He thought I was good, and that was all that mattered. I held onto the headboard so hard that my fingertips tingled from the lack of blood, and felt my body respond to Carter Sutton like it had been created for that exact purpose.

My orgasm ended at last, and I sagged to the mattress, hands still curled around the headboard. I couldn’t stay upright anymore. My limbs wouldn’t cooperate.

I felt his hands at the back of my head, untying the blindfold. He drew it away from my face and tossed it onto the floor. Then he drew out of me, and I cried out in wordless protest, already missing the feeling of his cock pressing me open.

“Hush now,” he said. He turned me over, gently, and eased me down onto my back. I squinted in the too-bright light of the bedroom. He was bent over me, a dark shape, and I felt him smoothing my hair off my forehead. I raised my limp arms and clutched at his shoulders.

“I let go,” I said, the only words I could summon.

He laughed softly and kissed my face. “That’s right. I didn’t tell you that you could, did I? I’ll have to punish you for that tomorrow.” He spread my thighs apart and slid back into me, holding himself above my body and rolling his hips slowly. “I’m going to come in your wet pussy, Regan. Would you like that?”

“Yes, yes,” I said, senseless, hungry, and held onto him as his rhythm fell apart. He slammed into me hard, twice, three times, and shuddered against me, panting raggedly, his cock pulsing inside of me as he came.

I lost track of time after that. I think I dozed off, and when I woke again, briefly, he was cleaning me with a warm cloth; and then he was rolling me onto my side and curling his body around me, turning off the light, and saying, “Sleep now.”

I slept.

Chapter 7

I woke from a comfortable dream about swimming pools and opened my eyes. I was in Carter’s bed, the duvet carefully tucked around my shoulders. I turned over, lazily reaching for him, but he wasn’t there. The bed was empty. I was alone.

I got up and dressed in my clothes from the night before, and then went in the bathroom to make sure I didn’t look too horrifying. My hair was a disaster, but I was able to smooth it down with some water and twist it into a respectable knot. With my coat on, I would look like every professional woman in Manhattan. Nobody would be able to tell that I was doing the walk of shame after the single hottest experience of my life.

God. The way he’d touched me, the way he’d laughed, low and pleased, when I begged him—

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t think about it now. I had to go home, and shower, and get ready for work.

It was hard to believe that in a few hours I’d be back at the club, serving drinks like nothing had happened. My universe had been upended. The world had changed. And there was no evidence of it, aside from the spectacular love-bite blooming in the hollow of my throat.

I adjusted my collar to hide the bruise. Slather on enough concealer and nobody would notice. Maybe I would wear a turtleneck, just to be safe.

I took a deep breath. My reflection looked just the way it always did. Nobody would be able to tell that I had been transformed.

I gathered my coat and purse and left the bedroom. I only vaguely remembered the layout of the apartment from the night before, but the hallway led me directly into the main room of the apartment, a large, open space filled with sunlight.

And Carter was there, sitting at the table, laptop open, a coffee mug at one elbow. He was already dressed, his suit jacket hanging from the back of his chair. My breath caught. I hadn’t thought—well, I hadn’t let myself think. I didn’t expect him to still be there, because it was better not to expect anything, and then always be pleasantly surprised.

He looked up as I came into the room. He didn’t smile; his expression didn’t change at all. “Regan,” he said, face smooth as the surface of a pond. “I didn’t think you would be awake so soon.”

My heart sank. So it was like that. “I should be going,” I said. I wouldn’t linger and embarrass myself.

“Have a cup of coffee, at least, before you leave,” he said, and my heart rose again, to rest somewhere right beneath my ribs. “It’s cold outside.”

I hesitated and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was only 10. I still had time, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to stay and drink coffee with him. It seemed so domestic, and I didn’t want him to get the wrong idea. I didn’t want myself to get the wrong idea. We’d had sex, and it had been fantastic, and now we would both go back to our separate lives.

“Blue Mountain, roasted yesterday and ground half an hour ago,” he said, and I took a step toward him without meaning to. I liked coffee, and I never got to drink the good stuff, just whatever swill was on sale that week at the grocery store. Carter probably had his coffee flown in directly from Jamaica. I would be an idiot if I turned down this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to drink a billionaire’s swanky coffee.

It was kind of terrifying how easy it was to justify my decisions. Or else it was just that Carter kept making it easy: first the money, then the hot sex, now the hot coffee. I hadn’t been able to say no to him yet. I wondered if I would ever be able to.

“A cup of coffee sounds good,” I said, and watched as one corner of his mouth curled into that familiar half-smile.

He disappeared into the kitchen, and I draped my coat over the back of the chair across from his and took a seat. He had a stack of papers resting beside his laptop, and an open file with some sort of official-looking document inside. It surprised me that he was working already, so early; didn’t he have people to take care of paperwork for him? But maybe that was the difference between being a millionaire and being a billionaire. Carter hadn’t gotten where he had by being lazy and outsourcing grunt work.

He returned with a mug and set it down in front of me. “I don’t know how you take your coffee,” he said. “There’s creamer in the fridge, and sugar—”

“Black is fine,” I said, even though I usually drank my coffee with a generous pour of creamer. I didn’t want to cause him any trouble. He was obviously busy, and I was interrupting. I was keeping him from his work. I just wanted to drink my coffee and leave.

He sat down and immediately directed his attention to his laptop. I raised my mug and blew on the steaming coffee. It smelled incredible. I took a hesitant sip. Still too hot to drink, but rich and full-bodied in a way that supermarket coffee never was. It was too bad that I wouldn’t be able to linger and fully enjoy it.