“Tell you what to do? Where to even begin?”

Nora grinned at him still on her hands and knees over him.

“Use your imagination.”

His imagination gave him a very good idea.

“Stay,” he ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

Zach reached for the drawer of his nightstand and pulled out the lubricant that Nora had given him.

“Why, Zachary, you surprise me.”

Zach nearly groaned aloud as he pressed into her. She was so tight around him he could barely breathe.

He pushed hard and Nora flinched.

“Sorry,” he said, smiling at his own eagerness.

“No, you aren’t.” He heard the laughter in Nora’s voice.

“No,” he admitted. “Not this time.”

CHAPTER 32

Shortly before dawn, Nora dragged herself out of Zach’s bed and dressed quietly in the dark. She found her tie that she’d used as a blindfold and hid it away where Zach would find it later. Last night certainly deserved a memento.

Nora gazed down at Zach’s still sleeping form. She could scarcely believe what had passed between them just two hours earlier. Someone, something, the real Zach who had been hiding for the past ten years and six weeks came out the moment she’d ripped off the blindfold. Last night she didn’t spend with Zach, her prim and proper editor. Last night she spent with the Zach who’d been a lady-killer as young as thirteen, had drunken threesomes during his university days and had taken the virginity of his eighteen-year-old student on his Cambridge office desk. Nora’s whole body ached from last night’s brutal sex. Without her toy bag they’d had to make do with just his hands to pin her down, his knees to hold her legs open, his hand over her mouth to gag her cries. It was some of the roughest, dirtiest sex she’d ever had in her life. She couldn’t stop smiling.

On her way out of his apartment she stopped and picked up her contract still lying on the sofa. She glanced through it, making sure all the i’s were dotted, all the t’s were crossed. The advance wasn’t going to make her rich, but it would keep her very comfortable for the next few years while she focused solely on her writing.

Nora drove home and dragged her exhausted body into the house. Although she longed for sleep, something nagged at her, something that told her that in her excitement over finishing her book with Zach, she’d forgotten something very important.

Nora entered the hallway that led to her room but stopped in midstep. Wesley stood outside her bedroom leaning back against the door. In his hands was a small box of Tiffany blue. From his stance it appeared he’d been waiting for hours, maybe all night. At first his eyes shone with relief; but then as he took in her tousled hair, her disheveled clothes, a terrible realization dawned on his face. His arm fell to his side, the box dangling by its ribbon from his slack fingers.

“Zach?” Wesley asked.