“You’re not even going to tell me what it is?”

“I don’t have X-ray vision, and you are not going to be here when I open it. Get out.”

With a noise of protest, he kicked his feet off my desk and left, closing my door on his way out.

I stared at the package for several minutes, feeling the rectangular shape of it beneath the padded envelope. A frame? My heart jumped in my chest.

Tucked inside were a wrapped parcel and a note that read,

Petal,

Open this with discretion. It is my favourite.

Your stranger.

I swallowed, feeling a little as if I were on the verge of unleashing something I would no longer be able to contain. Looking up to ensure that my door was firmly shut, I unwrapped it, my hands shaking when I realized that it was indeed a frame. Made of deep, simply cut wood, it held a single photo: a picture of my stomach, and the curve of my waist. The black table beneath me was visible. Max’s fingertips were also visible at the bottom, as if he was pinning me to the surface at my hips. A faint beam of light spread across my skin, a reminder of the door opening nearby, of the person wandering around the room just beyond the screen.

He must have taken that picture just as he’d buried himself in me.

I closed my eyes, remembering how it had felt when I came. I was like a bare wire, plugged into the wall and with the charge that would illuminate that dark ballroom running through me instead. He’d bared my clit with his fingers, stroked me just like that. I’d wanted to close my legs against the intensity of it, but he’d growled, held me open with his pounding hips.

I shoved the frame back in the mailing envelope and hid the entire thing in my purse. Heat spread like a clawing vine across my skin and I couldn’t even turn up the air, couldn’t open a window this high in the building.

How did he know?

I felt the weight of it pressing down on me, how much I’d wanted it to be a photo of us, how much I’d wanted to be seen. He understood, maybe more than I did myself.

Stumbling to my desk, I sat down and tried to take stock of the situation. But directly in front of me was today’s New York Post, open to Page Six.

There, smack in the middle of the page, was a story titled, Sex God Stella Goes Solo.

The playboy millionaire venture capitalist tried something a little new Saturday night at MoMA.

No, it wasn’t looking at art, and it most certainly wasn’t raising money (let’s be honest: the man already raises money better than every slot machine in Vegas). Saturday night at his annual fund-raiser to benefit Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, Max Stella arrived . . . alone.

When asked where his date was, he simply said, “I’m hoping she’s already inside.”