“Why are you having sex with him?”
Her whole face opens up, warm and unguarded.
“You are very cute when you’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous!”
“Sure.”
“I’m asking,” I say, and I can hear the edge in my own voice, the thing climbing up my throat that I have no intention of letting out but can’t swallow back down. “Why you need to have sex with him.”
I stand up. Because the sounds I heard behind that door are a drill bit boring into my skull, and they won’t stop replaying. My chest is a loaded weapon with nowhere to aim.
“Are you… are you doing that with all of them? All those other six? The other lawyers? The men who walk in and out of your office. Is that what this is?”
She unfolds her legs and stands up, tips the rest of the whiskey back in one clean swallow, and sets the glass down on the table. “Ah, such a long day.”
She crosses to where I am, on her tiptoes, lacing her arms around my neck.
“What if…” she murmurs against my mouth. Then she pulls back just enough to look at me, her eyes unblinking, and completely at ease with the question she is about to detonate. “What if I am having sex with all of them? What is that to you?”
I don’t say anything.
I don’t trust my mouth to produce language. The question is a key turning in a lock I have no business owning.
I hate the position this woman is putting me in right now. Standing here, rendered without words by a question we both know the answer to.
I take a breath. Let it out.
“You remember who you are, right?” she adds, then walks out of the room.
I slump into her chair.
I know exactly who I am.
Fuck it.
7
Kai
DIANA WALKS THREE steps ahead of me through the marble lobby of her office building, her heels striking the floor in a rhythm.
The burgundy carpet swallows the sound the moment we step off the elevator and onto Rutherford and Blake’s floor, but I still hear it. My ears have trained themselves to her. Heels on marble, barefoot on the hardwood of her penthouse when she pads in for coffee in the morning.
Today, her skirt is charcoal, tailored to within an inch of its life. There’s a slit up the back that opens and closes with every stride. A flash of thigh. A shadow. Another flash. The fabric parts for her, and gives me a clean view of her leg from mid-thigh down to the sharp bone of her ankle riding above those heels.
I’ve seen those legs up close. Open wide. Ass up and bare and my hand parting her butt cheeks. The way her hands gripped the sheets. The image lives in my head now.
And the thought that follows is the one I can’t outrun, the one no treadmill in a gym has managed to sweat out of me. Other men have seen her that way too. The barrister. Whoever came before the barrister, or at the same time as the barrister. A line of men who got to watch Diana Jensen’s composure come undone, and not a single one of them earned it. Not a single one of them deserved it.
Neither do I.
Remember who you are.
Oh, I know who I am, there’s no forgetting that bit. I’m the guy walking three steps behind her with a duffel bag of emotional shrapnel slung over his shoulder.
The reception desk is a slab of dark walnut, and the woman behind it is trained to greet billionaires without blinking. She’s my age. Dark hair pinned up. When she sees Diana, the professional smile cracks into a real one.