depth.
“I’ll wait for you to get ready,” I said, stepping back. Every step I put between us felt like a chasm.
“For what? Oh, yes, back on that again.” She shook her head and hopped off the sink. She’d lost one of her heels and she slipped it back on while straightening her clothes.
Somehow what we’d done had barely caused a wrinkle in her skirt or a hair out of place.
It was like that tornado in a bottle I’d made for a school science fair as a kid. In that small space, chaos reigned. Outside it, the air was still, the landscape undisturbed.
I might still be trying to regain my breath, and my tie might be tight enough to choke me, but Grace was already on her way back to normal. And I’d better catch up quick unless I wanted her to know the effect she had on me.
She was my tornado, and the glass walls were so fucking close to shattering.
“Ten minutes, Ms. Copeland.” The words tangled together until I had to practically spit them out. It seemed wrong to call her anything but Grace when her skin was still flushed from what we’d done. “Don’t keep me waiting.”
I turned away, but not before I glimpsed the pure malice that crossed her face. I opened the door and closed it behind me just as something heavy thunked against the door.
Her shoe, maybe. Had to be her shoe.
Oddly, her impulsive action made me smile. She wasn’t quite so unaffected after all.
I scraped a hand down the back of my neck, collecting the perspiration drying there. My clothes were sticking to me after our exertions. I needed a shower, long and cold.
And I needed to jerk off under the spray to the memory of her fisting my dick, her soft golden hair clinging to my lips as we ground ourselves into each other.
I started down the hall to my office and glanced at my arm. The cuff was still dangling open, revealing part of my tattoo. Woven through the pattern of thick black ink were about a half dozen angry red crescent moons from her nails.
She’d marked me in her more ways than one.
Chapter Five
S he kept me waiting .
It didn’t surprise me. What did, however, was her response when I finally left my office and stopped by her desk, my umbrella tucked under my arm.
“Dammit, I’m not going home with you.”
My eyebrow raised. I wasn’t offended, merely curious. “That might wound me, had I any intention of inviting you to my house.” It wasn’t technically a home. I slept there sometimes, and the closet held my clothes, but it wasn’t a home in the truest sense of the word.
Despite being an architect, I had no idea what that word actually meant.
“Oh, of course not. You can fuck me here, but you wouldn’t actually deign to allow me into your rarefied air.” She jerked to her feet, her boat-sized purse in one hand and her keys in the other. No umbrella, I noticed. No rain slicker. Nothing to shield all that leather and all that…hose from the elements.
I wasn’t thinking about her garters or her purple lace panties. I definitely wasn’t thinking about the nail-me-heels that had left an impression in my ass.
“Where’s your vehicle? You had one the night we—” I cleared my throat. “Where’s your vehicle?” I repeated.
“In the shop.”
Maybe that was why she hadn’t wanted to buy lunch. If she was more strapped than usual, she’d probably need to cut back. Hopefully the stipend would help.
I remembered all too well what it was like to not have more than a few pennies to my name. I didn’t want her to experience what I had. She was the granddaughter of a local scion. She shouldn’t have to struggle for even a moment.
“Is the problem serious?”
Ignoring me, she tugged out her phone, glanced at it, then shoved it back in her bag. “Look, really, this isn’t necessary. It’s a quick walk to the train and—”
“It’s pouring out.” I inclined my chin toward the wall of windows and the rain slicking down them. “You’ll be drenched in an instant.”
“Not the first time in my