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“The elevator is stuck,” I say.

“You are certain of that?” she asks.

“It isn’t the kind of thing I misjudge.”

“You didn’t seem to inspect much before you bought the entire building,” she says. “Maybe the wiring is as careless as the man who signed for it.”

“You have a great deal of nerve for a woman locked in a small room with me,” I say.

“You haven’t left me much else to lose today,” she answers, and there is no fear in it at all.

“This is a poor moment to mock the man you work for.” I press the emergency call button and speak into the panel. “The car has stopped between floors. Two people inside.”

A maintenance voice crackles back. “Don’t try to force the doors. The car is holding steady. We will have someone to you inside ten minutes.”

I let go of the button, and the silence settles back over the two of us, heavy and close in the small lit box.

“That poor woman upstairs,” Delaney says, sweet and cold. “All alone in your office, and here you are, stuck in a box where you cannot get to her. What a terrible shame.”

She blinks up at me with damp eyes and a face full of pretend concern, and the whole thorny act makes me want to put my hands on her again. She’s punishing me, and she’s good at it, better than she should be. She found the one wound I have, and she keeps pressing her thumb into it. The maddening thing is that I’d rather have her cruel and looking at me than sweet and looking away.

Her words detonate somewhere in my chest. I strip the loosened tie the rest of the way off and let it drop to the floor between us.

Her eyes follow it down, and I watch the exact moment she understands that I’m closing the distance, and she has nowhere left to go.

I plant a hand on the wall beside her head and snatch the folder out of her arms, and the papers scatter across the floor.

“What are you doing?” she gasps, papers still sliding down her skirt to the floor.

“I’m not going back up there,” I say, and lean down until she has to tip her face up to hold my eyes.

The nearness cracks the fight right off her face. Under the emergency light I can see the shine in her eyes, the thing she keeps trying so hard to hide.

“Your ex is waiting for you upstairs,” she pushes. “The delicate one. The one you dropped everything to run to.”

“Since when does my assistant decide where I’m supposed to be?”

“I’m only reminding you of the important people in your life,” she says. “I would hate for you to lose track of them down here with someone who doesn’t matter.”

“Important people,” I repeat, dragging my thumb across her lower lip. “Is that what she is to you?”

She jerks her face away from my thumb, and that small refusal snaps the last thread of my restraint. I cup the back of her head and take her flushed mouth.

She struggles, both fists hammering at my chest. I give her nowhere to go and push into her mouth anyway. She bites down on my tongue, hard, and the sharp copper taste of blood floods between us.

I don’t pull back. I kiss her more viciously and swallow all of it, the blood, the rage, the resistance, until there’s nothing of the fight left in her to give.

Her struggling slows as the air runs thin, and I get the silence I’ve been starving for, no sarcasm, no cold little title, nothing but her breath and mine.

When I break the kiss, she’s gone soft and pliant against the wall, her chest heaving, her lips red and parted. I wedge my knee up between her thighs and feel her legs give around it. One hand closes over her breast, the other slides up under her skirt, along the warm inside of her thigh, until there’s nowhere left for either of us to hide from what this is.

She’s soaked through, and she shudders the instant I touch her, her whole body giving away everything her mouth spent the day denying.

“Your mouth lies to me all day long,” I murmur against her jaw. “Your body doesn’t. It never has. So tell me why you keep saying no when you drip for me the second I get a hand under your skirt.”

“Because I’m not a fucking toy you get to pick up and throw away,” she breathes. “Go and do this to Yelena. Leave me alone.”

“You are mine,” I say against her mouth. “Not hers to hand back. Now say it to me.”