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"We both know that's a lie."

"It's just the usual stuff." She absently played with the button on his breast pocket, unable to control her sudden insatiable need to touch him. And that wasn't right. Was it?

"Pippi?"

She was about to make up some excuse when her gaze unintentionally drifted to the embroidered name on his uniform, and it hit her then.

A giggle escaped Pippi as she looked up at him. "I just realized..." She tapped the embroidered letters with a sheepish smile. "This meansCostume,doesn't it?"

His gaze was quizzical. "You thought differently?"

She remembered how silly she had been, fretting over what excuse to give to "Officer C. Ostume", and Pippi thought to herself,I'll take this secret to my grave.Out loud, she asked instead, "Did you buy this? Or is it a rental?"

"Neither. I borrowed it from a friend of mine."

"Oh." What kind of man would have a police uniform in his everyday closet? "You have an interesting friend."

The way she made 'interesting' sound 'weird as fuck' had him coughing. "You'll meet him one day." But only after he made sure Damen Leventis was aware of Pippi's first impressions of him.

"It suits you," she said shyly.

Acheron's lips twitched. "I thought you'd say that, considering your unexpected little fetish—-"

This time, it was impossible for Pippi not to succumb to a blush. "I d-don't h-have—-" A quick hard kiss cut her words short, and then a softly whisperedgood nightleft Pippi touching her lips as she watched Acheron Simonides ride into the night.

Acheron's regular routine took over the remainder of his evening. Half an hour spent addressing the pile of urgent paperwork waiting in his study, another half hour doing business calls with managers who lived in different time zones, and a fifteen-minute workout at his personal gym to cap off the night.

But throughout it, memories of Pippi climaxing on his mouth had shadowed his every thought, and they only became more vivid the moment he stepped under the shower. He had never been this enamored with a woman before, and he couldn't help feeling a little unnerved by the intensity of his obsession with Pippi.

You've put a spell on me, Pippilotta Jones.

A humorless smile twisted his lips at the thought, but even so he sought to purge all memories of her as soon as he hit the bed. Part of his strictly enforced discipline was being able to sleep at will rather than wasting any precious seconds on pointless bedtime ruminations.

Tonight, however, was different, his mind replaying over and over the minutes Pippi had belonged to him, and before Acheron realized what was happening, he was already reaching for his cock and doing something he hadn't done since he was a boy.

He imagined it were Pippi's fingers wrapping around his manhood, and the movements of his hand jerked faster. He thought of Pippi's lovely lips parting wide open to take him all the way down her throat, and he came with a guttural growl.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Logic told him that time would make him eventually lose interest in her, but the thought didn't please him at all. If anything, it made Acheron feel inexplicably restless and dangerously unstable - two things that he had never been, even when all the fucking odds had been stacked against him.

Control was the only thing that had kept him alive in all those years. Control meant not letting emotions get to him. Control meant playing by the rules. Control meant never showing any sign of weakness.

Heneededto be in control where Pippilotta Jones was concerned. That was a fact. But what was frustratingly becoming less clear to him was whether hewantedit as well, and Acheron found himself brooding over this even more when, upon reaching for his phone, he saw that he had missed a call from the only person in his past that had threatened his control.

Amelia.