Page 136 of Boardroom Mask

“You’re very warm,” she mumbles into my chest. “It’s unfair. You’re like a furnace.”

“Genetic.”

“They do come in handy from time to time.” She hooks one leg over my hip and presses closer. The grind of her against my crotch wakes me up the rest of the way. “Jillian.”

“Hmf?”

“If you keep doing that, this is going to stop being a cuddle and start being something very different indeed.”

She tilts her face up. Those green eyes are wide and mischievous and completely awake despite the hour. “Who said I wanted a cuddle?”

That’s all the invitation I need. I kiss her. I take my time with it, one hand in her hair, the other sliding down her spine to the small of her back. She arches into me and makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight to my groin.

We take it slow. Slower than we’ve ever been, because there’s nowhere to be and nobody to hide from. I pull the shirt over her head and she kicks her underwear off under the sheets, and then it’s just skin on skin, warm and unhurried. She pushes me onto my back and climbs on top. I let her set the pace, watching her move above me with her eyes closed and her lips parted, her hair falling out of its knot strand by strand.

When we’re done, I carry her into the shower. I’ve always thought this thing was designed too big for one person, but as it turns out, it’s exactly right for two. She stands under the spray with her head tipped back and water running down her freckled shoulders and sighs happily.

We don’t make it out of the shower before I’m inside her again. We leave behind some very interesting marks on the glass.

“Like modern art,” I suggest as I wrap her in a huge, thick towel.

She eyes the smudges from multiple angles. “Are you saying my boobs belong in a museum?”

“Where everyone else can see them? Fuck no.” I bend down and close my teeth lightly around one nipple. Jillian yelps and smacks me on the back of the head, but her hand keeps my mouth fasted around her breast so I can’t quite let go. “These,” I declare with a mouthful of boob, “are formyviewing eyes only.”

“That means this is mine, too,” she warns as she palms my already-stiffening cock.

“Yours,” I agree.

For the third time, we decide to fall right onto the shower mat and rut like animals there.

When will enough be enough, I wonder? Will there ever be a time I don’t see her and get hard immediately? Will thisShe’s minefire ever fade, or even cool off a degree or two? It’s as all-consuming as it was from the start. More so now, even, after all that we’ve been through and all that I’ve learned about her. Jillian Pierce has both surprised me and also confirmed everything I ever suspected about her, and she somehow did it at the same fucking time.

She’s a wonder. A goddamn wonder. There’s no other word for her.

Or, wait, yes there is.

Mine.

That’s the best word of all.

After a second, highly necessary shower, we end up back in bed. Jillian is sprawled on her stomach with the sheets bunched around her waist, chin propped on her folded arms, and I’m lying next to her, tracing abstract shapes on the soft skin between her shoulder blades.

“I decided something,” I tell her.

“When you were going down on me?” she asks with a lifted brow.

“Shortly before,” I say, chuckling. “I’m going to start restructuring the company.”

She turns her head on her arms to look at me. “Restructuring how?”

“Severing the financial pipelines. All of them. The Bratva has been this, like, parasite leeching on the ass of Lazarev Global. So I’m going to pluck it off and crush it.” I press my thumb against a freckle on her spine. “We’re going legitimate. It’s time.”

Jillian is quiet as she contemplates what I just said. “What does that mean for your safety?” she asks at last.

That’s a question I haven’t considered. “What do you mean?”

She rolls onto her side, facing me, and props her head up on one hand. “You’re about to cut off a lot of very dangerous people from a lot of money. What happens when they notice?”