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His other hand travels low ’til he’s cupping my sex. ’Til his fingers find my clit through the satin fabric of my panties and he’s rubbing away.

I’m not even sure where my clothes have gone… or why I’ve come into his office in nothing more than my bra and panties.

Yet I don’t give a single fuck as he rubs my clit and I feel how wet I am.

“The truth is, you want to be mine,” he growls into my ear, tugging at the soft flesh with his teeth. “You love to play hard to get, but guess what,dolcezza? I love a chase.”

My loudest moan yet leaves me as my throbbing clit can stand no more and a sudden orgasm hits.

I twist and turn, the pleasure pouring over me all at once.

It’s as my body thrashes that my eyes pop open and everything changes.

The office with the floor-to-ceiling window disappears. The grip my ‘boss’ has on me vanishes. I go from standing in my bra and panties being kissed and groped to lying in my bed in a hot sweat.

I spring up and realize I’m soaked.

There’s a wet patch in my panties from the very fake, very erotic dream I just had.

A dream that was clearly about Rafael. Even if I never set eyes on who my boss was, his smooth, husky voice tells me all I need to know.

“Great,” I mutter under my breath. “Now I’m dreaming about him. What a huge ego boost for him.”

Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I check the time and decide to slide out of bed and take a quick shower.

It’s not even midnight yet but Jayla’s bedroom door is shut and there’s no light peeking out from the crevice at the bottom. She must’ve gone to sleep early because she has to open the salon tomorrow morning.

I creep from my bedroom to the bathroom in the hall for my shower.

The heat and steam and sweet-smelling body wash does nothing to clear my mind of Rafael. Neither does the fresh pair of panties I change into. I emerge from the bathroom with thoughts of how the dream had felt so real.

His grip on me. His fingers on my clit. The words he’d growled into my ear.

The pleasure that quickly rose up inside me.

“That was real,” I whisper to myself. “Self-inflicted… but real.”

I’m wide-awake returning to my bedroom. But I refuse to spend any more time lusting after Rafael and remembering how natural our bed chemistry was. Instead, I do what I always do at times like this when I can’t sleep—I throw myself into my work.

Baron may want me to stop investigating the Belluccis and Tucos, but Irefuse.

Propping open my laptop, I set to work doing some digging. Any clues or info I can unearth that will help me break the story. Draw a solid connection between the shootout at the meat-packing factory and the city’s biggest crime families.

“I’m coming for you,” I say, tapping away at my keyboard. “Your days are numbered, Diavolo.”

* * *

Wednesday at 11 p.m. comes and goes.

Benji Sigler’s tip about the shipment turns out to be wrong. I’m waiting in the area when the hour passes and no freight train arrives. I glance down at the clock on the home screen of my phone and then quickly type up a text message.

It shows as sent to the number Benji’s been using.

The shipment you said would come hasn’t arrived.

Yet I never hear back. As midnight nears and the few stragglers in the area leave the station, so do I.

It was risky enough coming out this late to a bad neighborhood in the city. For the scoop I was willing to take the risk, but it seems I’ve either been lied to or there’s been a change Benji hasn’t alerted me about.