I can’t help but smile. I understand the feeling.

“He should be done soon, though,” she says. “Shall I have him call you?”

I tell her not to bother, and then switch over to my messaging app to send him a text. To the CEO of Stark International from the CEO of Fairchild Development: Regarding my previous request for an appointment, does this evening fit on your calendar?

I don’t expect a quick reply and am surprised when my phone pings almost immediately. I think I can squeeze you in.

I practically trip over my fingers typing the reply. I’ll be right over.

No. I will. I have plans for your new office . . .

I smile in anticipation and wonder how I’ll survive the time between now and when he arrives.

Since I can’t concentrate on work with the prospect of Damien’s pending arrival hanging over my head, I abandon Evelyn’s art app in favor of going through my emails and clearing them out. I make the mistake of opening the one my mother sent while I was in Munich. The one that tells me that I really should work on my personal skills, because ignoring her calls and emails is simply rude and not the way she raised me. I see that your current fling got away with murder, she writes. Hopefully that means you’ll quit playing Florence Nightingale to his troubles. It’s simply a waste of time, and there are any number of men who are equally as eligible. Honestly, Nichole, once you pass the ten million dollar mark, one man is essentially the same as any other. Think about what I’ve said. And call me. Kisses, Mother

I want to delete it. Right at that moment, actually, I want to delete it even more than I want to breathe. I don’t want that woman in my head. She may not have ever taken a knife to my flesh, but I know without any doubt that she bears as much responsibility for the scars on my hips and thighs as I do. I want to delete that email and prove to myself that I’ve moved on.

I want to . . . but somehow I can’t quite manage.

Fuck.

I slam the top down on my laptop, not bothering to close any of my programs.

“Bad first day?”

I look up to find Damien leaning against the door frame. He’s dressed for the office in a tailored gray suit, white shirt, and a burgandy tie, and he looks for all the world like a long, tall drink of sin. “Not anymore,” I say. “How did you get in?”

“Apparently your receptionist reads the papers. She knows we’re together.”

I lean back in my desk chair and eye him. “Are we?”

He steps inside my office, then pulls my door shut behind him. He pauses, then very deliberately locks the door. “We are.”

“Well,” I say as I feel the temperature rise between us. “That’s very good to know.”

“You look very authoritative behind that desk, Ms. Fairchild,” he says, then glances around the small office. “So this is where the magic happens?”

I’m grinning. Whatever remnants of gloom remain from my mother’s email have been firmly swept away. “It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”

“It’s wonderful,” he says. “I’m so proud of you. Tell me all about your first day.”

I give him the rundown on the lease and on Giselle. I can hear the lilt in my voice, the excitement from setting off on this new adventure. And I see my own happiness reflected in Damien’s smile. “I even have my first client,” I add, then tell him about Evelyn’s app for Blaine.

“You’re amazing,” he says.

“It feels good. You were right,” I add. “I took the plunge and it feels great.”

“I knew it would,” he says, then lowers his voice to add, “I thought of you today.” He strides toward me as he speaks. The room is small, and it doesn’t take him long to cross to my desk. “I pictured you the way you were last night.”

“Oh.” I swallow as the temperature in the room rises.

“Then I pictured you like that here. Naked and bound and ready for me. Wanting me.” He comes around the desk, his eyes never leaving my face. I feel my pulse beat in my neck, and I’m having a little trouble breathing.

“I—oh. Yes.”

“It’s intoxicating, you know.”

I squirm a bit in the desk chair. As far as I’m concerned, it’s his voice that’s intoxicating. “Um, what is?”

His eyes dance with heat and humor as he leans forward and puts both his palms on my desktop. “Knowing that I can bring a powerful woman like you to her knees. A woman with her own company, her own empire. Knowing that I can make her wet with my words. That my voice can make her nipples peak and her clit tingle. That I can shove her skirt up and turn her over her very own desk and spank that perfect white ass until it glows and then, when the scent of her arousal covers the desk and fills the room, I can fuck her until she comes so hard she screams for mercy.”

“Oh, God, Damien . . . ” My blood is pulsing, my body quivering.

“Stand up, Nikki. Go over toward the window.”

Though I’m not entirely sure my legs will hold me up, I comply. He looks me up and down. The high-heeled red pumps, the tailored skirt, the silk shell under a light summer jacket.

His eyes never leave mine as he sits in one of the guest chairs. “Take off the jacket.”

I do, tossing it over the arm of my chair behind the desk.

“Now the skirt.”

There is a challenge in his voice, and I know that he expects me to protest. To tell him this is my office and that I have a receptionist just a few feet outside that door. I don’t. This is exactly what I want, too, so I reach behind me, tug down the zipper, and let the skirt fall to the floor, revealing the red thong panties.

He says nothing, but I can see the heat building in his eyes, and my body responds immediately, my sex quickening, my nipples getting tight and hard beneath the lace of my bra. “Well, Mr. Stark,” I say as I slowly walk toward him. “What do you want from me now?”

His answering smile is like a slow caress, and ripples of desire break through me like foam upon a sandy shore. “Stop,” he says, when I am about five feet from him.

I do, my heart pounding with anticipation.

He lifts a finger and makes a spinning motion. I roll my eyes, but take a step forward, do a runway-style turn, and then repeat the process, effectively rotating a full three-hundred-sixty degrees for him. I put my hand on a cocked hip and tilt my head. “Like what you see?”

“Oh, yes,” he says. He leans back in the chair, his casual posture belied by the tension I see in his face and shoulders, and by the firm slant of his mouth. His gaze flicks over me, and I swallow, hyperaware of my body’s reaction. Of how I react whenever I’m around this man. No wonder he always says that I glow. Damien is like a switch, and it is he who turns me on.

The thong is wet against my sex, and the pressure makes me even more needy. It’s not the thong I want touching me—it’s Damien. He, however, remains resolutely still, his hands resting on the arms of that uncomfortable chair as he examines every inch of me, his gaze lingering at that tiny triangle of material.

“Spread your legs—that’s my girl. Now stay still for just a moment.”

My skin prickles, as if my body is anticipating his touch and is protesting that his hands aren’t upon me and his cock isn’t deep inside me. Then his eyes drift lower still. I don’t move, even though I know what he is seeing. The scars. Not too long ago, I would have curled up on the floor and cried if someone looked at me so intently. Hell, that is exactly what I did when Damien did that very thing. Sometimes it amazes me how fast my world has changed with Damien in it. And not just my world, but me. He’s my anchor. Something to hold on to as I dig deep inside myself to find a strength I never even knew existed.