Chapter 2 My Evening Has Been Cleared Up

• The screen flooded my darkened bedroom with a harsh, glaring white.
• D. Vance [10:48 PM]: Get me Durex ultra-thin. Three boxes, deliver to the penthouse in Tribeca at once.
• My jaw hit the floor. I could literally hear the air freeze in my throat.
• Condoms. In the middle of the night.
• I read the text repeatedly, letting the letters burn themselves into my retinas. Florence's floral water had barely dried on my coat, and already he already had the next kill.
• To him, I wasn't a person with a life outside our working hours. I was his errand girl, the buffer between himself and the mechanics of his own hedonism. He had never once looked at me as anything more than plain Clara, his secretary.
• I burned with fury, but the stark reality of my student loans and his frightening influence crushed any impulse to launch the phone into the wall. I rushed out of bed, threw on the first pair of dark jeans I could find, and yanked a thin, ribbed grey henley over my head before rushing out the door.
• Forty-five minutes later, I was standing in the private elevator vestibule of his Tribeca duplex, holding the crinkling brown paper bag from the pharmacy so tightly that my knuckles were white.
• I took a deep breath, forcing my face into the blank, expressionless mask I'd worn for him every day since I'd met him.
• The double doors began to pull inward.
• My voice died before it even escaped my teeth.
• Daxton stood in the entrance, and he was totally naked-chest to hip. Low-slung grey sweatpants hung on his slim hips, dangerously low on the waist, showing the hard lines of his V-taper. Dark hair shadowed the center of his broad, muscular chest, tapering down into cut, rippled abdominals.
• I'd known he had the physique under those suits from Italy, but seeing him like this, under the soft lights in the foyer of his house, was another experience entirely. He was stunning. Cruel, unmerciful, and devastatingly gorgeous.
• I tore my gaze from him, refusing to dwell, but even looking into his eyes was torture. His slate gray eyes possessed a predatory calm. Dark stubble covered his jaw.
• "I brought you what you requested, Mr. Vance," I said, my tone clipped as I thrust the paper bag at him. I refused to cross the threshold. There was no way in hell I was stepping into his territory.
• Daxton did not accept the bag.
• Rather, his eyes slowly drifted downward, moving down the neckline of my henley, before locking on my chest.
• An electric wave of heat surged through my body.
• I realized that without a bra, the fabric stretched tight over my chest, pulling the neckline lower than I realized, and because of the chillness of the elevator my nipples had hardened, one of which was pushing out the gap in the neckline of my shirt.
• Terrified, I crossed my arms over my chest, trying to cover myself.
• This was a fatal error. The pressure of my forearms squeezed my breasts upward and spread the cleavage of my soft bosom out over the neckline.
• Today was one of those days I hated that I was a D-cup
• Daxton's pupils dilated, disappearing into the gray of his irises. The corner of his mouth curled in a slow, wicked grin. Then his tongue flicked out to wet his lower lip.
• I willed my eyes to stay off his broad chest, but it wasn’t an easy feat.
• He had never looked at me for more than a second.
• "Come inside, Clara," he said softly, his voice dropping into a velvety, rich baritone.
• I stood rooted to the marble of his foyer. "That is not necessary, sir. You have received your goods, and I will return to Queens in a taxi."
• Right on cue, there was a deafening crack of thunder. Outside the wall of glass in his foyer, the heavens opened and blessed the windows with a violent storm.
• Without a moment's pause, Daxton's phone buzzed loudly on the console table.
• Without breaking eye contact with me, he blindly reached for the phone, tapped the button to receive the call, and he placed it to his ear.
• "Daxton?" a soft, breathy woman's voice said from the line, I could still hear it. "Baby, I am so sorry. The storm just struck midtown out of the blue, and the streets are flooded. We can't get downtown tonight. I have to cancel."
• "I understand," Daxton replied smoothly, and he hung up with a single tap of his thumb.
• Silence enveloped the foyer, heavy and oppressive, interrupted only by the roaring sound of the storm outside.
• He returned his gaze to mine, watching me with a slow, deliberate look.
• He’s wearing sweatpants, the frantic voice in my head screamed. He looks so soft, so warm, so completely lethal. At the office, his power was wrapped in wool and silk, sharp-edged and untouchable. Stripped down like this, with the scent of sandalwood, shower steam, and pure male skin drifting into the doorway, he was an intoxicating trap. I wanted to look away from the broad cut of his shoulders, from the way his muscles flexed every time he breathed, but my eyes were utterly paralyzed.
• Daxton stepped forward, crossing the threshold of his own entrance. Without grabbing the bag, he reached up and grasped me by the side of my neck, with his thumb pressing over my racing pulse.
• "It seems," he purred in my ear as he leaned down to within a breath of my mouth, "that my evening has been cleared up."
• All rational thoughts were burned to ash. All the voice in my head could scream for me to shove him, or smack him, or tell him about Florence and the fifty women before her, but his intoxicating magnetism was absolute.
• When his mouth turned toward mine, I shut my eyes and my brains off, then parted my lips to welcome him.