“What happens to Wade is immaterial to me. The only thing I give a shit about regarding Wade Pharmaceutical is you. Do you want Wade to fail?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t think I cared, that all I wanted was to write and explore the world...but now, hearing Dad’s voice...I do care. I don’t want Wade to fail. I don’t want to see what my family for generations has worked to achieve be devalued and sold for nothing.”

“Then...?”

I blinked as I contemplated my next sentence. There were so many unknowns about Donovan Sherman. However, I reasoned that this was only an engagement. I’d broken one of those off before. “I will agree to an engagement.”

Van’s lips captured mine.

When he pulled back, he grinned. “Fucking, dinner, more fucking, and then I’ll call my press secretary. A statement will go out first thing in the morning before the markets open.”

I smiled at Van’s timeline. “I should call my parents.”

He looked at the clock. “Do your parents stay up until after ten?”

“Yes.”

“You can call your parents when I call my press secretary.” Taking a deep breath, I nodded. “Turn around, beautiful. I’m removing those soft black pants.”

My pulse quickened. “Van.”

“Don’t make me repeat myself.”

Turning toward the cabinet, I splayed my fingers over the ivory surface as Van reached for each soft sock, removing them one by one, and then he reached for the waistband of my black pants. Soon the pants and my panties were lost to the kitchen floor. My insides twisted with anticipation as I heard the click of his belt buckle and sound of his zipper only moments before his large hands seized my hips and his foot spread my legs.

Looking down, I saw his shiny loafer and the hem of his suit pants.

I came to my toes as my back arched and my lips opened, and I let out a moan. Without foreplay or so much as a check to see if I was wet—I was—Van drove deep inside me. My body clamped down around him as my forehead fell to the cabinet.

His shoes were again in my line of vision—his shoes and my bare feet. Van was fucking me while still mostly dressed.

In the kitchen.

The ferociousness of his initial invasion now satisfied, Van’s thrusts took on a rhythm that I could anticipate. In and out. Closing my eyes, I saw us last night on the dining room table. I recalled the beauty of his cock moving in and out of me. With my hands on the cabinet, I pushed back against his thrusts, bending further at the waist, taking every inch of what he was giving me.

Despite his rule of controlling what happened during sex, I was hardly helpless in this encounter.