The Favor

“Initially, yes, I did. But that changed. I decided to keep you, and I was resolute that I’d find a way to make you want to stay with me. I swore to myself I’d make you mine.” He licked a circle around the pulse point on my wrist. “And I did.”

“But are you truly sure you’ll be happy in a relationship, Dane?” I asked, my voice low and soft. “You’ve been on your own for a long time.”

“I like being alone—it helps me recharge; I don’t think that will ever change. But I don’t prefer it anymore. I don’t prefer it over your company, anyway. Remember the day you went to visit Simon after work without giving me a heads-up? The same day that Heather later turned up here?”

“I remember.” It was the day after he and I had fucked on his kitchen counter.

“Coming home to find that you weren’t here … It was the first time that the house had ever felt empty to me. I’d gotten used to you being here. I hadn’t realized how much I liked having you around until that moment. I knew then that I was in trouble. Especially since I’d lost control and fucked you the night before.”

“You were pretty pissed at me that night.”

“I was pissed at the thought of you leaving o-Verve.” His dark eyes drifted over my face, hot and possessive. “I wanted you the second I first saw you, but I don’t get involved with my employees, as you know. I had the option of firing you so that I’d be free to pursue you, but I knew you’d want nothing to do with a man who cost you your job. Besides, you seemed to be what I needed in a PA.”

“And business always comes first to you.”

“It did. Now you come first. But back then, yes, I put o-Verve before everything else. I normally don’t hire women I’m attracted to, but I told myself it wouldn’t be an issue. It turned out I was wrong. Even so, I kept you as my PA all those years because I liked having you close. I came to think of you as a permanent fixture in my life. One I could trust. One I could rely on. One that never let me down. One that never left when the going got tough.”

I swallowed and bit my lip. I really never would have guessed he felt that way. I would never have even thought that he held me in more regard than he did his other employees. Dane just wasn’t a person who let others matter. They had to somehow make themselves important to him. I hadn’t realized I’d done that.

“It didn’t occur to me that you’d leave o-Verve after the divorce,” he went on. “I fucking hated the thought of you going anywhere. I didn’t want to lose you. Then you started ranting about how no other man would want you if you worked for your ex-husband. I was furious that you’d even want another man touching you. So, yeah, I lost it.”

“And you were determined that there wouldn’t be a repeat of that. But then New York happened.”

“When I walked into your hotel room and found you standing in your underwear, all I wanted to do was toss you on the bed and thrust deep inside you.” He breezed his thumb over a tiny scar on the heel of my hand. “For me, sex was always just sex. Uncomplicated. Basic. Physical. Easy to resist. It never meant anything. It was just a release valve. But there was nothing uncomplicated about being inside you. It was … different. Better. So intense it was addictive. It meant something, because you mean something to me. And I knew if I took you again, I’d keep you.

“I wrestled with myself over it all day. I told myself I didn’t want a real wife; that I didn’t want the same things out of life that you did; that I was better off alone. But then you said something that sealed your fate.”

I felt my brow furrow. “I did? What?”

“A woman at the conference asked you if you’d imagined when you first started working for me that we’d get married one day. You said, no, you hadn’t seen it coming; that you never thought you’d ever get involved with your boss but that some things were just inevitable and fighting them was plain pointless.”

I swallowed, touched that he remembered; that my words had affected him.

“Of course, I knew you were giving her what you thought would be a typical answer, but I also knew you were right. I knew that even if I resisted you that night, I’d take you again eventually. I didn’t have it in me to keep on fighting it, just as I didn’t have it in me to let you go when the time came. So I figured it was senseless to resist you anymore.”