“Of course it is. Tell them that the change is fine and I approve the expense.”
I folded the letter. “I’m sorry your mother is ill.”
Pain showed in his expression for a brief moment and I watched him fight it back. I wondered how often he fought down his pain. “She’s losing her memory,” he said. “It’s happening faster than the doctors expected, and they don’t know why.”
“What about your father?” I asked.
He shook his head. “My mother left my father when Ava and I were little after he hit her one too many times.”
My stomach twisted. “I’m sorry, Aidan. I shouldn’t pry.”
“It isn’t prying. Not when you know the person.” He stepped toward me and touched the line of my jaw with his fingertip. “And I’d say we know each other pretty well, wouldn’t you?”
I suppressed the shiver his touch gave me. Did we know each other really? We’d talked plenty, but that was usually in character. I raised my gaze to his. His eyes were dark and beautiful. There was pain in their depths but there was also warmth, because he was looking at me.
Yes, I did know this man. Even when we gave each other different names, I still knew him. And he knew me, in ways that no one else did—not my sister, my parents, my coworkers, my former lovers. Aidan knew me in a way that made me know myself better.
It was terrifying.
I was no one, an anonymous child who had been left at a hospital with her sister. Because I’d had to build my identity from nothing, I thrived on being the good daughter, the good sister, the good assistant. What Aidan knew about me—the real me—fractured all of that.
“I’m not renegotiating the game,” I said.
Aidan’s finger was still on my jaw. He dropped his hand. “Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Turn around.”
It didn’t matter how defiant or opinionated I was; when he said that, I did it. I didn’t even think. I turned around.
His hands came to my hips. I sucked in a breath at the touch. I tried to keep it quiet, but he heard it. His fingers pressed into the fabric of my knee-length skirt, pulling it up one inch, and then another.
“Do you have any idea,” he said, his voice low and rough, “how much I want to bend you over my desk and fuck you?”
I closed my eyes as I felt the hem of my skirt drift upward. “No,” I said.
“You sound so convincing, Samantha, but we both know I could do it if I wanted. Undo the top button of your dress.”
I did it, my hands moving of their own accord. My skin was flushing hot.
“The next one,” Aidan said.
I unbuttoned the next one. Cool air brushed the skin between my breasts. The entire office was on the other side of the door—phones ringing, keyboards clicking. My pussy throbbed.
He lifted my skirt higher, then brushed his warm fingers over the outside of my thighs, tracing lines on my skin. “I would fuck you until you came,” he said calmly. “I would fuck you until I came inside you, and you’d work the rest of the day knowing my cum was inside you. If you let me, I’d fuck you until I was the only thing you thought about every morning. I’d fuck you until you craved me above anything else.”
A soft moan escaped my throat, but I cut it off. “No,” I rasped.
His fingers moved to the front of my thighs, then traced a line between them. So very, very close to my pussy in my damp panties. “You won’t let me, so I’m not going to. But you want me to, Samantha. You want me to fuck you, and you want it very badly.”
“I don’t.” Who was I fooling? I was standing in Aidan’s office, my dress unbuttoned and my skirt up, my eyes closed, dying for his hands between my legs. But I said it again. “I don’t.”
He leaned forward, his breath against my neck. I could smell him, the heady scent of him mixed with the smell of my own sex. “We don’t need the game, Samantha,” he said. “You don’t need it. You never have. You just need to let go.”
Behind my closed eyelids, I pictured that—what letting go would look like. What it would feel like. With Aidan, it would feel amazing, like I was finally myself after a lifetime of trying to be someone. Of not knowing who that woman really was.
I stood frozen and helpless, temptation washing over me. And then Aidan removed his hand. My body ached as he lowered my skirt, the fabric brushing my oversensitized legs. He circled to the front of me and gently fastened my buttons.