Page 32 of Dial F for Finance

He sets the phone down. “God, you’re hot when you’re about to ruin something amazing.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know. That’s what’s getting me hard.” He props himself up. “Go on. Give me your terms.”

I close the laptop, because this needs my hands free. “Tokyo only,” I say. “Nobody at home finds out. We get it out of our systems, we sign the deal, and the day we land in Chicago, we go back to exactly what we were.”

It sounds clean out loud. Contained. An arrangement with an end date stamped on the front of it, which is the only kind I trust—because a thing that’s already scheduled to finish can’t turn around later and become something I don’t know how to lose.

“Nine days,” I add, in case the math isn’t obvious. “Then it’s done. Those are my terms. Take them or leave them.”

Dominic looks at me for a long moment, steady and assessing.

“OK,” he says.

I blink. “OK?”

“Tokyo only. Nobody knows. Ten days.” He counts them off on his fingers.

“Nine days,” I correct.

“Ten if you count last night.” He smirks.

“Are you seriously being pedantic right now?”

“I just want to make sure we’re both super clear on your terms. If you’re saying nine days in total, then we just used one up, which means we only have eight left including today. But if your terms are the entirety of our trip, then it’s ten. Ten days of fucking.”

I throw my hands up in frustration. “What the actual hell, Dominic? Of course, I meant the entirety of our trip. How else would it end when we land in Chic⁠—”

“Then I accept your terms, Pemberton.”

I let out a huff. “Good.”

“One amendment.”

“It’s not a negotiation⁠—”

“It’s an observation.” He sits up, and his expression sharpens in a way that drops my stomach through the floor. “Tokyo isn’t going to be enough. Not for me. Probably not for you either, but I’ll let you keep pretending, since it seems to be load-bearing.” He gets off the bed, crosses the room, and stops close enough that I have to tip my head back to hold his eyes. “So I’ll sign. I just want it on the record now—when we land in Chicago and you’re still thinking about my mouth and my cock, that isn’t me breaking the rules.”

“That’s arrogance.”

“That’s data.” He leans down and kisses me, slow, devouring, like we have nothing but time. “Ten days, Jenna. I give it three before you’re begging for an extension.”

CHAPTER 7

Jenna

Chicago.

Two Weeks Later . . .

Dominic Cruz walks into Mercer Capital at nine seventeen on Monday morning wearing a charcoal suit, a clean shave, and the expression of a man I would happily shove into traffic if Chicago had fewer witnesses.

I look up from my screen.

“Good morning, Mr. Cruz.”

The venom in my voice seems to drip into the office of our head of operations, Vicky. She stops typing and glances up. Then she looks between Dominic and me, and promptly closes her door.