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I turned my chair slowly to face him as he came to stand in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. He looked down at me with that dark, amber-edged assessment. My pulse made a decision that my brain hadn't signed off on yet.

Magnus reached out and tucked a loose loc behind my ear. His fingers grazed the shell of my ear. I felt heat in places that had nothing to do with my ear. His hand moved from my ear to my jaw. His thumb traced the line of it with the focused attention of a man memorizing something he had decided he wasn't going to keep. That was fine. I had no intention of being a kept woman.

He tilted my face up and looked at me for a long moment. Then he kissed me.

It was not the garden kiss, which had been urgent and half-desperate and tasted like a decision being made in real time. This was slower. More deliberate. The kiss of a man who had thought about this on the drive over and was doing it, anyway.

I reached up and gripped the lapel of his jacket. My body had decided we were doing this, and my body generally had better instincts than my brain in situations like these. Magnus made a low sound against my mouth. His hands moved; one sliding into my hair, the other finding the arm of my chair, bracketing me in.

He pulled back an inch. His breathing was not entirely steady, which I found to be a small, satisfying victory.

He reached past me and moved everything to the side. Not swept — moved. The legal pad squared neatly against the monitor. The coffee cup relocated two inches to the left. The pen was capped and placed parallel to the pad's edge. Then his hands were on my waist. He lifted me onto the desk surface with an ease that reminded me that he was not entirely human.

My mind was still on the consideration he gave to my things. There was something about a man who wanted you badly enough to clear a desk and still took the time to make sure your work was undisturbed. Like the passion was urgent, but your legal pad was also important. Like both things could be true simultaneously. That hit differently than a dramatic sweep would have.

Magnus Blackwood wanted me, and he respected my workflow. I was done for.

He stood between my knees, his hands framing my hips. I think his gaze was asking for permission. But the set of his jaw suggested that he was not taking no for an answer.

I spread my thighs.

His hands moved to the hem of my skirt.

He worked slowly. That was the thing nobody told you about a man with complete control; he would use it against you. Magnus used it to take his time, to find every place that made my breath catch. His hands were warm and certain, moving with a focus that told me he had been thinking about this. He had been thinking about me.

It was that thought — him taking me into consideration — more than him taking my clit between his thumb and forefinger and gently squeezing that had me coming embarrassingly fast. My hips jerked. My heels dug into the backs of his thighs, trying to pull him closer. My channel was gasping like it was parched. It was grasping around emptiness. He was still rubbing me as I convulsed, I needed him to fill me.

"Magnus—"

"Again," he growled against my jaw.

The fuck? I was still basking in the glow of aftershocks. What did he mean again? Apparently, he meant he wanted me to come again because he did not stop toying with my clit.

The left side of my brain said it wasn't possible. That I was too sensitive to achieve another climax so quickly. That I should be closing my legs to him. Even being polite and offering to suck him off as a thank you.

The right side of my brain said, shut the fuck up and let's get back in line for another ride!

The first time I'd came I hadn't made much of a sound. I'd been too busy gasping for breath. The second time was different. The second orgasm was slower and more deliberate and significantly more devastating than the first. When it broke over me I made a sound that would have embarrassed me if I'd had the cognitive capacity for embarrassment. Which I did not. I pressed my forehead against Magnus’s shoulder and let out a keening cry, sounding almost like a cat.

I pawed and clawed at him. Rubbing myself against him like I was in heat. All while mewling my pleasure. I definitely was going to suck him off now. I was going to lick at that thick straining cock like it was catnip. I was going to swallow his climax down like it was cream.

His hand was still moving. In slow, diminishing strokes until the last tremor worked its way out of me. He pressed his lips to my temple once — brief, almost careful — and then he straightened.

I heard the small, precise sounds of him putting himself back together. The jacket adjusted. The cuffs smoothed. I kept my forehead down for another moment, looking at the surface of my desk, getting my breathing under control; a woman reassembling herself from the inside out.

When I looked up, Magnus was standing at a distance, composed, aloof even. The only evidence that anything had happened was the slight unevenness of his breathing.

He put his fingers in his mouth and sucked.

I slid off the desk and smoothed my skirt, searching for the button to release me from the garment.

"I'm not going to fuck you." He said this as he licked under his fingernail, all while looking at my crotch and not in the eyes.

"Do you want me to suck you off?"

"No, I want you to go home."

I blinked. My right brain and left brain were still arguing with one another about how soon my clit could take another pounding, be it manual, oral, or with that thick length pressing against Magnus' fly.