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Furthermore, I’m a grown up who knows that sometimes, often, jobs come before lust. And I haven’t forgotten she’s here to do a job. That I was doing my job, earlier, when I shut her down—or when I relented and gave her access again.

She’s working here, in Colorado.

But she’s not working here, in this room. I suddenly know this as an absolute truth. I know this as a man, and I realize…this is one of those rare times when lust comes before the job, when it’s worth risking everything for a taste.

This woman wants to expose me as something I’m not, and in the process might expose things that I am, of which she—and the rest of the world—are currently unaware. I shouldn’t be attracted toher.

And yet Iam.

I should be wary. I should misdirecther.

But if I want a taste…

Fuck. My noble sensibilities will be the death of me. “We probably should talk,” I finally say. That’s the truth.

“Can we do that after dinner?” She gives me an earnest look, and I choose to read it as, don’t do this. Don’t say that we can’t…eat, flirt, look, want, yearn. And since that’s all I’m choosing to read it as—no mention of touching, kissing, tasting, taking—then we’refine.

“Yeah.”

Her earnest expression lights up with another sly smile. Curious, confident, and committed—to both getting her story, and God willing, getting her man. Or at least I can dream. And she stokes that fantasy, too, maybe unwittingly. Her eyes soften. “We’ll get there, Marcus.”