"Poor thing," he murmured into my hair. "Those corporate alphas love using pressure as a party trick." He set the roses on the console, shrugged out of his jacket, and turned back for me with a slow, deliberate smile I knew very well. His hands found my waist. His head came down again, and this time he breathed me in like a man checking the label on a bottle. "Mmm. Let me fix that for you, sweetheart. It has been too long."
His fingers slid to the first button of my blouse.
"Wait. Ronald, wait."
I stepped back hard enough to rattle the roses, and his eyes widened. I was as startled as he was. In five years, I had never said wait to him like that. Not once.
But the pine was still curled around my collarbones like a hand, and Ronald had just looked aroused by the fact that another man's
