Page 149 of Boardroom Sins

I didn’t even notice we were close. I’m still on my knees on the floor when the partition lowers a quarter-inch.

“We’ve arrived, sir,” the driver says with zero emotion.

I scramble up onto the seat, my legs unsteady and half-asleep from kneeling. Pins and needles shoot through my calves as blood rushes back to places it’s been denied. I pat down my dress with trembling hands, trying to make myself presentable, but I know I must look thoroughly debauched.

Lukas reaches across me and opens my door, letting in the cool night air. I step out onto the pavement. The late-night chill hits my bare skin, raising goosebumps along my arms and reminding me—as if I could forget—that I’m still not wearing anything under this dress.

I turn back to look at him. To my surprise, Lukas is holding something out through the window.

My underwear.

The black lace dangles from his fingers, swaying gently in the night breeze. It’s a taunt, a reminder of everything that happened tonight.

I reach for them automatically, still dazed. My fingers are inches away when, suddenly, he whips his hand back inside the vehicle.

A laugh escapes him. Not the warm, rare sound I heard in France, the one that made him seem almost human. This is something else entirely.

Cold. Cutting.Cruel.

He pockets the underwear without a word. Those dark eyes give me nothing. He raps twice on the partition and the car pulls away from the curb.

I stand there on the sidewalk, bare beneath my dress, my jaw still aching, as he disappears into the night. I’m left staring at the empty street.

What’s crazier: that that just happened…?

Or that I want more?

49

LUKAS

NYU LANGONE DENTAL — EMERGENCY INTAKE

Date: 13 December 2025 | 02:41 AM

Patient: Howell, Preston J.

Chief Complaint: Avulsed molar (#19, lower left first molar)

Mechanism of Injury: “Tripped and fell." When asked to elaborate on mechanism, patient became nonverbal.

The car pulls away and I don’t look back. I can’t.

If I look back, I’ll see Rae standing there on that sidewalk with her ruined makeup and her swollen lips, her eyes full of questions I have no intention of answering. If I look back, I might do something catastrophically stupid.

Like get out of the car and go to her.

I press the heel of my palm against my chest, trying to ease the pressure building there. It doesn’t help.

This is why I had to do it this way. I shoved her to her knees and fucked her throat like she was nothing more than a warm body, Imade it crude and transactional andmean, because if I didn’t, I would have done something far, far worse.

The only alternative wastenderness.

The alternative was brushing the hair from her face and telling her she’s the first thing I’ve felt in eighteen years. Admitting that, when she looks at me with those brown eyes, I thaw in a way I never thought I’d be able to do.

I can’t afford that.

Not now.