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CONTENTS

1. JUST ONE NIGHT, PART 2: Exposed

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

2. Special preview of JUST ONE NIGHT, PART 3: Binding Agreement

3. Connect with the Author

Where will Kasie’s choice lead her?

Keep reading and order JUST ONE NIGHT, PART 3: Binding Agreement today!

♦      ♦      ♦

From the boardroom to the bedroom, see how Kasie’s steamy affair began . . . read JUST ONE NIGHT, PART 1: The Stranger now!

Click Here to Order

To Food Fashionista Mika Takeuchi. Thank you for believing in me even when I had my doubts. Here’s to twenty years of friendship.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THERE ARE A lot of people who helped me with this project. There’s my amazing editor, Adam Wilson, whom I can always count on to champion my work as well as help me refine it and make it sparkle. There’s also the team at Pocket Star who have been fabulously supportive and done an amazing job with their promotional efforts.

And then there’s Cosmopolitan and its “Sex Position of the Day” articles. Thank you, Cosmopolitan, for helping me figure out what’s the best way to make love on a table. I strongly believe you should be every steamy romance writer’s number one reference magazine.

JUST ONE NIGHT,

PART 2:

Exposed

CHAPTER 1

ELEVEN DAYS AGO I met a man with strong, beautiful arms and salt-and-pepper hair. Robert Dade. We were in Vegas and he bought my attention with a smile. We talked, first at a blackjack table, then at a bar, and later in his hotel room.

I should have thought of Dave when Robert sat down by my side. Dave, the man who I’ve been dating for six years, the man who wants to make me his wife. I should have remembered my commitments before I opened my body for Robert on that Vegas night. But Robert, he unleashed an animal from within me, one that clawed his back and bit his neck. I didn’t know what kind of beast it was. I didn’t understand the chaos it could unleash.

And yet that chaos had been so sweet. Like ice cream after a lifetime of dieting.

How many times have I tried to say good-bye to Robert Dade? In Vegas, in his Santa Monica office, on the screen of my computer . . . every time I’ve ended up breathless, naked, caressed by his eyes and his hands. All he has to do is say my name, Kasie. . . . That’s it. That’s all it takes to make me tremble. “Kasie,” he whispers and I throb.

Robert thinks I’m strong. He says he wants to free me from my self-imposed confines. He says he wants to walk by my side on the beach, have dinner with me, and celebrate the little pleasures that make up our lives . . . together.

He says he cares for me, not the woman who I like to show to the world, but the woman who lays underneath all that, the woman who refuses to be suffocated with the expectations of others.

He told me all that as we stood on his boat.

In my mind I’m still on that boat in that moment. Yes, that’s the reality I choose to believe in. I give Robert my hand and he whispers words of reassurance. He tells me we can be together and no one needs to be hurt. We’re just two people; we don’t have the power to conjure deadly storms or turn the whole universe inside out. We’re just two people falling in love.

He tells me we can run away, just for a little while, and that when we come back, everything will be set as it should be. I’ll still have my position at the global consulting firm where I’ve steadily risen through the ranks; my career path will still be assured. He will still be the CEO of Maned Wolf Securities, my firm’s biggest account. We will work together, play together, be together.

We don’t have to feel the pain of guilt and consequences. Only pleasure. As if to demonstrate that, he reaches out to me. Brushes my cheek with his hand. Hands that are gentle and rough.

He’s built things with those hands, delicate woodwork and powerful companies. He runs those hands through my hair and tugs just slightly.

“Kasie,” he says, and the cage is opened.

I feel his mouth on mine as his fingers slip between my legs applying just a little pressure . . . just there against my clit. The fabric of my clothes feels flimsy and weak against the heat that we generate. I wonder if I’ll take them off or if they’ll just melt away on their own.

But Robert answers the question when he pulls my shirt from me, cups my breasts, pinches my nipples as they strain against my bra. We’re on the deck of his boat, docked in a slip in Marina Del Rey. People can see us. I can feel their eyes as they shift from the ocean to the fire. They’re watching him undress me, watching him touch me and I just don’t care.

Because I’m with Robert. Because I know that when I’m with him, I’m safe.

He pulls me to him as he gently sucks on the curve of my neck. I can feel his erection press against my stomach; I feel myself getting wet as I anticipate welcoming him inside. People are watching as I pull off his shirt and reveal a perfect body, hard and chiseled with the artistry of a sculptor. People are watching as he opens my bra and lets it drop to the deck.

I lay back on a deck chair . . . had that been there on the boat?

It doesn’t matter. In the reality I choose, it’s there and I can recline all the way back, half naked, inviting him to take me here in plain view. Let them watch. Let them take pictures for all I care. None of them matter. This is my world; I choose what rules are to be followed and which will be burned. I lay on this chair and I smile as I feel Robert’s fingers working on the buttons at my waist, smile as I feel him pull my pants off me, gasp as his fingers brush against my soaked panties.

“She’s magnificent,” a man murmurs. He’s all the way over at the end of the pier, but I can hear him perfectly. He’s never seen anyone like me. He’s never seen someone consumed by this kind of passion and power.

I watch as Robert pulls off his belt, his eyes never leaving mine. He is oblivious to our audience. He sees only me, the woman he wants, the animal he’s unleashed.

As he strips down I find myself breathless. He’s the reason the Greeks decided that the human form was worthy of worship. His desire is on display and I reach for him but he doesn’t immediately oblige.

Instead he kneels before me, pulls down my soaked panties, opens me with his tongue.

I arch my back and cry out. I’m so tender now, so ready. More people have come to watch. Women and men. They touch me with their eyes as surely as Robert Dade touches me with his hands and mouth. His tongue continues to toy with me, moving slowly at first and then faster as his fingers plunge inside of me, making the experience complete.

This time it’s me who runs my hands through his hair, me who tugs as an overwhelming desire pounds through my body. My hips are raised; the orgasm is coming, I hear the whispers of the onlookers, hear the clicks of their cameras as I explode, unable to contain myself for even a moment longer.

And then Robert pulls away, smiles. . . . The lounge chair I’m on seems wider now, sturdier, too. He straddles me, lies on top of me, presses his cock against my core . . . but not entering, not yet.

He looks into my eyes as I silently plead and the audience holds their breath. They share my anticipation, share my need and, when, with a hard thrust, he pushes inside of me, I feel their approval as my entire body rocks with the force of him.

I move my hips with our rhythm. I run my nails down his soft skin, feel his hard muscles, feel him push himself farther and farther into my body.

He pulls my leg over his shoulder and drives in deeper still. His eyes never leave mine. I can feel his breath, smell his aftershave on my skin.

I can barely contain myself; the passion is too much but he holds me still, pinning my arms above my head as he sometimes does, forcing me to do nothing but receive this pleasure as the world watches.

Now every part of me is palpitating as he leads in this erotic dance.

“Robert,” I moan his name, the only word I’m capable of saying, the only word I can think of in this moment.

He smiles and speeds up the rhythm. It’s the final push I need. Again my back arches, my head thrashes from side to side, my breasts reach up, my nipples brush against his chest as I cry out again, and this time his voice joins mine as we climax together, there on the deck of the boat.

People are watching, but they can’t touch us. We’re too powerful to be bothered by their attention. We don’t even bother to acknowledge them as we try to catch our breath, holding each other, drenched in our sweat.

People are watching, and they see me, see the woman Robert sees, see the animal, the strength, and the vulnerability. But I don’t see them. Everything right now is the man who is on top of me, breathing deeply. He looks into my eyes and I know we are safe.

“I’m falling in love with you,” he says.

And I smile.

*    *    *

THAT’S THE REALITY I want to believe in, but as I lie in Dave’s bed, untouched but completely violated, I find that the fantasy doesn’t have enough substance for me to hold on to. It floats away into my subconscious, waiting for sleep to come where it can live again.

But I know sleep is a long way off. Dave is snoring by my side, seemingly at peace. Yet how is that possible? How can he be peaceful after the violence of our last encounter?

Because I didn’t choose to stay on the boat. I left Robert standing on the deck. I walked away as he called my name.

Dave had found out the truth. Robert doesn’t know this, but I left because I got Dave’s text. He was waiting in the parking lot for me, and he was ready to use the new information he had gleaned to humiliate me at work, with my family . . . he was threatening to make my nightmares come true.

I went to Dave to stop him, yes. But more than that I went to Dave because I owed him. I needed to make up for the hurt I had caused by choosing Robert.

Had I done that? Was he satisfied in his revenge? Maybe yes, maybe no. Dave would say there had been no revenge. He would say he was helping me.

Months ago, on some cable news channel, I heard a terrorist interviewed by a reporter. He had hostages, but he called them “guests.” On cue, the hostages nodded their heads and sung the praises of their captor. He was the perfect host, they said. They loved every moment of their forced imprisonment.

Had those words scraped at the captives’ throats?

I’m not a hostage in the Middle East. I know Dave has no plans to kill me. Physical torture is not in my future.

But I do understand what it feels like to have to praise the man who is intent on making you suffer. I know the humiliation and the impotence. I felt it when I talked to my parents earlier in the evening before they took a flight back home. With the phone pressed to my ear I thanked them for coming out to the “wonderful” surprise engagement party Dave had thrown me. I looked down at the red ruby engagement ring on my finger, a ring I once coveted, and told them I couldn’t wait for the day when I would become Mrs. David Beasley.

Dave stood in front of me the whole time and fed me my lines.

I felt it when I texted my friend Simone to tell her Dave is my choice. I texted because I didn’t think I could speak the word “choice” without crying. In truth, my choices are gone. They vanished when I got off the boat, handed Dave the keys to my car, and let him drive me to my prison. He drove and I sat in the passenger seat wringing my shaking hands, like a hostage. Like a liar.

It’s not just my parents who love Dave. Dave is the godson of Dylan Freeland, the cofounder of the firm I work for. “He’s like a son to me,” Mr. Freeland had said at my engagement party. It had been a subtle reminder that my career and my love life are not as separated as I’d like them to be.

And Dave knows the secrets of my family . . . he knows about my sister who lost control as she recklessly danced with self-destruction. He knows that she used her own irresponsible impulses to the same ends as Cleopatra used her snake and Juliet used her dagger. He knows I wanted to be different from my sister.

He knows that I failed.

And so he drove me to his home and for ten minutes we stood in his living room without exchanging a word. I had wanted to break the silence but I couldn’t find a way to add actual gravity to the words “I’m sorry.”

So in the oppressive stillness we had stood across the room from each other. I had tried to meet his eyes, but the ferocity of his glare had forced my gaze downward. He’s barely five foot ten but in that moment his anger made him taller, more menacing.

He had stood there, in front of his fireplace, holding on to the mantel as if he intended to tear it from the wall.

“You’re a whore.”

“I made a mistake,” I said feebly. “I . . . I think I got scared. I wasn’t sure about marriage. . . .”

He took the Waterford vase on the mantel into his hands, stared at it before hurling it across the room. It crashed into the wall behind me . . . too far away for me to think that he was aiming for me.

But still.

“You’re a whore.”

“Dave, I’m so sorry—”

“I don’t want your apologies.” He took a step forward. He has blond hair and pale blue eyes, gentle colors that are tainted by brutish enmity.

I did that to him. It’s my fault. “If you don’t want my apologies,” I said carefully, “what is it that you want?”

“I want you to admit it.”

“Admit what?”

“That you’re a whore.”

He stepped closer.

The last time I made love to Robert, it had been in his home. He had held me afterward. We had giggled and shared the casual details of our lives. He had been kind and loving, a perfect and compelling balance to our rough desire.

I feel guilty as hell . . . but I don’t feel like a whore.

“I think,” I said quietly, “that you should give me my car keys. We should talk about this when you’re calmer.”

My steadiness had brought him to a new level of fury. He grabbed my arms and pushed me up against the wall.

When Robert had me up against a wall, it had been exciting . . . but that had been the touch of frenzied ardor.

Hate is a very different thing.

Dave’s violence affected me in ways I couldn’t have predicted. It’s like I came out of myself. I wasn’t the woman he had pinned against the wall but simply a bystander, watching, observing. I saw Dave, and the more enraged he became, the weaker he seemed. I hurt him, I betrayed him, I was wrong.

But his reaction makes me think that maybe I had cause.

“I need you to let go of me.”

Dave hesitated. He wanted to hurt me. Maybe he wanted to hurt himself, too. But unlike me, Dave has mastered self-discipline.

He took several steps back and looked away as he gathered up his willpower. I can’t help but admire him for it.

“My keys,” I said again.

He continued to stare at nothing . . . or maybe he was staring at the past. Maybe he was seeing all the missteps that led us to this place.

“I told your mother that it could have happened to anyone,” he said.

I froze. “You spoke to my mother?”

“This was years ago,” he clarified. “We were visiting them in their Carmel home during the Pebble Beach car show. You, your father, and me . . . we all went but your mother pleaded out. A migraine, she said.”

“I remember.”

“I left you there with your dad about an hour into it. I’ve never been into cars and you two don’t get a lot of alone time. I came back to your parents’ house and there was your mother, sitting on her cream-colored couch in her vacation home, photographs scattered all over the coffee table. She was crying.”

“What were the pictures of?”

“Your sister.”

“Those photos don’t exist.”

“Did she tell you that she destroyed them along with the memories? And you believed her?”

I hadn’t answered. I knew everything of Melody’s had been discarded. Her clothes given to Goodwill or thrown in the trash, her old stuffed animals thrown into the Dumpster, her diaries burned with the photos . . . I saw them do it. I watched them as they found a thousand little ways to spit on her memory.

“She kept some,” Dave says gently. “If you were able to see outside yourself, you’d have known that your mother isn’t so callous as to destroy all of it.”

There are some insults that can’t be brushed off. That was one of them.

“Your mother told me she’s haunted,” he continued. “She wanted to know how she failed and I told her that all we had to do was look to you to know that whatever demons consumed Melody were of her own making. If it was your parents’ fault, you would be out of control, too.”

I didn’t want to hear anymore.

“Your mother told me your sister was a whore. I told her you were nothing like that.”

That’s when those mutinous tears escaped, rolled down my cheeks, and left streaks in my foundation.

“How will she live with this, Kasie?” He asked. His voice had grown soft even as the words had grown harsh. It was like being caressed with barbed wire.

“She doesn’t have to know,” I had pleaded.

“If we split up, she does. I’m not like you. I don’t believe pretty lies are better than hard truths. Maybe your parents won’t fail you now the way they must have when you and your sister were children. Maybe they’ll help you, because God knows you need help . . . if you don’t get it . . . think of what happened to your sister, Kasie—”

“That’s not fair.”

“At the very least they need to know that they can’t trust you. They need to know you’re a liar.”

“I lied to you,” I screamed, my calm disappeared—memories of Melody, of the pain in my parents’ eyes, of the confusion around her death. . . .

As I lie by Dave’s side now, it’s hard to remember he’s supposed to be the victim and I the outlaw.

“I cheated on you, Dave,” I had said, not quite as loudly this time. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to lie about other stuff. It doesn’t mean I can’t be trusted.”

“And I’m sure that when Melody was first caught doing vodka shots at fourteen, she insisted that it didn’t mean she couldn’t be trusted to resist drugs. You know the saying, once a cheater, always a cheater? Well that’s not basic enough. Cheaters are liars. It’s a perversion. A pervasive problem that colors everything you touch. You’re a liar, Kasie, and you can’t be trusted. Not by me, not by anyone because now we know that when it serves your purposes, when your . . . pleasure’s at stake, you will lie.”

“Dave—”

“Your parents should know that,” he continued. “Your employer, too. The team that works for you should definitely know that. They should know that you’ve been fucking your client. They should know that you got down on your knees and sucked his dick to get the account. After all, your actions affect them. It’s their account, too. They should know that when he tires of your attentions—and he will tire of you—they should know why he’s taken his business elsewhere.”

“Oh God, please, Dave—”

“And if your parents, your employer, your coworkers, if they all decide to reject you, cast you out the way your parents cast out your sister, you shouldn’t be angry, Kasie. They have the right to protect themselves. They have the right to choose to spend their time with people who have better values and judgment than you.”

“Dave, I’m begging you—“

“Are you?” he asked. His eyes seared into mine but I couldn’t read them. I don’t know that man who stood before me, who sleeps by my side now.

Maybe I don’t know myself, either.

“Are you begging me, Kasie?” he asked again. “Do you want my help?’

I didn’t know what to say. It was easier when he was being violent. I’d prefer the blows of his fist to the stabs of his words.

“I want to help you,” he says. “You don’t need to be Melody. I can help you find your way back. If you let me help you, no one will need to know what you did. Do you want that?”

I nod, unable to talk.

“Good. That’s what I want, too.” He walked over to me, stroked my face with the back of his hand. I stood motionless. I felt sick.

“I want the woman I fell in love with. She’s still in there; I know it. You know it, too, don’t you?”

Another nod, another tear.

“Good, good. Because if we’re going to get her back, you have to acknowledge the problem. You have to acknowledge what you’ve become.”

I squeezed my eyes closed. I thought of Robert Dade. I thought of his smile, of his warm hands and kind words.

“I need you to say it, Kasie. I need to know that you realize the full extent of your debasement. I need you to acknowledge where you’re at so we can start to get you back to where I . . . where everyone needs you to be.”

“Dave,” I whispered. His name is acidic against my tongue. “Please don’t—”

“Say it, Kasie. Say it so I don’t have to expose all this. Say it so we can get back to where we were.”

I opened my eyes. I wanted to come out of myself again. I wanted to be the bystander.

But I’m in this now and I can’t see a way out.

“Say it.” The look on his face was as cold as it was expectant.

Pain, hate, totally futile anger, memories of Robert Dade’s kisses, memories of peace . . . But that’s gone now. I did this; I gave away all my power, my freedom, my moral compass. With so much already lost, how can I expect to hold on to my pride?

“Dave . . .” I choked the word out again, “Dave . . . I’m a whore.”

And he smiled as I crumbled.

CHAPTER 2

DAVE DIDN’T TOUCH ME that night. That’s good, because if he had, I might have killed him. I would have wanted to stop myself, but I don’t always get what I want.

For instance, I hadn’t wanted to stay at Dave’s but he had insisted. I know why. He didn’t want me to go to Robert. He wanted to watch me, control me, keep me in line.

It’s odd because only a few days ago I had wanted to be controlled; I didn’t really care how much of that control came from within and how much came from without. As long as I was able to stay on the predetermined path, I was good. I had so many goals: success in my career, respect from those in my industry and from those I love . . . but mostly, my goal was not to be Melody. My sister had rejected all the paths available to her. She had sprinted through the trees, pushing aside branches, ignoring the thorns that scratched her skin, oblivious to the living things she crushed under her feet.

Robert had told me that if I chose Dave over him, I would be choosing prison over the unknown. I had countered that we all live in some kind of prison. At least the cage with Dave is gilded.

But as I stand over his bed, watching this man I once loved sleep, nothing in this room seems to shine.

Again I think of violence. I think of putting a pillow over his head and not letting go. Would he be able to fight me off? What if he couldn’t? Could I cover up the crime?

I blanch, shocked at the darkness of my thoughts. It’s not even 6 a.m. I have to get out of here. Because if Dave is right, if I can’t be trusted to resist temptation, then we both have a problem.

I sneak over to his dresser. I haven’t spent the night here for so long. We always stay at my place. I live closer to my office, and to his, too, for that matter. But there’s another reason I prefer my place. My home . . . it breathes. Even when things were good, I had found Dave’s house to be a little stifling. Nothing’s ever out of place. Books and CDs are alphabetized and the corners of every sheet are pulled and tucked with military precision.

But once in a while he would convince me to stay over and for those rare occasions I had some things, including some gym clothes, tucked away in the one drawer Dave has allocated for me. In the closet I find my tennis shoes and I shove them onto my feet as Dave continues to snore.

*    *    *

ONCE OUTSIDE, I start running at a criminal’s speed. My form reeks of panic, not athleticism.

But as I get farther away, I slow to a more rhythmic pace. My heart races though my breathing is measured and I find my stride. The air is crisp and fresh; the pounding of my feet drums up a slew of new ideas.

For the first time I wonder if there is a third way. A different path, one that may have a few bumps but no chasms. If I tread carefully, I can avoid most, if not all, of the thorns. Dry leaves crunch under my rubber soles as I pass the pale yellow and cream homes of Woodland Hills. Every front lawn is perfectly maintained, every door protected by its own security system.

There are thorns and there are thorns. I don’t think I can survive humiliation or the pain my affair would cause my parents. I know I can’t survive the public destruction of my career.

They should know that you got down on your knees and sucked his dick to get the account.

It’s not true but it won’t matter. My master’s degree from Harvard Business School, all of my hard work and professional accomplishments, it’ll all be cast off into the riptide of public opinion. My entire career will be pulled out to sea and lost forever.

And my parents will blame themselves, and they will erase me from their lives the same way they erased Melody.

Others have faced ostracization—for example, women in difficult nations who have stood their ground, walked away from husbands even though such action was considered the ultimate act of shame; men who have stood up and proudly admitted to being gay even though they knew it would get them exiled by their community, their church, their family. There are political activists who have spoken out when every one around them insisted they tow the party line.

These are the heroic men and women of our time. But they have the moral advantage; I don’t.

I am a capable, tenacious woman; a survivor through and through. But I have never been brave.

The realization cuts at my gut. If I can’t produce courage, then what? Will my cowardice bind me to Dave forever? Will I have to let him touch me?

Once upon a time I thought Dave was a decent lover. He’s gentle, caring . . . he always looks into my eyes as he climbs on top of me. Always kisses me as he pets my thighs, a polite request for entry.

Robert never really requested anything. He always made sure I knew that all I had to do was say no to get him to back off, but aside from that he just went for it. I like the way he pinned me down. I liked the way he held me still with a look before claiming me, pressing himself inside of me . . .

. . . loving me.

Is Robert falling in love with me the way I’m falling in love with him?

I stop in the middle of an empty street. Sweat trickles down my spine. I’ve run a few miles but I’m not even close to feeling sore or tired. My body barely registers the effort. I am strong. I am a coward.

But I’m also smart. It’s my intelligence that has opened doors for me in the past.

Maybe I can use it to open my cage.

I squint at the rising sun, note how it makes my engagement ring glow, reminding me of fire and blood. It’s a beautiful reminder of the hell I’m in. Reluctantly I turn my back on the light and return to my prison, a new less frantic determination in my gate.

When I get there, Dave’s awake and eyes me suspiciously as I burst through the door.

“Where were you?”

I hold out the fabric of my soaked apparel for his inspection. “Obviously I was running.”

My impertinence brings a crease to his forehead. Apparently he doesn’t think I’ve earned the right to show him anything but deference.

“You know how lucky you are?” he asks.

This gives me pause. “Lucky?”

“I’m giving you a second chance. It’s more than you deserve.”

It’s a stupid, clichéd threat, but he’s betting that I’ll be too scared to call him out on his ineloquence or even remark that I don’t want this “chance.” I only want his silence.

I push past him without a word, but when I’m halfway up the stairs I stop and turn. “I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“You found me at the marina.”

“I did.”

I walk back down the stairs. I keep my eyes lowered hoping that humility will be enough to elicit the answers I need. “You need to know that nothing happened on that boat. I stopped it even before you called me. I went to the marina to end it.”

He still doesn’t believe me. My truths have the same intonation as my deceptions so he rejects it all.

“Nothing happened on that boat,” I say again.

“And before that?”

I lower my head farther, letting my hair fall in my face. “I’ve made mistakes . . . but no more, Dave. I’m not going to let my impulses rule me.”

He laughs. There’s no warmth in it. “You don’t think I’m buying this, do you?” He turns his back on me, which is better.

“No. I know it’ll be a while before you’ll believe anything I say,” I admit, and I mean it. The concoction of guilt, fond memories, and unspeakable anger make my feelings for Dave complicated. I take a deep breath, take a step forward, stand behind him, close enough for it to feel a bit intimate. “But no more lies, all right? I promise. From now on we’ll both be honest with one another.”

He whirls around, once more the predator. “There is only one pretender in this room. Only one of us acted the slut.”

The jagged edges of my rage puncture my heart as I cozy up to him. “I know how angry you are . . . I know I have . . . things to make up for. And I know we need to talk about what happened. Can you tell me how you found me yesterday? You came to the marina, we took my car back here . . . and yet your car is in the garage.”

He’s silent; a malicious smile plays at the corners of his lips.

“Who drove you to the marina?” I ask softly. “Who else knows?”

He wanders past me toward the kitchen, forcing me to follow him for my answer.

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” he asks as he reaches for a coffee cup.

“What’s hard?”

“Being kept in the dark.”

I don’t answer. I wait a moment as he pours himself a fresh cup of coffee from his coffee maker; he’s only made enough for one cup.

I force myself to turn and leave the room. I’ll find out who knows. I’ll think my way out of this.

But as I climb the stairs toward the shower, I realize that the questions are piling up. I need a solid strategy, I need to know who else knows. . . .

. . . and I need to figure out Dave’s motivations. If he hates me, why does he want to keep me? Control? Or something else?

I go into the bathroom, close the door, and peel my clothes off as I warm up the shower.

The door to the bathroom opens and I turn to see Dave looking at me. I recoil, grabbing a towel and holding it up against me.

“You’re my fiancée,” Dave says, taking a step forward and pulling the towel from me. His gaze oozes over naked skin. “And this is my house,” he adds.

I hold up my head, resist the urge to cover myself again. I stretch out my fingers, keeping my hands stiff as boards so they don’t curl into fists.

Dave quickly tires of his game and turns away, walking back toward the door. “Besides,” he says, calling casually over his shoulder, “it’s not like I’m seeing anything you haven’t shown to any man who asks.”

I bite down on my lip as the door closes. Maybe I can find courage in hate.

CHAPTER 3

WHEN I GET to my office Barbara, my assistant, is at her desk. She gestures for me to approach; culpability and concern color her expression. “Mr. Dade is in your office.”

No one is allowed in my office when I’m not there. Each consultant here has too much confidential information nestled into our files to be so careless.

But it’s hard to resist Robert when he tells you what he wants, so I know he’s basically forced Barbara to give him entry.

I take a pad of paper off her desk and scribble down a series of menial tasks that I say need her immediate attention; all of them require her to be away from her desk. I stand there until she leaves, knowing that I bought myself at least a few minutes of privacy. Once she’s gone I walk in to greet him.

Robert Dade is leaning against the front of my desk, his arms crossed over his chest, his legs crossed at the ankles. He’s relaxed, patient, beautiful. Everything I would expect from him. His eyes meet mine as I step toward him, letting the door close behind me.

I feel a rush of confessions press up against my clenched teeth. I want to tell him about the desire that bubbles up when I look at him and that his being here makes the shadows a little lighter.

I want to ask him to touch me.

But instead I look away. “We don’t have an appointment.”

“You’re working for me,” Robert points out. “My business can bring your firm millions. Do I really need an appointment?”

But it’s not a question. Just a gentle admonishment.

Quietly I lock the door, something I almost never do, but at the moment, interruptions can be dangerous.

“So, you’ve made your choice,” he says as he wanders around the boundaries of the space, taking in the pale yellow walls and company-approved artwork.

“I told you, I’m with Dave.”

He looks at me sharply, more curious than angry. “Say that again.”

“I’m with Dave.”

“You’re saying his name . . . differently.”

I laugh; I want the sound to be buoyant, but the heaviness of my mood adds unwanted weight. “His name has always been Dave. There’s only one way to pronounce it.”

“That’s not what I mean. Before when you spoke of him you sounded . . . determined. He was your decision. Now . . .” He lets his sentence drop off and waits to see if I’m going to fill in the blank. When I don’t, he walks toward me, and I don’t move. I don’t even blink as he brushes my hair from my face.

“What is it, Kasie? What’s changed? You seem . . . scared.”

“You know what I’m afraid of,” I hiss. “I don’t want to lose who I am. Dave keeps me grounded. You . . . you’re . . .” I hesitate. I want to say that he’s the tsunami that turns land to sea but I can’t get the words out. I want the land that I’m standing on to be destroyed. He’ll hear that in my voice. So instead I turn my eyes away. “I can’t do this, Robert.”

“No, you’re repeating old lines,” he says quietly, studying my face. He leans in so his mouth is near my ear. “Tell me.”

He’s only touching my hair but every part of my body reacts. I feel myself warming, feel my breath catch in my throat. I feel the throb.

“Tell me,” he says and I close my eyes. “Are you afraid?”

I reach for him, take his shirt in my fist, feel the comfort of these waters, the quiet power of him. His lips move away from my ear and I feel the tip of his tongue sliding down my neck, tasting me with gentle precision and purpose. Instinctually I move into him as his hand rises to my breast.

I want him. I want to get lost in him. My fist opens and my fingers slowly, almost unwillingly, wander to the buttons of his dress shirt.

His tongue has moved back to my ear and I gasp as he pulls me closer again. His fingers in my hair, holding me in place as another hand moves lower, past my breasts, to my stomach . . . lower . . . I feel his hand slip between my thighs and press up into me.

“Let me in,” he whispers. “Not just here,” and with that he adds more pressure, sending a jolt of pleasure through my body. “That’s good,” he says as I begin to tremble, “but I want in here, too.” And he kisses the top of my head. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

The buttons of his shirt finally give way and I place my hand over his bare skin. His heart is beating a little too fast, as if urging me forward. I turn to him and look into his eyes. There’s something there that I haven’t noticed before. Something inside the desire. Is it concern? Need?

Love?

His hand is still between my legs and I lean forward and let my lips brush against his; my eyes stay open and he becomes a blur of lightly tanned skin and black lashes. His fingers start moving and with each stroke I feel things fall away—fear, thought, confusion—until all I’m aware of is the feeling of him.

Without a word he pulls away his hand and moves it to the waistband of my pants. I feel it loosen as he unfastens the buttons, slips his fingers inside the cloth of my panties, already wet for him. When he finds that little spot, I dig my fingernails into the skin of his chest.

“We’re not over,” he says and I respond with a moan. “Did you think we were? Do you think I can’t see the invitation in your smile, in the way you shiver just slightly when I get near? You think I can’t hear it in the quiet that comes when you can’t quite get yourself to deliver the scripted denial or well-wrought protest? I can read your body like a blind man reads brail.”

He lifts one hand and slips it under my shirt, over my bra, lets his fingers slide over my erect nipples. “Did these get hard the moment you saw me?” He asks.

I bite down on my lip, afraid that if I speak I’ll admit to the truth.

“How long did it take you to get wet?” He asks. “Did it happen when I first spoke? Was it before I finished my first sentence?”

I shift just slightly so I can look into his eyes yet again. Yes, there it is, that unidentified emotion that doesn’t match his words. Maybe need, maybe love.

I want to tell him the real reason I left the marina but I don’t dare. I know he can sense that there are unspoken words, feel that something is being held back.

With our eyes locked his index finger plunges inside of me. My fingernails dig in deeper.

“What do you want?” Robert asks. “Do you really want Dave?”

I rest my head on his shoulder as his finger continues to thrust its way inside my walls, again and again. I shudder as he kisses my neck.

“Or do you want me inside of you, Kasie?”

I nod my head still against his shoulder.

“Then I’m going to need you to come now.” His fingers become more insistent; his free hand pulls me to him tightly, roughly. Something like a whimper escapes my lips.

“Come for me now, Kasie. Right now, I want to see you.”

I can hear people passing the office outside in the hall. I don’t dare make another sound. My nipples pressed against him, I reach up and pull his hair, frantic for release but so afraid of giving myself away.

“Oh God,” I whisper.

“Not good enough,” he says insistently; the intensity of his touch increases; he steps forward, moving me with him until I’m pressed against the wall with nowhere to go.

“Someone will hear,” I whisper.

“I don’t care.”

I look away. I should be angry the way I’m angry with Dave but I can’t think. All I can do is react, and what I’m reacting to is . . . exceptional.

One hand slides into that small space between the wall and the curve of my back. He forces it lower, down to my ass, and he manages to press me to him in an even tighter hold than before. Another finger slips in. I let out a small cry of excitement. I see his eyes move down my body, demanding, but where Dave’s eyes scrape, Robert’s penetrate. They reach in and pull at the internal flames that are consuming me. They make the fire brighter, stronger.

“Oh God,” I say again and then quickly cover my mouth.

But Robert takes away my hand, holds my arm captive as he brings his eyes to mine once again. “Try to lie to me now, Kasie. Try to tell me it’s him who you want and not me.”

I try to look away but I can’t quite make myself do it. I feel his erection against my stomach, rigid and strong. I bite my lip so hard I can taste blood but even that isn’t enough to silence me as his thumb moves up to caress my clit.

It brings me over the edge. Another cry, a little louder this time. I don’t care who hears. I can’t care. I have no awareness of anything that isn’t Robert or me.

I grab him by his open shirt. “I want you. Make love to me, Robert.”

“Yes.” His voice is a growl of pure desire. “But you have to leave him. I want to make love to you knowing you’re mine.”

I close my eyes, my erratic breathing makes speech difficult. “Just make love to me. Please.”

“Promise you’ll leave him.”

His hands are still stroking me, gently now, keeping me in the folds of passion but holding me back from another complete release.

“I . . . can’t.”

And with that he lets go of me. In an instant he’s across the room as I remain pressed against the wall, gasping for air. Instinctually I extend my arm toward him, as if for balance but he’s out of my reach.

He’s out of reach in every way.

“I thought you were through with betrayal,” he says quietly.

My pants are loose around my hips, my hair disheveled and around my shoulders. I try to gather my thoughts but the suddenness of the mood shift has the room spinning. “Robert, you don’t understand—”

“I understand enough,” he says curtly. “I understand what I have and what I don’t.”

“It’s not that simple!”

“It’s always been exactly that simple.”

I’m still trying to catch my breath as he buttons his shirt.

The earth is off its axis. Nothing’s going the way it’s supposed to. Slowly, over the span of silent minutes, my breathing becomes more measured. I straighten my clothes, turn my gaze to the windows, and stare at the graying skies. “You’re both bullies,” I say quietly.

Robert turns. “Excuse me?”

“You think you know what’s best for everyone, always. You tell me I should be more independent, and then you bristle when I don’t make the choices you want me to make.”

“I have never bullied you,” he points out. “I would never raise a hand to you, or even consider it.”

I shrug, a sudden melancholy making me tired. “Some bullies use fists, some blackmail or verbal intimidation. Others use pleasure. You know how to make me . . . feel things and you use it to control me . . . except you can’t, can you? You can make me call out your name but you can’t make me jump when you call out mine.”

Robert’s face hardens. “You think so little of me?”

“I think so little of men.”

He studies me. “Yesterday, after you left the yacht, you fantasized about me.”

I don’t answer but I feel myself flush.

“I know you, Kasie,” he says with a sigh. “I know that even when I’m nowhere near you I’m inside of you. I can touch you with a thought.”

“So touch me,” I say quietly. “Touch me with your thoughts, with your eyes, your hands, your mouth and let me touch you.” I walk over to him; I want to stay strong but there’s a need in me that I can’t harness. “I can’t be yours, not right now, not in the way you want me to be. Everything’s complicated. But I do want you, Robert.” I look down, see that he’s still hard. I reach for his hand, let my tongue flicker over his thumb. “You see? With us it can be simple.”

He smiles, almost wryly, and takes a step closer. “God knows I want you. I want to make you call out my name so loudly they’ll be able to hear you in Orange County. But,” and with this last word he pulls his hand from mine and uses his fingers to lift my chin, keeping my gaze, “it will be on our terms. Not just yours and certainly not his.”

“Is this revenge?” I ask. “I walked away from you, and now you’re walking away from me?”

He shakes his head; I can see that he feels my fatigue, that he’s unwillingly making it his own. “You know damn well I’ll never walk away from you. You’re the one pushing me out the door.”

He runs his hands over his own shirt, smoothing out a few remaining creases. And then he walks away. “I have some new product development in the hands of my engineers. More user-friendly security systems. Marketing thinks it has significant potential. I’ll send over the data.”

I grit my teeth. Only Robert can switch from passion to business so easily. They occupy the same space in his heart. It’s the foreplay and the cuddling. Usually it is for me, too, but not this time. Not when every statistic and every kiss is a challenge.

“You’re team will need to reevaluate some things based on the new developments. Take one more week,” he says. “That should be enough time for you to figure out how you want to handle things. Shall I email your managing partner to inform him of the change?”

“No,” I mutter, “I’ll tell Mr. Love.”

“Very well.” He smooths his lapel one more time. “And then after that our business will either be through or not, depending on your determinations.”

I don’t miss the double meaning although he keeps his voice professional, his posture relaxed. “Oh, and Kasie? Just so you know”—he reaches for the door but doesn’t open it as he makes direct eye contact one more time—“I fantasized about you last night, too.”

CHAPTER 4

AS I STAND there in my empty office, frustrated and unsatisfied. I wonder, should I have told him? What if I had? Would he have rescued me?

I break out into a bitter laugh. This isn’t a fairy tale. Robert can’t get on his white horse and permanently seal Dave’s lips. I walk around my desk and fall into my seat. The quiet of the room is taunting me, reminding me that I can’t even risk a scream.

I reach for my appointment calendar and flip through the pages. I’ve always been a good planner. I still believe that if given time, I can outsmart Dave. I can get out. But I can’t risk Robert confronting him, thereby giving Dave more ammunition for his plot. I’ll figure out why Dave wants to hold on to me and how he discovered my secrets. . . .

. . . And then I’ll discover his.

I’ll discover his secrets and I’ll gag him with them. I’ll find his lies and weave them into a rope to bind his hands and feet. I’ll make him every bit as helpless as he thinks I am now.

You betrayed him first.

It’s the voice of the little angel on my shoulder. She’s feeling neglected lately. And why should I start listening to her again? She wants me to stay where I am and ponder things back into stasis. My devil is more proactive.

For instance, right now my devil reminds me to find out how Dave got to the marina.

He didn’t drive there and there was simply no way Dave would use public transportation. Yesterday had started with him saying he had an early-morning meeting. But what if he didn’t? What if he had waited in someone else’s car, parked discreetly on the street, just waiting to follow me?

A cab? No, probably not. Los Angeles is not New York, where the yellow cabs stream through the city streets like so many migrating salmon. In LA cabs of any color stand out, and if one had been parked on my street as I pulled out of my driveway, I would have noticed.

So someone had driven him. One of his coworkers or friends? But Dave would not have allowed himself to be humiliated in front of someone whose opinion he cared about. A private detective? Could Dave have had a professional follow me?

I look down at my appointment calendar again. I have a meeting with my team in forty-five minutes. I idly read the names of those who are reporting to me for this project: Taci, Dameon, Nin, Asha. . . .

Asha.

The buzzer for my intercom goes off and Barbara’s voice breathes through the speakers, letting me know that the long list of menial tasks I heaped upon her this morning have been attended to.

“Come into my office, please,” I say and then sit back as the door opens and she tentatively approaches my desk.

Barbara has been my assistant for as long as I’ve been here. Before that she was the assistant to a man who worked here as a consultant for ten years. She claims to be content with her quiet place in the corporate world, saving her energy for her husband and children at home. I’ve overheard her waxing poetic about the joys of having free time and a rich family life. I don’t understand her enthusiasm. It’s within the unstructured mess that qualifies as my free time that I stumble and thoughtlessly submit to whims that will later come back to haunt me. I love my parents, but my family life has been rich only in tragedy and denial. Barbara’s view of the world is as foreign to me as that of a tribesman in the Brazilian rain forest. But while I may not be able to relate to her, I certainly respect her strengths, one of them being her keen powers of observation.

“Did Asha come to work yesterday?”

“Yes,” Barbara says with a definitive nod.

Ah, she did. So she couldn’t have been the one to ferry Dave about. I sigh and place my chin in my hand. “All right, my team will be meeting in here at the end of the hour. Just hold my calls until it’s over.”

Barbara nods again and starts to turn before stopping. “Does it matter that Asha showed up late?”

I lift my head. “Excuse me?”

“She wasn’t here in the morning. Apparently she had some kind of appointment. But she was here by noon, and I think she stayed late.”

“Noon,” I repeat.

“Is that important?”

As important as the timing of Judas’s departure from the Last Supper.

I sit back, measure the likelihood of the duplicity. “Two days ago, Dave called the office . . . he was planning a surprise party—”

“Oh, did that go well?” Barbara asks hopefully. “He called me but I couldn’t think of which of our colleagues to recommend as guests, since you really tend to keep your personal and professional lives separate.”

I wince at that. “Why did you tell him to invite Asha?” I ask.

Barbara gives me a funny look. “I told him no such thing. Asha came up to my desk just as I was hanging up. She had sent me some report that she wanted me to print out and have on your desk for the next morning. She asked me who had been on the phone and I told her. That’s all.”

“That’s all? She didn’t talk to him? He didn’t invite her to the party?”

“Not that I know of . . .” Barbara’s voice trails off. The rapid blinking of her eyes gives away her nervousness. “I did tell her about the party . . . and I mentioned that it was a surprise party. She didn’t spill the secret ahead of time, did she? I guess I shouldn’t have told her about it at all but it was such a grand romantic gesture . . . and Ma Poulette is supposed to be a fabulous restaurant. I just had to talk to someone about it. Did I make a mistake? If so I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

I hold up my hand to stop her. “Barbara, you didn’t do anything that merits an apology.” And I’m beginning to suspect that what Asha has done is so extreme that all the apologies in the world won’t make a damn bit of difference.

“Let Asha know that I need to see her.”

“Before the meeting?”

“Now.”

A few minutes later Asha walks in, all grace and conceit. She’s been expecting my summons and it’s her anticipation that gives her away.

I stand at my desk and gesture to a chair. Carefully she takes it, her eyes scanning the room, looking for something she apparently isn’t finding.

“Did you hear I was leaving?” I ask.

Her mouth twitches, the slightest giveaway of the smile she’s suppressing. “I’ve heard nothing. Are you?”

I reclaim my seat, lace my fingers together. “So Dave didn’t tell you?”

Ah, there it is, a flash of worry. “Dave . . . your fiancé? Why would Dave tell me anything? I barely know him.”

“But you knew him enough to get him to invite you to our engagement party.”

She shrugs, suddenly bored. “Only because he called the office to see if there was anyone from here he should be inviting. I told him he should invite me. That was the first time I’ve ever spoken to him.” She leans forward; her dark eyes are pools of mystery and cynicism. “Are you leaving, Kasie?”

“He called the office,” I say, refusing to allow her to drive the conversation. “Did he call you specifically?”

“No, he called your assistant,” she says, now clearly exasperated. “Why does any of this matter? Have you been asked to leave or not?”

I smile. Asha’s off her game. Today she’s more impatient than devious. “I never said anyone asked me to leave. Why on earth would you come to that conclusion?”

She hesitates; her error was a stupid one. Unworthy of her. I watch as she gathers her thoughts, calms her mind, and draws herself up. “You would never leave of your own free will,” she says simply. “If you’re leaving, it’s because you’ve been asked to.”

“I’m good at my job, Asha. You acknowledged as much the other night. So again, why would I be asked to leave?”

Again a shrug, but this one more practiced. She’s thinking, perhaps wondering how far she can backpedal before I have her crashing into a brick wall. “Politics are funny” is the phrase she settles on. “Sometimes people . . . perfectly competent workers, are let go because they don’t fit within the structure as well as it was originally presumed they would. But I’m just speculating, Kasie. You’re the one who suggested you were leaving.”

“Did I suggest that?” I ask. I keep the sarcasm light, almost playful. “And here I thought I just asked a question,” I say with a smile. “I’m more than a competent worker, but let’s not spend time debating things we both know. In fact . . . now that I think about it, there’s a lot of things we both know, aren’t there?”

“I’m not following.”

“Well, let’s see.” I get up from my seat again. My anger is intense, but I like the way it feels. I like the way I’m able to give it shape, form it into a weapon of torture. It’s a slow torture, delicate and feminine . . . it has artistry. I imagine myself holding a pretty little scalpel and rubbing it gently against Asha’s throat. “We both know you shouldn’t have been at that party unless of course you came with someone else. I saw you hanging out with Mr. Freeland. Was he your date? Your way in?”

“Did I give Freeland my affection in exchange for a party invitation? No,” she says, and now it’s her turn to smile. “I don’t mix sex and commerce. Do you, Kasie?”

I stopped. This is more audacity than I expected, even from her. “Are you asking me if I’m a prostitute?”

Asha giggles. It’s a surprisingly appealing sound, almost seductive in it’s daintiness. “Don’t be silly,” she says. “You’re an honorable woman. You wear a rather expensive engagement ring to prove it.”

I glance down at the ring. It squeezes too tightly.

“Besides,” she continues, “prostitutes have sex for profit. Not you. Although after you started dating Dave, you did get a very profitable position here—”

“He got me an interview. I got the job.”

“And then you also got us a very profitable account, didn’t you?” Asha asks sweetly. Her voice is the spoonful of syrup used to mask the bitterness of a crushed pill. “You got that all by yourself. No help from Dave at all. Mr. Dade just handed it to you.”

I don’t answer. Instead I wait, to see how far she’ll push. Is her hatred enough to make her careless? Has she been spying on me, even before that day on the boat? Or is this all presumptions and speculations?

“What did you tell Tom Love?” she asks. “That you met Mr. Dade in the security line at the airport before flying home?”

“Yes,” I say. I have my back to the wall while she looks up at me from the chair I ushered her into. This is my office. I’m in the position of strength here. But the dynamic is unstable.

“It’s funny, because I’ve never gotten into a conversation with anyone I didn’t know while in those security lines. Everyone’s so focused on getting their keys out of their pockets, their watches unstrapped from their wrists, it’s not really a let’s-get-to-know-each-other kind of place, is it?”

“For every rule there are exceptions.”

“True,” Asha agrees with a nod. “And for every crime there is a criminal. When Mr. Dade called to tell Tom he wanted consultant Kasie Fitzgerald to head a team to help him prepare his company for a public offering, he had a different story of your first meeting. He said that the two of you had spoken at a blackjack table.”

I raise my chin as if the gesture could increase my height. I need to be above this, but I don’t manage it. Her words cut as they were meant to. Tom never told me that my tale contradicted the true story he had apparently already gotten from Robert.

What else had Robert told him? Had he told Tom that we had ended up in his room? No, he wouldn’t have shared any of those secrets. For a brief moment my mind betrays me, bringing me back to that night, forcing upon me the recalled feeling of when the man I only knew as Mr. Dade had taken a scotch-soaked ice cube, briefly touched it to my clitoris, and then licked the liquor off me with the flick of his tongue. Images of his hands on my hips, his head in my lap as I grabbed the back of my chair, my skirt up around my waist . . . I had never done anything like that before.

I was paying for that now.

I could try to convince Asha that Robert is the liar. I could tell her that he had made up a false tale of how we met to insinuate things that never happened, as some men are apt to do.

But I can’t do that. I can’t load my shame onto Robert’s shoulders. Yet the price of the truth exceeds my means.

“I didn’t feel the need to tell my boss that I occasionally dabble in gambling,” I say, hoping the excuse doesn’t sound as lame to her as it does to me. “Some people don’t approve.”

“Tom Love approves of anything that brings him business, and your time in Vegas definitely did that.”

“Asha, where were you yesterday morning?”

“I was in a car,” she says, leaning back in her chair. “With your fiancé.”

And now I see that I’ve approached this all wrong. I had assumed she wouldn’t want me to think of her as a snoop, as someone so desperate to undermine me she would scurry after me, looking for bread crumbs, clues that could lead her to greater sins. But I’m the only one here who cares what people think. I’m the only one looking to hide my flaws with layers of icing. Asha cares only about power.

And that one fact gives her all the power in the world.

Her lips spread into a Cheshire grin. “Do you think I fucked him? Dave, that is. Would that upset you? Or would it just even the playing field?”

She stands up, crosses to me. She stands close, too close. “I would never fuck Dave,” she purrs. “I’d fuck you, though. Tell me, Kasie, have you ever been touched by a woman?” She reaches forward and brushes her hand against my breast. I jump back, shocked and completely thrown. When I asked Barbara to invite Asha into my office, I had a plan. I had set a trap for a wolf. I hadn’t understood that the predator I faced was a viper.

“I’m not a lesbian, not exactly,” Asha explains, answering a question no one had asked. “It’s more like authority, privilege . . . entitlement that I’m attracted to. I like to strip it away like so much unneeded clothing. I’d love to see you naked, tied to a bed, your body responding to my touch even though you wouldn’t want it to. I’d love to see you completely vulnerable with no semblance of control. Then again, you’re completely vulnerable now, aren’t you? And if there’s anyone in this room with control, it’s me.”

Is Asha trying to commit career suicide? She reports to me! If I told Human Resources what she’s saying to me now . . .

My cheeks heat up as what she already knows comes crashing home to me. Her smile is gentle, almost sympathetic.

“You’re not going to tell anyone about this conversation, Kasie. You can’t. One of us cares about her personal reputation, and I can destroy it with a word.” She leans her shoulder against the wall next to me, too close but not touching me. “I bet you made yourself vulnerable to Mr. Dade. That’s a man who can make a woman beg; I’m sure he can make you beg. And I bet that man is hung. Guys with big, rough hands like his always are. I bet your pussy’s sore for days after he’s done with you.”

“Get out of my office.”

“But you’re the one who asked me to come, didn’t you, Kasie?” she asks. “You brought me here to toy with me, find out what I know. Well,” she says, inching even closer. I turn my head away but I can still hear her whisper, a malicious seduction that makes me shiver: “What you’ve found out is that I know everything and now it’s my turn to play.”

She pushes herself off the wall and starts to walk toward the door.

“I don’t have as much to lose as you think,” I call after her. “If Tom already knows what I’ve done, as you suggest, then he’s known for a long time. And I still have my job. Nothing’s changed for me here.”

“Ah, but Tom is comfortable with corruption as long as it works to his purposes. But even he knows that if Dylan Freeland, the founder of our company . . . the fucking godfather of your fiancé, ever found out, your office would be mine.”

“So why are you talking to me?” I ask. “Why not tell the world?”

She shrugs. “Because this is fun. And if Dave hasn’t exposed you yet, it’s because he’s giving you another chance. He’ll back up any lies you spew. It’ll be his word . . . and yours and Robert’s against mine. I wouldn’t stand a chance. But if you slip up again? And Dave finds out?” She wags her finger at me. “That’s when the real fun begins.”

She smiles again knowing everything she said is perfectly clear and totally ambiguous. Then with another shrug she says, “See you at the meeting!”

I watch her leave and then, with the wall pressing into my back, I slide to the floor; my knees come to my chest and I bury my face in my hands.

CHAPTER 5

I DON’T KNOW HOW I got through that meeting. Every one of Asha’s comments and questions were completely appropriate. Her composure was perfection. Mine, not so much. I knocked over a bottle of water on my files, I tripped up on my words, I had to ask Taci to repeat her proposal for Maned Wolf’s international repositioning twice.

The problem was not what Asha knew. The problem was that Asha didn’t lie. She treasured the viciousness of complete honesty. She used truth as a weapon every bit as much as I used lies as a shield. That meant that if anyone ever asked Asha the wrong question . . .

Even now as I sit in my office, alone among a pile of paperwork, the thought makes me shudder. When did I become the fly in the web? But no, that’s wrong. The fly is an innocent. I am not.

Most of my coworkers have already gone home. Barbara left ages ago, but I’m still here, as is often the case. This office was once my sanctuary and I hope that in my solitude I can find a way to recapture that feeling.

Daylight is fading behind a smoggy sunset. The sky is a brilliant combination of pinks and lavenders. That’s the thing about smog. It’s toxic and according to the American Cancer Society it can even be deadly. But when framed the right way, at just the right moment it can make everything beautiful, and you forget. You look up at those colors as the sun rises and declines and you forget that the very thing that is enhancing the natural light, the thing that makes everything look so intensely beautiful, is slowly killing you. Eventually the sun gets a little higher and you see the ugliness of it. But by then it’s too late. You’ve been pulling it into your lungs for hours. It has you. It’s in you. That’s it.

I wonder if my affair with Robert Dade has been a little like that. Intense, brilliant, beautiful . . . but now it’s killing me. I’ve lost control and for me, for my entire life, control has been my oxygen.

I stare intently at the colors, wishing they would stay. What if I had never met Dave? What if I had found this job that I have loved so much on my own? What if when I had met Robert in Vegas, I had been free? How would things have proceeded? Would we have dated like a normal couple? No, nothing about Robert Dade is normal. But still, we would have become a couple. I’m sure of it. We would have traveled together—sometimes hiking up the Mayan pyramids; other times making love in “The Hotel of Kings” in Paris, the Tuileries Gardens below our window.

But I’m being too conventional in my thinking. We could go to Nice, to the Musée Marc Chagall, rent out the concert hall for a private performance. Not something the Musée would normally agree to, but Monsieur Dade could make it happen.

A small band of musicians is waiting for us on the stage as we walk into the room bathed in the blue light streaming through the stained glass. A pianist sits with his fingers poised over a baby grand that would be completely unremarkable if the lid of the piano wasn’t open to reveal painted lovers rising into a blue-gray landscape. Around them are villagers, a quarter of the size of the lovers. They don’t attempt to match the couple’s grandeur but they seem to rejoice in the warmth that emanates from them.

Robert leads me past rows of empty seats until we are in the front of the room, just a few feet from the stage. He steps away from me only to extend his hand in my direction, his palm up, offering a universal invitation that he reiterates with words when he asks, “Will you dance?”

As I take his hand the band starts to play and we begin to move. The bass is so low, its vibrations tremble against my skin as I follow Robert’s lead in something that resembles a waltz but is different enough to make it uniquely ours. I throw back my head and laugh as I’m twirled around the room, wrapped up in blue light and Monsieur Dade’s arms.

But then he stops, right there in the middle of the floor and with a slow smile, he tells me I’m beautiful. Lifting myself onto my tiptoes, I kiss his lips, lightly at first but then his hand moves to the back of my head, pulling me in closer.

The music soars with my pulse and we begin to dance again. But this time it’s different. Our shirts drift to the floor as the sonata ends, bringing us to a new, more rhythmic melody. Then comes his belt, my skirt, everything, until we are dancing naked through the hall. A red dove on painted blue glass seems to swoop down on us as his tongue parts my lips. The music beats through me as we sway. I feel him get hard against me. The musicians don’t even seem to notice us; that’s not their place in this dream. They are only required to provide Robert and me with a soundtrack for our passion. And as he lowers me to the floor, as I roll on top of him, straddle his hips and feel him push inside of me, I know that, in the ways that count, it is just the two of us. I ride him slowly, moving with the tempo.

The musicians have the stage. We have each other.

Robert’s hands slide to my waist, guiding me, moving me so I can feel the full length of him inside of me. Painted memories of Chagall’s youth seem to fall from the sky as Robert sits up. He’s still inside me as I sit facing him in his lap. For a moment we don’t move; we just take a moment to feel what it is to be connected, with our bodies, with our eyes, by an emotion that is so much bigger than either one of us.

And then the dance starts again. I gasp as his hips buck against mine, splitting me open until it feels like it’s not just him but the music itself that’s inside of me, moving through me, resonating against every nerve ending to make me frantic with desire.

With one decisive movement he flips me over and I cling to him as he begins to pull out only to enter me again with a forceful thrust and a gentle kiss. “I love you,” he says, and I respond in kind.

He positions one of my legs above his shoulder. “Follow my lead,” he whispers.

And with that he thrusts again and my world is filled with ecstasy. The music, the art, the man who makes my heart pound . . . it brings me to the brink of nirvana and as Chagall’s lovers swirl in their blue light I come with a cry that echoes through the room.

His sweat is mingled with mine, my nose is filled with the sent of our sex . . .

. . . and we’re not done.

He turns me on my stomach and again he enters me. On the ground I can see fragmented reflections of blue, a cool contrast from the red heat inside me.

As he pushes farther and farther inside, his hand strokes the length of my back with a subtle pressure that brings me to crescendo. And as I come again, I hear him cry out, too. We climax together in the blue light of Chagall’s concert hall, surrounded by music.

My name is on his lips and it’s what I hear as he lays his head between my shoulder blades. “I love you,” he says again as the musicians transition to a quieter song.

And in the perfection of that moment I know it’s true.

Just as I know the sunset I see right now is beautiful.

But like my fantasy, it’s fading. Darkness is coming.

The door opens to my office. I don’t turn to see who it is. I know just by the way my ring seems to get heavier on my hand.

“The workday’s over,” Dave says; his voice is laced with his newfound cruelty. “Get your stuff together. I have plans for us.”

CHAPTER 6

WE DON’T SAY much as we crawl along with the late rush-hour traffic of the 405. Dave keeps his eyes on the road, his hands on the wheel. I can smell the smoke of cigars on his clothes. He stopped by his men’s club before coming to me, sat in a leather armchair, chortled while some stockbroker told him a dirty joke, basked in the glory of being one of the elite. But whatever cheer he derived from those interactions fell away as soon as he got within touching distance of me.

I want to tell him that if he’s truly repelled by me, he should just let me go, spare us both. But I know it’s not that straightforward for him. There’s pride involved and maybe, to use Asha’s word, entitlement. There’s more, too, emotions and motivations I can’t yet read, but I’m too tired tonight to dip deep into that brew. I rest my head against the passenger window and wonder how long I can extend the silence.

“I talked to your parents today,” he says.

And I can feel the smog in my lungs.

I force my brain to start running through the facts rather than giving in to the panic that’s ebbing its way in. Dave is not like Asha. He can lie. He could be lying to me now. He has every reason to want to unnerve me.

“You called them,” I say, making my words into a statement rather than a question. If I’m wrong, he’ll smirk, inadvertently giving me a clue as to what’s going on. If I’m right, he’ll think I know him better than I do.

But of course I don’t know him at all. The man sitting by my side is little more than an ice sculpture of the warm human being who used to hold me through the nights.

Dave doesn’t smirk. Instead he nods, almost reluctant to acknowledge the accuracy of my statement. Perhaps he wants to keep me guessing about everything.

“Do you want to know what I told them?”

It’s funny, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard menace and hope mingled together like that. He wants so badly for me to take the bait. He wants to win the game. For him this is a sporting event, one that he’s only beginning to master.

For me it’s a war.

“Only if you want to tell me,” I say, a false retreat as I work to lure out the truth.

He gives me a sharp look. “I guess it doesn’t matter. Obviously I told them enough to keep them from calling you.”

“Is that obvious?” I ask. One more bullet deflected.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, aren’t you trying to prove a negative? You’re assuming they didn’t call me after your conversation, but you haven’t actually asked me if that’s the case.” I reach over and take his hand, ignoring the frostbite sting of his touch. “If you truly want to help me, like you say, then you need to communicate with me honestly.”

Again the silence comes as Dave keeps his eyes on all the brake lights ahead; they’re like the intent red eyes of demons watching a show.

“Things are supposed to be a certain way,” he says after we’ve rolled through another quarter of a mile. The statement isn’t meant for me; it’s not exactly like he’s talking to himself, either. This has the sound of a prayer, like he’s gently correcting God, reminding the universe how to act.

My hand is still on his, keeping the force field down. “What did you tell my parents, Dave?”

“I am so incredibly angry with you.” Again I’m not sure if the words are meant for me or God, though undoubtedly they ring true for both of us. “I’m not going to let you go, but I can’t let it go, either. They say love and hate are the opposite sides of the same coin but I never understood that expression before. I never got it. Now I do.”

I withdraw my hand. If this is what’s beneath the force field, it’s not worth my time. “This isn’t a coin toss,” I say. “If it was, I’d pick it up and flip it back to love.” I snap my fingers and then smile down at them wistfully. “It would be that easy.”

He doesn’t say anything and keeps his eyes on the highway. “I told them you were acting like Melody. I didn’t need to say much more before they speculated on the details themselves.”

I freeze. That bullet hit. My throat begins to constrict. But . . . “If you had told them that, they would have called me.”

“I told them not to. I told them I’d set you straight . . . or not.”

“I don’t understand.” And if it doesn’t make sense then it can’t be true, I want to add. It can’t be true. I won’t allow myself to even entertain it.

“Your mother thinks she did this to you. Maybe she did. She’s hysterical. Your father probably agrees but he won’t say as much. Since they think they’re the cause of the problem, they’re letting me be in charge of the solution.”

I feel myself color. “You think you’re in charge of me?”

“Yes. They’re disgusted with you, Kasie. They think you’re nothing better than a common slut fucking her way to the top. After we spoke, your father actually speculated that you might have been granting favors to some of your professors.”

“Shut up.”

“Tell me, how did you get an A in physics when you don’t know the difference between fission and fusion? Did you stay after class? Crawl under his desk, rub yourself against his leg like a dog in heat?”

“I earned every grade I got.”

“But how did you earn them? In sweat? Was it the papers you put on the professors’ desks that pleased, or was it the view of you bent over their desks, arching your back, offering your body as a door prize?” He shakes his head. “I think the saddest thing I ever heard was your father saying that it might have been better if they hadn’t had children. I don’t know, Kasie—they could be done with you. Just like they were done with the disappointment they spawned before you, even before she died.”

I can see my father sitting at the kitchen table with my mother. I hear him running through the filthiest of possibilities as my mother gets smaller and smaller in her chair. They don’t know I’m there, standing outside the room, peeking in. I only turned nine a few days earlier; my birthday party had ended badly right after my father had caught my sister and some man together in her bedroom.

“She was high, Donna,” he says to my mother. “My guess is that he gave her the drugs. That’s what she was doing, she was paying him with the only currency she has. And she did it during Kasie’s birthday. She taints everything she touches. We have to kick her out. I won’t have that kind of depravity in my house.”

“She’s our daughter.” It takes me a moment to realize it’s my mother speaking. She sounds so different. The polish has faded from her perfect diction and her words are laid bare, the desperation on display for all to see.

“She stopped being our daughter when she became a whore.”

Is there a tremor in his voice? Is he struggling with his proclamation? I don’t know. All I hear is the definitiveness of the sentence. I hear the condemnation. Only yesterday we were innocent, my sister and I. Her oddities were eccentricities; she was a handful. My father needed to take her in hand; that’s all.

But now she’s a whore.

Whores are nothing.

Whores can be cast out, punished, hated. I’m watching my father learn to hate my sister.

“Not under my roof,” he says, and I wonder if I’ll ever see her again.

I reach for my handbag, but Dave stops me with a look before asking, “What are you doing?”

“I’m calling my parents.”

Dave opens his mouth to protest, then stops and shrugs. The traffic is lightening as I fish out my cell and dial the numbers of my father.

It’s hard to hold the phone; my palms are slick with sweat and my eyes are already misting over.

My father picks up. “Kasie?” he says, surprised. Perhaps he didn’t think I’d be brave enough to call.

“Dad, I . . . we need to talk. I know . . . I know how angry you must be with me.”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line and I anxiously try to think of a way to proceed.

“Kasie, is there something you’re trying to tell me?” he finally asks. His voice is cautious . . . and confused.

“You . . . you don’t know why you might be angry at me?” I look over at Dave. He’s grinning.

“Have you done something?”

I pull the phone away from my ear. Part of me wants to laugh with relief and hysteria and pain. Dave’s playing a game. I’m fighting a war. He’s winning and I’m dying.

With a shaky hand I bring the phone back up. “I just realized that I didn’t spend much time with you at the party and I didn’t even offer to drive you back to the airport the next day. I’ve been horribly neglectful.”

“Which is why you had Dave call us,” my father says; his voice isn’t guarded anymore. It’s relaxed; he’s pleased with my apology for what he sees as a minor offense. “Dave explained how things are at your work right now. You do what you need to do, honey.”

“OK,” I say, numbly.

“Dave’s a good man,” my father says thoughtfully. “He’s . . . decent and he comes from a good family. I really like him.”

“I know,” I say.

Dave pulls us into a new lane and we pass a stream of cars slowly making their way to an exit.

“We’re proud of you, Kasie. We’re proud of the choices you’ve made in your life. And please don’t worry about being caught up at work. Your mother and I completely understand. And it’s not forever, right?”

“Right.”

“Good! So soon you’ll be the sweet, attentive daughter we all know and love. Just make sure you don’t neglect that man of yours. He’s a treasure, too.”

Trust, sweet, love . . . these words seem loaded to me now that I’m living in a world of deception, bitterness, and hate. Dave’s clearly enjoying my unraveling. He’s savoring the sour taste of my betrayal, letting the vinegar slide around on his tongue before swallowing it, and now I can smell it on his breath and seeping out of his pores. It defines him.

I say good-bye to my father, doling out enough pleasantries in the process to distract him from the sadness he might hear if he bothered to listen too closely.

I look at Dave. He’s still smiling but his smile doesn’t seem to be attached to the rest of him. His shoulders are rigid, his eyes are hard, his hands grip the steering wheel like it’s a rifle someone might try to pull away from him.

“I’m sorry,” I say. For the first time today I mean it. “I’m sorry I made you so very sad and so horribly angry.”

The smile stays plastered in place but his shoulders rise even higher. “Just because I didn’t tell them this time doesn’t mean I won’t. Your father won’t forgive you.”

“Dave, you don’t have to let this happen.”

“What?” he says with a short laugh. “I don’t have to expose you?”

“You don’t have to let my misjudgments change who you are.”

He’s quiet for a moment; we switch from the 405 to the 101 and the traffic slows once more. “When you took off your clothes for him, when you let him touch you in all the places where only I was supposed to be allowed to touch you . . . was that a misjudgment?”

“Perhaps I should have chosen a different word but—”

“Like when a track and field athlete hits the bar during a vault . . . or a quarterback tries to throw the ball to a teammate only to miss his mark and have it intercepted . . . that kind of misjudgment?”

“We’re not arguing semantics while we stomp on one another’s hearts.”

“No, we’re not arguing; I’m asking you a question. I’m giving you an opportunity to explain yourself.”

“I’ve already done that.”

“Have you?” He turns to me. The traffic has stopped . . . an accident perhaps. Someone’s carelessness has destroyed property and lives.

“I had wedding jitters . . . I got scared—”

“So you slept with someone else. You fucked a security blanket? Rubbed it between your legs, that made you feel . . . safe?”

“Dave—”

“Because I can do that, if that’s what you need.” With a jerk of his hand he plunges it between my thighs, roughly rubs the fabric against my vagina. The man driving the SUV in the next lane, bored and weary, looks over at the wrong moment. He sees where Dave’s hand is, makes eye contact with me, lifts his eyebrows.

I grab Dave’s hand and pull it away. “Knock it off.”

“Ah, so whereas when he fingers your pussy, it makes you feel safe, but when I do it, you find it repulsive.”

“When you do it in hate, yes, it’s repulsive.”

“You want to be touched in love?”

“Yes.”

“Then make me feel love.”

Perhaps it’s the accidental sincerity of his tone. I turn in my seat, try to study his expression, but his eyes stay stubbornly on the road. There’s something tragic in what he’s said.

“I don’t know if I can make you feel that.”

“Does he love you?”

I hesitate before answering. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if it matters.”

“And you?”

“You’re asking if I love him?”

“Yes . . . no . . . I . . .” His voice trails off and he blushes slightly, embarrassed by his own fumbling response.

The traffic in our lane starts to move. The witness to Dave’s brief assault falls behind us, making the memory nothing but a shrinking image in my side mirror. “What do you want to know, Dave?”

“I don’t think love can just disappear,” he says, as much to himself as to me. “And yet what you did . . . we had something . . . it was big. How can you be so cavalier with something that had so much substance?”

I don’t have an answer.

“You think I’m trying to torture you,” he says quietly. “Maybe I am. Maybe I want you to experience a tenth of the pain you’ve caused me. But I don’t believe the love we had just disappeared. I don’t believe that the woman I love has evaporated.”

“I’m here, Dave. I didn’t evaporate.”

“No, it’s not you. A whore in sheep’s clothing . . . in her clothing. It’s like a split personality or . . . or a mental breakdown.”

“You think I’ve gone crazy?”

“I think you need to be saved.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m going to do that. I’m going to be your hero whether you want one or not.”

And like that, he’s going from tragic to insane. He’s still the captor asking his prisoner to sing his praises, but maybe all captors are a little insane. What does it matter if someone is fanatical about religion, politics, or love? Fanaticism is what it is: crazy, misguided, and, in a weird way, honest. Fanatics believe their own bullshit.

“I understand now,” he continues. “You have . . . needs . . . things you have to get out of your system. I’m going to help you do that. We’re going to use the depravity that’s infecting you to our advantage. I’m going to bring you back to the woman you were, the one I want to marry. By the time I’m done, that’s who you’ll want to be. You’ll see how your current path only leads to degradation. You’ll crave purity.”

I shake my head. I didn’t know an affair could push someone over the edge like this. It’s like he thinks he can turn our lives into a modern-day version of The Taming Of the Shrew.

“Tonight,” he continues. “We’ll start tonight.”

I don’t know exactly what that means but I know what it might mean. The idea of being with Dave now, having him touch me, having him push his dick inside of me, looking at me smugly as I squirm underneath him . . . I can’t do it.

“You are so angry with me right now,” I say softly. “I don’t want to . . . to be with you until you feel some degree of kindness toward me.”

“You don’t think I do?” he asks, but it’s a rhetorical question. We both know I’m right.

“Then we’ll start slow,” he says. “A dinner at home. Cook me dinner the way you used to do. Dress up for me. Show me that you’re at least willing to make an effort.”

I turn toward the window. I’m tired. I don’t have the energy for any of this. But Dave had been making a point when he lied to me about telling my parents. He was letting me know what he could do. If I don’t make an effort, why should he hold his tongue? Why should he do anything for me at all?

“I’ll cook dinner,” I say quietly.

“And you’ll let me select something pretty for you to wear while you serve me?”

While I serve him. I have to tell myself that he’s only talking about dinner . . . but of course the wording was more carefully crafted than that. I’ve given my confession and this is the penance he has chosen for me. Instead of appealing to God, I’m meant to appeal to him.

So I nod. It’s only dinner, only a dress. I’d rather recite the Rosary a few hundred times, but perhaps that wouldn’t be appropriate. It’s seems silly to try to bring something sacred into hell.

CHAPTER 7

WHEN WE ENTER his house I head straight for the kitchen. Dave probably thinks this is submission but really I just want to get away from him. I’m not a spectacular cook but I’m not horrible. I pull out the ingredients necessary to make a quick-and-easy stir-fry and try to forget the day. The counter is covered with fresh vegetables and two small frozen lamb loin chops when Dave walks in. He stares at the meat, seeing an insult there. He doesn’t much like red meat but had bought the lamb in an attempt to please me. Months ago, a lifetime ago, he had tried to surprise me with a meal . . . which he mangled terribly. We had laughed about it and I had ended up making us pasta.

But he hadn’t thrown away the remaining uncooked loin chops and I do like red meat . . . and I’m the one cooking this time. I pull out a large chopping knife and lay it carefully on a cutting board.

“The dress is on my bed. Go ahead and change.”

“I’ll change after I make dinner,” I say as I reach for some extra-virgin olive oil and a microwave-safe plate for the defrosting.

“No, change now. It will make me happy.”

He’s a million miles from happy. If he was happy, I’d have the man I once cared for, even if I don’t love him.

I suck in a sharp breath. And like that I finally admit the evil truth. I never loved the man I agreed to marry.

I only wanted the life he provided, the orderliness, the structure, the predictability. That had all seemed so important. Funny how those “attributes” have lost so much of their appeal. Perhaps it wasn’t the betrayal that turned him inside out. Maybe it’s the lack of love that’s transformative. Maybe it’s the distance between what we want and what we have that sculpts our behavior.

A dress won’t fix anything, it certainly won’t make either of us happy but since I don’t know what will, I do as asked and go up to his room to change.

The dress makes me laugh. It’s ridiculously provocative and clearly something he picked up today. It’s black and off the shoulder. A strip of solid fabric covers my breasts but below is sheer black mesh, which will reveal my full midriff before meeting another band of solid fabric that forms the micro-mini skirt. I saw a photograph of a pop star wearing a similar dress to the VMAs or something like that, but I doubt Dave knows this is a knockoff of a piece just slightly less tacky. For Dave, this probably constitutes lingerie.

I squeeze into the dress. It’s skintight and oddly flattering but it’s also a little slutty. Much more so than the Herve Leger dress I wore in Vegas the night I met Robert Dade. One glance in the mirror tells me that I’m going to need to change out of the bikini panties I’m wearing and into a thong.

I fish through the few items of clothing I have stored here to see if I can find one.

“You won’t be able to wear underwear with that,” Dave says.

I whirl around to see him standing in the doorway.

I smile slightly. “Are you trying to humiliate me?” I ask.

He shrugs, giving away the answer in his silence.

I won’t give him the satisfaction. Not over a dress worn within a private residence. “Why would I be embarrassed? Only yesterday you saw me in less.”

I let my hand slide over my exposed stomach and then up my skirt. It takes effort to wriggle out of my panties without flashing him, but I manage it and then throw them at Dave, who catches them in one hand. He looks mildly embarrassed and slightly aroused.

I walk up to him, lean in, and say with a singsong whisper, “If you touch me, I’ll kill you.”

And then I walk past him to make dinner, leaving him with an erection he’s going to have to take care of all by himself.

It’s a struggle to prepare the lamb with my movements restricted by the unforgiving fabric. My guilt over what I’ve done is slowly dissipating with each one of Dave’s pathetic attempts to debase me. While Asha’s attacks are polished and executed with a vicious grace, Dave’s moves are clumsy, only hitting his mark by the occasional stroke of luck. The single advantage he has is that, unlike with Asha, I’m still not clear I fully understand what motivates him.

And what does he have to lose by calling my parents or his godfather right now? Is he stringing me along until he does? Am I playing for salvation or time?

The oil in the frying pan pops and sizzles as I sprinkle in bits of bloody red meat. I turn the knife on the vegetables, slicing through them with precise and violent movements.

I’ve been fighting like a civilian, wildly swinging at anything that resembles an enemy. I need to be the soldier. I need a battle plan.

As I wield the blade across the cutting board, I wonder if the violence will remain in the form of metaphor. How far can I be pushed before I snap?

Twenty-five minutes later dinner is nearly ready but before I can reach for a single plate, the doorbell rings.

I hesitate. This doesn’t feel like coincidence. I look down at my dress. It was one thing to wear this in front of Dave but someone else?

And then an odd thought crawls into my brain. What if it’s Robert Dade?

I imagine Robert bursting though the door. He doesn’t see Dave, only me. “You don’t need to do this for me,” he says. And just like that I realize that it’s always been about us. Dave isn’t important. I turn my eyes to Dave and watch as he fades away, like an apparition or a shadow destroyed by the light.

It’s an indulgent fantasy, one I don’t allow myself to entertain for more that a minute but it’s long enough to excite me. My heart beats a little faster; I feel a small ache of yearning. . . .

It’s pathetic, really. The chances of it being him at the door are slim to none. He doesn’t even know where Dave lives. He’s not here, so why am I feeling these things?

I know you, Kasie. I know that even when I’m nowhere near you I’m inside of you. I can touch you with a thought.

The doorbell rings again, pulling me out of my fantasies and reminiscences. But by now I already feel a slight moisture between my legs.

I shouldn’t have removed my underwear. Self-consciously I walk to the entryway of the kitchen as Dave approaches the door.

“Who is it, Dave?” I ask.

He looks over his shoulder with a smirk. There’s malice in his eyes as he flings the door open.

Tom Love stands there, a bottle of wine in his hand and a puzzled look on his face. “I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to bring something,” he says to Dave, speaking hesitantly as if he’s unsure of what he’s walking into. “I didn’t expect the invitation.”

And then Tom’s eyes dart to me. He takes in the dress and his mouth goes slack, his eyes wide . . . and then a devious smile.

“What exactly am I being invited to?”

I feel the embarrassment start at my toes and then crawl up my legs through my very core until it wraps around my lungs and squeezes with the crushing power of a snake.

“Remember I said your boss would be joining us?” Dave asks. He approaches me; each footstep has the hallow echo of spite. “When I put together our engagement party, the only people from your firm who you even knew well enough to invite were my godfather and Asha. Afterwards, I realized that most of your superiors don’t know anything about what you’re like outside of the office. I thought we should give Mr. Love a glimpse.” With this his eyes fall to my hem. I’m tempted to pull on it, try somehow to make the dress longer but it would be useless. If anything, pulling it would bring the top a little too low, exposing the pink areoles that surround my nipples. I’m hyperconscious of the wetness between my legs, I can feel it trickling down and I squirm slightly wondering how to best make my retreat.

“I won’t be joining you,” I say quietly. The declaration is met by a sharp look from Dave and a surprised one from Tom.

“You’re not?” Tom asks, stepping in and closing the door behind him. His eyes move from me to Dave, then back to me. He takes in the dress appreciatively, but the leer is gone now that he’s beginning to understand what this is and what this isn’t. “You didn’t know Dave invited me.”

I shake my head, but Dave drapes a heavy arm over my bare shoulders. “No matter; she made enough for three. Kasie’s not a big eater.”

I imagine scratching his face with the ring he forces me to wear. Red blood on a red stone.

“I won’t be joining you,” I say again, but suddenly Dave’s arm gets tight as he pulls me to him.

“But you must join us, Kasie,” he says. Again the image of a snake leaps to mind. Dave speaks with the serpent’s voice. “What will Tom and I talk about without you? It will all just be business, like that account you’ve been working on or something. Maned Wolf, right—Mr. Robert Dade?”

“Ah,” this from Tom as he gently places the burgundy wine on the table. I sense the dawning of understanding, but not surprise. He keeps his eyes on the table, perhaps studying the metaphorical puzzle pieces that have just been exposed to him.

“We’ll need three plates,” Dave says definitively. The role of master was not tailored for him. It’s a size too big and he seems more vulnerable within the fabric of the character. Like a boy wearing his father’s clothes.

And yet this bullet has hit its mark. I report to Tom, and although I respect his professional abilities, I don’t like him. I don’t like the way he molds ethics and morality to support his ambitions. I don’t want him to see me dressed like this, the skirt barely covering my hips, the neckline exposing the curve of my breast . . . this was never meant for Tom’s eyes.

And Dave’s threats were not subtle. Tom understood the nuance as well as I did. He had figured out that my relationship with Robert was more than platonic long before he arrived for dinner. But that doesn’t mean I want to discuss it with him. It doesn’t mean that I want to be faced with the shame of his knowing . . . and judging me. Was he like Dave? Did he, too, think I was a whore?

“The plates,” Dave says.

I turn and walk into the kitchen. The reverberations of my pounding heart are so powerful it makes my whole body shake. How could I have done this to my life? And for what? Sex with a stranger? An illicit affair? Had I actually thought it was worth the risk?

Had it been? The memories flicker in front of my eyes in rapid succession: flirting over scotch, energetically talking business at a restaurant, playfully hitting him with a pillow while he laughs, being in his bed, his weight on top of me, his hands on my hips, gently lifting them so he can plunge deeper into me, his hand slipping to my clit; he toys with me as he continues to move inside me. I can’t catch my breath . . . I don’t want to. . . .

What am I doing?

I have a crisis on my hands. My fiancé is treating me like a tramp in front of my boss and I’m fantasizing about my lover?

No, my devil answers, you’re just remembering why it was worth it.

I try to shake the thoughts out of my head and split the stir-fry into three portions.

Robert’s hands are on my breasts, gently pinching my nipples

I pull out three wineglasses.

I feel Robert’s kisses forging a path across my shoulders.

I hear the low murmur of male voices coming from the dining room as I carefully select the utensils. My nipples are hard and pressing against the fabric of this hateful dress.

I take a deep breath and center myself. I’ll take my time in here. Let the fantasy run its course, let it fortify me. When I make love to Robert I always begin by feeling vulnerable and end by feeling strong. I need to reach that point of strength tonight.

“Kasie.”

I turn swiftly, surprised by the sound of Tom’s voice so close. His eyes immediately go to my chest and I cross my arms over my breasts in hopes of hiding the evidence of my train of thought. But the action only pulls the dress higher, and I quickly lower them, hoping he didn’t notice that I exposed everything in a moment.

He turns his head away, his eyes on the floor.

“Where’s Dave?” I ask.

“I just got a new Porsche, told him he should go and take a look at it.”

“You didn’t go out with him?

“No. I locked him out.”

The admission shakes me out of my embarrassment and into something that resembles shock and awe . . . and admiration. “You locked him out of his own house?”

“I did.” He’s still looking at the floor but I can see the smile.

Maybe I like Tom after all.

Unless . . . I look down at my silhouette, feeling self-conscious once again.

“Why did you lock him out?” I ask. “If you think something’s going to happen between you and me—”

“What, are you telling me that I can’t have sex with you in your fiancé’s house while he’s locked out on the front porch banging on the door?”

I don’t want to show my amusement, but it’s hard to hide it.

“Look, sex with you under those circumstances, under any circumstances, would be awesome, but it’s not going to happen. I know you don’t want me here,” he says.

I swallow but don’t answer.

He shifts, suddenly gangly and awkward. “I also can’t sleep with you because you’re engaged to my boss’s godson. I don’t think he’s going to squeal on me for locking him out; he’s gotta have some level of pride, but sleeping with his fiancé while she’s cooking him dinner? Yeah, that might get him to make a phone call.”

“You’re smarter than me,” I say quietly. “I’ve done some things that I . . . I didn’t think through. Things that could get me fired.”

Tom lifts his eyes to mine. “I know what you’ve done . . . not the details, but I know . . . and I don’t care.” He lets that sink in, then breaks into a silky smooth laugh. “Actually I do care. I’m glad you fucked Robert Dade. If I had thought fucking him would get us the Maned Wolf account, I’d have fucked him, too. I’d have to have a lot to drink first but . . .”

A giggle bubbles up in my throat. Everything about this moment is preposterous.

Yet Tom’s smile fades as he presses forward. “Thing is, Kasie, if I had known that your fucking him was going to get us the account, I would have encouraged you to do it, and if you had let me in on what was going on, I would have helped you hide it from Dave.”

The giggle dies, the bubbles popping under the pressure of my disapproval even as my own hypocrisy drums against my temples. He’s only saying he’d do the things that I’ve already done.

“I didn’t have sex with Robert to get ahead,” I say quietly.

Tom shrugs, indifferent to my motivations. It’s the result that pleases him. “I’m just saying that if Dave’s godfather wasn’t Dylan Freeland, it would be a win-win for everyone.”

I watch Tom with new eyes, seeing for the first time how his indifference to morality can serve me. There is no judgment here, just hard practicality that rules his actions and a little lust that he restrains with admirable skill.

“Mr. Freeland is a great businessman,” Tom continues thoughtfully. “But unfortunately for us he’s an even better family man. If he finds out you cheated on his godson, you’re out. He’ll find an appropriate excuse. We have clauses in all of our contracts about behavior with clients, the importance of protecting the firm’s reputation, etcetera, etcetera. He’ll say you traded sexual favors for an account and that’ll be it. It’ll become a matter of public record; Freeland will make sure of that. Your life will get harder.”

As the word leaves his mouth, he winces and shifts his weight uncomfortably. The movement draws my attention downward, making me aware of his physical state and his unintentional pun. With effort I manage not to roll my eyes. It’s silly really, getting so excited over a dress. He could go to any beach to see women wearing less. And if I was any other girl, he would leer or dismiss me as a common slut or perhaps not notice me at all, write me off as another LA, club-going exhibitionist.

It’s the rarity of seeing me vulnerable, of seeing me revealing what I have consistently concealed, that disarms him. He knows I’m not wearing this dress by choice, and, because of that, I sense that he wants to be repelled rather than aroused by the sight of me . . . a sight he has no right to see. It’s a flash of decency in a cold storm of cynicism.

But his body is not cooperating with his whims of conscience and I can’t blame him for that. I can blame Dave, but not him.

Carefully, I clasp my hands in front of me. It feels like every movement moves the dress a little higher. “What can I do?” I ask.

Tom’s eyes flicker to my hemline before going back to the floor. “A counterattack.”

“Against Dave? How? He hasn’t done anything that will turn Freeland away from him. I have nothing on him that will compel him to keep quiet.”

“You’re not being imaginative enough,” Tom says. “Facts can be bought just like any other commodity. Sometimes by barter, sometimes with currency, but they can always be bought.”

It’s then that we hear the pounding on the front door. Tom sighs and shakes his head. “He’ll wake the neighbors with that racket.”

It’s only eight thirty, but the point’s a good one. Tom walks to the foyer, I follow a few feet behind and hang back as Tom opens the door, revealing Dave on his own doorstep, his face an intriguing shade of crimson. “You locked me out on purpose!”

“I did no such thing,” Tom says, the lie light on his tongue. “I have no idea how this happened.”

Dave’s eyes shift to me. “What exactly did you two get up to?”

I almost laugh. He calls Tom here to see me in a state of undress and now he’s worried that Tom might have touched me with more than his eyes? Again, I’m reminded that, like me, Dave is an amateur when it comes to ruthlessness.

Tom sees the humor in this, too, and a small smile plays on his lips. “Are you worried that I’ve already sampled what you’ve brought me here to taste?”

Dave looks stricken. Control is a slippery thing and his grip is weak. I see the way he’s looking at me. The hostility he shoots from his eyes almost hurts.

Almost. That’s the thing about cruelty: as with most venoms, when they are taken in continuous but small doses, one can build up an immunity to it.

“I don’t think I’ll be staying for dinner after all,” Tom says. He turns to me, conspicuously dismissive of the man in front of him. “The wine on the table is all yours . . . although I’m sure you need something stronger.”

“I’ll walk you to your Porsche,” I say.

Tom nods. “Take your key first. That door lock is temperamental.”

Yes, in many ways Tom is smarter than me. His vision isn’t clouded with emotion or pain. I grab my keys from my purse on the console and follow him to the car.

“He’s angry. He doesn’t want to let you go,” Tom says while we walk down the pathway, Dave’s glare pressing against our backs. “No man in his right mind would.”

His car is painted a uniquely dark, metallic silver that reminds me of the tinted mirrored windows that make up the high rise that holds Maned Wolf’s offices. He pauses at the driver’s-side door, his keys pressed into his palm. “Will you be safe?”

I look up sharply, consider his features. Concern is not an emotion I’ve seen him wear before. “Dave won’t hurt me,” I say.

“He’s hurting you now, Kasie. This is abuse.”

“I know . . . but what I meant . . . he won’t lay a hand on me, Tom.”

“I can take you home,” he says carefully. “Or if you like, I can take you to him.” I flush and Tom smiles wryly. “Would feigning ignorance be better?”

I nod. The reflection of my figure in the car’s metallic paint is distorted and fragmented.

“Very well; as far as I’m concerned Dave is the only man you’ve been with in years. Your relationship with Mr. Dade is purely professional. See,” he says as he unlocks his door, “facts can be bought, sometimes for as little as a smile.”

But I’m not smiling. I keep the thought to myself as he gets in and I watch my reflection in the shiny silver exterior shift, change, and disappear as he drives off.

When I get back to the house Dave is still in the doorway, his fury weakened with uncertainty. I move past him, wait for him to close the door before I turn to face him.

“I am stronger than a dress. I’m stronger than all of this.” The words are flat, without inflection. These are simple truths that don’t need enhancement. “Did you think Tom Love would forget who I am? Did you think he would see me in this dress and treat me differently than the woman he knows me to be? I’ve been working with him for five and a half years.”

“Yes,” he acknowledges. “And I’ve been your boyfriend for six. But as I said earlier, I don’t know who you are. What I do know is that the clothes you used to wear don’t seem to suit you anymore. This does.”

I feel the cheap fabric clinging to me, feel the air between my legs, reminding me of my exposure. I should feel vulnerable right now, but at this moment I simply don’t. He’s weak, desperate. I feel no more vulnerable before him than I would feel in front of a bird with broken wings.

“Is this how you wish to define us now?” I ask him brazenly. “With you constantly trying to bring me down and with me rising above it?”

“Seriously, Kasie?” he hisses. “Look at you! You’re dressed like a tramp!”

“And yet Tom didn’t see a tramp.” I take a step closer. Some foolish impulse takes over and I add, “Robert didn’t see me that way, either.”

“You’re bringing him up to me? In my home?”

I smile. In a Victorian novel he would have added the words “You dare?” and with a raise of an eyebrow I answer the unspoken question: Yes, I dare.

But I need to be careful here. The moment Dave gives up, the moment he thinks all his attempts at torture will be fruitless, he’ll end this thing with a phone call. And Tom was right in his predictions. If he exposes me to those who care about such things, to people I care about, he will pull away my newfound courage like the peel off an orange. I’ll lose everything.

So I soften my tone, offer him a treaty rather than a punch: “I don’t think you see me that way, either. I think you’re angry. But I think that maybe you meant it when you said—”

“When I said what?” The words come out like venom from a spitting cobra.

“When you said you wanted me to make you feel love. I think you want to love me again.”

He takes a step closer, hesitant at first, then another and another, each move becoming a little more confident and a little more aggressive. “He was different from me, yes? Edgier? Rougher? More dominant?”

“Is that what this is about,” I ask, almost weary, “dominance?”

“Give me a chance.” His right hand slips to the back of my neck and holds me in place. “I can give you what you want.” His left hand reaches for my breast.

I slap him in the face.

Slowly, his eyes never leaving mine, he lowers his hands and moves to the side, picking up his keys from a low table in the foyer.

“Where are you going?” I ask as he opens the coat closet.

“I’m going out.” He smiles sardonically before adding, “I need space to consider whether or not I’m going to destroy you. Don’t wait up. It’ll take some thinking.”

The air’s prickly. I may have pushed him too far. But he’s taking away my options and the violence he keeps pumping into my heart is hard to discipline. “My car’s still at work,” I say quietly.

“You won’t need it,” Dave says decisively. “I want you to stay here tonight. Your obedience may be the only thing that saves you.”

I don’t argue this time. There’s no point. I simply stand there as he exits.

And in my mind my new fantasy is that he never comes back.

CHAPTER 8

I sTAND ALONE IN the foyer for seconds, minutes, a brief eternity of time as I try to decide on a mental journey that will take me away from this place. What shall I fantasize about now? Swimming through the mellow waves of the Mediterranean? Dancing in New York? But my mind stays stubbornly in the here and now. A few days . . . how many lifetimes have I packed into that small space of time?

I lean against the wall, suddenly dizzy. It seems impossible that I’m at risk of losing to such an unskilled adversary. I’m just not used to this kind of struggle. My opponents have always been my own desires and memories, the war an internal one. And even in that war, my opponents were the conquistadors. They overcame my defenses and occupied my mind with colonial ambitions, bringing me to this hellish reservation where subjugation and servitude are the most obvious means of survival.

I hear footsteps approaching outside of the door. What could Dave have forgotten? Perhaps an insult or threat that he had neglected to throw my way.

I back away and watch as the doorknob moves, just a fraction of an inch this way and then the other. Why doesn’t he just turn the key?

But as I watch the doorknob continue to jiggle, I realize I have another problem.

The person at the door doesn’t have a key.

The person on the other side of the door is breaking in.

I move quickly, not caring how high my skirt hikes up, not caring what’s exposed. As long as I’m able to keep this new nightmare at bay, the dress is inconsequential.

I reach for the deadlock, but it’s too late. The door swings open and I find myself backing up as quickly as I moved forward, wanting to run but knowing there’s no use.

But then the intruder isn’t a stranger at all. It’s Robert Dade.

He takes me in with only the quickest movement of his eyes and then he moves past me, into the living room, standing in the center, his fists clenched at his sides, his ferocious energy flooding the room.

“Where is he?” he asks.

His back is to me, which is fine. My anger, shame, and humiliation have me burning tonight and he looks a lot like kerosene.

“He’s out. How did you know I was here? How did you even know where Dave lives?”

“Your boss called me.”

Well, there’s an unlikely hero. I almost say it out loud but sense Robert isn’t in the mood for small talk. His posture reminds me of a stalking tiger ready to pounce.

“When will he be back?”

It’s not so much a question as a demand for information.

I’ve had enough of demands.

“I can take care of this, Robert. I don’t need you.”

He pivots, his fury slamming into my frustration.

“Go upstairs and get out of that dress. You’re better than this. You should know better than to accept the role of Dave’s slave.”

“I’m not a slave.”

“Take off the dress!”

I stand my ground. I feel a little like a student in Tiananmen Square standing defiantly before an oncoming tank.

He breathes out aggravation through clenched teeth but then, as his eyes shift, so does his focus. There, on the side table, he sees the framed photo. It’s of Dave and me in kinder days. He’s wearing a navy wool crepe suit with a quiet silver tie while my hair is slicked back into an intricate chignon bun. There’s an almost elderly sophistication to the jewel-necked suit I’m wearing, the light sheen of the fabric and the ruffled peplum being the only hint toward a softer form of femininity. Dave has his hand on my back and I’m smiling serenely at the camera. It’s an image that could have been ripped from the pages of Town & Country. We’re perfect.

Roman statues, that’s what Simone had compared us to, perfect and cold.

Robert picks up the picture, examines it more closely. “I’m not sure I know this woman.”

“I know her.” I move behind him, peeking over his shoulder to see the photo. “I just don’t know where she went.”

Robert puts down the picture frame. “Let her stay lost.” He then turns to me, the edges of his anger mildly blunted by concern. “I won’t let him do this to you.”

“I don’t think you can save me and . . . I’m . . . I’m not sure I want you to.”

A flash of pain flickers across his features. He reaches out, cups my cheek in his hand. “You can’t ask me to just let this happen. I won’t do that.”

I feel a sudden rush of confusion. If he can help me, why shouldn’t I let him? Is it because I don’t want to admit to being a damsel in distress? Do I really value my bruised and battered pride over my freedom? What convict ever insisted on making an unassisted prison break?

But as much as I want Robert, I can’t help thinking that his affection might be infinitely more dangerous than Dave’s hostility.

“Take the dress off,” he says again. “I hate that it’s touching you. It’s like he’s holding you tightly from a distance.”

Yes, I want to say, holding me in an embrace of humiliation. I take a step back, moving away from Robert’s touch. I continue my backward stride, Robert following me, letting me set the pace. It’s a strange tango in which the woman leads . . . if only for the length of a few bars of music.

I lead us to the dining room. The table had never been set and it now stands bare, except for one unopened bottle of wine, a reminder of Dave’s failed plans and my minor victory. I move the bottle to a chair.

“He’s not here,” I say and I reach down to the hem, pull it up over my hips, my stomach, my breasts until, with a little effort, it’s gone and I’m standing there, completely naked, before my lover. “He’s not touching me,” I say. “No one will touch me without my invitation. If anyone tries, they’ll pay for that mistake. But you’re going to have to let me exact the price. Me. Not you.”

Robert stares at me. His eyes are hungry, but I still feel his vexation. Yet it’s not aimed at me. He’s pointing it toward the night, toward the unknown part of town where Dave sits, making decisions about my life. “I won’t just turn a blind eye, Kasie. That’s not who I am.”

I hear him but I’m not fully listening. I’m looking at the table. In its polished surface I see the night Dave had planned for me. How far would the game have gone if Tom had cooperated? And Asha, how far did she plan to push me? Did they all see me as weak? Did they think I would surrender all my power so easily?

“Kasie, did you hear me?”

I ignore the question, redirect his energy to my liking. “Would you like to touch me, Mr. Dade?”

His breath catches in his throat. I can still feel the anger but it feels even more distant now, allowing him more room to explore more pressing passions.

“I asked you a question.” I let my fingers run over the table. I’m playing a very dangerous game. I don’t know when Dave will come home. I don’t know what Robert will do to him if he does reappear. I don’t know if this will be the act that breaks my world to pieces. I’m risking everything for a moment of pleasure, to celebrate a fleeting victory. But I’m beginning to think that life is about passing moments and small celebrations. Without them there’s only pain, fear, ambition, and, for some of us, foolish hope.

“He wanted me to serve him and Tom Love at this table,” I say. “He wanted me to play the part of the submissive. He wanted to control me. He didn’t get what he wanted. I won. Will you help me celebrate, Mr. Dade? You’re invited.”

Robert doesn’t move right away. But when he does, it’s swift, closing the distance between us in seconds and pulling off his shirt so that our bare skin presses together in a raw embrace.

“I want you to take me here,” I whisper as his teeth graze my shoulder. I pull off his belt. “I want you to take me on the table where I refused to serve him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” I say as his belt falls to the floor. “You’re invited.”

And then I’m being lifted into the air, laid back on the table, like a delicacy meant to be savored.

He strips off the rest of his clothes and I take him in. His muscles create little hills and valleys across his chest and stomach. His arms and thighs are equally strong and enticing. This is a different kind of perfection. He’s sculpted but not like Michelangelo’s David. He’s made of something much more vibrant than marble. He’s a song with a pounding beat and a roughly melodic tune. His erection reaches for me, another blatant reminder of his vitality.

He leans forward, runs his fingers across my stomach; it seems he’s tracing the letters of a word there—“lust,” “love,” it’s hard to tell the difference, his touch shoots over me so fast. I breathe in the sent of him as his fingers continue their dance up to my throat, resting there, right under my chin. He studies me the way one would study an eclipse, expectant but awed. And his fingers keep moving, this time down to my breast; he caresses the area around one nipple and then the next, so different from Dave’s intrusive touch.

Besides, I stopped Dave. And if he tries to touch me again, he’ll again feel the sting of my refusal. He will never get anywhere with me. Not by design or force. He is not invited.

But Robert is, and as his fingers travel down to the curve of my waist, my hips, his hands gently pull apart my legs, opening me up; I feel my body silently restating that invitation, reinforcing it with the dampness between my legs, with the erratic pace of my breathing. He lifts my leg, kisses my ankle, then slowly moves higher. Each kiss is a little different. Here, where the muscle of my inner thigh begins, he sucks, just slightly, and here, as he travels upward, his tongue flicks out to taste the salt on my skin. Here, as he comes closer to my core, the kiss becomes gentle, almost innocent, a direct contradiction to his clear intent.

I reach my hands into his hair, try to draw him higher, but he will not be rushed. He lets the anticipation warm me before his mouth reaches its destination.

But when it does, when I feel his lips wrap around my clit in an open-mouthed kiss, that’s when the kerosene truly meets the flames. I grasp the edges of the table, anchoring myself to its solidity. Again images of what was supposed to happen here flash through my head. Me, exposed, serving men against my will.

But the image comes crashing down as I feel his tongue press inside of me, penetrating me, then pulling out, then tasting again. His hand slips beneath my hips, lifting me for his benefit and mine.

There are no images anymore. I’m blind to all of it and like any blind woman my other senses are heightened. The feeling of his hands pressing into my flesh is a unique ecstasy. The flicks of his tongue are like jolts of electric delight; the sound of my heart beating is thunderous and beautiful.

My orgasm is almost luxurious in its decadence, like a fine champagne bursting from its bottle.

In a flash Robert pulls me forward. As he stands I remain laying on the surface of polished oak, my straight legs supported against his chest. I feel his erection against my thighs, eager for entry. I grant it by lifting my hips; his hands quickly reach to hold them in place as my back rises with them into the air.

He enters me again and moves slowly, the gratification of this steady, cadenced hypnosis. This is what it is to feel beauty, to experience the texture of bliss.

For a moment I think I hear music like I heard in my fantasy but it’s only our mingled breathing, his growls harmonizing with my cries of rapture as he drives into me again and again.

What if Dave comes home? What if he sees Robert making love to me in his house, on his table where I have served him coffee, where he would have me sit by his side, the perfect subservient wife.

He’d broadcast the news to the world, to my family, and to my employers.

But as Robert grinds against me, I find that I don’t care. This is my rebellion. It’s a day of sunshine amid a season of rain and I will not waste it.

And then the dance shifts. He releases me, pulls away, lays me flat on the table. For a moment I’m confused, disoriented. I’m not ready for this to end.

And neither is he. He pulls me up so now I sit before him as he stares. The intimacy of a look can have its own tender eroticism. I link my legs around him, lean my weight back on my hands. The summons could not be clearer. With a single thrust he’s inside me again but this time he reaches new depths. I cry out as he leans forward, his teeth nibbling my ear before his tongue seeks out the nerve endings there.

“He’s never going to touch you again,” he whispers as he speeds up his rhythm. The table vibrates with our movement but it’s sturdy and strong, stronger than the rules I once set for myself, stronger than the threats of my enemies, stronger than my restraint that crumbles the moment Robert enters a room.

“I am the only man you will ever make love to again.”

I feel myself tremble as my muscles begin to contract.

“I’ll have you in his house, in mine, in your office, in a thousand beds all over the world. But this,” and now he pushes into me with even more force, “this is mine.” Again I cry out as yet another orgasm rips through me. And I feel him join me, feel him coming inside me, feel him throb as he claims me in the only way a man can really claim a woman.

I stare up into his eyes and gasp the word, “Yes.”

We cling to each other for minutes that feel like seconds . . . or days. I listen to his breathing, feel his heartbeat, smell his cologne. . . .

“You’re coming with me,” he says. His voice isn’t demanding. He’s just stating a fact.

I run my fingers over the back of his neck and stare at the white walls of Dave dining room, silently saying good-bye to my prison.

CHAPTER 9

I DRESS IN THE CLOTHES I wore to work but before Robert and I leave Dave’s house, I fold up the offensive dress neatly and place it in the middle of the dining room table. Robert nods his approval. He doesn’t know about the note I put inside the flimsy fabric. A small piece of white paper with some words written in cursive:

Do what you will but I can’t take this anymore.

You miss the woman who was loyal, I miss the man who was kind.

Good-bye,

Kasie

Robert expelled the fog from my mind. I felt it seep from my pores, mingle with the sweat of our lovemaking, and then it just evaporated. Robert thinks I’m going to trust him to save me. Dave will think I’m throwing caution to the wind.

They’re both wrong. I’m still at war. But now I’m ready to fight like a warrior.

But even wars have moments of quiet—moments when the gunfire’s so faint, it could be the popping of balloons. I feel that ephemeral peace as we drive away in Robert’s Alfa Romeo, a car that resembles art and smells of power. We don’t speak. Instead I enjoy the movement of his hand over the gearshift, cherish the way he caresses the leather-covered steering wheel. I’m almost jealous that the car should be the beneficiary of such firm and loving handling, but it’ll be my turn soon.

I’ve been to Robert’s home before but when we finally walk through that front gate . . . when I see the entire city sparkling back at me with excitement and anticipation, I can’t help but feel a little alarmed by the grandeur of the view. He leads me inside and I find that I feel awkward and a little shy. Last time I had been here we had made love in his massive bed over and over again, but afterward we had talked. It had been so comfortable. I had been at ease. I wonder if he expects that I’ll be able to go back to that place. I can’t of course. Not yet.

He seems to understand, or maybe he just sees the blush on my cheeks and senses that delicacy is needed. He almost formally ushers me to the deep brown leather sofa in the living room and then disappears to get me something to drink.

I sit rigidly, wondering if he’ll be bring me a scotch, the dangerous cocktail that had started it all.

But I need a clear head tonight. The battle is too close for that kind of indulgence.

When Robert comes back with a large green mug, I catch the sent of hot chocolate and I eagerly take the mug into my hands, sipping the bittersweet flavor with relish. It’s such an innocent drink, I wonder if I deserve it. But I hope I do. I hope to absorb some of the sweet, childlike qualities. I want to feel just a tiny bit of that innocence.

Robert sits by my side. “I’ll talk to Dave tomorrow.”

“No,” I say simply. “That’s my fight.”

“Love tells me that Dave might use our affair to get you fired.”

For a moment I’m puzzled, and then I realize he’s talking about Tom. That’s the only Love that can tell him anything practical.

“I’ll stop that from happening,” Robert goes on. “Even Freeland won’t throw away my business out of loyalty to his maggot of a godson.”

“Asha knows, too,” I say.

“Asha?”

“You’ve met her. She’s on my team.”

Robert shrugs, not understanding her significance. “It won’t matter what she knows. The world can know. It won’t effect your position. I’ll—”

“You’ll see to that?” I say, finishing his sentence, my tone harsher than I had intended it to be. It’s no use. I can’t internalize the sweetness of the chocolate, only the bitterness. I stare into the darkened fireplace. “She thinks I only got this job because I was sleeping with Dave, the maggot of a godson you’re so eager to confront.”

“So?” Robert says, still not grasping the problem.

“So now she’ll think that I’m only keeping my job because I’m sleeping with you.”

Fresh comprehension sparkles in his eyes. “Who the hell cares what people think, Kasie? They don’t matter. Only you and I do.”

“If that was true, the world would be other than it is. If that was true,” I say, each word growing a little more testy, “we’d be gods. Osiris and Isis. Zeus and Hera . . . but that’s not quite right, either, is it? After all, even they had to give the other deities some consideration.”

“Are you angry with me?”

I almost say yes but then realize it’s not true. Not exactly. “I’m angry because I want everything to be as simple as you say it is, and I’m angry because it can’t be. It’s my fault. I can’t be seen as the office slut. I need respect to do my job. I need respect to be able to breathe.”

“They’ll respect you when you excel. All anyone needs to do is watch you work to know that you deserve your position.”

“But they won’t see me. They’ll see what I’ve done and they’ll train their eyes to see the whore Dave and Asha believe me to be.”

“Tom Love knows you better than that.”

“And will Tom be in his job forever? Will I always report to him? Can you promise me that?”

Robert leans back into the couch, holds me with his gaze. “Yes, I can. I can make sure Tom never has any incentive to leave his position. I can shape the world to your liking. Money and power are the only currency you need if the goal is to pull the strings of industry. I have both. Let me buy you some piece of mind.”

I want to laugh. He’s going to make it rain and like a stripper Tom is supposed to get on his knees and scoop up the falling dollar bills. I suppose Robert would expect the same of almost anyone who he threw money at. Maybe someday he’ll expect it of me.

But he can’t buy my parents’ approval. And he can’t buy the respect of my colleagues. He can just give them incentive to hide their true feelings. I’ll always know what they’ll be saying behind closed doors. And I can’t allow Robert to force Tom into a stagnant career. Eventually I’ll be reporting to someone else, another man or woman who will wonder what I’ll do to earn my next promotion. I’ll be given clients who expect to be allowed to play with me during our meetings, to show me off to boardrooms of hungry men ready to fuck the woman who’s known for whoring her way through the business world, handing out sexual favors like they’re business cards.

Robert’s far from stupid. If he allowed himself to think, he’d see how impossible it all is. But he’s not thinking; he’s feeling. He says he wants to reshape the world, and in the late hours of the night, not long after making love to me on another man’s dining room table, he’s sure that he can do it.

Tomorrow reality will rise with the sun. But probably not tonight. So I swallow my pessimism with my chocolate and gently put my hand on his knee. “I’m tired,” I say. “Take me to bed.”

Perhaps the hot chocolate imparted some innocence to the night after all, because for the first time Robert and I slip into bed together without tapping into the ocean of sexual energy that always lies between us. Instead he gives me one of his shirts to change in to and under the sheets we curl up into each other. He’s asleep now and his breathing has a steady, soothing quality that quiets my anxiety. For a brief minute I can almost believe in his false promises. It feels like I really can be safe here, in his arms, inside his palace of capitalist riches. Isn’t this what I’ve always wanted? Security, wealth, success?

Yes, but I want those things to be real, not facades. I want the success to be mine. I can’t share in Robert’s dreams if I don’t pursue my own. Reluctantly my thoughts turn to Dave. I can see now that my relationship with Dave was never right but I also see why it had so much appeal. His dreams seemed to dovetail with mine. We seemed to complement each other. He was better connected but I was arguably better educated. Yes, he was a lawyer with a degree from Notre Dame but I have a master’s from Harvard Business School—and no Harvard graduate will ever accept the idea that there might be a better education available than the one he or she got, no matter what US News & World Report says about Yale.

But what held us together for so long were our common goals. We both want respect. He wants respect within the old-money world the men in his family have always traveled in and I simply want respect within my family and in the business world. Self-discipline is the attribute I’ve tried to nurture and refine while he has tried to exercise control over the external, his home, his social circle, me. I fear failure and rejection, even my own impulses. He fears helplessness, ridicule, the reckless wantonness of the city.

I smile in the dark. It’s that last part I’m focusing on now. In that knowledge is the key to everything. Getting respect from those who frequent Dave’s elite men’s club with its prohibitive membership fees and ingrained superiority complex requires a different set of rules. I picture the darkened rooms that make up those establishments that officially allow the admittance of women but never make them feel welcome. I see the cigars held by men with manicures and pedigrees. I hear their whispered interactions. In that world there would be no shame in demanding the subservience of a woman. These are stories Dave could tell with relish. But there is shame in losing a woman to another man. There’s shame in being abandoned. Dave is asking me to humiliate myself in exchange for his silence but I haven’t yet asked him to pay for mine.

I know what Dave wants, and what he’s afraid of. I know how to hurt him.

Carefully I slip out of Robert’s firm grasp. He stirs, waking enough to see that I’m getting up but not enough to ask where I’m going. I tiptoe to my purse, pull out my cell, and read the text I know will be there.

Where the hell are you?

That sent an hour ago. Then another sent after twenty minutes more had passed.

Kasie, really, where are you?

And then ten minutes after that:

I understand you’re upset. We just need to talk. Please respond.

I smile. My aim is getting better.

I hear Robert stir again but his breathing quickly falls back into the quiet pattern of slumber. I take my phone into his bathroom. I close the door and flip on the lights, blinking a few times to adjust to the illumination. The room is about the same size as my first apartment. There’s a sunken bathtub with water jets, a spacious shower with transparent glass walls, a mirror that lines the space of almost an entire wall . . . it’s decadent as hell.

And then I catch my reflection. My hair is a tumble of waves that fall over my shoulders; my eyeliner, not properly removed before bed, is now mildly smudged, giving me a careless, sultry look. I hold Dave’s text in my hand while wearing Robert’s shirt on my body. Who is this woman?

I don’t know this woman, he said.

. . . and I responded, I know who she is, I just don’t know where she went.

I stare down at the phone. The device itself is the only thing that’s familiar to me right now. It has my photos, the numbers of my contacts, old e-mails, and so on. It’s filled to the brim with reminders of the life that I destroyed. And I destroyed it for the man whose shirt is still on my back.

The devil works in mysterious ways.

But I can’t dwell on it anymore. It’ll drive me insane. So instead I type in a response to Dave.

Yes, we should talk. Let’s meet before your squash game tomorrow night. In the restaurant next door to the club.

I press Send and wait, one minute, then two and then the response comes:

You don’t need to go out of your way. We can meet by your work.

I smile. He has just shown all his cards, confirmed all my suppositions. I look back up at the mirror; there is one small thing I recognize in this woman smiling back at me: her intelligence.

No, we’ll meet by your squash game. It’s easier.

This time it takes him only seconds to respond.

Do you have your car? How will you get there?

He’s placed the target on his heart and I load my weapon.

I have someone who will give me a ride.

I giggle as I send this last message, knowing exactly what images are playing through Dave’s head. He sees me walking into a restaurant in front of all his friends. He sees Robert Dade by my side, a man stronger, more successful, better looking, a man who surpasses him in every way that matters. He sees himself as the cuckold as we sit down across from him, Robert’s hand on the leg of the woman whom Dave once boasted to have as his own.

In this vision he is the one cloaked in humiliation.

The Balance of Threat. It’s a theory of a highly esteemed Harvard professor. The idea is so simple, it’s beautiful. Independent nations’ behavior will be determined by the perceived threat of other nations. Where people miss the genius is that they focus on the wrong word, threat. But threats are finite. They can easily fall apart when a bluff is called. The word that holds the power is perceived. Perception is everything. I have no interest in threatening Dave the way he has so openly threatened me. I want my threats to be unstated but intrinsic in my messaging. I never said it would be Robert driving me to the club. I never said I would try to show him up to his friends. I want to let his imagination do my work for me because the demons within will always have more influence than the demons without.

Finally he responds with a text that reeks of fear and frustration:

I don’t want to meet by the club.

I take a deep breath. This is where I turn fear into panic.

I am going to be at the club tomorrow at 5:45 pm. If I don’t see you, I will ask your friends as they arrive where I can find you. I’m sure if I explain the situation, they’ll help me. As you said, we need to talk.

As I read his response I imagine how it would look if it were written by hand. The letters would be shaky and uneven; his sweat would stain the paper. His text says:

I’ll meet you inside the restaurant. I’ll find a table in the back. Please, let’s make this private. This is about the two of us, just us.

I don’t respond to this last message. If I did, I would have to explain his error. This isn’t about the two of us at all. It’s about something bigger. It’s about concepts and perceptions, power and grief. It’s about the line between fair retaliation and offensive vindictiveness. It’s about winning and losing.

It’s about war.

I smile to myself, flip off the lights. A small nightlight illuminates things enough for me to find my way to the door.

And when I open it, he’s standing there before me. The dark silhouette of Robert, naked and strong, his form vaguely outlined by the weak light. He looks down at my hand.

“A little late to make calls, isn’t it?”

“I was just checking my e-mail,” I reply.

“My seductive little liar,” he says softly.

I open my mouth to defend myself but stop. “Must we tell each other all our secrets?”

“No, I enjoy a little intrigue.” He steps into the bathroom, puts a hand on either side of my face, holding me still. “I don’t insist on knowing everything.”

“So nice of you not to insist,” I say, the note of teasing light, mingled with a strong dose of anticipation. I close my eyes and feel his hand move into my hair.

“You laugh but there are things that I do insist on.” I open my eyes again. It’s still so dark. His details are lost, making him a man of mystery. I lift my hand, let my fingers outline his features.

“I insist that you stay safe,” he says. He drops his hands to my thighs and then up to the curve of my bum. “I insist that those who would hurt you be dissuaded.” His hands keep moving up, to my waist. With a sudden movement he lifts me up and I instinctively wrap my legs around his waist. I can see his hazel eyes twinkling in the shadowy light.

“I have a plan,” I say. “No one will hurt me. Your lover is a warrior.”

“Are you now?” he asks. “Perhaps my warrior will join me in the shower.”

He lowers me onto the counter, unbuttons the shirt I’m wearing, strips it off me quickly. It’s almost one in the morning. Having shower sex right now is completely impractical.

But now we’re riding the waves of our impulses, and instead of drowning, I swim.

He leads me into the glass-enclosed shower area, turns on the water, and pulls me into a kiss. As the water washes over us, I feel his hand on the small of my back, feel him grow hard against me.

I pull away, smile. “Your warrior’s hungry,” I say.

I lower myself to my knees. I kiss the side of his hip, brush my fingers against the tip of his erection.

“Kasie,” he groans. His cock twitches ever so slightly.

“Is that for me, Robert?” I ask. “It seems impatient.”

This time I let my index finger trace the vein that travels from the base to the tip, moving my finger up and down, lightly, taunting and tantalizing.

“You were made for me,” he breathes.

“Maybe. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.”

Again he reaches into my hair. He pulls just a little. I raise my eyes up to his.

“Kasie,” he growls, “now.”

There’s something in the way his says the word . . . it invites no argument; it’s presumptuous in its authority.

And it makes me want to immediately follow the instruction. I wrap my lips around him, take him fully into my mouth, one hand on the base while the other reaches between his legs finding that place makes him shudder. I hear him groan again as I move my hands and mouth in unison, back and forth, up and down. His skin glistens with the warm water, the muscles in his thighs tense, and I pause long enough to trace the tip again, this time with my tongue before devouring him. Everything is slick and wet and utterly amazing.

I can tell he’s getting close to losing control and with a bit of reluctance I let him pull away. He pulls me to my feet, kisses me again, gently before whipping me around and bending me over. I reach down, press my hands into the floor.

The penetration is so deep I cry out in both pleasure and surprise. I feel the water rushing down my back, through my hair as he grasps my hips and thrusts inside me again and again. Even with him in me I ache for him, and it’s that aching that brings me rapidly to the brink. The orgasm comes so hard and so fast my legs shake with the pleasure of it. But Robert supports me within his grip as he continues to thrust. I gasp, predicting his imminent release, but then he stops.

“No,” he breathes, “I want to see you.”

He releases me and I stand again, finding my balance before turning to him.

Robert wet is a beautiful sight. With grace I didn’t know I had I raise one leg and wrap it around his waist, balancing myself against him.

“Now,” I say.

And immediately he’s inside me again. The warm stream beats gently against our skin as we lock each other in a kiss. He moves inside me, one hand supporting my leg and the other on my ass; my breasts are pressed against his chest. We’re intertwined, connected in every way possible. I keep my eyes closed so all I can do is feel—the water, him, the ecstasy. It’s a greedy and indulgent romance and as he presses into me, slides his tongue against mine, I moan.

His rhythm increases. “My warrior,” he whispers as his breath mingles with mine.

“Always,” I respond.

He explodes inside of me as the water washes over us. In that moment I am the happiest warrior on earth.

CHAPTER 10

WHEN I WAKE UP the next morning, he’s sitting by my side, looking down at me. Slowly I remind myself of where I am, that I am again in his shirt. I feel the gentle pressure of his fingers on my hip, only a thin sheet separating skin from skin.

“You don’t have to go,” he says softly.

I don’t fully understand his meaning. Is he referring to a specific location or is he talking about something grander, a declaration of us and what we can be?

But he quickly brings me back to earth with a troubling clarification. “You could work from here today. They don’t need you there. I’ll talk to Love, maybe Freeland—”

“I can’t let you do that,” I say. He already knew I was going to say that. I can tell by his tone, which carries only the faintest notes of hope, like violins that are all but drowned out by the heavy brass sounds of resignation.

“I told you last night, I will not sit back and watch as he victimizes you. That’s not how I live.”

I pause to consider the phrasing. It’s not how he lives. There’s something telling in that . . . but something I can’t quite place.

“I can win,” I say, pushing these thoughts aside. “I’m stronger than Dave. Smarter, too. I can win.”

“Not if you play by the old rules.”

I shift uncomfortably in the bed, moving the sheet down to my waist. “You don’t believe in rules?” I think of my sister, I remember her dancing on a table, shedding clothes like so many restrictive social conventions.

Robert smiles; his eyes flicker to the window, the port of entry for the hazy morning light. “There are so many old adages about winning. To the winner goes the spoils, the history books are written by winners, and so on. But there’s only one truly meaningful benefit to winning. You see, to the winner goes the rules. I believe in rules, Kasie. I believe in them because in my world I am the winner. The rules are mine to set. What I don’t believe in is playing by other people’s rules.”

The arrogance of that is enough to wake me up. I look at him with clearer eyes. What does it mean to truly be a power player? I wouldn’t know; neither would Dave. It took me a day and a half to figure out how to get out from under Dave’s thumb. Today, at 5:45 p.m., I hope to have that situation a bit more under control. Asha will be harder, she’ll bide her time, sharpen her weapons, hit me when I’m the least protected. But Robert Dade is different. He dominates the world in a way that I don’t fully understand and it occurs to me that if I give in to my feelings for him the way he wants me to, he’ll dominate me, too. And the danger here is that with Robert I might not look for the escape.

I will lose myself.

Like now, for instance. See the way he looks at me? Like a jaguar looks at a mate. Without making a sound he roars for me. How easy has it been for him to get me to forget my many protests and reservations? How easy was it for him to make me risk everything for him?

There’s a shift in the air. His hand reaches for the sheet and carefully he pulls it back. It’s just me, in his shirt, my hair covering the pillow. I sense his frustration, see that it’s mixed with a strong desire. It’s a hazardous cocktail.

I sit up, draw away from him. “I need to go home and change my clothes. Will you drive me or should I call a cab?”

There is a strain in our connection. His mouth twitches slightly as he swallows instinctive demands. “I’ll take you.”

He gets up and leaves the room. He’s exercising self-control by not trying to control me. But I wonder how long that will last.

*    *    *

AN HOUR LATER we’re parked by my front yard. I don’t have my car here. It’s in the parking lot below the office building I work in. But I don’t bring up this inconvenience. I don’t want to risk people seeing him driving me to work. I’ll find my own way. Just like I’ve found my own battle tactics.

I turn in my seat, a little hesitant, a little hopeful. “There’s a plan . . . one I’ve already set into motion.”

“All right,” he says, nodding his approval before he’s heard a single detail.

“I need your presence for it to work. I need you to be at this restaurant.” I pull out one of my business cards and scribble down a name and address before handing it over. “I’ll be meeting Dave there after work.”

His smile spreads a little wider. “You want me to come?”

“Yes,” I confirm, “at around six. Dave and I will already be seated by then. I’d like for you to come to our table and greet us, then choose a table for yourself. It doesn’t matter where.”

“You want me to be inconspicuous?” he asks; there’s an undertone of humor to his question. I doubt Robert has ever been inconspicuous in his life.

“No, I just want you to be close by but at a different table. I won’t be long. I should be leaving within fifteen minutes of your arrival, alone. I just need Dave to know you’re there as . . . as backup.” As a perceived threat.

Robert nods, warming to the idea quickly. “Six o’clock, I’ll be there. But, Kasie, if he so much as raises his voice to you, I won’t stay at my table. He will have to deal with me. It won’t end well for him.”

I hesitate. Coming from the lips of another man, that statement would imply that a physical fight was possible—a barroom brawl as it were.

But I don’t think that’s what Robert means. I am anxious to win this war with Dave but I don’t want to completely annihilate him. I want him to rebuild a life without me. It’s easier for the victor when the vanquished sees a path out.

But if Robert gets involved, if he handles things his way, I don’t think Dave will get the chance to do that. I don’t think Robert fights with a gentleman’s grace, following civilized rules of engagement. I suspect he fights like a colonial power, decimating those who hold the territory he hopes to claim. If I win this war my way, Dave will lose me. If we fight Robert’s way, Dave will lose everything.

“He won’t raise his voice to me,” I say carefully. “If he sees you’re there, it’ll be enough.”

Robert nods and I lift his hand to my mouth, kissing his palm. “Thank you,” I say.

His eyes roam over my features, my hair, my neck . . . I feel an unwelcome shudder of excitement as I wonder where this will lead. I don’t have time for romance and yet something inside me knows that if he insisted, if he tried to take me right here, in his car, in front of my house, in view of all my neighbors and friends, I might not refuse even though part of me would want to.

It scares me and yet the thought is exhilarating. Why is that? How can I fight so hard for freedom only to be enticed by captivity?

“Go in the house, get yourself ready,” he says before leaning forward, gently kissing my lips. After a moment he pulls away. “I’ll see you tonight at six.”

I feel him watch me as I walk to my door, hear his car pull away as I go inside.

As I head upstairs my mind idly goes back to my undergraduate philosophy class. The professor’s favorite quote was from Lao Tzu:

Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is power.

A little part of me worries that Robert Dade has the strength to take away my power.

CHAPTER 11

AFTER A QUICK taxi ride I walk into my office with renewed confidence; I’ve tucked concerns about Robert and me into my back pocket and I’ve almost forgotten they’re there. Things are going my way, I’ve chosen my weapons, selected my target. I have a plan. I’m ready for the day.

My team has sent me all their individual reports. Barbara has printed them and left them on my desk. I can see they’ve been working hard. Their reports are more thorough and precise than they were before. Our goal is to help Robert position his company for a public option and now as I study the numbers and strategies of his various divisions laid out in neat detail, I can see how it all fits together. The trick of my job is to know what to focus on. There are always more numbers than you need, problems that don’t need an immediate answer, others that demand attention. But once you know what’s important and what can wait, when you can see with the kind of tunnel vision that allows you to block out the background noise and zero in on the one instrument that needs to be tuned, that’s when your job is practically done. I see it now: the marketing plan that would be best; I can see the path.

I can see the path. Surely that will be the mantra for the day.

I spend the first half of the day bringing it all together in a single report that will be submitted to Robert.

Tom walks into the office. As usual he didn’t knock or give Barbara a chance to announce him. Barbara stands behind him now, a look of defeat weighing down her features. As usual I wave my hand in a gesture of casual forgiveness and she leaves us, quietly closing the door so we’re alone.

He sits opposite me, his eyes flickering to my outfit. I’m dressed more conservatively than I have been for a while. Beige trousers made of a gentle fabric, a cropped blazer of a similar color closed over a long satin top that’s the shade of platinum. I’ve accessorized with a long silk scarf that I’ve strategically draped and tied around my neck. The only skin that is showing is on my hands and face. But I can tell that’s not what Tom’s seeing. He’s seeing the dress from last night and everything it exposed.

I look down at my desk, squirm slightly in my seat, then curse myself for doing it. I don’t want to be reminded of that torture.

“Is the Maned Wolf report ready?” Tom asks.

I look back up at him, surprised. This is not the line of questioning I expected.

“I’ve just sent a final draft to my team and to you, and in an hour the team and I will have one more meeting to decide which parts of the plan will be presented by whom.”

“Is that what he wants?”

“Who?” I ask, confused. “Rob—I mean, Mr. Dade? Of course that’s what he wants. It’s what he hired us for.”

Tom raises his eyebrow. The question he doesn’t have to ask echoes in my ears. Is it what he hired us for? Or was it so he could claim you?

The silent question leads me to memories of harsher, spoken statements.

Prostitutes have sex for profit.

Asha’s words. I close my eyes and try to force them from my head. I didn’t even know who he was when I met him. My actions were wrong but my motives had been physical, emotional, never monetary.

“Does he want the entire team to present the report or just you?”

I open my eyes. “I thought we were going to pretend that you don’t know about . . . about my relationship with Mr. Dade.”

“Yes, well I thought about that, and if he asks me to pretend, then that’s exactly what I’ll do because, after all, this is all about what he wants.”

“Are you mocking me?”

Tom cocks his head to the side; he hadn’t expected the question. “Why would I mock you? I like you and I respect you, although my definition of ‘respect’ might be different from yours. I’d respect a drug dealer if he did his job well.”

“You have no morals.”

He effortlessly shrugs off the accusation. “Look, Robert is the biggest client we have. I want as many Maned Wolf projects—and as much Maned Wolf money—as our division can handle. I know that I need you for that but I also need you to keep him happy.”

“Are you seriously suggesting that I have to fuck him?” I snap, the profanity coming to my lips a little too easily.

He chuckles. “Of course not. That would be . . . what’s the word you like to use?” He snaps his fingers a few times as if trying to remember. “Ah yes, immoral. No, I’m not saying you have to fuck him. I’m saying you have to keep fucking him.”

“You’re out of line.”

“What are you talking about?” He shakes his head; his smile wavers. “I’m only asking you to do what you want to do.”

“And I’ll do what I want to do,” I say simply. “But you have no right to expect it of me.”

“Seriously?” He leans forward. I hear my cell ringing in my purse but ignore it. “Tell me, Kasie, do you enjoy your job?”

I don’t respond. He knows the answer well enough.

“Do you think it’s fair that I expect you to do your job?”

“That’s different,” I say, seeing the trap.

“Is it?” His posture is relaxed; he’s sure of his footing. “You enjoy your work and I expect you to do it. You enjoy fucking your client? I expect you to keep that up, too. And yes, there may be aspects of your job and your affair that you think are beneath you. Tasks that you find demeaning. It’s the nature of the beast. Work through it.”

There’s a shift in the wind that carries my mood in a new direction. Tom is supposed to be my ally but if he switches sides, I’m prepared to draw blood. “Wasn’t it you who pointed out what will happen if Mr. Freeland finds out about Mr. Dade and me?” I ask. “Dave knows, Tom. You know that better than anyone. You should be encouraging me to find a graceful exit to the affair so we can all get out of this unscathed.”

“Kasie, I’m getting out of this unscathed regardless. If you get fired, that sucks for me. Really sucks. You’re an amazing consultant, hands down the best analyst I’ve got. There’s a chance I’ll be up for promotion next year and if I get it, you’ll be partially responsible for that, and you’ll probably get my job. But empires rise and fall. Kings and queens are overthrown and replaced with others, ones who use different titles, wear different crowns but are every bit as ruthless as their predecessors. We’re all replaceable in the end.”

Out in the hall I hear someone laughing, the hum of activity. “Are you threatening my job?” I ask.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Tom’s eyes idly travel the room. “My only goal is to keep the account. I’m sure Mr. Dade told you that he spoke with me last night?”

“He did.”

“He’s going to take care of Freeland, Dave, the works,” he says, as he finally brings his attention back to me. “And if Freeland has a problem with Mr. Dade’s terms, well he is only the cofounder after all. Mr. Dade will put the right pressure on the right people. You’ll keep your job as long as we keep that account and that means that it’s most definitely in your interest to keep him happy.”

My fingers slide over the surface of my desk. For me it has as much import as any throne. I earned my place here. Dave got me the interview, not the job. I deserve to have the assignment given to me by Robert even if he didn’t know it at the time he gave it. “Mr. Dade and I have talked about this,” I explain. “He will not be taking care of anyone. I will. This is my fight and I’m fighting it alone.”

Tom’s expression doesn’t change; his face doesn’t move. The only hint of frustration is in the way he squeezes the armrest of the chair, just tight enough to make the tips of his fingers go white. “That’s not a wise choice, Kasie.”

“It’s the choice I’ve made. I meet with Dave tonight. By tomorrow he won’t be a problem anymore. Freeland will never have grounds to attack me. It’ll be done.”

“And if things don’t turn out your way?”

I press my lips into a thin line of rebellion. I will not entertain that scenario.

“Ah, no plan B? Well then we’ll use mine: if you don’t have it under control, we’ll let Mr. Dade handle this.”

“How? By telling the board of directors that they need to keep me on until he tires of me?”

“If necessary. But don’t worry, Kasie. I doubt any man ever tires of you easily.”

“I can’t believe this,” I growl.

“Really?” He frowns. “You’re the one who got this ball rolling. And it’s a nice ball. We’re all going to get a lot richer because of your talents . . . all your talents.”

Again I don’t answer and Tom sighs. “Look,” he says, his voice almost weary, almost angry, “I don’t really care how this is handled, as long as it is. But let’s face it, if you’re handling this yourself, it’s because Mr. Dade’s allowing you to do so. That man holds all the cards. Which brings me back to my original question. Does he want the entire team to make the presentation or would he rather you give it to him personally in intimate detail? Because I swear to God, Kasie, if you have to dress up in a G-string and pasties and give him this report while rubbing your ass up against a pole in order for us to keep his business, then you better get out the company card and book it on over to Fredrick’s of Hollywood.”

“Get out of my office.”

“No.”

I lean back in my chair. “You want to keep Mr. Dade happy? Fine. How happy do you think he’ll be if I tell him you’re harassing me?”

And now the smile is back. “That’s my girl. Now you’re thinking like the merciless businesswoman I know and love.” He stands up. “For the record, I don’t want to upset you. I want you happy, healthy, and available . . . to Mr. Dade. I’ll be keeping in touch with him, too, but you’ll always be the main point of contact—”

“Is that supposed to be a pun?” I snap.

Tom blinks, surprised, and then laughs, a full jolly laugh, like a perverted Santa Claus.

“My, my, aren’t we paranoid these days!” he exclaims once the laugh has calmed to a chuckle. “But it’s good. Point of contact—I’m sure Mr. Dade will remain very pleased with you.” He shakes his head as he turns to leave, unaccountably amused.

“You know, you think the two of us are alike, but we’re not.”

Tom turns, waits for me to continue.

“I made a mistake. I got involved with someone when I was already involved with someone else. It was wrong.”

“And I told you, I don’t fault you—”

“But you should,” I say. “The only reason you don’t is because you have no decency. No sense of right and wrong. You’re a womanizing narcissist who probably buys his romance off of Craigslist. I screwed up. You are screwed up.”

Tom waits a beat. He’d have a perfect poker face if it wasn’t for the clenched jaw. But then he shrugs with forced casualness. “I’ll call Mr. Dade and find out how he wants the report delivered,” he says as he reaches for the door.

“Tom!” I say. He stops and turns toward me. “You don’t need to call him. I’ve handled his account beautifully up to this point. All the Maned Wolf executives trust me. Do not undermine the whole team by interfering.” I cross my arms across my chest purposefully to demonstrate my stubbornness. I think I see a gleam in Tom’s eyes but I don’t know what it means.

Finally he nods. “Very well, do things your way. Like I said, just keep him happy. If I hear from him that you’re not, there are going to be problems. Not just from me but from the higher-ups.” I notice that Tom’s smile is harder now. I hit a nerve with my outburst.

“You really should stop crossing your arms in front of your chest like that,” he adds.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s just that it reminds me of when you crossed your arms in Dave’s kitchen. You do remember that, don’t you? When you were trying to hide how hard your nipples were but then the gesture accidently gave me a glimpse of your . . . contact point.”

I feel my face burning. I get what he’s doing. He’s angry. He wants me self-conscious, less righteous.

But he also doesn’t want to waste any more of his time. Without another word he turns and leaves.

I sit back down, try to wipe out the last few minutes of the conversation from my mind. Tom is wrong. Robert doesn’t hold all the cards, and, yes, I will handle Dave after work.

But now Dave’s only one of many enemies. The war has emboldened the terrorists, and despite the confidence I felt this morning, I still don’t have enough weapons in my arsenal to fight them all.

CHAPTER 12

THE DAY MOVES SLOWLY. The phone call I missed while talking to Tom was from Simone. From my recent silence she can sense that something’s off. I send her a text promising to call tomorrow. I know I can’t talk to her now, while I’m still reeling from Tom’s audacity. I get through the meeting with my team. Once again Asha is on her best behavior. She gains nothing by antagonizing me and prefers to wait for her moment. Will it come soon? Will she find an angle that works for her?

But such thoughts are as useless as a straw hat in a rainstorm. I’m in the rain, I’m going to get wet, so what use is it to think about the sun?

I get through the day, get to the restaurant, and immediately spot Dave at a table in the back. I can see he ordered us each a glass of white wine and a calamari appetizer. We’ll probably drink the former, ignore the latter.

I can see he’s worried, sending furtive glances to the left and the right as if he expects an ambush to come in from the window rather than the main entrance. He acknowledges me with a sheepish nod as I sit across from him and offers an almost grateful smile.

“You’re alone,” he says. His relief shoots out of him like steam from a kettle.

“For the moment.” I sip my wine. It’s dry with hints of citrus. Dave looks a little ill.

“I-I went too far last night,” he stutters. “I overreacted.”

The words sound familiar. Not long ago I had tried to be a bit more aggressive with Dave, sexually, that is. I had behaved spontaneously, straddled him as he finished his wine, asked him to take me in words much rougher than the soft enticements he approved of. He had balked. Rejected me completely.

Then he apologized the next day. He told me he had overreacted because my behavior was so out of character. He didn’t want me to change.

I see now how absurd that explanation had been. Everything changes. Everything. And really, all I had done was try to mix it up in the bedroom. If that’s not change we can believe in, then what the hell is?

But there was something sinister there, too. He had walked out when I overtly tried to seduce him. He walked away the moment I tried to propose a new idea, as playful and inconsequential as it may have been. Dave has always tried to control me.

And it had been his controlling nature that had attracted me to him. I was afraid of freedom, scared of my own impulses.

I’ve changed.

“Kasie, did you hear me? I went too far.”

“I heard you,” I say mildly. At the corner table is a woman sitting alone, giggling. It takes me a moment to spot the cell phone she holds against her ear.

Dave gestures toward another table, this one closer to the front. Three men who appear to be wheeling and dealing over drinks. “They’re members of my club,” he says. “I would prefer we not make a scene here.”

“Would you?” I ask. “I didn’t come here to make a scene, but I do find it interesting that you would think I would care about what you prefer.”

His eyes snap back to me. “You cheated on me. You betrayed me. I gave you everything. I got you that job—”

“You got me an interview.”

“Which was more than you could have done for yourself! I bought you white roses, I gave you that ruby that you still wear on your finger! I cherished you!”

I shake my head. Clangs from the kitchen, a car honking outside. “You never cherished me. You cherished the idea of me.”

“What are you talking about?” he snaps. “Have you lost it? Is this a game to you?”

“No, it’s a war. I recognize the carnage.”

“I’m going to tell Dylan.”

I smile. In the end he’s a child running to his elders to tattle. I glance toward the host stand . . . and there he is. Robert. He’s speaking to the hostess but looking at me.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I say slowly. “Telling, that is.”

“I bet you don’t!” Dave sneers. “You thought you’d just get away . . .” but his voice trails off, because he sees Robert, too, as he walks toward us. It’s impossible to miss him. Robert has that kind of presence. He reaches the table, his eyes glued to Dave.

“So you’re the man who is about to lose,” he says.

I wince at the words. I don’t mind antagonizing Dave, but I take offense at the idea of someone else doing it on my behalf. I hadn’t minded so much last night when Tom took up my case, but that situation had been more urgent. Here in the safety of the restaurant, restraint would be welcome.

Dave opens his mouth to speak, but instead of intelligible speech he releases a series of fragments, “You must be . . . why . . . when did . . .”

Robert watches him with bemused condescension before placing a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be at the table over there.” He points to an empty table in the center of the room. It’s a spot that will give him a perfect view of the entire restaurant and the restaurant a perfect view of him. “All you have to do is wave,” he says, looking at me before excusing himself with a parting nod.

Dave’s face is the color of a robin’s breast. He fumbles with the fork sitting before him, lightly tapping it against the table as if testing to see how easily it will scratch.

“You brought me here to humiliate me,” he whispers.

“You taught me well.”

His stares sullenly at the table, taps the fork with a little more force. It’s the metronome that sets the aural pulse for our meeting.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I say. “We could just stop hurting each other. We could call a truce, rebuild our lives, we could move on.”

“Separately,” he says.

I can’t tell if it’s a question or a statement. Either way, I confirm it with a nod.

“I needed you,” he says. Again his eyes dart around the room, his gaze lightly landing on the woman with the brightly dyed hair before flitting to the man wearing expensive clothes and cheap tattoos, to the woman still laughing by herself to, at last, Robert Dade. “I don’t like this city,” he continues, his voice vibrating with emotion. “It’s tasteless, brazen, it—”

“It scares you,” I finish for him.

“I didn’t say that,” he snaps.

“No, you didn’t, not in so many words. But you told me as much in a thousand little ways.” He glares at me but allows me to continue. “You’re from a world where manners are quieter,” I say. “Where traditionalism still means something and modesty is an attribute, not a hindrance. You came to LA because of a job offer. You came thinking you could handle the glitter of Hollywood, the vivid diversity, the aggressive women, and the preening men, but you can’t handle any of it, can you?”

Dave shifts in his seat; the fork continues its metrical pulse. I lean forward, determined to be heard. “So you tried to control your little corner of the city,” I say. “You did it by joining clubs that disdain those who don’t fit your old school, ivory tower view of the world. You found a house in a neighborhood where the only diversity that can be seen is between the different makes of luxury cars. You’ve kept your home stark to the point of austerity as if to compensate for the wildness of the city and you chose me because I had the right look, the right mannerisms, and the right education . . . and because I let you control me. You told me who you wanted me to be and I poured myself into your mold and held its form for years.”

He looks up at me now; he’s pleading with me without saying a word.

“I can’t do it anymore, Dave. I’ve changed. You can punish me for that if you like, but it won’t do you any good. At best you’ll embarrass yourself; at worst you’ll become a laughingstock. Either way we’ll be over. I am no longer well suited to live within that corner of the world.”

The laughing woman finally hangs up her phone, and just like that, her smile disappears.

“You’re holding on to me out of fear, not love,” I finally add. “But unfortunately this relationship will never make you feel safe again.”

Dave lets the fork drop back to the table, but he holds his silence. I nod, knowing he’s giving me his answer. He won’t be going to Freeland, he won’t be fighting me anymore. This battle is over. He’s letting me go.

Discreetly I take the ruby off my finger and push it in his direction. I’m careful about this. I don’t want anyone else to notice. He scowls at the offensive piece of jewelry.

“I hate this ring,” he mutters. “I hated it when you picked it out and I hate it even more now.”

“Of course you do,” I say; there’s no judgment in my voice. “You want a woman who is comfortable with the easy transparency of diamonds, not the flawed passion of rubies.”

“Silks,” he says. “That’s what the jeweler called the flaws in a ruby. I don’t understand it. Why would you give such a pretty name to an imperfection?”

I smile and sigh. “I know you don’t see the beauty in that. That’s why we don’t work.”

I look down at my hands, now naked of adornment. “I am sorry I hurt you. It shouldn’t have taken an affair for me to find myself. I should have figured it all out by myself. I should have been stronger. I’m so, so sorry that you had to suffer for my weakness.”

Dave nods curtly. “Will you leave together?” he asks.

I glance up at Robert’s table. “No. He’ll leave a few minutes after me. If you like, you and I can walk out together, for appearances.”

He perks up slightly at that. It’s the first thing I’ve said during this entire meeting that he’s comfortable with.

He signals for the check and I pull out my cell and send Robert a text.

I’m going to walk out with Dave but then we’re going our separate ways, permanently. Everything has been handled. No need to follow.

I watch as Robert glances down at his phone as a waitress brings him a cup of coffee. He reads as he sips, not bothering to put any cream or sugar in it. He takes it black. I didn’t know that.

It’s funny but that bothers me. How many other little details do I not know about the man who has redefined my life?

His response is quick and to the point.

You shouldn’t be alone with him. I’ll follow.

It’s the response I predicted but I had hoped for better.

Everything is fine. He and I are done hurting each other. I need you to trust me with this.

I press Send as Dave gives the waitress his credit card.

I can see Robert’s frown as he reads. For a moment I question the wisdom of using him as my “perceived threat.” It’s a little like using a mountain lion as a guard dog. You have no real control over who and when it will attack.

But Robert meets my eyes from across the room and gives me a stiff nod before sending yet another text.

If I don’t hear from you in five minutes I’m coming after you.

It’s funny because I know his interest is in protecting me but the text makes me feel like I’m the one he’s targeting.

I put my phone back in my purse, smile at Dave. “Let’s go.”

He gets up first, stands politely by as I gather myself. We walk out side by side, past the tattooed man and dyed-haired woman, past Robert, only stopping briefly at the table filled with the wheelers and dealers who greet Dave warmly and me with the civility required.

Once outside we walk the block to where I’m parked. My ring is in his pocket; my keys are in my hand.

When we reach my car I turn to him. “We have things in one another’s houses. Shall I bring your stuff to your place and pick up mine or visa versa or—”

“I’ll bring your stuff to you, pick up mine,” he interrupts. “If it’s all right I’ll do it while you’re at work; Monday afternoon should work. I’ll mail you the spare key you gave me . . . or—”

“You can just leave the key under that plant—”

“The potted cycad by the kitchen entrance—”

“Yes, the one I bought at Boething last year—”

“I remember.”

We stop. He shoves his hands into his pockets, directs his attention to the passing cars. Good-byes are never elegant. There are always things left to be said, little memories that need to be shoved aside, littering our minds until time finds a way to discard them. Finality, which should be so easy, is always awkward.

“I guess I should go then,” I say softly.

He nods, turns but then stops. “I had an affair, too.”

I drop my keys. Confusion followed by a new sense of indignation. All the righteous anger he had thrown my way and he had been guilty, too? Was he kidding?

When he turns back to me I expect to see the triumph of a man who’s delivered a knockout punch, but instead I just see sadness.

“Years ago and it only lasted a month. She was a college student doing a legal internship at my firm. You were acting a bit moody. When we were together you seemed . . . I guess melancholy is a good word for it. I thought I was losing you. And then this ambitious young woman with dark hair and light eyes . . . just like you, she comes to my firm, looking for role models, looking up at me with admiration . . . I was weak, I thought I was losing you.”

“But when . . .” My voice trails off as a memory creeps to the forefront of my mind. “We had only been dating a year . . .”

“Yes, you remember that time, five years ago. You had been at your job for a few months and all of a sudden you pulled away from me. I tried to reach you with romance, little gestures of affection, but you didn’t respond and I was too much of a coward to face the issue head on.”

Too much of a coward. Well, that was one thing Dave and I had in common. Except . . . “You did talk to me about it. We were at my place, finishing off a bottle of wine, and you asked if I was losing interest. You asked if you were the one making me sad.”

“And you started crying. That was the first time you told me about your sister.”

“It was the tenth anniversary of her death.”

A bird lands lightly on the sidewalk by our feet, picks at some crumbs of crackers dropped there by those who had walked before us. “That’s when you broke off the affair with her?”

Again he nods. The bird continues to feed off of someone else’s mess. “I knew when I heard the story of your sister that you were the perfect woman for me.”

“Excuse me?” Again the indignation pounds at my temples.

“You say I’m scared, Kasie? Well, you were terrified. You were terrified by the very idea of being out of control, so much so that, yes, you let me set more rules for us, you allowed me to wield a lot of the control. If you felt the impulse to rebel, you squashed it all in the interest of not being Melody.”

“You took advantage of my tragedy.”

“Because you wanted me to.”

The bird, now done with its snack, flies off to find the next course. Dave stares down at the remaining crumbs, shuffles his feet. “I knew we were in real trouble when you insisted on a ruby over a diamond.”

“It’s a small thing.”

“It was enough to let me know that the current had changed.” He reaches down to pick up my keys. I had forgotten about them. “I guess you’re not scared anymore, huh?”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I say as I take the keys from his hands.

“Well, at least you’re not alone.” He pauses before adding, “That girl I cheated on you with is married now, to some other guy who’d worked at my firm. I doubt she ever told him about me. I haven’t seen her in years, but her husband and I travel in the same circles. I hear things. They have a baby now. Apparently she decided that a career in law isn’t her thing. Too much ugliness and aggression. Now she’s running the Sunday school at his church or something.”

“It sounds like she would have been perfect for you.”

“Yeah, maybe she would have been.” He meets my eyes. His sadness is mixed with just a little bit of anger and maybe a few spoonfuls of regret. “I picked the wrong woman.”

I stand outside my car and watch as he walks away, not to the club but toward some other destination. I’ll never know where. The little minutiae of his day-to-day life is now off limits to me. He’s going to become a stranger.

Maybe he always was.

I turn my head, not wanting to see the moment when he disappears.

CHAPTER 13

I’VE ONLY JUST opened my car door when I hear him call my name. I turn to see Robert striding toward me. “Where is he?” he asks; his voice is steady but I can hear the undercurrent of aggression.

“He left. Like I said in the text, it’s over.”

He studies my face then looks around to see if he can spot Dave. “He’s not going to give up so easily.”

“Nothing about this was easy,” I say.

“He’ll talk to Freeland. He’s petty like that. You just have to look at him to see it.”

“ ‘Petty’s the wrong word,” I say but I can’t think of the right one. The only word that comes to mind is lost. “He won’t talk to Freeland.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s like the rest of us, guided by self-interest. There’s nothing in it for him anymore. It serves him better to just walk away.”

Robert shakes his head, unable to accept that any man would so readily accept defeat. The wind blows, making the trees rustle above our heads; leaves fall among the crumbs. Robert looks down and lifts my left hand. “He took the ruby back?”

“I gave it to him.”

A flash of approval, maybe even relief. “Let’s go to my place. We’ll order Chinese food and talk. I know you want to trust him, but we have to be prepared.”

A dry leaf falls on my shoe. The tree doesn’t need it. It has plenty of other greener and healthier leaves to adorn its branches. This leaf here is dead. It must have died on the vine, well before it detached itself.

But I wonder if the tree will miss it anyway.

“I think I’d like to spend the night at my place,” I say.

“All right, I’ve never been to your place—”

“No, Robert, by myself.”

For a moment I can see his confidence waiver, he thought my days of pushing him away were over. Maybe they are, but tonight I need to mourn for a relationship that died on the vine.

I put my hand on his arm. “Monday I’ll come to you, or you can come to me if you like. But I’m tired, Robert, in so many ways. You need to give me a few days to recover.”

He nods, understanding. “My car’s parked in the lot on the next block. Walk with me there; there’s something I want to give you.”

I nod and walk by his side. At some point he takes my hand, rubs his thumb back and forth over my bare ring finger. It feels weird, holding hands in public like this. In fact it still feels wrong.

But how much time have I spent fantasizing about being in a relationship with this man? Sailing away with him, scaling the Mayan pyramids, making love on the floor of the Musée . . . in my mind Robert and I have been a couple for some time now.

And yet I never imagined us walking down an LA street holding hands.

“Was Asha a problem today?” he asked.

“No, not Asha. Today it was Tom who treated me like a hooker.”

The words came quickly to my lips before my mind had time to engage, before it could remind me of who I was talking to.

“Tom . . . Love? What did he do?”

This is a story that needs to be significantly watered down for Robert. I’m not sure why, but I sense that it would be best if I appear unfazed. Unfortunately I can’t repress a shiver when I recall the interaction. “He’s just being Tom, that’s all. Now that he has confirmation about the nature of our relationship, he . . .” My voice trails off as I try to think of the best way to summarize everything.

“He what?”‘

“It’s not a big deal,” I say quickly. “It’s just going to take some time to remind him that my personal life is none of his business. I can handle it.”

Robert’s grip on my hand tightens but he doesn’t say anything. No verbal response is probably the best response I can hope for.

We reach the parking lot and I break out in skeptical laughter. “This is where you parked your Alfa Romeo 8C Spider?” The lot is a little run down. Cars are tightly packed together, the wind pushes bits of litter over the gravel surface; it does not speak of luxury.

“I gave the attendant a little something extra to take care of it for me,” Robert says and gestures to the far end of the lot where only one car is parked.

I try to speculate on how much “a little extra” is and I wonder if it’s necessary. There’s something intimidating about Robert, even when he’s not trying to be. I can’t imagine anyone trying to test him by screwing up his $300,000 car.

He walks me over and opens the trunk that is about the size of a hatbox. He pulls out a couple of dress shirts, considers them both before handing me one. “Sleep in this until I see you next,” he says. He throws a fleeting look at the lowering sun. “Put it on as soon as you get home. Wear just my shirt, nothing else. Think of me.”

I take it in my hands, lift it to my nose. It smells slightly of his cologne. I smile my consent. I will sleep in it, and thinking of him has never been a problem.

He opens the passenger door for me and tells me he’ll drive me back to my car. I begin to protest, telling him that I’d rather walk, but he insists and I give in easily.

As he starts up the engine I realize that when it comes to Robert, I quite frequently give in easily.

*    *    *

WHEN I FINALLY get home, it feels oddly empty. I have lived alone since college, but before all of this, I was able to fill the empty space with plans and expectations. On the coffee table are travel magazines to help Dave and me plan our next vacation. And there on the wine rack is the bottle of expensive Merlot I planned to bring to a birthday party for one of Dave’s coworkers. Upstairs is a calendar with each day jotted out in perfect detail with lunch meetings and date nights, next to it a list of potential clients I’d like to promote my firm to, earning their business and impressing the partners.

I still have the things, but they signify nothing. What was once travel research is now just a few periodicals with pretty pictures in them. What was a gift is now just alcohol waiting to be drunk. The calendar of planned days is now just paper filled with useless scribbles.

Perhaps the list of potential clients is still useful. After all, I’m pretty sure I’m right about Dave. He won’t talk to Freeland. Maybe he was never going to. I don’t think he can face the shame any more than I can. Asha is powerless without Dave’s cooperation. Evil bitch that she is, she’ll probably find somebody more vulnerable to torture. Tom will get himself in line in time, after he sees that I have everything under control. . . .

. . . except for Robert. I don’t have him under control. And of course I don’t want to control him, but his unpredictability is unnerving. Perhaps I won’t have time to approach new clients. Maybe he’ll give me more and increasingly time-consuming assignments to fill up my days. He could keep me tied to him with ropes made of numbers and mergers.

I’ve draped Robert’s shirt over a dining room chair but I go and pick it up again. I have nightshirts that are more comfortable than this. Later tonight, when I get tired, I’ll change into one of them. He won’t see me in the shirt, so there’s no real need to wear it.

Put it on as soon as you get home. Think of me.

My hand goes to the scarf around my neck and I carefully pull it off, drop it on the table . . . a table not so unlike the one at Dave’s house.

I do it only because my house is warm. I don’t need the scarf. I don’t need the jacket, either. I pull that off as well, drape it over another chair.

Think of me.

I had been laid out for him like a feast, right there on Dave’s table. He had run his hands over my body, kissed me, tasted me. . . .

. . . as soon as you get home. Think of me.

I unbutton my blouse. I’m alone here. It doesn’t matter.

He had pinched my nipples, made them reach out for him. My hand goes to my bra.

Wear nothing else, just my shirt.

The bra falls to the floor and he’s there. I feel him in the air, hear him in the stillness; I hold the shirt to my face, breathe in the cologne so that now all my senses are engaged.

I can touch you with a thought.

Is he thinking of me now? Is that what I’m sensing? Him, reaching across the distance with a fantasy, like some warlock in a fairy tale? I pull off my belt, drape it over my jacket; my fingers fumble with the buttons that hold my slacks to my waist. He guides me, instructs me, compels me to go further.

Wear just my shirt, nothing else. Think of me.

I remove my pants; my panties are next; I clutch his shirt in my hand.

. . . even when I’m nowhere near you I’m inside of you. I can touch you with a thought.

I feel the throbbing between my legs. Slowly I loosen my grip on the cotton fabric, slip in one arm, then the other. The fabric is light, almost teasing against my skin. Goose bumps rise all over my body. Outside I hear the wind knocking at my windows, clamoring for entry.

. . . even when I’m nowhere near you I’m inside of you.

I feel a jolt of electricity, a small spasm. I reach out for the back of the chair for support. My breathing is irregular. It’s just cotton, just the trace of cologne, just the Santa Ana winds clearing away the haze, encouraging the fire.

Think of me.

I close my eyes, try to regain my composure. There are things I’m supposed to pack, a loss I’m supposed to mourn. This isn’t right. It’s crazy. He’s not here.

I can touch you with a thought . . . think of me.

I lower myself onto the chair, finger the fabric; I can feel him caressing the insides of my thighs, kissing my shoulder. I don’t touch myself. I don’t need to.

I can touch you with a thought.

His teeth graze my neck, his hands run down to the small of my back. I slide down farther in my chair, part my legs just enough. His tongue flicks back and forth against my clit, and I let out a tiny gasp as I writhe in my chair, running my hands up and down his shirt.

Even when I’m nowhere near you I’m inside of you.

I feel him enter me; my muscles contract as I lose myself in the ghostly fantasy. The wind quietly howls and I part my lips tasting the energy that’s in the air. He surrounds me, overwhelms me.

Think of me.

I feel myself on the cusp of losing control. There’s an aching inside of me that’s both erotic and torturous. It seems impossible that I could orgasm without the help of my hands, without his physical presence. But Robert is so much more than the flesh, blood, and muscles that compose him. He’s a force, a phenomenon. He’s power and intrigue, enticement and danger. He licks the hollow of my throat, strokes my thigh.

Even when I’m nowhere near you I’m inside of you.

The throbbing intensifies, I arch my back; his tongue is now on my nipples, his hands are in my hair, his erection fills me. Is this really happening to me?

I can touch you with a thought.

When the explosion comes, I close my eyes and give in.

CHAPTER 14

THE SPELL FADES slowly over the following days. It stays with me in low degrees as I extricate Dave’s life from mine. I put his things in boxes, making sure everything is neat and well folded. I leave it near the foyer but not in it. I don’t want it to look like I’m pushing him out the door. He can take those steps himself. I pull the pictures of us out of frames and put them into photo albums that will be stored in the back of a closet with the old yearbooks and neglected skeletons.

But my mind’s not fully engaged in the tasks. This was supposed to be a weekend for good-byes, the last nights for reminiscing, nights to indulge light tears and heavy thoughts.

But the last few nights haven’t been those things, and that bothers me. What bothers me even more is that I’ve worn Robert’s shirt each night. As soon as Los Angeles turns away from the sun, I slip it on. It’s Sunday night and I’m wearing it now. Why is that? Robert’s not calling to check up on me. He hasn’t even sent me a text. Did he ever really expect me to put it on in the first place?

Yes . . . yes, of course he did. And he knows I’m wearing it now. That’s why he hasn’t called or texted. He doesn’t have to.

So as I move from room to room in my lover’s shirt, Dave, the man I’ve spent the last six years with, disappears. Like a minor earthquake that briefly wakes you up at five in the morning. You know you felt something but you can’t quite figure out what that something was, or if it was real.

I don’t think I want to know what that says about me.

I eat a light meal, try to distract myself with a little TV, open that overpriced bottle of Merlot, and try to become accustomed to the scent of Robert’s cologne.

It’s almost ten when my phone rings. Something tells me that it’s not Robert even before I look at the screen. But I am surprised when I see Tom Love’s name.

Ten o’clock on a Sunday night is not an appropriate time for him to call. My eyes scan the room as if looking for a weapon that will reach through a phone line. It’s not until the last ring that I finally pick up.

“What,” I say in lieu of hello. Really, considering how angry I am with him, it could have been a lot worse.

“Relax.” Tom’s voice holds the air of bemusement but I don’t sense the smugness he had on Friday. “I’m calling to apologize.”

“I should have you fired for sexual harassment.”

“Probably. Look, I don’t always phrase things right. Ambition keeps me moving forward but it can also addle my brain. I get so focused on what’s to come, I don’t think about what I’m saying in the moment.”

I shift slightly in my seat, hold my tongue, wait for him to get to the point. I’ve worked with Tom long enough to know that if he’s apologizing, there’s something in it for him.

“It was wrong of me to ask you to continue your affair with Mr. Dade for the sake of the firm and it was ridiculous for me to suggest that you should do it for my sake. I know I could never pressure you into sleeping with someone you don’t want to sleep with, and even if I could, I wouldn’t.”

“Bullshit.”

Again a rueful laugh. “I guess I deserve that. But I am sorry for the way I spoke to you. That kind of talk is only appropriate in locker rooms and strip clubs; I should know, I’ve apparently spent enough time in both.”

I sigh and pick up the remote, slowly scrolling through the news stations, watching with mild interest as they deftly interweave tragedy with entertainment. People die in the Middle East and a European prince wants to introduce an American-style Halloween celebration to the royal family. A man in New York kills his wife and children and Kim Kardashian gets another $600,000 appearance fee. The anchors slip from one story to the next with barely a pause, their smiles and frowns flickering off and on with the rapidity of blinking Christmas tree lights.

“I would like you to consider something, though,” Tom goes on, insisting on my attention. He’s been talking for a while now, bumbling through various forms of an apology, but nothing he’s said has been remotely as interesting as Kim’s $500 manicure.

“And what would that be?” I ask with a sigh.

“Don’t keep your relationship going for the sake of the firm, but don’t end it for the sake of pride. You like him, Kasie. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have risked so much to be with him.”

“I took care of Dave,” I say coolly. “Just like I said I would.”

“So he’s not going to go running to Freeland, crying about his girlfriend cheating on him with the big, bad Mr. Dade? Well done! I underestimated you.”

“Which is another thing you should apologize for.” I sip my wine. An awkward young anchorman is relaying true stories of Stranger Danger.

“You’re right, you’re right,” Tom says. “I’m sorry. But that doesn’t change the crux of what I’m saying. No one is making you do anything, but don’t throw an entire relationship away just to make a point.”

“You’re doing it again,” I say.

“Doing what?”

“Underestimating me. Do you really think I can’t see through this? You’re changing your wording, not the message. You want me to keep seeing Robert Dade because it benefits you. My heart is of no interest to you at all.”

“Now that’s not fair . . . at least it’s not entirely fair. I do want you to enjoy your romance because I like you. My apologies and advice are as legitimate as your accusations and anger. But at some point you’re going to have to accept that we have a symbiotic relationship. If I advise you to follow your heart and you listen, everyone wins. Yes, my motivations are mostly selfish but I don’t see how that changes anything.”

This is probably as PC as Tom gets. That’s not saying much, but the fact that he’s trying is telling. “You really want more Maned Wolf accounts, don’t you?”

“Well, aren’t you quick.”

I laugh despite myself. “I don’t want to ever hear about that night that you saw . . . I don’t want to talk about how that dress. . . .” I blush and grit my teeth, angry with my own embarrassment. “Just don’t ever mention it again, all right?” I finally manage.

“Never,” he says quickly. “That’s a promise.”

I wish I could make him promise not to think of it ever again, too. I could ask him to say he won’t, but I’m so tired of lies and false denials. I know Tom has relived that moment a thousand times. I know in his fantasies he was not so honorable. I know that when he looks at me now, that image leaps to the forefront of his mind. My humiliation prickles my skin, makes me squirm a bit, but at least my humiliation is real. And for the first time in my life I’m able to acknowledge what I’m really feeling rather than denying it and pretending to have neater emotions.

“I haven’t ended things with Mr. Dade. I have no plans to do so.”

“You’ll tell me if and when you do? Just so I can prepare myself and the firm?”

“That’s a promise,” I say, mimicking his words and tone.

I can almost hear Tom’s smile. “You’re a treasure, Kasie.”

“Good-bye, Tom.”

I hang up the phone.

On the television children are being tested. The journalist says that these tests prove that even the most responsible child will accept the invitation of a stranger if the incentive is strong and the lie is smooth. Children are impulsive, the journalist says. And when approached by a well-dressed, charming adult who speaks with authority, they will respond. They will forget what they’ve been taught, forget the warnings and follow the stranger to danger.

I look down at the shirt I wear as a nightgown, feeling like a child.

CHAPTER 15

THE NIGHT STRETCHES ON. Around eleven I go to sleep restlessly. My dreams are jumbled and disquieting.

In one I’m in the back of a limo with Dave by my side . . . except he’s a ghost; I can only see his outline.

“Did I kill you?” I ask as the limo takes one sharp turn and then another.

He just smiles with transparent lips. “There’s so much to fear in this world,” he says with a laugh.

Except it’s not his laugh; he speaks with my sister’s voice. Panicked, I try to get out, scurry to the other side of the limo, and attempt to open the doors, but they’re locked.

“Silly.” Her voice murmurs in my ear even though Dave has not moved. “It’s not me that you have to be scared of! That would be like being scared of yourself!”

“I’m nothing like you,” I say to her, to Dave, to anyone who will listen.

“Really?” the voice says teasingly. “Tell it to Mr. Dade.”

The dreams go on like that. Nightmares and phantasms, clashes with invisible opponents. I wake up a few times, tangled in the sheets as if I had been combating the bed itself. It’s not until well after two that my mind finally escapes from the alarming images and lets me fall into a deep, continuous sleep.

When next I awake it’s to the sound of classical music. My alarm clock, of course. I find it easier to start the day with the slow build of a sonata than the sudden scream of an electric guitar. I keep my eyes closed and let myself be drawn into the music. It’s a Baroque piece of the seventeenth-century-master Tomaso Albinoni, a personal favorite. The sound is low and alluring, decadent to the point of being sinful. I become aware of the feeling of Robert’s shirt against my skin and let a small sound of pleasure hum through my closed lips, breathe in deep through my nose . . .

. . . and smell coffee.

Slowly, almost fearfully, I open my eyes. On my nightstand next to my alarm is a steaming cup of coffee.

And another is being held on the charcoal gray armchair of my bedroom, cupped between the hands of Robert Dade.

I don’t move, don’t sit up, don’t say a word. I think about the dreams and nightmares I had had only a few hours before. This doesn’t feel like a dream and yet it doesn’t make sense that he could be here, holding one of my ceramic cups filled with coffee.

“You know he’s a Venetian,” he says, gesturing to my clock radio.

“I’m sorry?”

“Albinoni. He was a Venetian. It seems appropriate when you consider where we met.”

I pull the sheets up to my chin. “How did you get in here?”

“As you may recall, I know how to pick a lock.”

“I have a security system.”

“I know. My company made it.”

“Robert, you can’t just—”

“You do remember that you told me I could come to you in a few days. It’s been a few days.” I turn my eyes to the clock.

“True,” I agree; “it’s also seven fifteen in the morning.”

He sighs, sips his coffee. “Do you know how hard it was for me to stay away this weekend? Knowing that he still has a key to this place? Knowing that he could come here and try to exact revenge at any time?”

The music has taken on a yearning quality. Its melody keeps me calm. “Dave isn’t a psychotic. He’s a man who was hurt. That’s all. He gave me back some of the pain I gave him and now he’s moving on.”

He studies his coffee, tilting it like a sommelier would tilt a glass of wine while looking for clues to its age and weight. “Putting you in that dress,” he says, “displaying you in front of Love as if you were a toy or a prostitute . . . perhaps it’s not psychotic but it does point to a . . . a demonic sensibility.” He looks up from his coffee, locks his eyes on mine. “You think you know what he’s capable of. You don’t.”

I groan and look up at my angled cream ceiling. It’s early; I’m not thinking straight. But for him to break into my home to warn me of what Dave might be capable of seems ironic.

“Those boxes downstairs, those are his things?”

I nod.

“When will he be picking them up?”

“Later this afternoon.” I turn on my side, flash him a pacifying smile. “I won’t be here.”

Robert nods his approval, walks to the bed, puts his coffee cup next to mine. “You won’t see him alone again. It’s not safe. If you need to meet him, you’ll call me first.”

“You don’t have the right to tell me how to handle this.”

“No?” He cocks his head to the side. “You’d risk your well-being just to be rebellious? Why do I doubt that?”

There’s a gentle but mocking lilt to his voice. I bite down on my lip. I should kick him out. This morning he is a criminal. My angel is incensed. But my devil has Hollywood tastes and seeks to glorify the crime.

Perhaps it’s I who has the demonic sensibility.

“Maybe you should take the day off,” he suggests. “Work from my house. Give Love another day to reassess his behavior.”

“No, I need to be at work. I can’t let my personal stressors keep me from my professional responsibilities.”

Robert doesn’t say anything. Instead he pulls the sheet back, runs his eyes over his shirt that covers my body. “You did as I asked.”

Of all the things he’s said and done this morning, that one sentence is by far the most provoking. And yet it oddly thrills even as it alarms. The combination of emotions worries me. He needs to leave the room. I need to drink my coffee, get my bearings, find the good sense to chastise him for his magisterial behavior.

But I don’t move. My request for privacy dies before it ever reaches my lips. Instead I lie here and wait for his next move, knowing deep down that if he demands, I will want to give.

Therein lies the danger.

With a firm but gentle hand he pushes me from my side to my back. “You can go to work today if that’s truly what you want to do. But you’re going to be late.”

“I can’t—”

He puts a finger against my lips. “You can talk later. Right now you need to unbutton your shirt. Show yourself to me.”

It’s a power game. Pride kicks in, and I almost refuse.

But I don’t.

Something in the way he’s looking at me, something in his tone . . .

My fingers fumble with the buttons of the shirt. It had been so easy to refuse Dave, but Robert . . . it’s different.

The shirt is now undone, but it still covers me. A small strip of skin is revealed between my breasts.

He leans over, gently pulls the fabric back so that it lays on my shoulders and spreads out at my sides like the closed wing of a moth. He straightens his posture, stands over me as he studies the nuances of my figure. My breathing is irregular and I look away from him. I shouldn’t want this. I shouldn’t want to follow a man’s commands. Not after what I’ve been through with Dave.

And yet.

“Spread your legs, Kasie.”

I close my eyes. “I have to go to work,” I whisper.

“Later. Spread your legs.”

Is it because I know what it’s like to have this man inside me? Am I like any addict, willing to humble myself for one more fix? Or is there a part of me that really isn’t ready to face the music of the day? Am I using a convenient sense of subservience to justify this small procrastination?

Does it matter?

Slowly, I open my legs. I expect him to touch me but he doesn’t. Instead he circles the bed, wolfish in his movements.

“You want to handle things in your own way,” Robert says, his eyes moving up and down my body with an unapologetic appetite. “I respect that. I will allow that.”

Allow . . . I open my mouth to object but again he leans over, puts his finger against my lips. “As I said, you can talk later. But right now, I want you to listen. And you will do what I want, won’t you, Kasie?”

My heart is pounding so loud, I wonder if he can hear it. He removes his finger and I remain silent.

Again his eyes roam over me, caressing my thighs and stopping there, right there between my legs.

“Are you wet, Kasie?”

I don’t answer, partially because I don’t know if he wants me to speak, partially because I’m embarrassed to admit that I am.

“Touch yourself,” he says; his tone leaves no room for negotiation. “Reach between your legs; tell me if you’re wet.”

My hand twitches at my side, almost as if it’s battling with itself, but my urge to yield is overwhelming. With an odd mixture of reluctance and anticipation I move my hand between my legs. My fingers slide over my clit and I jump, surprised by my own sensitivity. But I know he wants more. I slip one finger inside myself as he watches.

“Yes,” I say quietly, almost meekly, “I’m wet.”

He nods, satisfied with my answer. He reaches down, gently directs the movement of my hand. “Use two fingers,” he says; his voice is kinder now but the air of authority is still prominent, “and use your thumb to rub your clit. When I tell you to masturbate, this is what I want you to do, unless I tell you otherwise.”

And as he pulls his hand away, I do as I’ve been asked. My fingers plunging inside of myself as I further stimulate myself with my thumb.

“As I was saying before,” he says, his eyes glued to me as I being to writhe on the sheets beneath me, “I will allow it.” He puts special emphasis on the word he knows will get under my skin but I don’t think I have even the slightest ability to challenge him. I try to focus but my mind is clouded with confusion and ecstasy. Why am I doing this for him? Why does it incite me?

“However,” he continues, his voice still calm, “if he tries to hurt you, if he tries to lay a single hand on you, I will step in. I will take care of him and I will decide how to do that. If there are lines that can’t be crossed, I will erase those lines. I will keep you safe. You will not stand in the way of that.”

I’m coming dangerously close to an orgasm, and somehow the thought of coming in front of him while he is fully dressed, so calm and so commanding, intensifies my agitation. I look away but he reaches over, guides my chin back in his direction. “Do you understand, Kasie?”

I nod but it’s not enough.

“I need more than that. No, no, don’t come yet,” he says as I arch my back, the little control I have left slipping away. “I need you to answer me first. Tell me you understand.”

“I understand—” I gasp.

“. . . and you will not stand in my way.”

“I will not stand in your way,” I parrot. It’s all I can manage.

“That’s good.” He sits on the side of the bed; he watches the movement of my hand with almost scholarly interest. “How close are you to coming, Kasie?”

“Oh God!”

“That’s not an answer. How close are you?”

I try to look away again but again his fingers slip under my chin. “Answer me.”

“I’m very . . . very close . . . to . . .”

My voice gives out. I can feel the orgasm that sits on the verge of bursting through me, but just then Robert firmly but carefully grasps my hand, stills it, and then pulls it away from my body.

“Not yet,” he says.

My eyes widen in surprise. The shock of being denied when I’m so close is too much. Suddenly I don’t care about the consequence of my submission. I don’t care that he has taken command of me without having to fight me. I certainly don’t care about how late I’m going to be for work. I need the satisfaction my fingers had promised. I try to move my hand back between my thighs but his hold is too strong.

“Please,” I gasp.

“Please what, Kasie?”

I flush, my cheeks red with frustration and uncontainable longing. “Please let me come.”

He smiles and kisses my forehead protectively. “Don’t move; you’re not allowed to touch yourself, not right now. Just wait.”

He stands and again for reasons I’m not clear on I obey despite a growing desperation.

Slowly he takes off his shirt, then his pants. I watch him as I struggle to stay still. My body is on fire.

Finally he exposes his erection to me. I’m frantic to get it inside me, but instead he pulls me up so that I’m sitting back on my heels. He pulls my knees apart enough so he can see me completely and then pets my hair. “I know what you want. You want me to take you on this bed. You’re desperate to come. But the blowjob will be first, Kasie. Understand?”

Again I nod and he smiles before gently pressing my head forward. I wrap my lips around him, my hand slides over the base of his cock as my tongue finds the veins and ridges, toying with the tip before taking more of him in my mouth. I hear him moan and the sound encourages me, electrifies me. I move back and forth, preparing him, hoping that my success will be rewarded with something even better.

Again he moans and then quickly pulls my head away. “Now,” he says. And then he pushes me back on the bed and in an instant he gives me what I crave. He’s inside of me, answering my body’s pleas for release. My orgasm comes swiftly, tearing through my body like a tornado, making the room spin and my world buckle. He continues to move inside of me, grinding, biting my neck. I try to hold on to him but he holds my arms down and his strength is insurmountable.

“No one will touch you,” he says, his voice so low I have to struggle to hear him. “No one but me.”

He thrusts again and I cry out. He overwhelms me, pounding into me as I thrash beneath him.

Yes, this is a dangerous man. Dangerous because his power comes from my own desire and his power over me is increasing with time and familiarity. I can fight Dave, I can fight Asha.

But Robert Dade?

I stare up into his eyes. Can he read my thoughts? That quiet but knowing smile suggests it. I wrap my legs around his waist; his mouth moves down to my ear. “Kasie,” he gasps.

He pulls out, flips me over, and enters me again. Again I cry out, my breasts crushed against the firm mattress. I grab on to the wooden bars of the headrest like a convict railing for release.

Again his mouth is by my ear as he pushes inside me again and again. “No one but me,” he says again, his voice rasping as he struggles for a last moment of control. But as I push my hips back against him I know that his control is almost gone.

“Now,” he groans and in that moment we come together. The sensation is so forceful and primal, it feels almost perilous.

I feel the weight of his chest on top of me as he finally collapses; I close my eyes and try to bring myself back to earth.

I might have been safer at Dave’s.

CHAPTER 16

I’M ALMOST AN hour late for work. Barbara looks at me, surprised as I stride past her. I had forgotten to call to warn her of my delayed arrival, not something I’ve ever done before. But it’s all right. I’m composed now. The hypnotic events of the morning have passed. By the time we had parted ways, Robert’s voice has adopted his normal low and casually confident tone.

But as I sit at my desk, mulling through the contents of my inbox, a nagging sensation of worry distracts me. I lost myself earlier, I gave myself to him, my body, my will. . . . The angel on my shoulder, long neglected and ignored, raises her voice, urges me to run. Prays that I’ll listen just this once.

But I can’t run from Robert. Not now, not yet. Tom was right: it’s not what I want. Obviously my relationship benefits the firm, my career, and so on, but as far as I’m concerned that’s all beside the point. I can’t run from Robert because I don’t want to. I just don’t have the necessary will to make my legs move.

Tom bursts into my office with his characteristic inconsideration. Barbara stands behind him with a shrug and a smile before closing the door behind him, giving us privacy.

“Tom, I’m sorry I didn’t call to say I would be late; I—” but something stops me. The sheen of sweat that dots his brow, the flush of his cheeks and the rigidness of his jaw, it all adds up to no good. “Did something happen?” I ask.

“My apology wasn’t good enough?” he croaks. I’ve never heard his voice take this tenor. It’s thin, artless; it hints at an ocean of rage that threatens to submerge the entire building. “Was I not sincere enough?”

I shake my head, not understanding.

“I went too far Friday night, I know that. I apologized for that!”

“You did,” I agree, then turn up my palms as a sign of confusion. “I’m sorry, Tom, I’m still not following. What is going on? What’s upset you?”

“He took it away.”

“Took what away?”

“EVERYTHING!”

The cry is so loud that Barbara hurries back in as if expecting to break up a fight. But when she sees Tom’s face, sees the pain, she steps back out, closes the door again.

I wish she had stayed. Before me is a man so wrecked, it wouldn’t be implausible if he told me someone had just broken into his home and killed his children, raped his wife, stolen all of his possessions.

But Tom has no children, no wife, and all of his possessions are insured.

As far as I know, the only thing Tom has, the only thing he actually cares about, is his job.

I fall back in my seat. The air seems to have taken on the sulfurous scent of foreboding.

“What happened?” I ask again. But I know. I know Tom will be leaving today with the remnants of his career here packed up into a small box. I know his heart has been crunched with the same callousness we use to analyze the numbers of a division that is slated for liquidation.

And I know who’s responsible.

As Tom lets the silence do his talking for him, I shift positions; Tom has always been able to elicit in me a strange mix of derision and respect. And he didn’t just step over the line on Friday. He obliterated it. If I wasn’t afraid of damaging my own reputation, I could sue.

But that’s the thing. I never wanted to sue. I was ready to accept his apology, as self-serving as it might have been. I was willing to take this on a day-by-day basis. I wanted to see if we could make it all work. Not doing so wasn’t just bad for Tom. It was bad for me.

“On what grounds?” I ask weakly. “They have to have grounds, right?”

“The complaint of a client,” he hisses. “Apparently I’ve made some disparaging remarks to some of the women who work for Maned Wolf, Inc. . . . women I’m pretty sure I’ve never spoken a word to in my life—but they’re all willing to sign affidavits saying I have. And then there are other companies who have brought their business here, smaller companies who have suddenly remembered that I was inappropriate with the women at their firms, too.”

He stares at me, waiting for a response. My mouth opens but nothing comes out.

“It’s a joke, of course,” he says, then tears his eyes from me, turns to face the wall, raises his fist. “It’s. A. JOKE!” With each word he pounds his fist into the wall. I can practically see Barbara on the other side of the door wondering if she should come in again.

He continues to stare at the wall. “It’s a joke,” he says again, softer this time. “I’ve never harassed a woman in my entire professional career.”

“Wellll . . .”

Tom pivots slowly, sneers at me. “You?” He takes a step closer. “I said a few brash remarks the day after you flashed me your pussy.”

I grow cold, my nails scrape against my desk. “I didn’t flash you—”

“Tell me, if I hadn’t locked Dave out of the house, if I had accepted his invitation to dinner, would you have served me? Would you have poured my wine while wearing a dress made out of the same amount of material as a washcloth? Would you have sat next to me, wearing no underwear, knowing how high your hemline was going to rise as soon as you hit the chair, knowing that I would be looking at you while you were literally half naked for the entire night? Would you have let Dave debase you in front of me, let him indulge his little revenge fantasy?”

Now it’s me who turns red. The humiliation of that night shoots through me like the pain of a damaged muscle that’s been reinjured. “There is no need—”

“Because that’s how it seemed to me,” Tom continues, cutting me off. “You felt cornered. You felt like you didn’t have a choice. But I gave you a choice. That ass your fiancé was so eager to show off? I saved it! I left! I called Mr. Dade! I am not the bad guy here, so why the hell did you sic your fucking dog on me? Because I told you what you didn’t want to hear?”

“I didn’t sic anyone on you,” I hiss. Slowly I rise to my feet. “I am grateful that you didn’t act like an asshole when Dave tried to use you as a weapon against me. I’m grateful that you called Mr. Dade. None of that gives you the right to treat me the way that you did on Friday. But despite all that, I did not get you fired.”

“You expect me—”

“I don’t care what you believe!” I snap, not allowing him to finish his thought. “I told my lover about my day at work. That’s it. Period. I have the right to do that! Everything I’ve done since I’ve last seen you I’ve had the right to do!”

“And can the same be said for him? Do you honestly believe he had the right to do this?” Tom blurts out the question with vehemence, but after it’s spoken it hangs in the air like a sword above my head.

Tom seems to see the sword, too, and it calms him. He’s apparently satisfied that he’s shaken me. But with the calm comes a new melancholy. I watch as his shoulders drop, the red color drains away, and suddenly Tom just looks old. At least ten years older than how he looked on Friday when he laughingly and unknowingly sealed his fate.

He exhales loudly. It’s a despairing and mournful sound.

When he turns from me he seems empty. After so many unexpected theatrics he leaves my office with the silence and weight of a ghost.

Tom has always been more of a troublesome ally than an enemy. Like China or Saudi Arabia. Not governments I love, but countries whose value I recognize. As Tom would say, I recognize the symbiotic relationship.

And if this is a war . . . if it ever was, then Robert’s a mercenary. He fights by his own rules, not those of a more honorable soldier, but he fights for me. I’ve paid him in . . . in what? Sex? Affection? Have I paid by giving him control of my own life?

I stand up again; my legs are wobbly but I manage to gather my purse and leave the office. “I’m taking the rest of the day off,” I say to Barbara.

“Oh I know,” Barbara says, smiling up at me. “Mr. Dade already called to say that you would be. He said he’d meet you at his place. I would have rung him through but you seemed . . . busy.”

I stare at her, sure I’ve misheard. She takes a moment to lean forward, whispers conspiratorially, “I had no idea! He’s so hot, Kasie!”

I stiffen; my throat constricts, so I answer only with a stiff nod before turning and walking away.

On my way to the elevator I run into Asha. She stops, offers me a thin smile that hangs in that no-man’s-land between admiration and resentment. “I heard you’re getting promoted to Tom’s position,” she says.

I freeze. Everything takes on a surreal quality. The shadows cast by the light take on the shape of specters and shadow people.

“I’m impressed,” she continues. “You did it. You won.” She gives me a reluctant nod of deference. “To the victor goes the spoils.”

To the victor goes the rules.

“I have to go.” I push past her before she can say more. The elevator ride makes me nauseous. I know I’m not fit to drive but I get in my car anyway. I stay below the speed limit, hoping to give myself time to think. But it doesn’t help. The only things in my head are anger, confusion, fear . . . fear of what?

But the answer to that is easy. I fear my protector.

When I get to Robert’s the gate is open. I move into the driveway, pull my keys from the ignition, and carefully make my way through the gated front yard and into the house. Nothing is locked against me. Everything opens with a touch.

I find him sitting in the living room, reading some report. He looks up at me and smiles. “You’re welcome,” he says before turning his attention back to the papers in his hand.

I shake my head. “You think I’m here to thank you?”

“Why not? I’ve taken care of Tom for you. If Dave’s a problem—”

“He won’t be.”

“But if he is,” Robert continues, “I’ll take care of him, too.”

Behind him is a painting. I’ve admired it before. A picture of abstract lovers surrounded by a chaotic swirl of nonfigurative and colorful shapes that seem impotent in their efforts to pull them apart. When I had first seen it I had thought the painting was a testament to the power of love.

Now I wonder if it’s just a testament to power.

“This is not how I do things,” I say. “I don’t live in a world where it’s okay to destroy those who cross me.”

“Trust me, you’ll get used to it.”

“I’m leaving you.”

He finally puts down the papers, gets to his feet, moves to me. We’re a foot apart now. I don’t want to respond to him but my body won’t cooperate. It’s almost Pavlovian. He comes near me and my heart speeds up, my breathing becomes more shallow, and then there’s the gentle throbbing between my legs.

I turn my head away, shamed by my body’s betrayal, knowing that he can see it.

“You have told me it’s over a thousand times,” he says quietly. “It never is, Kasie. You’ve tried, but you can’t walk away. At times you think you should but you don’t. I told you I wanted to be with you when you were truly mine. Now you are.”

“No,” I say feebly, trying to find strength in repetition, “it’s not how I do things.”

With his hand he guides my chin back to him, just like this morning. He stares down into my eyes. “It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve reshaped our world.”

A small cry escapes my lips. I turn around and run to the door.

But even as I get outside, even as I climb back into my car and peel out of the driveway, I know I can’t get away from him.

Even when I’m not with you, I’m inside of you. I can touch you with a thought.

I’m in trouble.

Where will Kasie’s choice lead her?

Keep reading and order JUST ONE NIGHT, PART 3: Binding Agreement today!

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From

JUST ONE NIGHT,

PART 3:

Binding Agreement

Available May 20

WHEN I PULL UP to my driveway I see his car parked in front of my house. It’s impossible to miss, really. What surprises me is that he’s leaning against the outside of my door. His arms are crossed and his salt-and-pepper hair gleams with the slight dew of the night. I park my car and go to him.

“You didn’t let yourself in this time.”

He smiles ruefully. “I’m trying to find a happy medium between being protective and being intrusive. I thought not breaking into your home would be a good start.”

“You’re learning.” I put my key in the lock, open the door, and allow him to follow me into the living room. “Still,” I say once we’re inside and he’s lowered himself onto my sofa, “you could have called.”

“I could have,” he agrees. “I didn’t.”

I turn to him. I don’t understand this man. Sometimes I’m not entirely sure if I like him. But my God, do I want him.

“What are you here for?” I ask.

“You’re not leaving me,” he says simply.

“You think you get to make that call?”

“I do.” He cocks his head, smiles. “I would have to do something specific to give you the will to walk away. I haven’t and so now you can’t will yourself to do anything but stay.”

I stare up at the off-white ceiling above me. I have worked to keep the interior of my home simple, sophisticated, comfortable, but now everything in here feels complicated, untamed, and I am not comfortable at all. Everything about Robert agitates me. His voice vibrates inside of me like the beat of a rock song, bringing me alive, amplifying emotions that I might otherwise suppress. “I’m just out of a relationship,” I remind him. “I spent years being controlled by someone else’s vision of me and now you want to control me, too.”

“No.” He stands, moves to my side. “I don’t want to control you.” He lets his fingers slide under my chin, guides my face in his direction. “I would like to corrupt you . . . if only a little.”

“Corrupt me?”

“Kasie, if you let me help you, we could have everything. The people who would mock you or try to make your life harder? They’ll bow before us. Tom was a cautionary tale. We need those. You need those. People should know what happens to those who cross you.”

“You’re talking about a man’s life.”

“I’m talking about winning.”

His hand slips to the small of my back and I instinctively lean into him, pressing my breasts into his chest. “I don’t want you to get Asha fired.”

“Ah, but you want so many things,” he whispers, grazing his teeth on my earlobe. “What is it you want more, Kasie? Fairness? Power?” He gently pushes me back against a wall, his tongue flicks against the base of my throat. “Me?”

I try to answer but his hands are on my shirt, pulling it from me, unbuttoning my pants, and then letting them fall. . . .

Will Kasie find her happiness with Robert?

Keep reading and order JUST ONE NIGHT, PART 3: Binding Agreement today!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kyra Davis is the author of the critically acclaimed Sophie Katz mystery series and the novel So Much For My Happy Ending. Now a full-time author and television writer, Kyra lives in the Los Angeles area with her son and their lovable leopard gecko, Alisa.

Visit her online—www.KyraDavis.com

Follow her @_KyraDavis—www.Twitter.com/_KyraDavis

Visit her Facebook fan page—http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fans-of-Kyra-Davis/303460793916

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events,

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ISBN 978-1-4767-1313-7

Table of Contents

Cover

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

‘Just One Night, Part 3: Binding Agreement’ Preview

About the Author

Copyright