“Tried to touch yourself and think of me? Like your hand could stand in for me?”

I watched her expression grow from curious to predatory before answering, “Yeah.”

“Did you come?”

“Jesus, Chloe.” How was it so hot to be grilled by her like this?

She didn’t blink or fidget at all while waiting for me to answer. She simply stared me down. “Tell me.”

I couldn’t fight my smile. Always such a ballbuster. “A couple of times. It wasn’t very pleasurable because you would come into my head and it was just as frustrating as it was relieving.”

“For me, too,” she said. “I missed you so much it hurt. At work I missed you. At home, in my bed, I could barely stand it. The only time I could clear you from my head was when I was—”

“Running,” I whispered. “I can tell. You lost too much weight.”

Her eyebrow lifted. “So did you.”

“I also drank too much,” I admitted, reminding her that this wasn’t a contest. She didn’t need to prove she’d fared better. I was actually pretty sure she had. “The first month we were apart is still kind of a blur.”

“Sara told me how you looked. She told me I wasn’t being fair by staying away from you.”

My eyebrows inched up in surprise. Really? Sara had said that? “You did what you needed to do.”

Leaning back, she looked down the length of my torso, and then up to my eyes. I was curious to see that she looked a little surprised. Maybe even giddy. “You let me tie you up.”

I stared up at her. “Of course I did.”

“I just wasn’t sure you’d let me. I thought I’d tricked you—I thought you might say no.”

“Chloe, you’ve owned me since the first second I saw you. I’d have let you tie me up back in the conference room if you’d asked.”

A tiny smile pulled at one side of her mouth. “I wouldn’t have let you if you’d asked.”

“Good.” I leaned in for a kiss. “You’re smarter than I am.”

She stood, reaching behind her to unfasten her bra. It slid down her arms and fluttered to the floor. “I think we’ve both always known that’s true.”

The way I wanted her was a kind of steady, heavy ache. I was so hard I could feel my every heartbeat through my cock, but I also felt like my vision was oversaturated with color: the red of her panties and lips, the brown of her eyes, the creamy ivory of her skin. My body was screaming for hers to take me inside, but my brain couldn’t stop drinking in each detail. “Let me feel you.”

She returned to me, lifting her chest to my mouth. I leaned forward, taking a nipple between my lips, flicking it with my tongue. Without warning, she stood and stepped away, turning her back to me and looking over her shoulder with a mischievous smile on her face.

“What are you doing, little devil?” I panted.

Her thumbs hooked into the waist of her lacy panties and she wiggled her hips as she began to lower them.

No. No way in hell.

“Don’t you f**king dare,” I said, yanking my hands free from her flimsy knot and standing to tower over her like a storm cloud forming in my own living room. “Go down the hall and get on my bed. If you even think of taking off your panties, I will take care of myself and you’ll lie there and watch me come.”

Her eyes widened into enormous pools of black in the dark room, and without another word she turned and sprinted down the hall to my bedroom.

And with that memory in mind, my day was officially shot. That night had been the single most intimate night of my life, and had launched our relationship from Giving It a Try into Fully Committed. I would never get over the way she turned her vulnerability into quiet command, or the way she let me turn the tables in my bedroom, tie her to my bed and nibble at every inch of her body.

I groaned as I realized I had no idea when we would ever have such a lazy night together again, and picked up my phone.

Lunch? I texted.

Can’t, Chloe replied. Meeting with Douglas from noon to three. Shoot me.

I looked at the clock. It was 11:36. I slid my phone back on my desk and returned to the article I was working on for the Journal. I was useless and I knew it.

After about two minutes, I picked up my phone, texting her again, this time using our secret code. Bat signal.

She replied immediately: On my way.

The outer door opened and closed, bringing the sound of Chloe’s heels tapping across the floor of the office just outside mine. It had once been Chloe’s, but when she’d returned to Ryan Media Group after finishing her MBA, she moved to an office of her own in the east wing. End result: the outer office now remained empty. I’d attempted working with a few different assistants, but they never really worked out. Andrea cried all the time. Jesse tapped her pen on her desk and the effect was much like a woodpecker going at a tree. Bruce couldn’t type.