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It was enough to make me dream. To wish. To hope. As I circled his room and checked out his personal, private space that he wanted me to be a part of tonight, I barely thought about all that I could do for him.

It seemed like so little. He was granting me a chance to be with my son in a safe location. He was pleasuring me and sleeping with me, each time better than the last as he worshiped my body. On top of all that, he wasn’t pressuring me at all. He never demanded that I kiss him when Paloma or Brady could see—instead, he respected my wishes to hide this torrid affair from my young son who might not understand or accept how much life was changing. And Nikolai never asked me for anything—rather, he gave and presented me with so much.

Even this job.

He could’ve protested and said that I couldn’t work. But he welcomed it, encouraged it.

And what a difference it was.

The door opened and closed behind me. Hearing him enter, I whirled around and smiled at him.

“That was fast.”

He nodded, undoing the knot of his tie. “It was. I barely read one page.”

“It’s the swimming. He loves being in the water.”

He grinned, stalking toward me. “I love being in the water too if it means having you wear next to nothing.”

I met him in the middle of the room, helping him with his tie and then assisting in getting off his clothes. I didn’t hurry. It wasn’t a frantic rush. Slow and lazy, I explored touching him as I undressed him.

“I’m glad he’s asleep so fast.”

He leaned in and cupped my chin to kiss me. “Me too.”

I smiled against his lips, still unbuttoning his shirt. “Not just for whatever you have in mind…” I teased as I spread my hands over his taut skin as I slipped my hands under his shirt. “I wanted to talk to you, too.”

He nodded. In his eyes, I noted the heat and lust. All for me. But the rest of his face was serious, a somber, pensive countenance that signaled to me that he was listening.

“About the drone? Or how he saw something before and didn’t tell anyone?”

I shook my head. “I agree. He needs to tell someone if he sees anything. I’ll talk with him more tomorrow so he understands how important it is.”

“Without scaring him.”

I nodded. “Without scaring him, of course.”

“What did you want to talk about?” he asked as I pushed his shirt off his huge, muscled shoulders.

“About how grateful I am to have the chance to help. To work. To do something meaningful.”

When he opened his mouth to say something, I shook my head. “Not because I feel like I need to. To pay you back for all you’re doing for me. I can’t ever repay you for everything.”

He cupped my face and kissed me softly.

I lowered my hands to work on getting his pants off. We stood together in his room like this, and it felt so intimate. So alone and private, and I dared to wish it could always be like this. That no matter how the day went, we’d come back to each other like this.

“But I’m grateful for being able to have a purpose. I know my biggest purpose is to raise that sweet boy. Being a mother will always be my main achievement in life. But I was surprised by all the pride I felt to have a purpose at the computer again.”

He scoffed as I unzipped and pushed his pants down. Stepping apart, he aided me in getting them off. “I thought you hated your job.”

“I hated working for Pickering Inc. Security. I hated working for supervisors like Owen and with all the men who despised me as a woman in their territory. But I’ve always wanted to do something with my life. To apply all that I did in college and perfected as marketable skills that companies would need to rely on.” I brought my hand to his dick, gently curling my fingers around the thick girth of his shaft that hardened for me by the second. “It’s only been one day. One morning. But when I was getting briefed by the others on what I could do, it wasn’t like what I did before. I wasn’t wasting time being on a shift that felt endless with the same old. I wasn’t counting down the hours or minutes or seconds until I could escape. It’s not like I was stuck doing something just to earn a paycheck.”

He stepped forward, pushing his dick into my hand.

Before he could say something, I hurried to explain the rest of what was in my mind. “What I did earlier matters. That’s been the missing piece of the puzzle for too long for me. I’ve always wanted to have a purpose. An end goal to work toward and keep as the target on the horizon. And now I have one. If you’ll give me the chance to work with the rest of the IT team, I can apply all I know to keep you and your family safe. To keep myself and Brady safe while we are here with you. It doesn’t matter what it is—hacking or scouring through more surveillance. It matters and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to do something good like this.”

Pulling me closer for a kiss while I still stroked his long dick, he seemed to want to show me what he thought of all that I’d said instead of replying with words.