Versed in Desire. Anne Calhoun

and set the glass down with a cluster of others on the battered grand piano, then cocked an eyebrow at Luke. He took my hand with a casual possessiveness then lifted it to his sensual mouth for a single, simple kiss, his languid gaze holding mine.

      “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

      The more polite equivalent of your wall or mine?

      We were working our way through the throng that was surely in violation of the fire code and had made it as far as the foyer when my new boss, Tony, appeared from the door leading to the rooftop garden. Luke dropped my hand to give him a three-step, back-slap handshake. The familiarity of their greeting gave me pause, but my blood turned to ice when Tony said, “Corryn, you’ve found Morrison.”

      Names weren’t my strong suit. I’d heard dozens of them in my first two weeks at Cooper Bensonhurst and was just beginning to remember the ones I could attach to faces. The other shoe dropped: Luke the tongue-tangling rake was also Luke Morrison, VP of Special Acquisitions, Tony’s best friend. We hadn’t met because he’d been in Tokyo for the last two weeks, acquiring something special worth just over half a billion dollars.

      Math geek, my ass. Corporate raider, more like.

      Speechless yet again, I took what I hoped was an inconspicuous step away from Luke and did my best impersonation of innocence for Tony.

      “She’s awesome,” Tony continued at full volume, oblivious to the severed power line of longing showering sparks around us. “Don’t even think about stealing her away to replace Bonita.”

      Bonita was Luke’s beak-nosed harpy of an admin, and on my best day I couldn’t hope to match her scary efficiency. “That wasn’t what I was stealing her away for,” Luke said. I shot him a quelling look, but thank God Tony was already gone, drawn into a circle of fashion types.

      Luke and I stood immobile in the foyer, people parting around us to flow in and out of the open front door. I looked at him and he looked at me. “I thought you said your name was Erin.”

      “Cor-ryn,” I enunciated twenty minutes too late. It wasn’t the first time someone had substituted the more familiar Erin for my unusual name.

      Hands on hips, Luke looked at his battered Birkenstocks, then stepped towards me, using his body to shift me back, out of traffic. He shoved his hand through his hair, which was a couple of weeks past a haircut and starting to curl. “Let’s pretend that didn’t happen.”

      Trapped between him and the wall, oh, how I wanted to agree, to sneak out with Luke and channel the wildfire flowing between us. I had a healthy appreciation for the adrenaline rush of casual sex…but not with my boss’s best friend two weeks after I’d started a job at the most prestigious investment house in New York. I’d scraped by waiting tables and temping. Cooper Bensonhurst paid well enough for me to get my own apartment and I had big plans for a writing schedule set around the regular hours.

      “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. I laid my hand on his chest as I spoke, intending the gesture to appease, but the heavy thud of his pulse traveled through my palm and up my arm. Our heart rates slowly synchronized and for a bewitching, bewildering moment the connection seemed to amplify the pulse and rhythm I felt emanating from the city. My fingers curled into his sweater.

      He read my mixed message without effort. He leaned in, brushed his beautiful mouth over my cheek, then murmured, “You sure?” in my ear.

      I could smell whiskey on his breath and that hot-earth aroma of lust rising from his open collar. Backed into a wall, Luke tense and expectant mere inches from my body, my senses jerked into overdrive, recording the images his question inspired. Hiking up my dress, gripping my ass with both hands, sliding inside. Heat flickered through my pussy and a little breath of a sigh wafted into the air between his mouth and mine.

      Two more people worked their way into the tiny space, urging him against me. He put a hand by my head to keep from crushing me, but I still felt him against me from hip to shoulder, the strength of his erection pressed against my belly. The other hand curled around the back of my thigh, edging up my skirt while his eyes, dark and daring, searched mine.

      “I’m sure.”

      My firm tone surprised both of us. He stepped back and blew out his breath, a visible crack in his cool facade. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen frustration on the face of a man who’d been denied what he wanted. It was the first time I regretted it as much as he did.

      “See you at work,” I said, then slipped past him, pushing through the crowd in search of a drink and a distracting conversation.

      Two hours later I watched as Luke left with the accessories editor from a fashion magazine. I went home. Frustrated. Alone.

      That should have been the end of things. I’d made a choice, an unusually sensible, safe choice, yes, but I thought the break was clear.

      The muse thought otherwise.

      August…

      Metcalf, Tony, to Morrison, Luke: Well?

      Morrison, Luke, to Metcalf, Tony:???

      Three months into my job, I’d mastered my most crucial task as Tony’s admin—staying on top of his email. Most of the day Tony ran client or strategy meetings from his spacious corner office on forty-four, the executive floor at Cooper Bensonhurst. My desktop mirrored his, enabling me to see every message he sent or received. Based on those communications, I would update presentations, meetings and travel arrangements before he had to ask.

      This privilege unwittingly gave me a unique insight into Luke.

      I saw him every day, and on the surface things were excruciatingly civil. Just as he’d suggested, we pretended. I pretended I didn’t dress for him in heels, pencil skirts and tailored blouses unbuttoned to just this side of sexy. He pretended someone else wooed me with cupcakes from the Cupcake Café, leaving them at my desk while I was out for lunch or running an errand for Tony. If Luke’s eyes held mine just a moment too long in the elevator, if he watched me walk away after I stepped into a meeting with a message for Tony, if I looked back and saw Luke watching, well, longing looks weren’t a wall.

      Tony remained blissfully oblivious to the languorous seduction going on right under his nose. I’d declined the invitation to his party Saturday night with the excuse of a previous engagement. In truth, I didn’t trust myself to resist another encounter with the dressed-down, sleepy-eyed Luke, and I did need to write. My usual methods of encouraging the muse weren’t working. I’d knitted slippers for every member of my family. I’d walked off three pounds, no mean feat given the cupcakes. I’d done my time with my notebook, but I couldn’t lose myself in the work.

      A new message alert popped up.

      Metcalf, Tony, to Morrison, Luke: How was she?

      I didn’t bother being offended. Men were men, and other women weren’t bound by the same sense of restraint keeping me from Luke’s bed. Whoever she was, she must have been a fifteen on a scale of one to ten if they were discussing her on work email. This was the first hookup debrief in the three months since I hadn’t gone home with Luke.

      Morrison, Luke, to Metcalf, Tony: She was bony.

      Tony and I let out simultaneous barks of laughter just as Luke rounded the corner from the elevator, his BlackBerry in one hand and a brown paper sack from the deli across the street in the other. He paused by my desk, his gaze flickering from my hair, tucked as always in a heavy bun at my nape, to the swell of my breasts just visible inside my shirt placket. One dark eyebrow lifted in an unspoken question as he pocketed the BlackBerry.

      I folded my arms on my desk, leaned forward and smiled up at him. “Like any good retainer, I see all and say nothing.”

      Though the words were teasing, my smile faded as I spoke. Faced with Luke’s lean body and the mental image of my dark-eyed devil making love to a lingerie supermodel, angel wings and all, heat and jealousy pumped in equal portions through my veins.

      For