Page 28 of Sexting His Assistant

“You apologized for sending it to me,” I say. “Not for writing it.”

She goes very still. “That’s because I’m not sorry for writing it,” she says.

The answer hits low and hard.

I believe her. God help me, I believe every word.

My voice comes out quieter than before. “No. I don’t imagine you are.”

We stand there in the middle of the boardroom with polished wood, floor-to-ceiling glass, and my reputation hanging above us like a blade.

I’ve broken men in rooms like this.

I’ve negotiated deals, ended partnerships, ruined families, and never once lost command of myself.

Then Nina Hale blushes in front of me and says she’s not sorry for wanting what she wrote, and suddenly self-command feels less like virtue and more like a handicap.

Her eyes flick to the door. “Someone will come back.”

“Yes.”

“We shouldn’t⁠—”

“No,” I say. “We shouldn’t.”

But neither of us moves.

I look at the phone still clutched in her hand. “Does he make you blush like this?”

Her laugh is brittle. “That’s none of your business.”

“Another honest answer disguised as defiance.”

“You’re enjoying this far too much.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

“Then what is this?” she asks.

I meet her gaze and decide, for once, not to lie. “A problem.”

The room breathes with us.

Her voice is barely above a whisper now. “For you?”

“For both of us.”

She looks down for one second, then back up, stubborn even now. “You keep saying that like I did something to you.”

“You did.”

The room is so quiet I can hear the soft hum of the lights overhead, the distant movement beyond the glass walls, the slow rhythm of her breathing.

I walk right up to her, so close I can smell her scent, sweet and intoxicating.

I lift my hand and touch her jaw with two fingers, not gently enough to be kind, not hard enough to be cruel. Her breath catches. She doesn’t pull away. She leans into it by the smallest degree, and that small surrender does more damage to me than any explicit message could.