Page 33 of Dial F for Finance

Silence.

Dominic stops in front of my desk.

His eyes move over my face. Slowly. Deliberately.

“Nice to see you made it back to Chicago safely.”

I give him a tight smile. “Is there something you need?”

He smirks. “I simply wanted a moment with my⁠—”

“Don’t you dare say it,” I interrupt. “We’re at work.”

He grins, undeterred. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.” The voice is low, just north of unprofessional.

“I haven’t.”

“And yet, still radiant.” He tucks his hands in his pockets, leans a hip against the metal trim of my desk like he owns it. Which he sort of does, in the sense that he owns half the building. “Kind of miss the Tokyo version of you.”

“She’s dead,” I say. “Buried in the unspeakable expenses section of the code of conduct.”

He laughs. “You say that like there’s not an entire graveyard of behaviors you’d resurrect if it came with plausible deniability.”

“You must be dying to tell Bennett about your heroic contract-wrangling.” I close my laptop with the kind of carefulness I reserve for people trying to read over my shoulder. “If you sprint, you can probably catch him mid-scone.”

Dominic’s eyes flicker. He’s trying not to let the smile fully break. For all his billion-dollar confidence, his ego can smell competition at a hundred meters.

“I don’t take credit for other people’s work,” he says. “I’m here to see you.” He lowers his voice to a register that could make an HR manager materialize from thin air. “You’ve been ignoring my texts.”

I look at him for exactly long enough for it to be interpreted as a threat. “I was busy forgetting you exist.”

He leans in. Close enough that the intoxicating scent that only exists on his skin invades my personal space. “Any luck with that?”

“None,” I say, my voice steady but my pulse ticking faster. “Your afterimage lingers. Like carbon monoxide or a design flaw.”

That earns me a flash of teeth. “Pretty sure I’m still in warranty. Want to file a claim?”

I arch an eyebrow. “At this point, it’s more efficient to cut my losses.”

“Ten days together and somehow you’ve gotten funnier,” he says, but there’s an edge under the words. “Did I rub off on you? Or is it the jet lag?”

“It’s the jet lag. And the jet, come to think of it. The environmental damage from your existence is nontrivial.”

His smile doesn’t flag, but his attention shifts to the aggressive buzzing of his phone. “Please forgive the intrusion, sweetheart. We can get right back to your evisceration of my personality once I see who this is.” Pulling it from his pocket, he glances at the screen, the lines of his mouth sharpening.

“Damn. I have to speak to Bennett. Unfortunately, I’ll have to suspend our courtship until after my nine-thirty.”

“Don’t strain yourself,” I say.

“Pemberton.” He tuts at me as his thumb flies over a reply. “You of all people should know how much I enjoy breaking a sweat where you’re concerned.”

My ability to respond stalls when my mind unhelpfully supplies the image of our sweaty bodies in tangled sheets. All I can do is press my knees together and breathe.

“Think about my mouth while I’m gone,” he says, his voice laced with amusement and overconfidence, as he pockets the phone.

I open my mouth to toss some sort of cutting remark back but nothing comes out.

The bastard smirks, straightens his lapel, and throws me one last look before setting off toward Bennett’s office like he’s been summoned by God Himself. I watch the back of his suit and imagine all the surfaces in this building we could fuck on.