“Oh God,” I groaned as he prolonged it with his long fingers pushing even deeper. I turned to press my face into the shoulder of his suit to stifle my cry.

He slowed, and stilled, before kissing my temple, and then pulled his fingers out. Lifting his hand from under the table, he pressed his fingers to his mouth once, briefly, before wiping them on his napkin.

And then he licked his lips, watching me. “Your tongue tastes like candy, but your pu**y tastes even better.” He leaned in and kissed me deeply. “I want it to be my c**k inside you next time.”

Yes, please.

Jesus, who was this woman possessing my brain? Because I wanted it, too. Even after what he’d just given me, I wanted to climb into his lap and take all of him inside.

Before that line of thinking could get me into even more trouble, my phone buzzed in my purse. I pulled it out: Bennett.

BACK FROM MY MEETING. LET’S SIT DOWN AT 2.

The clock on my phone read one forty-five. “I have to go.”

“We’re establishing a pattern here, Sara. You come, you go.”

I offered him a half-smile, half-wince, but when the waiter came back with our food, I slid a twenty onto the table and asked him to put mine in a to-go container.

“I’d like your number,” Max said, stuffing the money back in my purse.

“Absolutely not.” I laughed.

I had no idea how this had unraveled. Okay, that was a lie, I knew exactly how it had unraveled—he’d started whispering in that hot accent and then fingered me—but I knew better than to let myself get involved with Max. For one, he was a player, and in no way did I want to go down that road again. And two, my job. It had to come first.

“I will eventually get it from Ben, you know. We go way back.”

“Bennett won’t give it to you without my permission. Very few people want to punch my ex more than I do, but Bennett is one of them.” I kissed Max’s jaw, relished the sharp stubble, and got up. “Thanks for the appetizer. Delete the video.”

“I’ll consider it if you go out with me again,” he answered, eyes shining with amusement.

I exited and crossed back over Fifth, biting back a smile.

Four

Three days after I’d given her an orgasm for lunch I wasn’t any less obsessed.

“So who are you bringing tonight?” Will asked absently, eyes on the folded copy of the Times in his hand.

The drive back to the office from the tailor had been silent up to this point, broken only by the sound of the engine and the occasional car horn or shout from the street. I continued to go over the files I’d brought—photographs from a new exhibit in Queens—as I answered, “Going solo, actually.”

He looked up at me. “You don’t have a date?”

“No.” I glanced over just in time to see his eyebrows inch up in surprise. “What?”

“How long have we known each other, Max?”

“Six years, I’d say.”

“And in all that time, have you ever attended a social function without a date?”

“I really wouldn’t remember.”

“Perhaps we could check Page Six. I bet they’d know,” he deadpanned.

“Very funny.”

“It’s unusual, that’s all. It’s our biggest event of the year and you don’t have a date.”

“It hardly matters, yeah?”

He laughed. “Are you serious with me right now? ‘Who is Max Stella taking?’ is one of the first things people ask when there’s a party like this.”

“I like how you play me up as the skirt-chasing wolf in contrast to you, all upstanding and virtuous.”

“Oh, I never said anything about being virtuous,” he said over the top of his paper. “I’m simply suggesting that people might wonder if you’re meeting someone there, that’s all.”

I turned back to my files as I considered this. In truth, I hadn’t made a date for the fund-raiser. I hadn’t made a date because I wasn’t interested in taking anyone.

Which was weird. Maybe Will was right. Ever since I’d met Sara, other women seemed predictable and tame.

Will was also right when he said the annual Stella & Sumner Charity Gala was our biggest event of the summer. It was held at the Museum of Modern Art, and everyone who was anyone in New York would be in attendance. With dancing, dinner, and the silent auction that followed, we managed to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for a pediatric cancer foundation every year.

The dreary sky of the afternoon had cleared, but the smell of a storm still hung in the air when my car stopped at the barricades in front of the museum. A valet opened my door and I climbed out, fastening the button of my tuxedo jacket as I stood. My name was called from several directions, the pop and flash of cameras erupting like a small lightning storm within the press area.