He turns on his side, brushes my hair out of my face as I study the ceiling.

“What are you thinking, warrior?”

“I’m . . . I’m thinking this is a really nice place.” I can usually deliver my lies with conviction, but not now, not while my body is still trembling, my mind still reliving the way he kissed me, the way he moved inside me.

He smiles, knowing I’m not telling the truth and not caring. His eyes roam the room, as if trying to view his dark wood furniture, the fireplace, the few pieces of designer men’s apparel that have been casually left on the floor for the first time. “It fits my needs,” he says.

I bite back a laugh. If he needs all these things, then he must be the neediest man on earth. “What do you do, Lander?”

I know the answer too well.

“I work for a bank.”

“Ah, so you got all this on a teller’s salary?”

The way he slid his hand up my inner thigh, the way his fingers caressed me, toyed with me until I cried out.

“I’m a VP,” he explains with a smile.

“Wow, you worked your way up in the world at the young age of . . . I’m guessing you’re around thirty?”

When he found that spot on my neck, the way he teased it with his tongue, alerting me to sensitivities I didn’t even know I had.

“Thirty-two, and no,” he says calmly. “My father is the CEO, my brother’s a managing director. I was given what I have. I didn’t earn a thing.”

The admission is unexpected, and it jolts me out of my revelry. I look at his face, searching for either smugness or regret, but neither is there.

“Does it bother you?” I ask. “Having everything come so easily?”

“No,” he says, his hand sliding over my stomach, stroking my skin. “I’ve added my own complications to my life,” he continues. “In the end nothing will be easy at all.”

“In the end,” I repeat, trying to ignore the slow circular movement of his palm. “That sounds so final.”

“Endings usually are.”

“We should drink to that.” I sit up and hold the comforter over my breasts. If there was ever a time for modesty, this is not it. But I’m feeling shy now, unnerved by what he was able to unleash.

“Let’s drink to happy endings,” I say, keeping my voice casual, flirty.

His eyes sparkle in the dark as he examines me. “I don’t believe in happy endings.”

“Then what do you believe in?” I pull back a little more, grab one of the dress shirts I spot crumpled by the bedside, and throw it on. “What should we toast to?”

He sighs, but his smile is bemused as I inch out of the bed. “If we have to toast to something, let’s toast to justice.”