Luce? You left me a pretty big void to fill.

Don’t blame me, I hear her snap back. Your life. Your choice.

Yeah, right.

My eyes wander of their own accord back to Gemma. She’s got her head bent now, and Wolf’s fingers are typing something into his cell phone. She nods and smiles, then presses a hand to his forearm. My stomach rolls on a surge of emotion I don’t much care for.

I stalk towards the blonde as though she is the only woman in the room.

‘I’m Jack Grant.’

Her lips are painted a bright red. She purrs. ‘I know who you are.’

‘Then you have the advantage.’

Her lips part. ‘From what I hear, telling you my name wouldn’t serve much purpose. You won’t remember it tomorrow, right?’

I laugh, appreciating her honesty. ‘No...’ I lean forward so that my lips are only a whisper from her ear. My breath flutters her hair and I see a fine trail of goose bumps run across her skin. ‘But you’ll remember me for the rest of your life.’

Her laugh is husky. She’s everything I would usually find sexy, but in that moment she’s just passably acceptable. If I’m honest, I’m bored. It’s a phone-it-in flirt. A What the heck? situation.

‘We’ll see...’

‘Can I get you a drink?’

‘I can share yours,’ she murmurs, her eyes dropping to my champagne flute.

I didn’t even realise I was still holding it. I extend it to her on autopilot, watching as her lips shape over the glass and she tilts it back. The liquid is honey-gold. She passes the glass to me and I take a sip.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ she says, with a throaty laugh in the rushed words.

I nod, reaching down and putting a hand in the small of her back. Gemma and Lucy are both in my head now—a fascinating occurrence. A new occurrence. Are they ganging up on me? Would they even like each other?

Lucy was so soft and sweet. She looked at me like I was her saviour and I suppose I was. I ripped her out of her old life, away from a boyfriend who used her as a punching bag, and I made all her dreams come true.

But fate is a bastard of a thing, and it only had bad news in store for Lucy. For a while she managed to jump tracks and sit on a different train, and then—bam. It took her. You can’t outrun destiny, can you?

Gemma is nothing like her. Her personality isn’t so much hard edges as a single hard face. She is smart—smarter than me by a mile—and focussed in a way that is completely familiar to me. She is also sexy. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. She acts so damned cold around me—as though she’s never so much as heard of an orgasm, much less experienced one. It makes me want her more. Want to show her for the liar she is. To make her orgasm again and again until ‘cold’ is a very distant memory.

‘Jack.’

She catches me as I’m about to leave the room. Her eyes briefly meet the blonde’s. There is nothing beyond a polite acknowledgement of her existence. That iciness is there. I want to push Gemma backwards against the wall and kiss the hell out of her. Right here.

‘You’re scheduled to speak in twenty minutes.’

Whoops. Even for me that’s a bit of a slip. I don’t usually let anything get in the way of business—even my sex life.

‘We’ll be back by then.’

Blondie surprises us both. Her meaning is unmistakable.

Shit. I can’t remember the last time I had a quickie in the car. Is she seriously suggesting it?

Gemma shifts her attention to her phone. She runs that iPhone as though she designed the thing. Her fingers fly over the screen like it’s a part of her. Her complacency pisses me off.

‘Okay. The talk can be brief. Just an outline of what the foundation is hoping to achieve, thanking the commercial partners, yada-yada-yada.’

‘Yada-yada-yada?’ I grin slowly, my eyes linking with hers, daring her to forget the coldness and complacency.

She looks at Blondie and her smile is perfunctory. ‘Have fun.’

* * *

Of course Jack nails the speech. Not so much as a hair on his head looks out of place. The tuxedo is immaculate. The white shirt crisp. The bow tie in place as though glued. He speaks eloquently about the foundation and he also speaks with humour, so the crowd laughs.

I don’t.

I am wondering about the blonde.

No. I’m thinking about Jack—but they’re thoughts that I need to run a mile from. This can’t control me. I’ve worked my arse off in this job, twisting myself in mental knots to stay on top of my workload without breaking a sweat, and I am not going to let the fact that my boss is impossibly hot get in the way.

Instead I let my attention drift to Wolf.

He’s talking to someone else now—no doubt about that bloody software. His face is serious, and that makes me smile. Because Wolf is pretty much always serious.

Warning! Warning! Warning! It flashes inside my mind. Because I don’t do serious, and if I let the flirtation with Wolf keep going I think he’s going to see roses and candy and wedding bells.

God help me, I can’t think of anything worse.

I am suffocating at the very idea of being a bride in white, having Wolf waiting for me at the end of an aisle. He would definitely want children, too. Three of them. And he’d expect me to be the obliging baby-maker and carer. He’d look at me with those puppy-dog eyes, sadness and disappointment on his features, if I so much as dared suggest we get a nanny.

Maybe I could be like Marissa Mayer and have a nursery built into my office? The nanny could be based there, so I could still be one of those hands-on Pinterest-type mummies. Wolf would never even need to know I’d hired someone to help.

But Jack would. He’d hate that. A baby crying when I’m trying to talk to him about tariffs on our Chinese imports? No, he’d probably seduce the nanny and then I’d have to either fire her or kill her.

Okay, now who’s getting ahead of themselves?

But Wolf has caught me watching him and his heart is so on his sleeve he might as well be a cartoon character, with one of those thought bubbles popping out of his head. I have to let this opportunity pass me by. He’s not right, and when he realises that I’m not going to leave Jack and move to Manhattan, working with him will become a nightmare.

I look away.

Right at Jack.

He’s standing in front of me.

The band has started to play and I’ve been so lost in imagining the hell of my future with Wolf DuChamp that I haven’t realised.

‘Did you like the speech?’

‘Looking for compliments?’ I sip my champagne, pleased at how quickly I’m able to recover. ‘What’s the matter? Wasn’t she suitably impressed?’

His eyes clash with mine. He’s angry. Ooooh. Why? Have I hit the nail on the head somehow?

‘Are you wondering if I can please a woman in fifteen minutes?’

He shifts his body infinitesimally, but enough to spark something low in my abdomen. Anger. Resentment. Heat. Warmth. Need.

Fuck.

‘Believe it or not, I haven’t given any thought to your bedroom prowess,’ I lie, shifting my attention back to the room of people. London’s elite swirl around us, and I am wanting to swirl away with them.

‘Liar,’ he says, so softly I think I’ve misheard.

Because we can’t go there! He knows that—I know that. Every bone in my body wants him, but my brain is still in charge. I don’t want to screw up my career, but it’s more than that. I love Jack. Not in that way. I mean I love working with him. Even when he’s at his assholiest, he’s become one of the biggest constants in my life. How stupid would it be to rock the boat?

I imagine, briefly, that we indulge in an affair and it ends—because Jack doesn’t do permanent—and then I imagine not seeing him again.

It makes me ill.

I don’t want to think about it.

I don’t want to risk it.

‘The speech was good.’ I bring the conversation back onto far safer ground, trying to fold my desperate realisations away neatly into a box I won’t open again.

‘Tell me something, Gemma,’ he says, and the tone of his voice is still dangerous to me.

He hasn’t got my silent memo, obviously, because his words prick the blood in my veins until it gushes and gurgles through me—he’s flirting with me.

I use my most businesslike tone. ‘Oh, I don’t know if you really want me to do that. You might not like what I say...’

His eyes lance mine. It’s like being sliced through.

‘What’s the deal with you and that guy from New York?’

Who’s he talking about? Oh. Right. ‘You mean Wolf?’

His lips curl derisively—that’s one of my favourite of his expressions. I don’t know if he realises how devilishly sexy he looks.

‘Who calls their kid after an animal? Especially when he’s the least wolf-like person you can imagine.’

‘I don’t suppose they knew that when he was born,’ I say, but a smile is pushing at my lips. He’s right. Wolf is handsome, but in a very neat and tidy kind of way.

‘Is he a wolf in the bedroom?’

The question catches me completely off guard. It’s wholly new territory for us. Invasive in a way I don’t know if I like but am worried that I might.

Still, challenging Jack is what I do. That’s who we are.

I tilt my head to one side, assessing him for a moment, before volleying back, ‘How was the blonde?’

‘She was dull,’ he says with a shrug and no hesitation, apparently having no qualms discussing his sex-life with me.

‘Where is she?’

‘At her house. Waiting.’

‘For you?’

He shrugs. ‘I said I might stop by. It seemed like the only way to get rid of her.’

Wait. He hasn’t slept with her? No, not slept with. Fucked. The thought is oddly elating, though I can’t help but feel sympathy for the woman he flirted with and then sent packing.

‘You really are a bastard,’ I mutter. ‘Are you going to go to her?’

His eyes are probing mine now, and I feel like every single one of my fantasies, my dirtiest, hottest dreams, are playing out between us like a kinky Pensieve for his pleasure.

Yes, I’m a Harry Potter diehard. Hermione was one of my first role models.

‘Maybe.’

My stomach turns. I am used to this feeling with Jack. In the first six months we worked together I wasn’t so adept at dealing with his vivid love-life. I blushed whenever I found evidence of his nocturnal activities, and I couldn’t always meet his eye. But now? Well, now I’ve had two years to practise acceptance.

I smile blandly. ‘Well...’ I shrug as though my heart’s not racing and my nipples aren’t throbbing. ‘Have a good night.’

‘Wait.’ His words are commanding, and so too is the hand he clamps around my wrist.

I jerk my face towards his, the breath exploding out of me. We don’t touch. No more than an accidental brush of fingers from time to time. That’s impossible to avoid when you’re together as often as we are.

Definitely not like this.

His thumb pads across my inner wrist, and when I don’t say anything he pulls me, hard and fast, so that my body rams into his. We are surrounded and yet we are alone. There is a void that engulfs us. Like a sensual electric fence.

This is all new and all wrong. And so right.

His body is tight. Hard. Hot. Just as it is in all my fantasies. It takes every single ounce of my willpower to close my mouth and let my breath return to normal. To look at him as though he’s lost his mind, not made me lose mine.

‘Yes, sir?’

His eyes flare. I meant it to put him back on his guard, to remind him of the boundaries of our relationship, but I might as well have struck a match over gasoline. He doesn’t let me go.

‘Dance with me.’

The air around us is charged with expectation and I just know he’s asking for more than a dance. Does he expect me to say no? I don’t like living up to expectations, and I’m not going to give him a reason to think I’m afraid of what’s going on between us.

‘Fine.’ My smile is tight. It stretches over my face like sunburn.

He expels a breath, long and slow, and places a hand in the small of my back. No...just at the very top of my arse. His fingers are splayed wide and they press into me firmly, so that I’m propelled towards him. His other hand links with my fingers, wrapping through them.

I focus on the band, my eyes taking in the details of their appearance while I concentrate on looking completely calm. I’m not, though. I’m weak when I want to be strong, and I need something that I shouldn’t.

‘This dress is sensational,’ he says, immediately shattering my attempts to find calm.

‘Is that your informed fashion opinion?’

Too tart. I soften the snap with a smile. It’s a mistake. His eyes are mocking, his own smile sardonic.

I look away again immediately.

‘It’s my informed opinion as a red-blooded male.’

‘What do you like about it?’

Warning lights are flashing in my mind, clamouring for attention. They are bright and angry. What am I doing?

‘Let me see,’ he murmurs. ‘The colour. The way it’s literally glued to your skin.’

He drops his head closer and heat spirals inside me; my blood is a vapour of steam in my veins.

This isn’t right. It’s not us. He sleeps with other women and, sure, he flirts the heck out of me, but that’s harmless.

This doesn’t feel harmless.

The music slows and I slow with it, putting some space between us with what I tell myself is relief.

‘Get me up to speed on the New York situation,’ he says.

‘I intend to.’

I’m snappy because I’m uncertain. I’m completely wrong-footed by his nearness, his touch, and my own desire for him is swamping me. I need a minute to regroup, but his fingers are giving me no time. They’re throbbing across my spine, my arse, and I am heating up by the second.

‘Tonight. Now.’

I angle my head towards Wolf unconsciously. He’s still locked in conversation. I have no intention of going home with him, and yet I resent Jack’s implication that I don’t have a life of my own.

‘It’s not urgent.’ My words are stiff. ‘It’ll keep till tomorrow.’ And I force myself to pull completely free of Jack’s grip.

It’s the equivalent of grabbing a lifeline from the side of a sinking boat. It’s slippery, and I’m pretty sure I’m not strong enough to hold on to it for long enough to save myself. Drowning is inevitable.

‘I want to hear about it tonight.’

It’s a challenge. A gauntlet. He gives me a lot of latitude in my job because he knows how much I do. And I do it well. But at the end of the day he’s my boss, and I don’t know if anything is to be served by refusing him this request.

‘Fine,’ I say with a shrug of my shoulders. But I’m not going to let him think he’s won. ‘I just need...twenty minutes.’

I disconnect myself from him and try not to register how my body screams in frustration.

I saunter off towards Wolf before I can see if Jack’s reacting in the same way.

Wolf is deep in conversation when I approach. ‘May I have a moment?’ I look with a hint of apology towards the men he’s with.

‘Sure.’ He grins at me. A nice grin. He really is good to look at. Not groundbreaking, earth-shattering, but nice.

He puts a hand on my elbow but I am leading him, walking quickly out of the ballroom, seeking privacy for no reason other than to give Jack a taste of his own damned medicine. That and to send a loud and clear message. He doesn’t control every part of me.

‘All good for later?’ Wolf asks.

I smile. ‘No, it’s not. I have to work tonight, actually. I’m going to brief Jack on the software situation.’

‘Tonight?’ He arches a brow, his voice rich with disbelief.

‘He micromanages everything,’ I explain. It’s true. ‘And he’s impatient as hell. I just want to make sure I have all the information.’

He nods, not quite hiding his disappointment. ‘Let’s recap.’

And that’s how I spend the nineteen minutes I have. Well, eighteen... I allow myself one minute to pull a bit of my hair loose from its bun and to pinch my cheeks, making them appear flushed with pleasure.

Jack is waiting for me in the limousine twenty-five minutes after I left him. I imitate breathlessness as I step inside, and enjoy the way his eyes sweep over me with undisguised speculation.

‘Ready?’

It’s not what I expected. I nod, but as I do so I feel like maybe I’m agreeing to something I don’t understand. Like there’s a hidden meaning I don’t yet know.

‘Yeah. Let’s go.’

Chapter Two

I’LL SAY THIS for Jack. He knows how to do this. Late-night entertaining is clearly his forte.

His office is dimly lit and he’s switched on some kind of acoustic guitar album that’s humming low in my abdomen. The vocalist has a husky rasp and it’s doing very strange things to my equilibrium. He mixes two martinis with a maraschino cherry in each.

I arch a brow as he hands me mine. ‘I hate cherries.’

‘Interesting,’ he murmurs, his eyes hooked to mine. ‘Why?’

I stare at it and swirl the glass, sipping the alcohol and wincing as the slightly medicinal flavour assaults my back palette. ‘They’re weird. Plasticky.’

‘Not the real ones.’

‘No.’

I swallow, wondering at the way my gut is churning and my pulse is racing. I need to bring it back to business. It’s the reason I’m here with him.

‘The server in Canada can pick up the slack, but it’s going to slow things down.’

‘By how much?’

‘Just a few seconds’ lag. It’s unavoidable, given the distance.’

‘A few seconds?’ He shakes his head. ‘There’s nowhere closer?’

‘Not that can handle this amount of data.’

He throws his drink back in one motion. ‘And Wolf thinks that’s acceptable?’

He says his name with obvious derision.

‘You think he’d go to the effort of flying out here to propose it if he did?’

‘Well, he’s banging you, right?’

I can’t hide the angry intake of breath. Sure, he’s always rude. And demanding. And I’ve learned not to give a shit. I don’t expect the same courtesy from Jack Grant that most people pepper into life. But this is too far even for him...even when we’ve been flirting all night.

‘His suggestion is professional,’ I return softly. A warning lurks in my words. Does he hear it?

Apparently not. Jack is like a cat with a mouse.

‘But you are fucking him?’

‘God, Jack,’ I snap, standing up.

His eyes follow the fluidity of my movement. They’re narrowed. Assessing. He’s reading me like a book. But I’m too angry to care. Too worked up, as well. He’s halfway to being drunk, and he’s obnoxious, and since he pulled me hard against his body I’m a bit mushy.

I hide my mushiness, though. I hide it behind a veil of anger. ‘That’s none of your damned business.’

His eyes flick to mine. There’s a lazy arrogance in his features but anger palpitates off him.

‘He works for me. You work for me. If you’re fucking him I want to know.’

‘What I do in my own time, and with whom, is up to me. Until the day it starts affecting my job performance you should just butt out.’ I jut my chin, my eyes sparking with his. ‘Got it?’

He looks calm, controlled, but I know there’s an undercurrent of emotion just beneath the handsome surface. Because I know Jack. Probably better than anyone else on earth.

‘You don’t strike me as coy,’ he says.

‘Because I’m not.’

I step backwards. The wall is behind me. I brush against it, feeling cornered and unbelievably confused and turned on by this strange turn of events.

‘So answer the question.’

‘Am I fucking Wolf?’ My question emerges as a husk in the night.

‘Yeah.’ He moves forward. An infinitesimal step. ‘You know everything there is to know about me, don’t you? So why keep your secrets?’

I open my mouth to say something snappy, but shut it again. He’s right. I know a lot about him. Not the ‘everything’ he claims, but a lot.

‘You could always lock your door if you want to be more private about your love-life.’

‘Sex-life,’ he interjects swiftly, on autopilot, and I know it’s because of Lucy that he’s so emphatic on this point.

I don’t know anything about his wife. I presume she was a nice enough person—although agreeing to marry Jack does make me question both her sanity and her judgement. But maybe he was different before she died. Maybe his bastard impulses weren’t so apparent?

‘So you’re going to live out the rest of your life like this? Moving from one woman to another, never getting to know a thing about them beyond their cup size and their sexual proclivities.’

His eyes drop to my breasts and I can tell he is assessing my cup size. Crap. My nipples strain hard against the flimsy fabric of my dress—it’s too tight for a bra, and sadly I don’t really need one.

His smile is self-satisfied and I want to slap it off his face. I fight the urge to cross my arms and cover my involuntary reaction.

‘I’m trying to get to know more about you right now,’ he says.

My pulse is hammering hard in my veins. His revolving-door bedroom flashes before me in an instant. The number of mornings I’ve arrived to find him asleep after a busy night of... Best I don’t imagine that right now.

‘Are you afraid I’ll judge you?’

I open my eyes to find him right in front of me, his head bent, his body just a hair’s breadth from me. A soft moan escapes me before I can catch it.

‘You? You think you’d have any right to judge me after parading half of England through here?’

‘Not half of England,’ he murmurs, a smile shifting over his face. ‘Half of London, maybe.’

‘How do you justify it?’ I ask, feeling a dangerous pull towards a line of questioning my brain is shouting at me to back away from. ‘You think Lucy would be happy that you’re fucking your way through a smorgasbord of women just because you won’t have an actual relationship? Is there a sliding scale of monogamy that the dead expect?’

A muscle jerks in his cheek. I recognise that I’m stirring him up and still I don’t stop. I’m angry, too! He doesn’t have a monopoly on thwarted desire and pent-up frustration.

It feels good to goad him! So good!

‘You think what you do is fair to these women?’

His smile spreads slowly, but it is cold, angry. ‘I don’t hear any complaints.’

Boom! It’s the proverbial match to the fuel of my anger. I explode.

‘You boot them out before you even know their names half the time! Where, exactly, would they lodge their complaint? My God, Jack. Of all the chauvinistic, selfish, careless—’

He lifts a finger to my lips, silencing me with the touch. His eyes on mine are intent. Heat builds inside my blood, at fever pitch now.

‘You know...’ His fingers dip into my drink, fishing out the bright red orb at its base. ‘You have a tendency to be judgemental.’

My sharp intake of breath is dangerous, given his finger’s closeness to my mouth. He runs it across my lower lip and I don’t pull away. He holds up the cherry with his other hand. My eyes slip to it of their own accord.

‘Haven’t you ever discovered that you like something you thought you hated? Haven’t you ever been wrong?’

I shake my head, not really sure of the question he’s asking. He surprises me by lifting the cherry to his own lips and sucking it into his mouth. I watch for a moment, and as his finger drops from my mouth I try to say something. I’m not sure what, and I’ll never have a chance to find out. He brings his lips to mine, pressing the cherry into my mouth, rolling it around before sucking it back into his and crushing it.

The flavour is all around me and I no longer care. Because it is dwarfed by something else: the taste of him. Cherry flavour is on his tongue, evaporating in the flame of our kiss.

His lips crush mine, silencing any words, sucking them out of me, and a new heat spreads in my body. His kiss is punishment and it is possession. I cannot explain it better than that. It is a moment of clarity in which my anger seems to evaporate temporarily before it is back and I am kissing him—just as hard, with just as much fury.

My tongue lashes his and my hands are in his hair, rough, pulling at him, and I am kissing him as though I am still shouting at him with my touch.

He groans angrily and his body weight holds me to the wall, his strong legs straddling me, pinning me where I am. I think my brain is trying to tell me something, but I can hear nothing above the pounding of my heart and the rushing of my blood.

Desire is a whip, and it is lashing at my spine.

He drags his lips lower, nipping the skin of my shoulder with his teeth and teasing the racing pulse-point in my neck with his tongue. I groan, tilting my head back, knowing I need to stop this madness but accepting we are past that.

A line has been crossed. Not just crossed! Obliterated! There is newness to this. But I want to shape it, not be shaped by it. I need to be in charge—at least to some extent.

‘Why do you care?’ he asks, bringing his mouth back to mine and kissing me with enough force to hold my head hard against the wall. His hand drops to my dress, lifting the hem, and his fingers slide between my weak, shaking legs.

‘Care...?’ I mumble. What is he talking about?

He breaks the kiss but I have no space to think—not when his fingers are sliding inside me, his hand easily pushing aside the barrier of my flimsy underpants.

Oh, my God. I’m about to come. I swear, I’m this close. He swirls his finger around my wet muscles, teasing me, feeling me, and I am his. Completely.

‘Why do you care who I fuck?’

The question is a gruff, deep demand.

I blink my eyes, trying to think straight. But he moves his thumb over my clit and I shiver, trembling in every bone of my body as I feel the wave building around me.

‘I don’t,’ I snap through gritted teeth, sweat sheening my brow.

My eyes are shut, so I don’t see him dip his head forward. It is a surprise when his mouth clamps over my breast, his teeth biting down on my nipple through the silky fabric of my dress.

My stomach lurches as he drags his teeth along my nipple, pulling, making me throb with pleasure. And his finger pushes deeper, then draws out. My own wetness glides across my clit as he thumbs my nerves, and I am lost. Exploded. Gone.

Heat shoots through me, bursting me apart, and I am panting loud and hard as he moves his head to the other breast.

Shit. It’s too much. My muscles are clenching and my legs are hardly able to hold me up. I have had amazing sex, but something about this has blown all my experiences out of the water. Is it the illicitness of being with my boss?

My boss.

Jack Grant.

I groan in awareness of a moment I will undoubtedly regret, and then I groan at my weakness because I can’t stop. There is a compulsion—no. An awakening. It is an acceptance of a truth I have fought too hard and for too long.

Two years of looks, laughs, infuriating arguments and differences of opinion have been leading to this. Two years of finding him in bed and fantasising about climbing in with him. I have resisted because he is my boss and I love my job—and because he’s Jack-bloody-Grant. I have resisted acting on my deepest desires, but now I find it is impossible not to welcome his.

His hand drops to my side. His fingers dig into my flesh just enough to make me arch my back forward, but his hips rock me against the wall, crushing me with strength and passion. Hell, he’s good at this. So, so good. So much better than I imagined.

And I’ve imagined a lot.

I whimper—a sound I don’t think I’ve ever made in my life—as he brings his mouth back to mine, but the ghost of his kiss lingers on my breasts, making them painfully sensitised.

‘Now do you think women complain after they leave me?’ he asks, and he is stepping away, backwards, his eyes glinting in his handsome face as he stares at me with a confusing lack of passion.

There is colour in his cheeks and his chest is shifting hard, as is mine, with the pain of laboured breath. But his voice is steady and his eyes are cold.

His question doesn’t make sense. I lift a finger to my breasts. They’re tingling and swollen. I stare at him, unusually slow on the uptake.

‘I give them what they want. What you want.’

And he turns sharply, stalking across the room and grabbing another drink. His back is to me as he throws back the glass and swallows, but I hardly register the movement. Shock is seeping into me. Shock at what we’ve just done.

Holy hell!

Was he proving a point? I am trembling, moistness slicks my underwear, my dress bears the marks of his kiss, my mind is tumbled—and he is nothing?

Feminine pique stirs in my gut. I fantasise about slipping the dress from my body and storming across the room. About pushing him to the floor and straddling him, making him admit he wants me.

I know he does. I felt the proof of his desire hard against my stomach. But sanity is returning, and with it the realisation that we have done something very, very stupid. There is no turning back. No unwinding time. I need to salvage my pride and get the hell out of his office before I do something really stupid. Like ask him to finish the job he started.

‘I’ll email you a full report on the server’s feasibility tomorrow.’ My words are pleasingly stiff.

He grunts. ‘There she is. My cold-as-ice assistant.’

I straighten my back. I have never been his assistant and he knows it. He’s goading me. Spoiling for another fight?

I narrow my eyes. ‘Oh, I’m not cold,’ I hear myself say. ‘I’m very, very turned on.’

Perhaps my honesty surprises him. He turns his face, angling it towards me without actually looking in my direction.

‘If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and...blow off some steam.’

I walk out of there calmly, even though I am awash with doubt. Let him make of that what he will. If he imagines me going to Wolf... So what? If he imagines me going home to masturbate, looking at a picture of him, then let him.

I don’t know if I give a shit.

It is cold when I emerge from The Mansion, and drizzling with rain.

One of the decisions I made within six months of coming to work for Jack was to move to Hampstead, where he lives. The hours I work, I don’t want to lose any more to a lengthy commute.

The Mansion is at the end of a long lane that comes out near the Heath, and just around the corner from a happy little school is my townhouse. A Dickensian brick with a shining red door and window boxes that have been sorely neglected over the summer. I should have planted them with pansies and strawberries, as they were when I first moved in, but I’ve never got around to it.

I shoulder the door inwards and slam it closed behind me with true relief.

But then I make the mistake of shutting my eyes and there he is. Jack Grant...head bent forward...mouth moving over my breast. I curse darkly—a string of angry words that would have knocked my mother sideways if she thought I even knew such language—and stride to the mirror in my entrance way.

My breasts are covered by two dark, wet marks. I lift my fingers to them and trace their outline, shuddering at remembered sensations, desperate for more. More of him. More of this.

I groan loudly and stomp through to the kitchen.

What the hell just happened? He’s my boss. My boss! And I know what he’s like. I know how messed up he is. For two years I have kept all this swirling desire at bay. Why couldn’t I control it tonight?

I pour myself a glass of wine in the hope that it will somehow reach back through time and wipe the experience not only from my memory but also from existence. It doesn’t. Each sip reminds me of him, and the faint overtone of alcohol hits the back of my throat, making me crave him.

This is not good.

I walk more slowly through the house, up the narrow stairs—two flights. The house is tall and skinny, with one or two rooms on each of its five storeys. My office is on the first floor; my bedroom and bathroom are on the next. There are three bedrooms on the next few levels, and a roof terrace right at the top. I love it, but I am not here nearly enough.

I kick my shoes off, then flick the light on with the base of my wineglass, narrowly avoiding spilling Pinot Noir on the beige carpet. I pad over the carpet and strip off the dress as I go. I’ll give it to charity as soon as I can.

In just my still-damp underpants, I climb into bed and pull the duvet up to my chin. Wineglass in hand, I stare at the wall.

It’s not that bad, is it?

People must do this kind of thing all the time. We work together. Hell, we practically live together. Something like this was kind of inevitable.

I cringe.

It’s so not okay. Wasn’t I just congratulating myself a few days ago on the Very Important Lessons I’ve learned from watching female bosses get derided and demoted over the years? Surely the cardinal sin for any woman in the workplace is to get involved with a colleague? And definitely not a senior, super-rich, super-yummy, fuck-around kind of colleague.

Ugh!

There are only a handful of us that work at The Mansion. Jack’s two assistants, his driver, a bodyguard and me. We are all bound by a strict notion of confidentiality, and I think most of his staff are too afraid of me to get on my bad side anyway. So it’s not gossip I fear.

It’s Jack. And it’s me. It’s the respect I suspect I have sacrificed by letting this happen.

Letting it happen? My brain is outraged. My brain, after all, did try to stop it.

Sorry, I wasn’t listening. I won’t make that mistake again.

I pour the wine into my mouth, wincing at the astringent taste I really don’t enjoy. I’m tired. It’s been a long day and a weird night.

The last thing on my mind as I fall into a tortured, sensual sleep is a question about what tomorrow will bring.

* * *

He’s at his desk when I arrive the next morning, coffee steaming in front of him, dark head bent. I move past, telling myself I would never do anything as cowardly as tiptoeing even as I hold my breath until I’m past his doorframe.

‘Gemma? Get in here.’

Shit.

I squeeze my eyes shut, suck in a deep breath. I can do this. We just kissed.

You didn’t ‘just kiss’. He stuck his finger deep inside you and made you come.

Shut up, brain.

He sucked on your breasts and you fell apart at the seams.

Seriously, I’m going to lobotomise myself.

‘Gemma?’

With a silent oath, I spin on my you-can-handle-anything Jimmy Choo heel and stride into his office with my very best appearance of calm.

‘Oh, hi, Jack.’

Crap. He’s wearing the pale blue shirt that makes his eyes look like bloody gemstones. It’s unbuttoned at the neck and I can see a hint of dark hair curling above the top button.

‘I didn’t realise you were here.’

His smirk shows my lie for what it is.

‘Sit.’

I arch my brow, staying exactly where I am, ignoring the wall to my left. The wall he pressed me against while he explored me intimately. My eyes stray to the bar instead. To the cocktail he was drinking last night.

‘Sit,’ he says again, and there is something in his voice that makes my nerves twitch.

There is promise in that command. Promise and heat.

‘How are you?’ The question, softly asked, makes everything inside me tremble.

‘I’m fine,’ I snap, to counteract that response. ‘And busy. What do you need?’

His smile spreads slowly across his face. It is fire and it is flame and my brain is beginning to get very, very anxious.

‘How did you sleep?’

Does he know I dreamed of him? That in my dreams he did very, very bad things to me?

I swallow, crossing my arms over my chest as the memories nip at my heels. They are in the room with us, swirling around him, me and the things we did. I can’t give them more air.

‘Did you want something?’

He stands up, and I am frozen to the spot as he moves confidently across the room, shutting the door and clicking the lock in place.

‘I slept badly,’ he says, ignoring my question, his voice sunshine on my cool flesh.

‘Mmm...?’ I murmur, making sure no warmth conveys itself to him. ‘Maybe you should have tried a sedative?’

He strides to the chair across from his and holds it out. Shooting him a look laced with my fiercest resentment, I sit down, careful not to so much as brush against his fingertips. Fingers that have now been inside me—that have not just touched me, but have breached my barriers and found my throbbing heart.

Fingers that have undone me.

I am holding my breath again. Is that how I’m going to get over this little hurdle? Suffocate myself? Is that even possible? I’m pretty sure we have some breathing trigger in our brains, but my brain is a bit pissy with me so maybe it would conveniently forget about the button.

I push air out consciously, quietly, and he takes his seat.

‘Anyway...’ I prompt impatiently.

His smile is a flicker. Is he laughing at me? Arrogant arsehole! That’d be just like him. See? That’s the problem! I know him. I’m not one of his other women. I know that he is as bastardy as he is sexy.

‘How did you sleep?’

I blink at him, my eyes wide. ‘You’ve already asked me that.’

‘You didn’t answer.’

I expel a sigh that speaks of anger. ‘Like I always do. Seriously, Jack. My desk is covered in paper. I have to get to work.’

‘I’m your work,’ he says with a shrug.

Insolent bastard.

He leans forward, and while his face is casual there is an urgency in the flecks of gold that fill his eyes. ‘Did you see him last night?’

I want to remind him of the salient fact I pointed out the night before. It’s not his damned business. But I’m not sure I can say that with such conviction now that I’ve tasted his mouth; now that I’ve been stunned by his desire.

Can I skirt around his question?

‘You’re my work? Okay, the thing is I have the New York guys waiting on contracts, you have a meeting in a week that I have to prepare for and Athens wants your input—which means my input—on a lease agreement. And I need to—’

‘Quiet.’

God! Don’t hate me, but when he’s bossy I love it. And he’s almost always bossy.

I glare at him across his desk; it’s best if he doesn’t know that this is just about my favourite version of him.

‘You’re fucking telling me to be quiet?’ I lean forward, and we’re close now: almost touching. ‘Seriously?’

‘You’re pissed off.’

‘Damn right, I am.’

His laugh is soft. Throaty. Hot. ‘Because we didn’t finish?’

I flick my eyes shut. My cheeks are hot. ‘What do you need?’

‘Are you in a relationship with him?’

‘Who?’

‘Wolf DuChamp?’

I hide a smile. ‘So you do know his name?’

‘Now I do.’

His expression is unreadable. But deep inside me something stirs. Hope. Because isn’t there an implication there that he knows about Wolf because of me? Because he wants to know about my life?

‘So? What’s the deal?’ he asks.

‘Are you jealous?’ The words are a challenge; they escape unbidden.

His response is razor-sharp. ‘Why would I be jealous?’

Crap. A stupid challenge, apparently.

‘Forget it.’ I scrape the chair back and stand, my eyes not inviting argument. ‘Is that all?’

‘You haven’t answered me. How can it be all?’

I expel a breath angrily. ‘I like him.’ I shrug.

It’s true. Not romantically, necessarily. But he’s a nice guy. Good-looking. It doesn’t matter that I’ve already ruled out a relationship.

‘Are you fucking him?’

My expression is ice—even I can feel the chill that spreads through the office.

‘Isn’t this the question that got us into trouble last night?’

He stands up, slamming his palms against the desk, his eyes lashing me. ‘Are you fucking him?’

It’s loud. Not quite a roar, but close to it. I’m startled. This is outside the bounds of anything that’s happened between us and we both know it. Then again, I guess we’ve obliterated boundaries now. They—like me—are in a state of flux. Changeability that is unpredictable and not good.

‘Go to hell.’

I turn around and walk out of his office, but my knees are shaking and I feel really weird, as if I could cry—which, for your information, I haven’t done in years. I literally don’t cry. Not at sad movies. Not when my cat died.

But I’m shaking, and if he follows me I’ll be really lost.

He doesn’t.

I storm over to my desk. I wasn’t lying or exaggerating. Piles of paper clutter every available inch of the thing. I turn my back on them and stare over the Heath, my eyes brooding.

This is a damned nightmare, isn’t it?

My brain nods along smugly. Told you so.

Chapter Three

IT HAS BEEN a week and I’m still here. What’s more, my brain and I are almost friends again. I have been behaving. Working hard, speaking politely, keeping my sexy, kinky ‘if only’ thoughts hidden behind a mask of disinterest.

Of course it helps that I’ve hardly seen Jack.

He’s been in Tokyo for four days, on a trip I would usually do with him.

Here’s how it would go: Private jet. Limousine. Luxurious hotel accommodation—his apartment there is being remodelled. Meetings. Late-night debriefing.

You get the picture, and you no doubt see the risk.

‘I have too much on,’ I said when he’d decided he needed to go personally. ‘Seriously, there’s no way I can leave the office now.’

He ground his teeth together, looked at me as though I were pulling some soppy, emotional crap and then he nodded. ‘Fine.’

He’s due back today and my desk is no clearer—it’s just a different heap of papers that covers it now. My phone bleats and I grab it up, my nerves not welcoming the intrusion.

Perhaps my impatience conveys itself in my brusque greeting.

‘You sound like shit.’

The cackling voice brings an instant smile to my face. ‘Hi, Grandma.’

‘Where’ve you been, lovey?’

‘Oh, you know...’ I eye the paperwork dubiously. ‘Living it up.’

‘If only. Let me guess. You’re at work?’

‘You called my work number, so I suspect you know the answer to that.’

Another cackle. ‘Are you coming to see me any time soon? I have something for you.’

‘Another lecture on my priorities?’

‘You’re a smart girl. You know your priorities are out of order.’ She sighs. ‘Take it from a woman at the end of her journey. There’s a big, beautiful world out there, and even if you devote your life entirely to travelling you’ll still never get to see everywhere and everything.’

‘God, that makes me feel both nauseated and claustrophobic. It’s saccharine and overly sentimental even for you, Grandma.’

She laughs. I love her laugh. My grandma shines a light with her smile alone.

‘Everyone’s allowed a bit of sentimentalism at some point, aren’t they? Especially at my age.’

‘I travel everywhere,’ I point out, flicking my calendar onto my screen and scanning it. ‘In fact I’m off to Australia next week.’

Crap. With Jack.

‘Oh, yes? That wouldn’t be a work trip, would it?’

I grin. ‘No. And by no, I mean yes—but I imagine I’ll still get time to pet a koala.’

‘You know they’re not just crawling around the streets? You actually need to go bush to find one.’

I burst out laughing. ‘“Go bush”? Grandma, you’re a Duchess. I think it’s in the manual that you’re not allowed to “go bush”—or go anywhere, really.’

I’m not joking. Grandma really is a Duchess. She married my grandpa, who was a decade her senior and had come back from the Second World War with what we’d now know as post-traumatic stress disorder. She was a nurse, and his family hired her to care for him—to “fix” him. She quit on the first day. There wasn’t anything wrong with him, she declared. He was just different.

They got engaged that afternoon.

It’s the only fairytale I believe in—and only because it has a macabre degree of reality to it. Grandma did fix him. He made her a princess—of the social variety—and she made him whole in a different way, just like she said.

We lost him years ago, and now she’s the one who’s a little bit broken. But still amazing. The most beautiful person in my life. My other constant.

Jack and Grandma. Great. An emotionally closed-off sexy widower that I should definitely know better than to want, and a champagne-swilling octogenarian, relic of the aristocracy. These two are the anchors in my life...

I shake my head, my smile rueful.

‘Pish! I’ll have you know I went bush and did a great many other things in my time.’ She sighs heavily. ‘And now it’s your time—and you’re spending it in some ghoulish house on the edge of the moors.’

‘It’s a mansion, actually, with state-of-the-art offices. And it’s Hampstead Heath—not a moor.’

‘Still...’ A huff of impatience. ‘You’ll come this weekend?’

‘I promise.’

I click in my calendar and make a note. Without entering my plans straight into my calendar I’m running blind. My eyes are dragged of their own accord to the entry for my parents’ anniversary. Ugh.

‘I suppose you got your invitation?’

‘Mmm...’ It’s a noise of agreement that could mean a thousand things. ‘Very elegant paper.’

I stifle a laugh. ‘Stiff and unyielding.’

My implication hangs in the air, unspoken.

‘Ah, well. At least there’ll be booze.’

‘And lots of it.’

I run a finger over my desk. Grandma and I got rather unceremoniously sloshed at the previous year’s anniversary affair. If we hadn’t been related by blood to the bride du jour we definitely wouldn’t have been invited back.

‘We’ll do a rehearsal at the weekend,’ she says, and I hear the wink in her words.

‘Perfect. See you then.’

‘Good, darling. Ta-ta.’

My phone rings again almost as soon as I hang up, and the smile is still playing on my lips as I lift the receiver and hook it beneath my ear. ‘Yeah?’

‘Gemma.’

His voice gushes through me like a tidal wave crashes over the shore. We’ve been in constant contact while he’s been travelling—but only via email or text, and only in the most businesslike sense.

At no point has he reminded me of the way his mouth pushed me back, tasting me, robbing me of comprehension and hammering every last one of my senses. At no point have we discussed how he made me come against the wall of his office.

Hearing his voice now is as intimate and personal as if he strode into the room and straddled me, reached down and kissed me...

‘I’m meeting some clients in the City. I need that presentation on the Tokyo project, as well as an up-to-date cost analysis and the report I had done. Meet me in an hour.’

It almost sounds like a question, but we both know it isn’t. My body hums with vibrations. I’m going to see him again. It’s the most alive I’ve felt in a week. My abdomen clenches in anticipation. Of what?

My body is getting carried away, but thankfully my brain is still lucid-ish. ‘Fine,’ I hear my brain say, cool and unconcerned. Liar.

There’s a pause and I wonder what’s coming next. ‘Good.’

The little tick of approval sends a thrill along my spine. I hate that. I repress my pleasure.

‘And, Gemma? Rose has something for you.’

I gather the documents he needs and quickly run through the project presentation, then step out of my office, laden with files and my MacBook Air.

Sophia and Rose are in the office they share, heads bent, and I smile crisply at them. ‘I’m meeting Jack in the City. He says you have something for me?’

I address the question to Rose, who reaches into her desk and pulls out an envelope. It has his dark, confident writing across the front. My name, scrawled in his handwriting. I resist the urge to run my fingertip over the letters.

‘Thanks.’ I nod crisply and Sophia reaches for her phone before I’ve said another word.

‘Hughes—Miss Picton is travelling to the City.’

‘Thanks.’ I nod, pleased that things are working efficiently.

I hired Sophia to replace the last of Jack’s assistants to quit. He’s run through about six since losing Lucy; my own job has been filled a dozen times at least. I think it kind of bonds Sophia and me—a similar determination not to fail runs through us both.

‘Will you be long? Shall I move your two o’clock?’ asks Rose.

I can’t reach my phone and can’t remember off the top of my head what I have at two. I guess my blank stare conveys that, because Rose smiles at me kindly. How she’s managed to work for Jack for three years is beyond me. She’s a butter-wouldn’t-melt kind of woman, and yet there’s a quality to her that makes her oblivious to Jack’s demanding requests and lack of charm.

‘Carrie Johnson.’

‘Right.’ I nod distractedly, thinking only of the mysterious envelope. It’s small and there’s something inside.

Carrie is my friend who’s looking for a new job—I have her in mind for something with the foundation, though I don’t know exactly what yet. She was made redundant in the last round of restructuring at her company, and she’s brilliant and incisive—far too clever to let go.

‘Yeah, shift it to tomorrow. Thanks. Please apologise for me.’

‘Here.’ Sophia scrapes her chair back and walks towards me with outstretched arms. ‘I’ll help you to the car.’

I hand over some of the papers gratefully. The offices are in a separate wing of The Mansion, and we step out onto the short path that winds through a manicured garden before opening out into a gravelled courtyard. It’s really well designed to keep business away from personal life—not that Jack has much of a personal life outside his fuck-fests.

At least, not that I know of.

I slide into the back of the limo, distracted; I don’t think I even acknowledge Hughes, which is unusual because I like him and we usually have a nice banter going.

You know everything there is to know about me.

I’m startled. The words come from nowhere and I look over my shoulder, half expecting to see Jack’s cynical smile. Is that even true? Do I really know him that well?

We’ve spent a heap of time together, that’s true. But I don’t know if I would say I consider us well acquainted. Out of nowhere the memory of his lips on mine sears me, pressing me back into the leather seat with a groan.

I reach for the envelope, and now I give in to temptation, running my finger over his scrawled writing before tearing the top off.

My emotions are mixed as the object inside falls into my palm.

The distinctive dark red foil denoting a Cherry Ripe confectionery bar is instantly recognisable. I check the envelope for a note; there isn’t one. But his meaning is clear.

I can’t help it. I tear the paper off the bar and inhale.

Cherries will remind me of Jack forever. I don’t think I can say I hate them anymore.

My gut clenches as I recall the intimate way his finger circled me, teasing every nerve ending, finding where to press to make me moan.

Fuck.

A shiver dances along my spine and it is still pulsing even as the car pulls into the underground car park of the City high-rise that houses Jack’s offices. I gather he used to be based here a lot more. It was only after Lucy died that he set up shop, so to speak, at his home.

I make a point of smiling brightly at Hughes as I step out of the limo, laden with documents.

‘Need a hand, ma’am?’

‘I’m fine,’ I demur.

I can’t help but wonder if my cheeks are burning after the delicious thoughts that have travelled along with me.

Why did he stop? What happened to push him away from me?

I wanted everything. I wanted him. That technically makes me a complete idiot, right? Because I know he’s a total man-whore, and I know it would make my job pretty untenable to be fucking Jack, but in that moment none of it had mattered.

Which only goes to show that I need to be even more on my guard with him.

I am not going to let this get out of hand. There are plenty of hot guys out there. Plenty of men who can kiss you like you’re their dying breath.

Except I don’t think that’s necessarily true...

I’ve dated a fair few guys—most of them smart, handsome, powerful. I have a thing for that sort of man, I suppose. But none of them has done this to me. My mind is still mushy. I only have to close my eyes and remember the way it felt to have his body pressed hard to mine, almost holding me up with the weight of his strength, and I’m having palpitations and flushing to the roots of my hair.

The lift whooshes up and reminds me of the glass elevator in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It seems to be building up speed as we get nearer the top, and my tummy lurches as I imagine it bursting through the ceiling and flying into outer space.

It doesn’t.

Is it wrong that I’m just a teeny bit disappointed? I always thought that looked to be so much fun—the way that elevator flew all over London’s skyline.

The offices are buzzing, and it’s so strange to be back in this kind of environment that I freeze for a moment, simply soaking in the noises. Anywhere else I’ve worked, it’s been like this. I was like a headless chicken most days, surrounded by people who were every bit as harried and exhausted as I was. Exhaustion used to bleed into energy, so that I fed off a state of perpetual tiredness.

Someone rushes past, arms full of papers, and that reminds me that I need to do something with the files I’m carrying. I begin moving quickly down the carpeted corridor, eyes straight ahead lest I be called upon to answer a query. The problem with being Jack’s right-hand woman is that people see me as a substitute for him. I cannot visit this office without being waylaid with a dozen queries at least. Only I don’t feel like talking to anyone at this point in time.

The conference room is at the end of the corridor. Two enormous timber doors provide entry to it. I shoulder my way in, making straight for the table, and I’ve just dropped the files down onto its glass top when I realise I’m not alone.

There’s a movement to my right. No, a shadow more than a movement. But it captures my eye and I turn around slowly, careful to keep my expression neutral, because deep down I know who it is.

‘You’re here already,’ I murmur, pleased with how unaffected I sound.

Especially when he’s wearing his charcoal Armani suit with a crisp white shirt. And a dark grey tie. Oh, God, help me. I turn around, on the pretext of straightening the documents, but I feel the moment he starts to walk towards me and sweep my eyes shut.

My heart is pounding and my blood is gushing. What happened to pretending not to be affected by him? To keeping him at a distance?

‘I’d say it’s quicker to get here from City Airport than it is from my place.’

His voice is barely above a growl. It’s primal and animalistic and a slick of heat runs through me.

‘How was Tokyo?’ I skirt around the table, laying information packs down as I go, checking each space has a glass of water.

He shrugs. ‘Fine. And here?’

But his eyes are dropping. He’s looking at my breasts as though he wants to take them into his mouth. As though he’s remembering the way it felt to suck my nipple through the fabric of my shirt.

I moan, low and soft, so soft I don’t think he catches it, but his lips flicker and I am in serious trouble. They are beautiful lips. Not full, but rather sculpted as if from stone. His face is peppered with stubble, as though he hasn’t shaved the whole time he’s been away.

I turn away, my breath uneven. I don’t know what to do.

‘As usual,’ I say, no longer dispassionate, no longer smooth. My voice is jerky and unnatural.

I want to kiss him.

I need to kiss him.

I realise it in an instant and I turn around, back towards him. Our eyes meet and I feel a pulse of heat that I know I’m not imagining. It’s a need so deep, so desperate, that I instantly imagine us fucking on the glass-topped conference table.

Is he thinking the same thing?

He takes a step towards me, his eyes latched to mine, his expression almost haunted. I part my lips on a breath and he stops just in front of me, catching that breath with his chest, and I can almost feel his lips on mine. It’s a phantom kiss, but no less mesmerising than a real kiss because he’s so close I can smell him...I can feel the warmth emanating from him.

‘Did you get the chocolate bar?’ he asks, and I feel my skin heat with memories.

I nod.

‘Did you miss me?’

His voice is low and hoarse. I should laugh at him. That’s what I would usually do. So why does his question fill me with a dawning despair? I can’t ignore it. I’m suffocating under the realisation that I have missed him.

‘Yeah, right,’ I mutter, hoping it sounds more convincing to him than it does to me. ‘I’ve been sitting in my office pining for you every day. One kiss and I’ve been writing your name in my notebook with little love hearts around it.’

I roll my eyes for good measure and so miss the moment he narrows his.

Jack isn’t a man to be mocked. I know that, but honestly I wasn’t intending to goad him. And yet I’m in no way surprised when his mouth crashes down on mine—for real this time, nothing phantom about it.

His hands pull through my hair, letting it out of the bun I looped it into earlier this morning. His fingers fist around it, holding my head under his so that his mouth has full access to me. And he plunders me. There’s no other way to describe it. His mouth is a weight on mine and his tongue is angry.

Fierce heat pools between my legs.

He pulls on my hair as his mouth pushes mine, bending me backwards until my spine is on the conference table.

‘Did you miss me?’ It’s a demand now, as he separates my legs and stands between them.

His cock is hard. I can feel it and unconsciously I writhe lower, trying to press myself against him, to connect myself to him.

His laugh is a dark imitation of the sound. ‘Not now.’

It’s a gruff warning, but insanity is cutting across me. I need him. If I don’t have him I am going to scream. Sense is gone. Rational thought impossible. Even my brain seems to have momentarily forgotten itself.

I’m wearing a grey woollen dress and he rubs his hand over my breast, cupping it, holding me tight as his fingers graze my nipple. The fabric of the dress is coarse and the friction is unbearable.

His kiss is an insufficient prelude. I need so much more.

‘More?’ he murmurs, and I realise I must have spoken aloud.

He pushes my dress up my legs, and groans when he connects with the lace tops of my stockings. He digs a finger under one of my suspenders and then snaps it, hard, so that I make a sound of complaint. It’s quickly muffled by a groan of pleasure as his fingers find my panties, pulling them roughly down my legs.

He stares at me and I wonder if I look as wanton as I feel. Hair tumbling around me like a golden halo, face pink, dress hitched up around my waist, legs spread around him.

His eyes are mocking as they meet mine. ‘Haven’t missed me, huh?’

I know I should say something sassy, pithy. Put him in his place. If his hard-on is anything to go by he’s missed me, too. Or fantasised about me, at least.

‘Like a hole in the head,’ I murmur, but it’s lacking spark.

He laughs, his hands firm around my calves as he spreads my legs wider, and before I can anticipate what he’s going to do he brings his mouth down on me, running his tongue across my opening, lashing me with that same intensity he’s just kissed me with. He pummels me, his tongue flicks my clit, and I am crumbling. I arch my back and stretch my arms over my head, my whole body trembling as wave after wave of need builds inside me. I’m so close to coming that I have to bite down on my lip to stop myself crying out.

‘Have you missed me?’

He brings his mouth higher, dragging his tongue over my belly button, and his fingers push my dress up my body. His fingers find one of my nipples through the fabric of my lace bra and I jerk, because I am too sensitive already. I am only seconds from falling apart.

‘Please...’ I groan, moving my hips nearer to him, needing him to release me from this sensual torture.

‘Please what?’ he asks with a quiet anger I don’t understand.

‘Please,’ I insist.

‘Say it.’

Our eyes clash; it’s a battle of the wills. I don’t care enough to try to win it. At one time I would have fought tooth and nail, but not now. Now only one thing matters to me.

‘Fuck me, Jack.’

‘Here? In the boardroom at my office?’

I am going to hell. I don’t even want to think about what my brain’s going to have to say.

‘Yes. Now. Please. Fuck me,’ I whimper, so hot that I need him to do something. To fix this.

I drop my hand to my clit, but when I touch myself he grabs my wrist and pulls it away.

‘No, that’s cheating,’ he whispers, his eyes on me as he loosens his belt and pushes his pants down just enough to release his gorgeous, glorious cock for me to see. I’ve seen it so many times, but now...? It’s for me.

‘Please...’

His eyes hold mine as he layers protection over his length, quickly, easily.

I push forward on the table, seeking him, and then he thrusts inside me, slamming me hard, and I feel the coiling of a pleasure that I cannot control. It is hot and fierce, and I cry out at the invasion that is so much better than my wildest fantasies.

His hands on my shoulders pull me up; he’s so strong and I am lost in the moment. He pulls me against him and lifts me off the table so I can take him deeper, and I have a fleeting moment of gratitude for the heavy tint on the windows that surround the boardroom. His cock is spearing me, and I am wrapped around him, and he kisses me again—a kiss of such ownership and possession that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to lie to him again.

I did miss him.

‘You want this?’ he asks me, lifting my hips easily, gliding me up his length before pushing me down and making me cry out, my back arched, my nipples hard.

I nod.

‘I didn’t hear that.’

‘I want this,’ I groan, my fingers tearing through his hair, my mind completely scattered.

His laugh is throaty as he lifts me once more, but this time he eases me down to the floor, stroking up my dress as he goes.

I know outrage must show in my face, and I know he appreciates that.

‘You want me.’

Mortification, anger and impatience are firing bullets across my desire.

I reach down and cup his hard-on, my eyes issuing him with a challenge. ‘And you want me.’

He nods slowly, his eyes locked to mine. There is no mockery there now; instead I see something darker. Resentment.

‘I want you.’

He turns away from me, pulling his pants up, buckling his belt, his shoulders set square.

He turns to face me, his expression suddenly businesslike. ‘We’ll talk after the meeting.’

I blink. The meeting. Shit. It’s the reason I’m here but how quickly I’ve forgotten its existence.

My eyes fly to the clocks on the wall, each showing a different time zone. There are minutes to go before the others are expected, which means they could literally arrive now. I run my hands down my dress, then neaten my hair. No time to pin it back into a bun so I just smooth it with the palms of my hands until it sits neatly around my face.

I turn to face him, intending to ask for my underpants back. But the look he gives me is so fulminating that I lose my voice.

‘You look like you’ve just been fucked,’ he says darkly, and I sweep my eyes shut, shame spiralling through me.

What the hell has come over me?

I stalk towards him, my hand extended, waiting for the scrap of lace he must have somewhere, but he grabs my hand and jerks me against him once more.

‘I like the way you taste.’

And he pushes me against the glass, and his hand pushes between my legs, and he pads a thumb over my clit. I’m already at breaking point. His body traps mine, but he doesn’t kiss me. He watches me from a distance as he torments me with his thumb, moving faster until my breath is ragged and my eyes are huge.

‘I want to taste you tonight. I want to spread your legs and dip my tongue inside you. Then I want to flip you over and take you from behind. You are so fucking hot when you’re turned on.’

I whimper—a sound of pure confusion—because the pleasure of his words combined with the torment of his touch is almost more than I can bear.

I swear—a low, throbbing whisper—as my pleasure bursts like a waterfall. I come. I come hard. And as I do he slips a finger deep inside me, swirling it against my walls as my muscles contract. He stays there as I fall apart and then he glides his finger out and lifts it to his mouth, sucking on it while his eyes watch me.

The door is pushed inwards. It happens so quickly. I am still breathless, and I’m sure my orgasm is written all over my face. It’s not like it was my first time, but this was Jack. He’s Jack Grant—seriously sexy.

He should come with a health warning.

I hear my colleagues move into the room and I turn away on the pretext of getting myself a coffee from the back of the room.

He still has my underwear, and the tops of my legs are wet with the evidence of my own satisfaction. My breath is uneven.

God, this is going to be the longest hour of my life.

* * *

‘Gem.’

Is that what everyone in the universe except me calls her? Her back has been towards me for at least three minutes and I’ve gone through the greetings and I’m waiting for her to turn around. I want to see her full red lips, her messy hair, her passion-soaked expression, and I want to know that I did that to her.

She angles her head sideways to greet Barry Moore, one of the transition team consultants on the Tokyo deal. ‘Hey...’

Her smile is cool, her expression calm. The only sign that she was ravaged by me only minutes ago is that her nipples are straining against the fabric of her dress—something that might be explained by the ice-cold air conditioning.

‘You did a great job on the summaries—thanks.’

‘You got my email, then?’ Her voice is calm and clipped, as always, those haughty, aristocratic syllables like plums in her mouth.

‘On the flight over.’ He nods, his eyes briefly dipping to her breasts so that I am flooded by an urgent need to bodily shove him aside.

‘Jack? Shall we begin?’

I draw my attention away reluctantly, turning to the manager of the takeover team. ‘Yes. Take a seat.’

I nod towards the table and find myself drawn to one seat in particular. I press my hands to the tabletop, right where Gemma’s legs were spread, and my eyes seek hers.

She meets them with fierce resentment.

She’s pissed at me.

I just made her come in what I gather to have been a spectacular fashion and she’s angry with me. Mind you, I guess I didn’t really choose my time or place well. Leaving her breathless and wet right as some of the company’s most senior staff filed into the room might explain her anger with me.

I sit down, my eyes not shying away from hers.

She chooses a seat at the other end of the table, on the opposite side. I cross an ankle over my knee and something catches my eye. Something dark and small. With a smile, I reach down and lift her underpants off the floor, palming them thoughtfully.

Her eyes are watching me and I see embarrassment creep along her cheeks, creating a hole in the armour of her professional composure. Her beautiful neck moves visibly as she swallows. And while I have her attention I lift my finger to my mouth and run it over my lower lip thoughtfully, tasting her openly.

Even from this distance I hear her sharp intake of breath and I smile.

I’m going to make her do that a lot.

Chapter Four

‘I BELIEVE YOU have something of mine.’

Like my dignity. My self-control.

The meeting took almost two hours, and I managed to concentrate for the most part. But every now and again my insides would clench, reminding me that Jack had driven himself inside me—that he’d made me come against the glass windows of his boardroom and he hadn’t experienced the same pleasure. I should have felt satisfied by that, but instead I was annoyed. Like he had proved how easily he could tear me apart and I hadn’t done the same to him.

‘Yeah...’

His smile makes my heart pound. Desire is slick in my blood, heavy and needy.

‘So?’ I put my hand out, then retract it, remembering belatedly that he has a habit of yanking me towards him when I give him the chance.

‘So...’ He reaches into his pocket and retrieves the underpants. ‘I like the idea of you not wearing them.’

I roll my eyes. ‘What a cliché. Do you expect me to dress a certain way for you from now on?’

His smile is a flicker at the corner of his lips. ‘No...’

He wraps an arm around me easily, pulling me to him. Of course he doesn’t need my hand as an invitation. He has arms and hands of his own, and if he wants to touch me Jack Grant isn’t going to wait for a bloody invitation.

‘But if you did I’d enjoy doing what we just did over and over.’

I’m wet again. I can feel it building and I know that only fucking him—properly—is going to release this beast of need inside me. But I’m still fuming with Jack. How dare he do that to me right before an important meeting?

‘No way,’ I snap. ‘Never again.’

He raises a brow, his smile genuinely amused. ‘Really?’

And he reaches around for my hand, dragging it to his cock. I stare at him, challenging him, showing him I’m not afraid, as he curls my fingers around his length, rock hard inside his suit pants. My heart begins to bang into my ribs so hard that I absent-mindedly wonder if anyone has ever broken a bone that way.

‘You don’t want me to sprawl you out on the table and fuck you so hard you forget your own name?’

I want that so badly—but I have enough self-respect to know that he’s playing with me. That the way he can knock me sideways is insulting.

And so I shrug. ‘I think you’ve got a pretty fucking exaggerated idea of your abilities in bed.’

His laugh sends sparks of warnings through me. ‘Really?’

‘I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.’

I jerk away from him but my hand forms a fist; it wants to go back. To grab his cock and hold it tight.

‘You want a demonstration of how wrong you are?’

‘Arrogant son of a bitch...’ I mutter, my eyes scanning the room until they land on my vintage Balenciaga bag.

I scoop it up, sending him a fulminating look. ‘Keep them.’

I want him to chase me. To follow me and slam the door shut. To press me against it and moan into my mouth. To beg me to get on the floor and let him take me. Because at the smallest sign of conciliatory, normal behaviour I would do anything Jack asked of me.

But he doesn’t.

I leave and I don’t even know if he watches me go—I am too proud to turn around and check. My knees are shaking as I make my way through the corridor. It’s only early afternoon, and I have a mountain of work to do, but suddenly I’m not in the mood.

I don’t want to be near Jack.

Oh, really? my brain prompts sarcastically, rolling its eyes with such force that my head starts to throb. Really?

Really.

I jab my finger onto the lift’s ‘down’ button and wait. As I step in I see Jack emerge from the boardroom, looking every bit the confident billionaire bachelor.

Ugh.

I press the button for the car park impatiently, and slam my palm against the ‘door shut’ button, holding my breath and praying I can avoid a shared lift ride with Jack to the basement. I’m not sure if I’d shout at him or jump him but neither is advisable.

I tell myself I’m glad when he doesn’t arrive, jam his hand in the closing doors, out of breath from racing to catch me like men do in movies. The lift cruises downwards, taking my plummeting stomach with it.

Hughes is waiting in the limousine. I smile at him tersely as he steps out and opens the door for me, grateful to slide into the luxurious leather interior. I stare at the screen of my phone and that ridiculous sense that I might cry is back.

What the hell is happening to me?

I tap out a quick email to Sophia, asking her to clear the rest of my afternoon—from memory I had a phone conference scheduled and I’m really not in the mood. Nothing won’t wait until tomorrow.

I double-check the itinerary I’ve been sent for the Australia trip—it’s jam-packed, but that makes sense. Jack’s too busy—and so am I, come to think of it—to go halfway around the world on holiday.

He’s setting up an office in Sydney, which will start with a staff of almost four hundred to oversee two of the companies he’s recently acquired there, as well as a winery in New Zealand that he’s bidding on, should he be successful. It’s a huge venture, and it’s the first time I’ve been involved in anything like it.

Challenges like this are another reason I love working for Jack. Really, I was hardly qualified for this kind of job when I started working for him—my background in law and then banking give me excellent corporate insights, and yet this just works. He’s always challenged me. Trusted me. Thrown down gauntlets and stood back to watch me pick them up.

He’s doing it now, isn’t he? Pushing me in ways I could never have imagined. But instead of meeting his challenge I’m acting like a terrified child.

A frown tugs at my lips. Why have I just run away from him? He wants to fuck me and I want that, too.

The car door opens abruptly and I tilt my head upwards, expecting to see Hughes’s face. It’s Jack instead, and he’s visibly pissed off.

Ignoring the way my pulse immediately starts to fire in my veins, I send him a look of barbed curiosity. ‘Yes? Can I help you?’

He doesn’t answer. Instead he leans forward and taps on the glass that separates Hughes from us, then settles back into the seat beside me. The car glides out of its parking space, moving through the underground car park with finesse.

‘Jack?’ I snap, angling in my seat to face him fully.

‘Not now.’

My eyebrows shoot upwards. Even for the dictatorial side of Jack, this is a tad too much. ‘“Not now”?’

‘No.’ He turns to face me, and there’s such a searing...something in his expression that I blink several times, trying to understand him. This—us.

But I get nada.

‘Okay, but I think we need to talk,’ I respond after a moment.

He glares at me and my temper bubbles. ‘I don’t want to talk. I want to fuck.’

My jaw drops. ‘You don’t just get to say that!’

A muscle jerks in his cheek. He turns away from me, sits back in the seat, his body rigid, his face tight.

‘Not another word.’

I’m not afraid of Jack. Not even a bit. Many times I’ve gone up against him, arguing my case until he either sees it my way or at least understands my perspective. I won’t do that now. I’m too fond of Hughes, and the idea of subjecting him to the tirade I’m about to unleash doesn’t appeal to me, so I bite my tongue—literally—curling my fingernails into my palms as I stare out at the City.

It takes me a moment to realise we’re not going towards Hampstead.

‘I want to go home,’ I say coldly.

His look is one of silent impatience, but before he can say anything the car pulls into yet another underground car park and comes to a stop right near the lift.

I can’t describe how lost and confused I feel. I’m a swirling tempest of rage and insecurity, uncertainty and doubt. It’s as though I’m in the middle of a swamp, reeds tangled around my ankles, water rising.

I want to fight with him. I’m angry. But I don’t know what about! Putting into words what I feel seems impossible.

And then he speaks.

‘Come with me.’

Three simple words, but they are enough because there is a plea in their depths.

I nod slowly, and there’s a plea in that, too. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t use me. I haven’t even realised I feel it until this moment, but the idea of becoming to Jack what all those other women are is unpalatable. I weigh that against my need for him, and desire wins. I can only hope I won’t regret it.

He pushes the button for the lift and then swipes a keycard. Soon the elevator is soaring towards the heavens—I’m in another lift, only this time with Jack Grant by my side.

‘Am I allowed to talk now?’

He glares at me, then stares ahead until the lift doors open.

I guess not.

I stand with my hands on my hips, angrily admonishing him with my look. ‘Nuh-uh. I’m not getting out until you tell me what’s going on.’

‘What’s going on?’ His tone shows incredulity.

He turns back into the elevator and lifts me easily, throwing me over his shoulder in a way I have only ever fantasised about. He carries me into an apartment—a palatial space. I gain a brief impression of glass, steel, white leather furniture and a state-of-the-art kitchen before he’s storming down a tiled hallway and turning into a room.

A bedroom.

With an enormous bed in the centre and floor-to-ceiling windows that show a glinting view of London below.

‘You are driving me crazy—that’s what’s going on. And I don’t want to want you like this. I’m sick of waking up about to fucking explode because I’ve been dreaming about you. I’m sick of looking at you and imagining you naked every time we’re in the same damned room.’

He drops me onto the bed but I’m too shocked by his angry confession to care. So he does feel it, too—this burning, all-consuming, unwanted, unwelcome, unasked-for need.

‘So, if it’s all the same to you, I want to fuck you properly—right out of my head—so we can go back to working together like damned adults instead of horny teenagers.’

My breath is burning my lungs, exploding out of me in fierce bursts. ‘You think you can fuck me out of your head?’

‘Yes.’ He stares down at me, flicking his shirt open button by button.

My eyes follow his movement and though I’ve seen him naked before it was never like this. He’s never been naked for me.

‘Why? Why now?’

‘Because I need you now.’

Still, my brain is shouting at me and, having ignored it in the past and had it lead me into disastrous temptation, I push up on my elbows and roll off the other side of the bed.

His eyes stay trained on me even as he continues to undress, and my throat is dry, parched. I feel like I’ve been dropped from a great height; I’m in free fall with nothing to grab. Gravity no longer exists.

‘How dare you? You drag me here, to your...your...lair...’ I spit angrily, only to have Jack burst out laughing.

‘My lair?’ He throws his head back.

He’s so sexy. God, this isn’t fair. I know what I should do. I know what I need to do. But he is laughing at me, and my pride is being thumped with each sound he makes.

I jump back onto the bed, storm across it quickly and step off the other side, surprising him with the force of my body against his, knocking him partway to the floor. He catches his balance, his hands steadying me even as I keep on pushing until we are at the wall.

‘I’m not some nuisance you can get rid of. An itch you can scratch and lose.’ I push a fingernail into his chest and glare up at him, my eyes firing at his.

‘So what are you?’ he demands roughly, his chest moving with each strained breath. ‘Why are you all I can think of lately? Why do you consume my every damned waking thought? What sort of magic is this?’

I have needed to hear these words and they fill me with something I don’t understand. There is awe and confusion, and anger, too—because he is just like Mr Darcy, telling me he loves me against his will.

Only Jack’s not promising love so much as sex, and Mr Darcy would never have made Elizabeth Bennet come pressed hard against a glass window on the forty-second floor of a high-rise in the City of London.

You know what else Lizzy wouldn’t have done...?

I drop to my knees in front of him, and before he can guess what I want, or say anything to stop me, I move my mouth over his length, taking him deep—so deep that I feel him connect with the back of my throat.

‘Holy hell, Gemma,’ he groans, but he doesn’t pull away.

His hands drop to my hair, tangling in its blond lengths. It is still wild around my face from when he almost fucked me in his office. His fingers pull at it and I glide my mouth over his shaft, rolling my tongue across its tip and tasting just enough of him to make my insides clench with fevered desire. I squeeze my fingers around his length and then take him deep inside my mouth again, my eyes travelling up his honed body to meet his. I see the swirling depths of emotion in them...I see that he is as lost as I am...and it is all that keeps me going.

If I’m going to feel like I have no clue who I am anymore then he should, too.

I move my mouth faster, rolling my tongue over his sensitive tip each time I am close to pulling away completely, and then his hands on my hair tighten, slowing me down, holding me still. His breath is rough, and I taste more of him spilling into my mouth.

I try to take him deeper but his fingers hold me still, the pressure on my scalp almost painful.

‘This isn’t going to end that quickly,’ he says darkly, pulling me away completely and staring down at me before reaching beneath my arms and lifting me to stand. He stares into my eyes and there is so much triumph in my face that he must see it.

‘Holy hell, Gemma,’ he says again after a moment, and pulls me back towards the bed.

My heart twists achingly in my chest. He pushes me backwards, onto the middle of the mattress, and bends down, grabbing for something off the floor.

A second later I see what it is: his belt. He’s naked—spectacularly so—and so hard and firm. He runs his hands over my arms, catching my wrists and pinning them over my head.

‘Do you trust me?’ he asks—deep, throaty, gravelled.

I shake my head but my lips are twitching. ‘I trust you to make me come. I don’t know if I trust you with anything else right now.’

His laugh is soft as he loops the belt in and out of the bedposts, and then grabs my wrists and incorporates them into it, pinning my arms behind me and above my head. It’s not particularly comfortable.

‘Then let me make you come again and again and again, Gemma.’

Gemma. The way he says my name like that—rich with passion and want—makes my body catch fire. Like it’s not already an inferno!

He pushes at my dress, his hands on my thighs intimate. I still have no underwear on and he smiles to see my nakedness.

‘You are beautiful,’ he grunts, almost as though he’s never noticed me before.

He brings his mouth down against me and I jerk my arms, wanting to touch him.

He laughs. ‘And you’re mine.’

Butterflies ravage me angrily. I am his. For this moment...for this night. Is this how it always is with him? When he makes love to those other women does it feel to them as though they are the only woman in the world?

The idea of being one of them is anathema to me.

‘Remember what I told you in the boardroom?’

He pushes the dress higher, over my breasts, then leaves it bunched under my arms while he turns his attention to the scrap of lace that covers me. He doesn’t bother to unclasp it—just lifts my breasts out of the delicate cups, bringing his mouth close to one of them and breathing warm air over the sensitive, erect nipple.

I arch my back instinctively and he laughs. ‘Do you want this?’ he murmurs, flicking it with his tongue, then circling the darker flesh slowly, teasing me, taunting me.

I nod, incoherent with need. ‘I want everything,’ I say seriously.

‘Everything?’

‘All of this,’ I agree, pulling at my hands again, not caring that I am conceding all that I am to him. ‘Please,’ I add.

‘Do you remember what I said?’

He is insistent. What did he say? ‘Not to wear underpants again?’

He laughs, and then his teeth clamp down on my nipple and I cry out. The pleasure radiates through my body, slick in my abdomen.

‘That, too.’

He rubs his stubble over my nipple and it’s so sensitive from his mouth that I make a soft sound of surprise.

‘I said I am going to fuck you until you can’t remember your own name. Okay?’

I nod. I am lost, and I need him to see that. ‘What’s happening to us?’

His smile is haunted as he slides a condom over himself once more. ‘What’s happening? I think I’ve finally found my cure—that’s what’s happening.’

And he thrusts into me, so deep and hard and fast that the peculiar statement is lost. I am lost. I jerk my wrists so that the belt pulls against my skin, and I cry out in frustration that I can’t touch him like I want to.

He is so big, and his dick reaches places inside me that I didn’t know existed. He moves his mouth to my other breast and lashes his tongue against me as he pounds me hard. My hands jerk above my head. I am his prisoner, but even without the belt at my wrists I would be.

‘Are you on the pill?’ he demands, and I nod.

I am incoherent with pleasure, saying his name over and over again. My body is on fire. He is its master. His hands are rough on my smooth skin. He touches me everywhere as he moves inside me, thrusting deep, and still I want more.

‘Please!’ I cry out, not even sure what I’m begging for now.

But he knows what I need. Somehow he has mastered my body already, even though we are so new to one another. He pushes inside me and rolls his hips. I lift mine to meet him and I’m exploding, falling apart and flying at the same time, dropping through the earth’s core as my body tries to cope with these sensations.

I groan loudly, wrapping my legs around his waist, holding him right where he is. But before the waves of my pleasure have begun to subside he guides my legs over his shoulders, so that I am bent over myself and he is so deep I see stars. Pleasure is tingling through me and he blows through it, rocking me in rhythm with his needs, kissing the sensitive flesh behind my knees before running his fingers lower to cup my arse.

I am shuddering with the strength of what he’s doing to me. Then he pulls out, and I almost sob with the emptiness that threatens to cut me in half.

His laugh is dark. An acknowledgement that he understands.

His hands on my hips are strong; he flips me easily onto my stomach and my arms are crisscrossed, my dress tangled around my breasts and my neck.

I don’t have time to tell him this, or to shift and adjust myself. He spreads my legs wide, puts an arm under my belly and lifts me higher. And then he drives into me from behind. He brushes against new nerves, makes me feel new things, and I gather from the muttered string of dark curses that fill the room that this is different for him, too.

His fingers dig into my hips as he holds me steady, thrusting into me and making me different, somehow. He drops forward, kissing my shoulder, dragging his mouth down my back before biting me on the arse—gently, but enough to make me groan. And then he’s sucking the flesh at the small of my back, and I wonder if I’m going to have a mark there afterwards.

His finger between my arse cheeks surprises me. It is not somewhere I’ve been touched before, but it’s only the lightest suggestion of a touch. A finger lightly pressing against my butt. A curious flash of wonder flies through me. But instinctively I shy away from it and he understands, laughing and moving his hand to my clit.

He strums me as though I am a guitar, and it’s so intense that I almost cannot bear the pleasure. But I don’t dare ask him to stop because perhaps he would and I couldn’t bear that. It is like being prodded by a hot iron, though: I am burning up.

I explode angrily, loudly, my body shaking from head to toe, glistening with sweat.

He holds me tight, waiting for the waves to slow, to recede a little, and then runs his hands over my flat stomach to my neat breasts. He rolls my nipples between his finger and thumb, plucking them in time with his dick as he takes me again and again.

‘It’s not fair...’ I moan, resting my head on the pillow, trying to catch my breath. ‘I want you to feel this.’

He makes a noise. It could be agreement or amusement; I’m not sure. ‘Do you think I’m not enjoying myself?’

No. I know he’s having a good time. But that’s not enough. I don’t want to think I’m like all those other women, just being ‘had’ by him. I want to rock his goddamned world.

‘Do I get to tie you up?’ My words are as fevered as my sex-stormed soul.

He laughs and shakes his head, his chin gravelly against my back. ‘No.’

‘Why not? What’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander?’

‘Not in this case.’

‘Isn’t that a bit sexist?’

‘You don’t like it?’

My cheeks flame and I’m glad I’m facing away from him.

He brings the flat of his hand down on my arse, just lightly, but enough to spark the fire back into me, to make me forget what I want to do to him momentarily and enjoy what he’s doing to me instead.

I push my arse higher and he massages me with his fingers, digging hard into the muscles there. I moan, low in my throat, and then he pushes inside me. I’m so wet. I drop my head lower and now he reaches up, unclipping the belt and freeing my wrists.

He pulls out of me. ‘Turn around.’

A command. I obey, even though a part of me wants to tell him to stuff it purely as a point of pride.

Flat on my back, I stare up at him, my breath rushed, my lower lip sucked between my teeth.

‘I want you to see what you do to me.’ The admission is hoarse; as though drawn from deep in his throat.

He pushes my legs up again, lifting them over his shoulders as he drops into me, and I welcome him as though he’s been absent for months, not moments. He laces his fingers through mine, pinning my arms either side of me, and he stares down at me as he takes me once more.

I sweep my eyes closed as another wave begins to build, but he drops his mouth to mine and pulls my lower lip between his teeth, pressing into it just enough to startle me into looking at him.

‘I want to see you. And I want you to see me.’

Mesmerised, I can’t look away. I watch as his face contorts with pleasure and he rocks inside me, and my own pleasure rides high with his until we are climaxing together, my body flaming to his, leaping with his, burning like his. It is him and me, and no one else in the world exists or matters.

He explodes inside me—a powerful release that makes him cry out loudly...a guttural sound that rips through the room. And I echo it deep within my soul. I am as overwhelmed as he.

He stays above me, his breath uneven, his eyes almost accusing as my own climax recedes, and I am left weak and confused by what the hell just happened to us.

I stare up at my boss, at the man who’s just given me—I don’t know...four orgasms? Five orgasms? I’ve lost count. It’s still the afternoon and my body is covered in goose bumps.

Holy shit. Is this what it’s like with his other women?

They are like ghosts, immediately hovering on my subconscious. I hate it that they’re there, but my brain clearly needs me to remember them. To remember what Jack’s like.

‘So I suppose you don’t get complaints after all,’ I murmur, running my fingertips down his back. Like mine, it is wet with perspiration.

‘Not so much.’

He pushes up, with a smile on his face that somehow doesn’t fill his eyes. He presses a light kiss to my forehead and then stands.

‘I’ll get Hughes to take you home.’

The words seem to be spoken in a foreign language for all the sense they make to me. He’ll get Hughes to take me home? Is he fucking serious? Am I being dismissed?

I smile, even as my mind is reeling from the sheer rudeness of that statement. ‘I need to finish something at the office.’

I am amazed by myself. How do I sound so unbothered? So casual? It’s a bald-faced lie, but it’s the best I can come up with while my body is numbed by shock and fulfilled desire.

He nods. ‘Fine. He can take you there.’ Another tight smile. ‘You’re okay to let yourself out? I’m going to grab a shower.’

Jesus fucking Christ. Is he indeed?

‘I think I can find a door without a map,’ I drawl sarcastically, reaching for my phone without so much as a smile.

I flick it to life and load my emails, but the words swim before me like one big puddle of grey matter.

Which is what his brain is going to be against the crisp white wall if I don’t get the hell out of there.

He walks towards a door across the room and I continue staring at my phone. Yet I know he’s paused and is watching me. So I smile at an imagined joke on my phone, then pretend I’m typing a reply.

If you’d asked me an hour ago what could go wrong I would have said exactly this. Pushing past the boundaries we’ve always wisely obeyed, only to have Jack reinstating them just as fast as he’s able—brick by brick, blocking me out.

My fingers move over my phone but I’m play-acting, doing what I can to distract him from the fissures running through my heart, my hopes and my confidence.

Eventually Jack moves into the bathroom and I hear the shower running.

Arsehole.

It might have been the best sex I’ve ever had, but I’m pretty sure it was also the biggest mistake of my life.

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