2

Because the reception desk is empty. Vanessa is a ghost. My little booty is stuck.

“Hello?” I call out, my voice echoing in the cavernous office.

No response. It feels like I’m on the surface of Mars. No signs of life anywhere in sight.

I glance at my watch. It’s 7:42 P.M. Most normal employees went home hours ago.

But not me. Not Rowan St. Clair, perpetual overachiever and Olympic gold medalist in people-pleasing. A leftover trait from growing up fatherless and becoming Mom’s emotional support child when her diagnosis landed at the ripe old age of eleven.

I sigh and make my way down the hall. “Hello?” I call again. “Is anyone here?”

Radio silence once more. Vanessa, if she even exists, is not within earshot.

“Perfect,” I grumble. “Just perfect.”

I look at the imposing double doors that lead to Vincent’s personal office. Maybe I could just slip in and leave the folder on his desk? If he isn’t there, no harm done. If he is, I’ll stammer out an apology and scurry away like the meek corporate mouse I am.

Genius plan. Flawless. There is not a single chance that this could possibly backfire on me in any way, shape, or form.

I raise my hand to knock.

Then I hear it.

“Yes, right there!”

My hand freezes in mid-air. Surely that can’t be…?

Another moan. Louder this time. Breathier. More…

Oh.

Oh, no.

It is exactly what I think it is.

I should leave. I should absolutely, one hundred percent leave right now. I should turn on my heel, throw the files over my shoulder blindly, and GTFO before I get fired, roped into a weird sex thing that almost definitely violates several HR policies, or both.

But I feel stuck. It’s like there are roots growing from my feet and implanting themselves in the tasteful carpeting of the executive floor. I’m every bit as stuck as I was the day Vincent first looked at me.

Which makes no sense. I’m an adult. I’m twenty-seven-and-three-quarters years old, for crying out loud. You’d think I’d be able to hear two people doing the nasty without my brain getting fried.

But you’d think wrong.

Why?

Because I’ve never done the deed myself.

Even admitting that to myself—as if I wasn’t keenly, painfully aware—makes my cheeks go bright red.

Twenty-seven years on this planet and I’m still the proud owner of a V-card. It just… never happened for me, not in the way it seemed to for most other people. Dad gone, Mom sick, things to do, growing up too fast in all the wrong ways…

I dunno. The math didn’t math.

That’s what I tell myself, at least. Maybe it’s just that I was afraid that a world that had already treated me so cruelly would just keep doing more of the same if I gave it the chance.

So I kept myself locked away. I didn’t date. Didn’t kiss. Didn’t ever raise my voice to ask for the love I so badly needed.

I just let my imagination keep me warm at night.

And it did. It does.

Sort of.

But only in the way that a thin bedsheet on a cold night is barely better than no blanket at all. Like, yeah, sure, if I was brave enough to shuck the sheet and go find a proper duvet, I’d be so much warmer and happier.

Problem is, I’m not that brave.

So I stay huddled up with the meager comforts I do have—with fantasies of a man who doesn’t know I exist—and I tell myself that it’s enough. Even when, deep down, I know it isn’t.

“Harder, please!” the woman whimpers, snapping me out of my morbid downward spiral.

My cheeks are still burning so hot that it’s a miracle the fire sprinklers don’t go off to douse me in anti-horny juice. It is long past time for me to go. Leave these two anonymous deviants to do their anonymous, deviant things.

I turn to leave.

But then my elbow bumps against the door.

Which, apparently, has not been properly closed.

Meaning that, when I make contact…

It swings open.