She was there in five minutes. Marbury’s office sat atop a row of small shops that included a dry cleaner, an insurance company, a hair salon, and a Chinese restaurant. The scent of cooking oil and spices followed her up the stairs. Her stomach growled; she’d forgotten lunch. She didn’t tell people that sometimes she forgot to eat. In a world where just about everyone was dieting, the few times she’d said anything about forgetting a meal, people looked at her like she was an alien. Then they got hostile, as if she were holier than thou and trying to make them feel bad. But where some people turned to food when they were stressed, she was the opposite; food made her sick. That was another thing she didn’t tell people.

The outer office consisted of Clarice seated at a very big desk with her computer monitor, keyboard, and phone all within reach, and a host of office machines lining the walls, including a combination printer with scanner, fax, and copier, a color printer for presentations, and of course a coffeemaker and large refrigerator. Denton Marbury was a large man.

The high-speed printer was spitting out documents while Clarice talked on the phone’s headset and tapped on the keyboard. She’d fashioned her honey blonde hair into a ponytail on the crown of her head. At close to fifty, she seemed a bit old for ponytails, but she’d once confided to Bree that a tight ponytail was cheaper for stretching out the wrinkles than cosmetic surgery. And it seemed to work for her.

She held up a finger to keep Bree for a moment, her polish the most amazing neon orange that actually seemed to glow. Marbury was closeted in his office. Whenever Bree had an appointment with him, he always made her wait, sometimes only a few minutes, but always long enough to show his superiority.

But with his office door closed, escape might very well be hers. Bree merely waggled the manila envelope of documents, mouthed “I’ll leave them,” then slid the package onto the edge of Clarice’s desk.

She almost made it out the door.

“Bree.” The deafening voice raised her hackles. Even when Denton Marbury was trying to whisper, he boomed. The sound matched his body. He was six-foot-three and wide like an ex–football player who’d stopped pumping iron long ago. Because he was tall, she didn’t think of him as fat; she wasn’t even sure he was, there was just so much meat to him. He wore a light brown shirt, brown tie, and brown pants, and all the unrelenting brown seemed to amplify the bulge of his belly.

Okay, if she had an appointment, he kept her waiting. But if she was trying to sneak in, he had some unnatural radar to catch her. He always had to get his pound of flesh, so to speak. “Mr. Marbury, I have to run. Erin needs me right back.”

“Why, I just talked to Erin and she said your father’s ill and you’re working half days.” He smiled. He had the square jaw, fleshy lips, and perpetual five o’clock shadow of the Fred Flintstone cartoon character. He held up his watch. “My understanding was you were on your way home.” He didn’t offer sympathy or condolences. Not that she’d have known what to say if he had.

She certainly shouldn’t have lied, though. She shouldn’t have offered an excuse at all. But he always made her feel as if she owed him something. “I have to run another errand for Erin, then I’m on my way home.”

“What do you have to do for her?”

Most people would never even ask the question. If you were making an excuse, they’d let you get away with it. Because really, what skin off their nose was it? It wasn’t his business anyway. But Denton Marbury always pushed her. He was a total asshole, and if she wasn’t so pathetic, she’d tell him so.

“Denton, Roger says he needs to talk to you.”

Marbury didn’t bother to glance at Clarice as he snapped out, “Tell him I’m busy.”

Clarice was silent a beat, then clucked her tongue. “He heard that, and he says that if you’re too busy to talk to him, he’s too busy to write you a check.”

Bree wondered why she couldn’t think of something pithy and brilliant like that to tell him when he was bullying her.

Marbury growled. “Fine. I’ll be there in a second.” Then he turned back to Bree. “We need to schedule a time to go over the documents.”

Bree wanted to say that they were self-explanatory. At least for anyone who knew accounting and did DKG’s taxes, but with certain people, it was just better to avoid confrontations. “Fine,” she told him. “I’ll look at my calendar when I get to work tomorrow.”

“Be sure to call me,” he said. Not okay, give me a call when it’s convenient or that’ll be good. No, he had to say it like she was a bimbo who would forget or simply ignore him.

Wouldn’t she just love to ignore him. “I will.” But gosh, with all the stress she was under, she was sure she’d promptly forget.

Behind him, Clarice shooed her away with a get-while-the-getting’s-good hand gesture. Bree was well aware that Clarice had come to the rescue with that phone call.

Leaving, she felt like a frightened mouse scurrying away from the cat with the huge claws. She didn’t know why she let Denton Marbury intimidate her. He wasn’t even that smart or great at tax work. She’d had to call him lots of times about errors she found in the tax forms when she reviewed them. He always managed to make it sound as if her work papers were at fault. Not. But she could never tell Erin. She didn’t want to be caught in the middle. Besides, it was humiliating to have to ask Erin to fight her battles.

As she climbed into her car, Bree realized her heart hadn’t stopped racing. She felt almost dizzy, she was breathing so fast. After even a few minutes around Marbury, the thought of returning to her parents turned her stomach queasy.

She stared at her cell phone on the passenger seat. Almost as if her hand wasn’t part of her, it reached for the phone. She couldn’t see Luke tonight. She couldn’t see him for all the nights it took for this to be over. But God, she needed him.

He answered on the first ring. As if he’d been waiting for her. As if it didn’t matter that he had to interrupt a meeting or get rid of someone in his office or cut off another call; he’d do it for her. He was a busy CEO, but he always answered.

“What’s wrong, baby?” he said after her hello. He could gauge her mood almost from her first word.

“Bad day,” she whispered. Bad day, bad month, bad life. “But I can’t see you tonight.”

“Where are you now?”

“On my way back to my parents.”

“Meet me for coffee.”

“It’s the middle of the day,” she protested. He saw her only at night. As if they could do the things they did only after dark. As if he couldn’t see her in the light.

“Yeah, it’s the middle of the afternoon and time for a coffee break. Where’s the nearest Starbucks?”

“There’s a Peet’s.” It was in a strip mall two blocks from her parents’ house.

“Tell me how to get there.”

“But you can’t just leave work.”

“I’m the boss. I’m taking fifteen minutes to calm you down.”

He always knew when she needed him. He always knew what to say and do. Today she wanted to touch his hand, let his voice wash over her, and bask in the beauty of his male features. Then she’d feel better. Then she could face going home to that death house. What an awful thought, but she couldn’t help it.

In the end, though, she’d always done what she was supposed to.

“It was five minutes.” He touched her chin. “You’re worth five minutes.” And so much more.

Her cheeks brightened with color, though he wasn’t sure whether it was embarrassment or pleasure. Despite the shirt, blazer, and vest, she wasn’t in strictly business attire because of the jeans, and her boot heels put her at perhaps an inch over him. Because he preferred it, around him she wore tight clothing, leggings, short skirts, Spandex tops, and sexy heels. He liked the fact that when he pulled her close, her nipples would touch his through their clothing.

“I can’t be very long,” she said.

“I understand.” She’d called, she’d needed, he’d responded, canceling a meeting to see her. Pussy-whipped? No, more like obsessed. He didn’t care about that either. He wanted her, to be there for her; that was all that mattered.

“White chocolate mocha for Luke,” the barista called. Luke retrieved it, then snagged a small table in a corner just past the pastry case.

The mocha was for her. He had a cup of black coffee.

“Thank you,” she said, scooping the whipped cream off the top with two stir sticks. When she sucked it down, she moaned with pleasure.

Luke relished the sound. For the duration of her father’s illness, it was probably all he was going to get beyond the late night phone calls. That, too, was okay.

“Touch me,” she murmured.

Christ. She blew a few of his brain cells with those two words. His chair was close enough that his knee pressed her leg, but instead of putting his hand on her thigh, he laced his fingers through hers on the tabletop. They would have made an odd picture, a man in his midforties holding hands with a woman ten years younger. Bree, with her delicate features, could pass for even younger, thirty or so.

They had never held hands like this, never gone out for coffee, never even had a date. They were all about sex, hot, kinky, delectable sex, but this held its own unique pleasures. “We’ve done everything backward,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Fancy dinners and candlelight. Then the sex.”

She sipped her mocha, licked whipped cream from her lip. Everything she did had a touch of sensuality to it, though he didn’t think she recognized that. “I’m not a romantic,” she said.

“Why?” She deserved romance in addition to whatever else she craved.

She blinked as if at first she didn’t understand the question, then stared into space a long moment. “I don’t believe in all that lovey-dovey stuff. It isn’t real.”

“I was in love with my wife,” he said, not to hurt or dismiss Bree, but to make a point.

“You’re divorced.”

“True, but that’s—”

She held up a hand in front of her face, blocking him out. “You don’t need to tell me about your divorce.”

Another intimacy she didn’t want from him. He told her anyway. “My wife divorced me, not the other way round.”

She pried her hand out of his. “Are you pining for her?”

“No. That’s done.” He paused a beat. “I pine for you.”

She laughed, bright for a moment, but the look didn’t last. “You’re just teasing me.”

“Not at all. I’ve decided we’ll go on a few dates. There’s a place up along Skyline, the best continental cuisine.” He kissed his fingers.

“I’m uncomfortable letting a man pay for expensive meals like that.”

But she was comfortable sucking his cock or letting him fuck her or spank her. “Do you think it’s some sort of payment for sexual favors?”

“No.”

He raised one eyebrow in question.

She toyed with her stir sticks.

Obviously her perceptions were a little skewed; fancy and romantic wasn’t the way to go with her. But they did need to push the boundaries of their relationship, not just the limits of sexual inhibition. Especially now, when her father was ill. He wanted to give her something without stress. “We’ll watch a video and eat popcorn.” Of course, at his place on a couch they’d end up doing far more. He looked at it as killing two birds with one stone; a little intimacy and some hot kinky sex at the same time.

She bit the inside of her lip. Then let it go. “Why can’t we have what we have? Why do we have to change it?” She’d been gazing steadily at her mocha, but now she raised her eyes to his through the lushness of her dark lashes. “Don’t you like it anymore?”

He wanted sex with her, and he wanted more, to take her to the company barbecue, someday to come home to her. “It’s time for us to change.”

She took a deeper breath than normal, rolled her lips, swallowed. “I have to go,” she said.

He grabbed her hand, made her stay put for another second. “What we do is good, Bree. But you need more. I intend to give it to you.”

“I don’t want more.” She tipped her head and gave him a look. Oh you poor deluded man. “I’ve never had a boyfriend, Luke. I don’t know how to have one. What we do is all I know how to do. I don’t have anything more to give. But thank you for the mocha.”

He wouldn’t let her go with just a thank-you. “There are other pleasures to explore. A date. It isn’t that difficult.”

She didn’t answer. Instead she leaned forward, kissed his cheek. “Thanks for coming over to make me feel better.” She stood, purse in her hand.

The subtext was that he hadn’t made her feel better despite his intention. He’d pushed, that’s what he’d done. While it was necessary, maybe the timing wasn’t perfect, but he’d already started down the path.

He rose before she could get away, commanding her with his closeness, his maleness, and his bigger body. It didn’t matter about her high heels; he was master. “Bree,” he said and didn’t care if he was demanding. “Say yes.”

He could see his distorted reflection in her eyes before she finally answered. “Yes.”

“Yes what?” he murmured.

She moved only her lips. “Yes, Master.” Then she left.

She’d do it because he’d ordered her to, but not of her own free will. With Bree, though, Luke wasn’t sure that mattered. She was comfortable with commands.

He hadn’t specified an evening for their date. He’d do that later. He’d done enough simply putting her on notice that it was coming. Now, however, he didn’t like having her beyond his reach, not when things were falling apart in her life.

As he pushed through the coffee-shop door, he saw her head disappearing inside her car several spaces down. His Lexus was right at the front entrance, but by the time he’d pulled out and headed to the light, there were two cars between them. She turned left. He was supposed to go right.

There was no indecision about it; he followed her without missing a beat.

She accelerated faster than he did, but he could see her merge into the right lane ahead, then turn again. By the time he made the same right, she was two blocks down, turning left.

When he got to the street, he saw it was a cul-de-sac. She’d parked in a driveway and was climbing out of the car.

He didn’t turn down the road, and she didn’t see him.

It had taken her six months to tell him where she lived. He would have preferred that she offer him her parents’ address, but he knew it would take another six months for that. He couldn’t wait that long; he had to know where to come when she needed him.