I should have run from Lila Parker at the first notice of that feeling. I should have let her go, having done my duty to distract her. But instead, I’d heedlessly indulged.

I hoped it wouldn’t be my undoing. And I wished I cared if it was.

Half a step, and her ass was propped on the desk. I broke away to press hurried kisses down her neck, lips closing, tongue sweeping to taste the sweet remnants of cake. The weight of her breast filled my palm as I licked a path to the hem of her bra, to the peak of her nipple, the silk like second skin. Her fingers tightened in my hair, a sigh of pleasure, the link of her thigh around my waist. A thunk as a heel hit the ground.

My fingers trailed all the way down her leg to grasp her heel in my palm. I lifted, spreading her legs wider, fitting myself between them with a promissory grind of my hips. She gasped at the contact, and up I kissed to take those lips again while my hands relieved her of her bra, then, with a shimmy of her hips, her panties.

“Off,” she breathed, tugging at my shirt.

Holding her still with my hips, I leaned back and shucked it, tossing it somewhere behind me.

When I looked down, the moment stretched, the details sharpening, collected in a breath that felt like an eternity. Lila stretched back on the desk, elbows propping her up. Her eyes were hot and hungry, scanning the breadth of my chest to my belt and back up, snagging my eyes and holding them. Her neck, white and long, her messy hair, bright as crimson. Her breasts heaving, the curve of her waist beckoning, the circle of her thighs around my waist, that sweet rippling of flesh that awaited my touch.

She was, undoubtedly and without question, the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on, and not for the many ways I’d just cataloged. She was beautiful for the way she looked at me, with adoration and respect, with deference and worship. She was beautiful for the softness she only gave to me, for the slivered crack in her armor she’d shown me with trust.

She was beautiful because she was mine. In that moment, the woman who gave nothing gave herself to me.

To me.

And that gift would not be squandered.