I doll up for him that night. Pink lace undies with a little bow at the top, the same bow in the middle of my front-clasped lace bra. I slip on an A-line skirt that twirls a little when I walk, and a slinky spaghetti-strap ivory-colored top that lets him see the pink strap of my bra peeking out from underneath. It screams I want you in the most blatant way I know how to say it.

He texts me that he’s outside my building.

Gina isn’t back from work, so I leave a note like the kind I leave when I’m camping out with Stop the Violence, saying: Sleeping out tonight. XOXO R

Both an eternity and a heartbeat later, I climb into the back of the Rolls and see him. Did he dress up for me too? He’s so handsome in a black button-down shirt and black dress slacks that my breath can’t seem to go past my throat. His hair looks wet from a recent shower, the top button of his shirt undone and the cuffs rolled to his elbows. The glimpse of his golden body under his clothes makes my heart beat more rapidly. The privacy glass is in place, and he whispers, as if for my benefit, “He can’t hear or see us.” I didn’t know I was so desperate, but when he reaches out and pulls my body closer to his and slides his hand under my top, to the bare skin of my back, I wedge a little closer.

Another corner kiss.

I shiver.

He grazes the second corner now, his lips warm but firm.

I slide my hand up his hard thigh, wanting to know he’s hard, not certain if I have the courage to let my hand wander higher. It feels so hot, his skin under his clothes. His eyes are so green and so dark.

“Where are we going?” I whisper.

“My place,” he murmurs. He brushes my lips with his and looks at them, then edges back so he can look at me completely.

I start to put a little distance between us, trying to get myself under control.

“Come here, I want you close to me.”

He slides his hand around my waist, and with a small press of his fingers on my ribs brings me closer. Heat bubbles in my veins as I press my lips to his thick throat. He lets me. I rub my fingers up his shirt and he slips his hand under my top.

We shift so that I’m straddling his thigh.

I lick between his lips.

He drags me over his lap so his erection is right between my legs. “I’m so hot for you,” he rasps.

Pleasure ripples through me when I feel the hard erection beneath me. I wanted to know? Now I know. He’s pulsing. Huge and perfect, hard as steel, his need a living thing biting between my thighs. In contrast, his lips are soft and brushing feather-like against the edges of mine, incredibly gentle. “I want to taste you here, right here. To take you all night. My god, you’re ravishing,” he whispers, drinking me in with his eyes and savoring me with his hands.

My responses are ungoverned. Unplanned. I nibble my lip, aching.

We share a stare—eyes, lips, eyes, lips, lips. Lips. He ducks his head, and the idea of not tasting him is suddenly intolerable. We kiss. Just lips first. A graze, a press, then easing back, breathing hard.

He trails his hand down my back. “How do you want it? Hard? Soft?” He looks down at me like I’m some goddess.

“Hard. No. Soft. Soft, then hard.”

I’m so excited and nervous.

He eats me with his eyes as he pours wine for us, and we drink and look at each other, and when I set my cup aside, he does the same and pulls me close to him so he can tease my lips apart with his mouth and taste the delicious red wine I just sipped. He smiles when we arrive at his apartment building. We head into the lobby, and I feel the knowing glances come at us from every corner.

Saint curls his hand around my arm and tugs me into the elevators.

“How many women do you bring here?” I ask. He gathers so much attention. I can’t imagine ever getting accustomed to that.

“I haven’t brought one in a while,” he admits as the doors close and we ride alone to the top. “Since I saw you.”

I laugh. “You don’t have to say that.”

“Why would I be lying right now?” He tugs me closer to his hard lines, my breasts aching as they press against his chest. “You’re here, aren’t you?” He runs a hand down my hair, and suddenly I feel so precious under those twinkling, knowing eyes. “You’ve got every intention of letting me do anything I want with you,” he whispers in my ear.

“You really haven’t brought anyone?”

I can’t seem to make my voice rise above a whisper. My body feels so tense with wanting, it’s an effort to stand here and not let my fingers and tongue have their expedition on his body. God, my attraction to him has nothing to do with reason. Nothing.

He shakes his head, his gaze intimate on my face as he basically admits to being celibate for what has to be a record time. I’m so undone by the thought, I drop my lashes and gaze with sudden shyness at his throat.

“What about the after-party I couldn’t go to? You got a show from . . . those girls?” I quietly ask him, stroking one of his shirt buttons with a fingertip. Why does he make me so shy? I’m afraid he’ll see that I’m jealous, but I have to ask.

It feels like this elevator is our own cocoon and nothing can come between us right now, nothing in the world outside this perfect space.

His throat: it’s so masculine. I watch the thick tendons and his Adam’s apple move as he answers now, his voice warm, his breath moving the hairs along my temple. “The Ice Box that night was a way of me distracting myself—I had every intention of fooling around. But you appeared, the very thing I wanted to distract myself from, and I couldn’t go through with having anyone else after the way you looked that night.”

The elevator stops at the penthouse, and I blush as he takes my hand and leads me in, my brain almost flooded with pleasure from what he just said.

He called his friends when he was riding in the car with me on our second interview. He was attracted to me then, while I’d been fascinated with the water he’d drunk, almost wanting to drink from the bottle he’d left behind—not even understanding what was happening to me.

Saint would’ve seen me for another interview—I would’ve made sure of that—but I’d have never known whether, while I lay wanting at night, he went and buried his desire for me between another woman’s legs.

I’m glad to know; he didn’t need to tell me this, and yet he did.

“Do you do that often?” I whisper. “Take just any woman in exchange for the one you want?”

He lets his head fall back and shouts with laughter, squeezing my hand. “Rachel, I never settle . . . not in business, not in pleasure. You were going to be the exception because you were a reporter. I never mix business and pleasure.”