He fucked me for three hours?

“Are you okay?”

I blinked, unsure of what to say. I was still recovering from bliss. By the time I finally came to, I looked up and found him staring at me.

“Thank you,” he said, a smile in his eyes.

“For fucking you?”

“No.” He slipped his arm behind my back and helped me to my feet. “For the windows and the mail. The latter was actually quite convenient.”

“You’re welcome.”

He led me back into the living room where he’d placed my blue overnight bag and strawberry shampoo onto the coffee table.

“Is there anything else you have hidden here?”

I shook my head.

“Are you sure?” He tilted my chin up with his fingertips. “Because I’ll be making sure you’re never able to get inside of here again.”

“I’m sure.”

His fingers left my skin and I felt disconnected.

“Where do you actually live?” he asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, grabbing my things. “I’ll have my roommate pick me up.”

“That’s not why I was asking.” He prevented me from walking to the front door and led me down a hall and to what appeared to be a closet.

Taking a key out of his pocket, he unlocked the door and I realized it was a small elevator.

“I had this installed years before your housekeeping company was contracted to work here,” he said, pulling me inside.

“So, why don’t you ever leave this open so you won’t have to use the public elevator?”

“It’s only operable from the inside.” He hit the only button on the pad. “And since my unit isn’t rented like the others, I didn’t want strangers being able to access my apartment from below. Although, it seems like I encountered that problem anyway.”

I blushed and the doors glided shut. He stared at me as the car descended down, making me yearn for his touch all over again.

“I have a question,” I said. “How did you know I wasn’t really a pilot?”

“Simple.” He smiled. “Any real pilot would’ve jumped at the chance to talk about flying. I wouldn’t have had to ask you anything beyond commercial or private. You would’ve waxed poetic for at least five minutes.”

Very true... “I take it you’ve met a few pilots in your life?”

“You could say that.”

The elevator stopped at the ground level and he walked me to the curb where a driver and a black SUV were waiting. The lettering underneath the door handle read, New York’s #1 Private Driver Service.

“They’ll take you home and charge the fee to me,” he said.

“Thank you.” I climbed inside and set my things on the seat.

He looked at me as if he wanted to say something more, as if he wanted to taste me one last time. Instead, he pushed the strap of my dress back onto my shoulder and let his fingers linger against my skin for a few seconds before shutting the door.

“Where to, Miss?” The driver looked at me through the rearview mirror.

“Brooklyn,” I said. “16 Hampton Street.”

He gave me a slightly confused look, but he sped off toward the borough.

I turned my head toward the window, noticing Jake was no longer there.

As the car rolled over the city’s potholes, my bare ass slid across the seat—reminding me that he’d never returned my panties. Leaning back against the headrest, I shut my eyes as my nipples hardened, as I thought about the way he’d both harshly and gently bit them in turn. I knew it’d be a very long time before I met another man who could ever have such an effect on me, a long time before someone else could ever live up to that level of sex.

I caught the time on the car’s dashboard and realized I never told Meredith that I was leaving the party. I pulled out my phone and saw she’d called me four times, sent two “Where the hell are you?” texts, and left a voicemail, so I sent her a response.

Gillian: You owe me a hundred dollars.

Gillian: 7 stars.

GATE A5

JAKE

New York (JFK)—> Dubai (DXB)

“You sure you want to completely cancel your housekeeping services, Mr. Weston?” The manager sounded confused. “Even after we’ve both concluded that nothing strange has been happening?”

“Absolutely.” I hung up and poured myself a shot of bourbon, the fourth one I’d had since escorting Gillian out of the building. Tossing it back, I gritted my teeth as the liquor burned its way down my throat.

I was still trying to figure out what the hell had happened tonight—how the hell a simple one-night stand had turned into an encounter with a modern day Goldilocks. The second she left, I’d walked through every room of my apartment again, trying to see how the hell I’d missed all the signs. How the hell I’d blamed everything on a team of people instead of one.

The first time I saw my Coke tins overturned months ago, I assumed it was me who’d done it in a rare bout of fidgeting. But when I returned from an international flight a week later, I noticed that the tins had been arranged into the shapes of small pyramids, something I would never have the patience to do.

I even installed a small-interior system right after that—a series of motion sensors that were supposed to send notices to my phone if someone ever entered when I was away, but all I ever saw was a quiet, still apartment. It wasn’t until hours ago that I realized that the “intruder” had managed to rig my system to run on a loop.

Just this morning, I’d found white cotton slippers tucked under my sink, a black and lace thong entangled on the rung of my dryer, and a pink coffee mug hidden at the rear of my cabinet. The second I’d spotted that terribly hidden bottle of shampoo in my bathroom, I vowed to bring the manager up next week to see this shit for himself.

Until tonight, that is.

After seeing Gillian, fucking her and grabbing fistfuls of her hair while I held her against my bookcase, that strawberry scent that often pervaded my space made perfect sense.

It was the one and only thing that lingered, no matter how well the staff attempted to clean. Airy and intoxicating, it clung to all of my pillows and sheets, so deeply ingrained in the fabric that I smelled hints of it for weeks.

I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that the intruder wasn’t an annoying neighbor who preferred my views of the city over her own, or pissed that it was a sexy-ass employee who thought she was doing something worthy of my gratitude.

I couldn’t help but picture her perfect, pink lips pressed into an angry line for a “Thank you,” couldn’t help but see the way her deep, green eyes gazed into mine when we damn near fucked inside the rooftop party’s elevator.

The way she screamed when I had her pinned against the floor...

Before I could call the housekeeping manager and tell him that I wanted to change my mind about canceling, my automated voicemail system made a loud beeping sound.

“Welcome home,” it said. “You have three new messages. Please say the password.”

“No.”

“Please repeat the password.”

“I said no.”

“I’m sorry. That’s not the password. Please repeat the password.”