Page 97 of Dial F for Finance

We stay like that for a moment, fused and breathless, my forehead back on the cool mahogany while his hand releases my hair and traces a gentle line down my back. The city hums outside, indifferent to whatever we’ve just done to each other. I can feel his heartbeat where he’s still inside me, slowing from its frantic pace.

“Stay still,” he murmurs, voice still rough. He pulls out carefully, one hand steadying my hip while the other reaches for some tissues. I watch him over my shoulder as he cleans us both as best he can. When he smooths my skirt down, his palm lingers against my thigh, warm through the fabric.

“Your panties,” he says, holding them out with a grin that should be illegal.

I take them, but my fingers aren’t quite working right yet, and he laughs—low, delighted—and does it himself, sliding the red lace up my legs with maddening care, his knuckles grazing sensitive skin and making me shiver. He adjusts the waistband with a proprietary pat, then offers his hand to help me stand.

“Don’t think I don’t remember that lingerie set from Tokyo,” he says as he turns me to face him and pulls my blouse back to get a peek at the red lacy bra. “Seems I’m not the only one who was looking for a logistical ploy and a locked office.”

I laugh then wobble. He catches me, pulling me against his chest where his heart has settled to something closer to normal. I can smell myself on him, on his jaw, his breath, and instead of embarrassment I feel only this absurd, giddy warmth rising up my throat like champagne bubbles.

“You’re ridiculous,” I say into his collarbone, though I’m grinning against his shirt.

“You’re magnificent.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, and I realize my bun has completely dissolved, dark waves falling past my shoulders in a way that makes me feel younger, more careless than I’ve allowed myself to be in years. “Also, you have lipstick on your teeth.”

I gasp, mortified, and wipe at my mouth with the back of my hand while he laughs—actually laughs, head tipped back, the sound filling his office like something earned. When he looks at me again, his eyes are soft in a way that makes my chest constrict.

“Better?” I ask.

“Worse,” he says, and kisses me slow—unhurried, thorough, like he’s tasting what’s left of us and memorizing the flavor. His thumb traces my jaw, my cheekbone, the corner of my mouth where the burgundy has smeared. When he pulls back, he’s wearing some of it too, a faint stain on his lower lip that I want to bite clean off.

I lean into him, letting my body weight settle against his chest, feeling the solid warmth of him through his shirt. My arms loop around his neck and I laugh, breathless and genuine, because I cannot remember the last time I felt this unguarded in my own skin.

“What?” he asks, smiling against my temple.

“Nothing. Everything.” I pull back enough to look at him, to take in the mussed hair and swollen mouth and the gold band on his finger that matches mine. Forty-six days left on our trial, and I’m standing in his locked office wearing his cologne and my own ruin, and I can’t stop grinning.

“Your place or mine?” I say, the words tumbling out before I can calculate the variables, before I can weigh which location offers better cover, easier exit routes, less exposure to witnesses. I just want to keep being wherever he is.

“Yours is logistically preferable,” he says. “It cuts twenty minutes from my morning commute.”

“Yes, but yours has that giant tub.”

He stops.

The delight on his face is immediate.

“Are you choosing my house over operational efficiency?”

“I’m choosing superior bathroom infrastructure.”

“Of course. I’ll have it filled before you get your shoes off.”

He holds out his hand.

I take it, and we walk out of Cruz Financial together.

For infrastructure reasons, obviously.

CHAPTER 25

Dominic

By week four, Jenna Pemberton has started leaving traces of herself all over my life.

A second drawer in my closet, claimed with no announcement and organized with terrifying efficiency. Her lipstick beside my sink. A pack of my razors is allowed to live at her apartment because apparently mine are “superior and the space was underutilized, anyway.” Roz convinced her to attend a Sunday brunch and folded her in so completely that last weekend, a four-year-old spent two hours calling me “Aunt Jenna’s husband,” which is the best title I have ever held.

Dustin texts her before he texts me now. Seven fifteen every morning, meme delivery—you can set your watch to it. When I complained, my own brother sent me a thumbs-down and a picture of a bored cat.