She didn’t drink much, having a low tolerance for alcohol, and just this swallow was made more potent by the method of delivery, by his care for her, by the stroke of that tongue on hers. He pulled away reluctantly, and then she smelled one of the snacks they often brought in for meetings from the gourmet deli down the street. Goat cheese flavored with thyme, wrapped in a finger-sized, seasoned flatbread.

“Your favorite, I believe,” he said, those eyes watching every inflection on her face, his own expression still a little intimidating, reminding her that he was not going to brook resistance. Savannah decided she was going to let him win this minor point to fortify herself and regroup.

She wanted to try a different strategy.

An experiment, really.

She ate the entirety of it from his hand, even obeying the sensual urge to clean the soft cheese off his fingertips, taking the taste of his skin with it, those strong fingers resting in her mouth.

The tension and lust poured off him as she did it, and she knew her experiment was successful. It wouldn’t be easy, but with the power of that knowledge, she knew she could turn this to her advantage, make him her slave if she wanted to.

But something else came with the thought. Anguish. She didn’t want to make Matt a slave. She wanted his harshness, his power, his command.

She wanted the tender protectiveness and chivalry as well, and wondered if there were even more gentle sides to him than he’d yet revealed to her, aspects of his personality that might exist in a softer world, one outside these corporate walls.

“God, you make me insane, Savannah,” he muttered.

Join the club, she thought. “How did you know these were my favorites?”

It was Lucas who spoke. “You don’t eat much that we have brought in. Or at least you didn’t at first.

But then we started noticing the things you would eat, more than once.”

“We wouldn’t touch any of those,”

Peter put in. “And made sure that portion of the tray was closest to you.

Then we figured out if we ordered more of that type of snack, you’d eat more.”

Southern etiquette. Never eat the last one.She remembered a gradual increase in the food she’d eaten at their sessions, an ample variety of her preferences present.

“We made it a competition, coming up with foods we thought would become your new favorite.” Peter laughed, caressed her bare calf from somewhere out of the range of her vision, reminding her forcibly of the view he had of her spread legs. “I knew you’d love those chocolate cream finger cakes.”

“I lost a five hundred dollar bet on it,” Lucas grumbled good-naturedly.

“I was sure you’d pick the caramel creams.”

“When Ben baked the cakes himself and slid them on the tray like they came from Dean and Deluca’s ? Not a chance.”

Savannah choked. “Ben baked…”

“It isn’t the sleazy lawyer routine that gets him women. It’s his culinary skills,” Jon added.

“Yeah, like you don’t use the lost angel thing to seduce women.” Ben snorted outside of her vision.

“Five hundred dollars on whether or not I’d eat a sweet?”

Matt dabbed at the corner of her mouth with one finger, put a missed bit of goat cheese on her tongue.

“We always have a betting pool running on something. At the end of the month, the winnings go to the preferred charity of the final winner.”

“What’s your chosen charity?” she asked.

“A man’s charities are a private thing. Not manly to discuss,” Lucas interjected.

“And I think our guest has recovered enough,” Matt said, his eyes studying her face.

Anticipation sprang up in her, thick as heated blood.

She wasn’t sure she could take anything else. Emotionally, she felt as delicate as an eggshell, just Matt’s words creating a shiver through her body. But wetness touched her thighs, her pussy leaking a tiny drop, her body’s betrayal of her interest. It was as if Matt’s multiple-layered strategy had already trained her body to such a level of sensual awareness that the mere suggestion of sexual activity could get her revved up again.

He rose, his fingers whispering across her cheekbone, and leaned over where she could see him touch the table controls. The motor engaged and she was moving along the track, down the table, and as she turned in that direction she saw she was going to the very end, where Peter had moved and now waited, just to the right of the rounded table end.

Peter would have looked more at home at a monster truck rally. With a corner lift to his mouth at almost all times, as if he were sharing a private joke, he had a soft Southern drawl and a way of wearing his clothes that suggested he’d be most at home in jeans and a T-shirt from a seventies’ rock band. His fingers would tap restlessly as they conducted their meetings and at times she’d hear him humming a heavy metal tune under his breath. He wore his hair cropped in a short military cut that emphasized the strong lines and corded neck of a bodybuilder. He wasn’t a bodybuilder, but an Army reservist.

He spent a great deal of time staying in shape to serve his country if called. He’d taken a leave from Kensington to volunteer for a year tour in Afghanistan. During that time Matt had casually mentioned many were sending shoebox care packages to the soldiers. He’d left her a copy of the instructions that were circling the corporate offices, encouraging participation. In the margin, he’d noted how to get one specifically to Peter, if she wanted to have her staff make up one for him.

Before she knew it, she was collecting items, especially as she had watched the news reports and thought of Peter’s face, the laughter so often in his gray eyes, the strength in those broad shoulders, a strength that the media footage made clear could be erased in an instant by the fragile reality of mortality.

Moist towelettes, sample-size toiletries, a pack of playing cards she’d found that had images of New Orleans integrated into the depictions of numbers and royal personages.

She remembered he had a weakness for ice cream and put in a bag of hard candy that boasted fifty-one flavors similar to ice cream.

The latest Dean Koontz novel and a Nightcrawler X-Men comic book.

The others called him Nightcrawler, because they claimed he preferred trawling the New Orleans nightlife over sleeping.

And then she put in something she hadn’t expected to buy. On one of her layovers, when she was browsing in an expensive airport jewelry shop, she’d seen a gold St. Christopher medal. She’d purchased it with not a thought for the three-figure price, because it didn’t matter. Getting him back safely did.

She’d never done something so… nurturing before. Filling the list in the privacy of her home, she didn’t involve her staff. She even mailed it herself.

She’d never prayed. She suspected there was a God out there, but had always imagined Him like her father.

Not Someone from whom she could seek support or comfort, just Someone who expected the best, or dire consequences would result. But in that moment, when she took the medal home and tucked it in the box, finishing the care package, she offered something that she supposed was like a prayer to that saintly figure. Please keep him safe. Bring him home.

When Peter did get home, at the first meeting where she’d seen him again, he’d been wearing it. He’d ruffled her by putting his arms around her and hugging her, a close hold that he prolonged five still seconds before he let her go, looked in her eyes and nodded. Then he asked her one question.

“Have you tried the God-awful chai tea Jon’s trying to make us drink today?”

He always wore the necklace.

“I love your breasts,” Peter said simply, bringing her back to the present. He had sat down, and had his elbows on the table, his chin resting on his fists, as if they were two children, facing each other on their stomachs on the limb of a tree.

The whole world fallen away below, so that the only things around them were things that could fly or flutter, crawl to great heights to see the world from a higher perspective. “I try not to stare, because I know women think men are creeps when they stare at their breasts during conversation, but since you and I don’t have to talk directly that often in meetings, it’s seemed okay to stare at them.”

It startled a smile out of her, and he returned the favor, showing her white teeth so symmetrical she knew an orthodontist had been part of his youth.

“Of course, sometimes it ticked Matt off.” He grinned more broadly. “You like lace, just a bit on the edges.

You’ve never worn a bra for us that didn’t have it.” His finger reached out, traced one bare curve, the line such lace would follow if it had been there. In her raised position, her breasts were right before his face, at the level of his mouth, and she could not block the images that thought evoked. This position also put her where she could still see the wall screen. New images had been picked up. Her writhing, screaming response to Jon’s stimulus, all muted, but no less potent, particularly when Peter’s large callused hands reached forward now and began to fondle her. She was getting very, very attached to the magic of men’s hands. At least the different textures and types of touch these men had.

He traced the crease under the left breast, started up the opposite curve, making her feel his appreciation of her shape, her fullness. Her nipples ached, but he did not touch them, just the soft flesh around them.

“You’re too thin,” he observed in a warm voice that implied no judgment, no criticism. “You don’t eat enough, though you’re in good shape. You use your corporate gym daily, I know. When I’ve crossed the city overwalk between our two buildings, I’ve seen you running the track on the tenth floor. Covered in a light sheen of sweat, wearing a black sports bra that holds you so tight and immobile, no give. Much like your life, don’t you think?”

“And all of your lives are so perfect,” she said, but with much less acidity than she would have had a few hours ago.

“Well, I can’t think of a moment much better than this one.” He gave her a charming look and then continued on, unperturbed.