Page 3

By the time we’re finishing our third round, Ian has covered all the small talk basics. Veering suddenly away from the book and Eros, he started asking about me . Where I’m from, what I studied, if I have any pets, my parents’ names, and — he wheedled it out of me — my actual bar order.

I’m no longer nervous or stilted. This feels like a night in with a friend.

Ian is weird, but charming when he wants to be, and I don’t mind looking at him.

I don’t mind the way his eyes follow my movements, the way his gaze lingers on my mouth.

And I feel interesting , for the first time in a long time.

Maybe for the first time in my life. I feel seen by Ian.

Understood in a way I’ve never been understood.

He’s asking me questions my ex didn’t think to ask until we’d been dating for months.

And on top of all that, he even loves my blog.

And the excitement of tomorrow, the knowledge that I’ll be meeting Eros, speaking to him, buzzes in my skull like a heady drug.

“Tequila shot?” Ian asks, rising from the couch, half-smiling. I can’t tell if he’s joking. He’s just as perfectly groomed as he was before we started drinking with only a hint of dishevelment: one dark curl falling loose over his forehead.

If I’m being honest with myself, I want another.

I want to sink into the softly-lit haze of drunkenness.

I want to immerse myself in this indulgence, this validation I’ve been waiting my whole life to receive.

But I’m also well aware that I’m here for work, and another drink will send me right over the edge. “I’m okay, thanks though.”

Ian smiles conspiratorially. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“We should get an early start tomorrow.”

“We’ll be fine.” He holds out his hand for my glass.

A self-loathing laugh threatens to bubble up my throat. I know what’s going to happen next. I know who I am. I know what I’m like.

“C’mon,” Ian urges. “C’mon.” He smiles wide, and I can’t help the way my skin tingles at the sight. He’s magnificently hot.

Fuck it. I hand over my glass.

While Ian is at the bar, I stand and go to the floor-to-ceiling window.

I drift closer to the glass. I’ve never been this high up before.

Rain still pounds the glass, but I bet you could see the ocean from here on a clear day.

I wonder if Ian ever stands here and gazes out over the west side of the city, searching for inspiration.

“Afraid of heights?” Ian asks.

“Not really.” I stop a few inches from the glass.

Police drones buzz through the night, their red lights flashing below me, spotlights beaming down through a thick fog onto the streets below. I can see everything from up here. The city is dark but vivid, all its light and color bleeding together against towering buildings, and… oh, fuck .

I sway, pressing a palm to the glass. Either I’m way more intoxicated than I thought, which isn’t likely, or I’ve developed sudden altophobia.

My vision spins, then pops and crackles like an antique TV screen.

The cityscape flickers in and out. Towers of light disappear and reappear again under a stormy sky.

How many shots were in those cocktails?

Sick with vertigo, not trusting myself to stay upright, I close my eyes and lean my forehead against the glass.

That was the wrong thing to do.

As soon as I close my eyes, I get a sickening swooping feeling in my gut, like I’m falling through the glass and into the rainy night, plummeting downward into a black abyss.

It’s the same sensation I felt in the elevator, like I’m deep underwater, but more intense.

The world is opening up before me, and there’s an impossible pressure crushing me, grinding my bones, flattening my lungs.

But something tells me it won’t last forever. If I can just hold out, if I can get to the other side—

“Kit.” Ian’s voice is sharp.

I gasp, opening my eyes. The city spreads out before me, rain-blurred and bright.

I step back from the glass, unsteady on my feet.

“You good?” I turn to see Ian standing by the couch, watching me. His expression is unreadable. He’s holding a full shot glass in one hand, a bottle of water in the other. He smiles slowly. “I thought you weren’t afraid of heights.”

I return to the couch, taking the offered drinks.

His eyes flit to my shaking fingers, and I’m ashamed.

I wait for him to scold me, to say something like he refuses to work with someone who can’t handle her liquor, who can’t handle being 153 stories in the air.

Instead, he waits patiently for me to settle in, to take a revitalizing sip of water.

He watches me take the shot, his gaze piercing.

When I’m warm from tequila, my heart finally begins to slow, and I meet his penetrating stare. “Sorry about that,” I murmur. “I’ve never actually been in a building this tall.”

He takes the shot glass from me, his fingers brushing mine.

There are a few drops left. He dips his finger into the glass, collecting the last of the tequila, and deposits it on his tongue.

He swallows. “I should have warned you. It’s a ridiculous building, gives everyone vertigo.

Too tall. Way too tall.” He laughs like it’s hilarious that he owns a penthouse in a building that’s practically in space. “Takes some getting used to.”

I can’t help but smile back at him. “The tequila helped.”

He sets the shot glass on a side table, then props an elbow on the back of the couch, leaning in toward me. “Let me distract you, Kit. Is that okay?”

I don’t know what he means by distract , but I want it, whatever it is. I nod.

“Tell me something,” he says, voice low, taking advantage of our close proximity. “Do you know why I do what I do?”

The tequila has me loose, relaxed, and warm.

Rain patters the window in a soothing rhythm.

Ian’s gaze is soft. I set my water next to the shot glass, allowing my body to lean toward Ian’s.

I know what he’s doing. I’ve played this game a thousand times, and I’m good at it.

“I don’t know, Ian. Why do you do what you do? ”

His eyes crinkle at the corners when I say his name. “Because we are more than our basest functions. We are intellect. Emotion. Curiosity. These things make us what we are. But if you take away those higher functions, then what?”

“We’re no more than animals,” I answer, a thrill running through me. This is the kind of thing I love to write about on my blog. “Or worse, we’re vegetative. Walking the line between life and death.”

“Exactly,” Ian says proudly, like I’m his prize pupil. “But what if we take away the lower, base, simplest functions of a human? You take away fear, hunger, the need to reproduce… you take away death . What do we have then?”

I know what he would answer. Without his base urges, a human becomes nothing more than a computer .

It’s one of his most famous quotes. But I don’t want to repeat his words back to him like a fangirl.

I want to prove that I’m worthy of his respect.

“A higher being,” I answer. “A sentience no longer weighed down by its physical needs. Maybe even the next evolution of humanity.”

His smile broadens. “I love the way you think.”

“Thank you,” I say, and I feel a telltale blush rising on my cheeks. Fucking embarrassing.

“I’m not flattering you. I’m being honest.” Ian is very much in my personal space, one arm braced against the back of the couch, one gesturing as he talks.

Our knees are almost touching. “I’m curious.

Do you believe this so-called higher being , this next evolution of humanity…

can it possess both, and still remain superior?

The intellect…” he leans closer, and suddenly his thumb is on my chin, his eyes searching mine. “And the base urges?”

The room is very warm, its edges liquor-hazy. The rain is picking up, and the wind howls outside, animalistic. But Ian’s thumb on my chin insists that I stay focused on him, on the question. The room fades away, and nothing is left but Ian’s dark eyes, his jaw, the curl of hair on his forehead.

“What if the urges were controlled by outside, or artificial means?” he continues. “What if they were limited, unable to override the higher functions? Can such a thing claim to be superior? Or is it only a mockery, a facsimile, of what already exists?”

My lips part. Ian’s gaze flickers down to my mouth.

My brain stalls out. Then I realize he’s waiting for me to respond.

“If you were able to isolate the lower functions,” I say, “to control them as you say, so they never overwhelm the mind… then whatever you’ve created is no longer human.

Humans lose control all the time. We think we’re governed by our intellect, but we’re not. We’re barely a step above an animal.”

“We roll in the mud with the beasts,” he says.

“I guess we do.”

Then he leans forward, thumb still on my chin, and kisses me.

It’s wildly unprofessional.

It’s hot as fuck.

I know I should push him away and put a stop to this. It can’t go anywhere; it creates a weird dynamic, he’s twice my age — I even saw it coming and didn’t stop it. But I still want it.

I’ve been wanting to kiss Ian De Leon since I first saw him.

He tastes like whiskey. He kisses like he’s spent years perfecting the art. If he’d slobbered on me, if he’d been desperate and pawed at me, I could have easily cut this short. But he hasn’t. And he doesn’t. He stays exactly where he is, his fingers holding my chin, our knees almost touching.

And even though we’re just kissing, I’m slowly undone. I was already horny for him, but now? I’m four drinks in, and I can barely restrain myself from crawling into Ian’s lap and ripping his shirt open. It’s what I’d normally do in this situation.

But I do have some self-control. Some .

When he makes a soft, low sound in his throat, I almost change my mind and straddle him. But a distant, insistent thought keeps hounding me: this is work . I’m at work . This is my boss, no matter what he says about us being “friends.” And I’m acting like my usual fuck-up self.

Ian’s thumb runs slowly along my jaw. It’s the only place he’s touching me, but the sensation is like a live wire to my skin.

I lean into the feeling, hating myself for doing so.

Hating that when he deepens the kiss, tilting his head to let my tongue in, I eagerly take the invitation.

Hating the way my body betrays me, the breathiness, the involuntary moans.

By the time Ian pulls away to end the kiss, I’m wet and thoroughly disgusted with myself.

“Good, Kit,” Ian says, his thumb returning softly to my chin. His pupils are dark. My traitor eyes flit down, and I see that he’s just as turned on as I am. “Good.”

“I probably shouldn’t have let you do that,” I murmur. A massive understatement.

“Why not?” he asks, leaning back, giving me a little space.

“You’ve been checking me out all night. If you weren’t so focused on making a good impression, you would have noticed I was checking you out, too.

That little skirt is incredibly fucking sexy.

” He lets his gaze rake over me slowly. I revel in it.

“Are we wrong for feeling these things?” he continues. “Are we not allowed to act on them?”

I take a steadying breath. It’s not like I’ve never made out with an authority figure before. And I’ll only be here for three days. What could possibly go wrong in that time? “Just promise you won’t fire me for kissing you.”

“I kissed you , Kit.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I told you, I’m not your boss. We’re friends. I wasn’t fucking with you. We’re getting to know each other. I’m getting to know you. Am I supposed to let just anyone write this book for me?”

“Right,” I say. “No, totally.”

He stands, looming over me, impossibly sexy. His shirt hangs open, his thick black hair now slightly more mussed from the kiss. Was I grabbing his hair? I don’t remember. I must have been. My slut hands.

He smiles, and his gaze is on fire. “Get your bag. I’ll take you to your room.”

As I stand and retrieve my duffle from the closet, following him up a black spiral staircase, I allow the worst version of myself to come out.

I wonder what he’d do if I tried to take him to bed.

Would he refuse? Of course he wouldn’t. Men never do.

And he’s still hard. He’d be such an easy lay, and I can see that he has plenty to work with.

We’ve already kissed. Would fucking be so much worse?

I’m gnawing at my lip with anticipation as Ian leads me to a large, clean guest room. A window looks out onto the night, the steady rain. He turns on the lights, ushering me in. “Your home for the next few days.”

I turn to face him. He’s leaning against the door frame, hair hanging over his forehead, chest hair on full display, erection also on full display. My mouth waters. I say nothing.

“Good night, Kit.”

I have about two seconds to decide what kind of idiot to be.

He straightens and starts to turn.

“Ian,” I blurt.

He pauses and turns to face me, brows raised. There’s a spark of something like approval behind his eyes. Like maybe he wants this, too.

“Do you want to…” I bite my lip, tilting my head to indicate the room behind me, the bed.

He hesitates, and my heart stands still. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but he studies me for a moment, allowing his gaze to travel up from my feet to my breasts to my face, where he lingers.

God , I want him. Say yes, say yes, please…

After a long silence in which I almost spontaneously combust, Ian speaks. “Good night, Kit.”

Then he turns and closes the door behind him.

And I’m left standing there alone, burning up with arousal and shame.