Page 11 of Ascension

“Hmm?” I managed.

“You just signed off on a 24-hour full closure of both eastbound lanes,” she said lightly, eyes on me, head tilted. “No emergency access.”

Fuck.

Sure enough, my signature stared back at me like a goddamn rookie mistake. One I would never make if I wasn’t thinking about Calla’s voice in my ear or the feel of her inside me, fucking me deep and deliberate while whispering, “You’re mine.”

“Revert that,” I said calmly, drawing a bold line through the item. “Lane shifts and phased detours. No full closure.”

“Got it,” she said, smiling slightly, her pen tapping her lower lip in rhythm. That damn dimple winked at me again. “You sure you’re good? You’ve been somewhere else since we walked in.”

I met her gaze, and for a second, it wasn’t just flirtation.

It was hunger.

I’d thought about her. Late nights alone, hand wrapped around my hard dick, wondering what she’d sound like if I made her come, wondering if she was a screamer or the kind who bit her lip and shivered. If she liked her hair pulled or her throat grabbed, if she’d ride me slow, deep, intentional, until I lost the ability to form a coherent sentence.

And I’d bet good money that under those clothes, she had more ink.

I wanted to see it all.

Wanted to worship it.

But we had a line. One I’d never crossed. Not because I didn’t want to—but because I knew once I did, I wouldn’t come back from it. Amiyah was intelligent, ambitious, highly respected, and I wasn’t about to fuck with her professional credibility just because I had a recurring fantasy about her calling me Sir in the office and then sitting on my face after hours.

I couldn’t afford that kind of mess.

So I kept it locked down.

Even when she tilted her head like that. Even when her shirt dipped just enough to show a peek of the tattoo between her breasts. Even when I wanted to drag my teeth across the ink and make her say my name.

“I’m good,” I said, smoothing my expression. “Just running through contingencies.”

She studied me for a beat longer than necessary, then nodded and turned back to her binder. Her curls brushed my arm as she moved. My jaw tightened.

She was a temptation I’d taught myself to ignore.

But today?

With Calla still under my skin? With the way my body still remembered surrender?

I didn’t feel like myself.

Out here, I was the man everyone looked to for answers. The signature on a billion-dollar project. The voice that made deals happen, that made cities safer, stronger, smarter.

But last night?

I was hers, reduced to nothing more than a man on his knees. Helpless, wrecked, fucked, and free. And not even Amiyah’s slow smile or sexy ink could pull me out of the grip Calla still had on my soul.

My thoughts were interrupted yet again. “…and next, we’ll review the bid award for instrumentation and monitoring,” said DeShawn Greene, the contracts administrator, tapping his pen against the screen as if this was just another bullet point on the agenda.

It should’ve been.

I nodded along, hands folded in front of me, projecting calm. Control.

But inside, I was still humming with everything I hadn’t said. Still raw from the memory of Calla’s hands on me. Still half-hard in slacks that felt too damn tight as Amiyah sat next to me, her pheromones letting me know my presence aroused her. Had this meeting not been scheduled, I would have taken the day off to recover from last night’s activities.

I focused on DeShawn’s voice as he clicked to the next slide.