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His hand is around your throat. Not squeezing. Just there – palm fever-hot against your pulse, fingers curving around the column of your neck like he's holding something precious. Something breakable. Something he's terrified to drop. Your back presses against floor-to-ceiling glass. Sixty stories of city lights glitter below like scattered diamonds, and Callan West – the man Forbes called "ruthless," the man who makes grown executives weep in boardrooms – is looking at you like you're the first real thing he's touched in years. "Tell me to stop." His voice scrapes low, wrecked. His thumb finds the hollow beneath your jaw where your heartbeat screams secrets you've never told anyone. "One word and I walk away. You go back to your life. We pretend this never happened." Your lungs won't cooperate. Neither will your voice. Neither will the liquid heat pooling low in your belly as his thigh presses between yours – deliberate, devastating, exactly enough pressure to make your knees threaten collapse. "That's not a word." His mouth hovers a breath from yours. Close enough to taste him – scotch and smoke and something darker. "That's you deciding what you want." His free hand grips your hip. Not gentle. Anchoring. His body cages yours against the window, every hard inch of him pressed to every soft inch of you, and your nerve endings can't decide whether to scream run or stay or find out what happens when a man like this finally stops holding back. "I need to hear you say it, Maya." His lips brush the shell of your ear, and the sensation short-circuits rational thought. "Yes or no. Right now. Before I do something we can't undo." Your fingers curl into his lapels – ten thousand dollars of Italian wool crushed in your fists. He doesn't flinch. Doesn't retreat. Just waits, patient as a predator who's already won, for you to stop pretending you don't want to be caught. You open your mouth to answer – 72 HOURS EARLIER "Everyone out." Two words. His voice slices through the conference room like a scalpel – precise, cold, absolutely certain of obedience. Twenty executives scramble for the door, expensive shoes thundering against marble, and you're caught in the stampede until – "Not you." Your coffee sloshes. Hot liquid scalds your wrist but you barely feel it because Callan West is looking at you like you're the only person in a building that employs three thousand. You're not supposed to be here. You're a temp. A nobody filling in for someone with food poisoning. You don't even have a badge with your actual photo – just a visitor sticker with your name misspelled. The door clicks shut. Silence crashes down. He doesn't sit. Doesn't soften. Just stands there in his charcoal suit – sleeves rolled to reveal forearms corded with muscle, watch worth more than your car – watching you with eyes the color of a winter storm. "What's your name?" "Maya Torres." Your voice comes out steadier than you feel. "I'm the temp – " "I know what you are." He moves closer. You catch his scent – sandalwood and smoke and something underneath that makes your hindbrain whisper danger danger danger. "You're the one who sent back my acquisition brief." Oh god. You'd found seventeen errors. Exposed three potential lawsuits. Flagged them in red like you were grading a freshman paper instead of correcting a man who could buy your entire neighborhood. "With annotations." He stops three feet away. "Explaining why my legal team should be fired." "I said implied – " "You said the liability analysis was – " He pulls out his phone, reads directly. "'So fundamentally flawed it suggests either incompetence or deliberate sabotage.'" Heat crawls up your neck. "That was... accurately stated." Something flickers across his face. Surprise. Then – impossibly – respect. "Do you know how many people correct my work?" Another step. Two feet between you now. "Zero. In seven years of running th sis company. Until you." "Maybe they should." "Maybe." He's close enough now that backing up feels necessary – until your spine hits the wall and there's nowhere left to run. "Or maybe I just needed someone brave enough to tell me the truth." His forearm braces beside your head. His body radiates heat like a furnace. "Option one." His free hand rises. One finger traces your collarbone – barely touching, not quite innocent, leaving fire in its wake. "You go back to your desk. Forget today happened. I'll have HR process your bonus for catching errors that would have cost me forty million dollars." Your mouth goes dry. "Option two?" "Dinner." His fingertip finds the hollow between your collarbones. Rests there, right above your hammering heart. "Tonight. Not as my employee. Not as a temp." "Then as what?" His eyes drop to your mouth. When they rise again, something raw lurks behind the CEO mask – something hungry that's gone too long without feeding. "As someone who interests me." His voice drops to velvet. "Do you have any idea how rare that is… What do you say?"