At ten the next morning she woke up and ate breakfast. Her first appointment was at noon that day, so she dressed in her kinky best. At 10:45 she heard a brisk knock on her door followed by the ringing of her doorbell and another round of knocking.

“Jesus H. Christ, I’m coming,” she said as she headed to her door. She threw it open ready to chew out her new no-neck overpaid bouncer bodyguard for excessive door knocking. “Dude, seriously, holy shit.”

Lance stood outside her door on her front porch wearing an awkward smile on a face made even more handsome by daylight.

“Hello, Mistress. Shall we?”

Nora remembered Kingsley’s words from last night—no sex, no kink.

“God-fucking-dammit.”

Ten minutes later they were in her car heading to the city. She’d insisted on driving.

“Any reason why you lied when I mentioned Kingsley last night?” Lance asked as Nora turned south toward Manhattan.

“I’ve been trained to disavow all knowledge of Kingsley Edge. You get my name, rank and serial number only.”

“If I had known you were Kingsley’s top Dominatrix, I might have checked with the boss first before going to bed with you.” Lance put on a pair of dark sunglasses, which annoyed the hell out of her. First, it made it harder to read his eyes. Second, they looked so damn sexy on him she wanted to pull over and fuck him right on the side of the road.

“Under normal circumstances he doesn’t care who I sleep with.”

“Maybe,” Lance said, “but this hardly constitutes normal circumstances.”

“Did you tell him we fucked last night?”

Lance’s answer to that was to give her a look that suggested she might have just asked him the most insulting question he’d ever been asked in his life.

“So that’s a no,” she said.

“Yes, it’s a no.”

Nora groaned loudly, loud enough Lance pushed his sunglasses down to give her a “What the fuck?” look.

“Sorry,” she said. “I had an amazing time last night.”

“Yeah, well, so did I.”

“And now you’ve gone and fucked it up by getting hired as my bodyguard.”

“This is my fault?”

“Yes. You know King will kill us both if we sleep together while you’re working as my bodyguard.”

“Worse. He told me if I laid a hand on you while I’m supposed to be guarding you, I’d be fired completely—from the bodyguard job and my real job running security. And if you laid a hand on me—”

“What? He’ll fire me? I don’t get fired.”

“No,” Lance said, turning his head to gaze out the window. “He’ll fire me for that, too.”

Nora winced. “That man needs to be flogged. He’s only doing this to piss me off.”

“And maybe so I won’t get distracted while I’m supposed to be protecting you?”

“Don’t give him the benefit of the doubt. He’s a sadist. This is the sort of shit he pulls on me. Probably payback for the time I started a rumor Kingsley wore a toupee. He was really confused by all the women who wanted to suddenly play with his hair.”