Apparently Chloe was more of a saint for “putting up with me” than I’d given her credit for.

My door opened and she stepped through, brows drawn together. We used the bat signal primarily to notify each other of work crises, and for a moment I wondered whether I was overreacting.

“What happened?” she asked, stopping about a foot away from me, her arms crossed over her chest. I could see she was preparing for a professional battle on my behalf, but I wanted her to fight a far more personal one.

“Nothing work related,” I said, rubbing my jaw. “I . . .”

I drifted off, staring at each part of her face in turn: her eyes as they narrowed in concentration, the full lips she’d pulled together in concern, her smooth skin. And, of course, I let my eyes drop to her br**sts because she’d pushed them together and . . . well, f**k.

“Are you looking at my chest?”

“Yes.”

“You sent me the bat signal so you could look at my tits?”

“Settle down, firecracker. I sent you the bat signal because I miss you.”

Her arms fell to her sides and seemed to stutter, fingers fumbling to straighten the hem of her sweater. “How can you miss me? I stayed over last night.”

“I know.” I knew this side of her. Forever knee-jerking back to self-preservation.

“And we had all weekend together.”

“Yeah, you and me—and Julia and Scott,” I reminded her. “And Henry and Mina. Not alone. Not nearly as much as we’d anticipated.”

Chloe turned her head and looked out the window. For the first time in weeks we had a perfect, sunny day, and I wanted to take her outside and just . . . sit.

“I feel like I miss you all the time lately,” she whispered.

The knot in my chest unwound a bit. “Do you?”

Nodding, she turned back to me. “Your travel schedule sucks right now.” She leaned forward, cocked an eyebrow. “And you didn’t kiss me goodbye this morning.”

“I did, in fact,” I said, smiling. “You were still sleeping.”

“Doesn’t count.”

“Are you looking for a fight, Miss Mills?”

She shrugged, struggling to repress a smile as she studied me carefully.

“We could skip the fight and you could just suck on my dick for ten minutes or so.”

Without another beat passing, she stepped close and slid her arms around me, stretching to press her face into my neck. “I love you,” she whispered. “And I love that you sent the bat signal just because you missed me.”

I was struck silent, for probably too long, and I finally managed to croak out an “I love you, too.”

It wasn’t that Chloe wasn’t expressive; she was. When we were alone, she was—physically—the most expressive woman I’d ever known. But whereas I told her often how I felt, I could count on two hands the number of times she’d actually said the words “I love you.” I didn’t need her to say it more, but each time she had, it affected me more profoundly than I’d anticipated.

“Seriously, though,” I whispered, struggling to regain my composure. “Maybe I just need a quickie over the desk.”

She laughed, shaking her head against my neck and reaching between us to palm my cock. I knew this game, and it was entirely possible she was going to do something mildly threatening that would thrill me as much as it terrified me. But instead of looking at me with danger in her eyes, she turned her head to suck on my neck, whispering, “I can’t smell like sex in this meeting with Douglas.”

“You think you don’t always smell like sex?”

“I don’t always smell like you,” she clarified, before licking my neck.

“The hell you don’t.”

It had been so long since we’d fooled around in the office, and I was so keen to feel her; I wanted to tear my pants down my legs and shove her skirt over her hips, then ruin the neat stacks of paper on my desk by throwing her down on it.

Mercifully, she kissed from my jaw down my neck and slid along my body to the floor, pulling her skirt up slightly, demurely, so she could kneel in front of me.

But no . . . once on the floor, she kept pulling her skirt up until it bunched at her hips. With one hand, she reached between her legs; with the other, she made quick work of my belt and zipper. I closed my eyes, needing to calm my mind for a beat as she freed me quickly, and without hesitation pulled my c**k into her mouth. I’d been nearly hard, and with her touch I lengthened. Warm, wet suction slid down my length and back up again, harder with the second pass as she adjusted to the feel of me in her mouth.