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I was breathing hard when I finally stopped. There was an excruciating pause before Nuni finally started speaking, his tone almost guarded.

“Okay. So this morning was just… irrational horniness. From both of us. It wasn’t—You haven’t… changed your mind then.”

My breath caught as I stared at the muted rerun of some sitcom playing on my TV. He almost sounded disappointed. Like he wanted it to happen again.

I wanted it to happen again too. A lot.

Hustin’s voice rang through my head, asking me if I was one hundred percent sure that sex with Nuni var Rorik would never happen again. Telling me to just have a secret fuck-fling with him if it was what we both wanted.

But then I remembered the days after Corva had found her lifemate fucking his secretary. She’d remained poised and professional at work, but she’d still been tense and snappy and had looked ridiculously stressed. She’d had to take some time off to move into her own place across town. When it had just been me and her in her office one day, I’d awkwardly asked her if she was alright. She’d given me a brittle smile and said, “Some people are just animals, Anita. And unfortunately I mated one of them.”

God, I just couldn’t imagine her reaction if she found out I’d had sex with a client. I knew Hustin was right—this wasn’t the exact same situation. There wasn’t really a power imbalance, and neither Nuni nor I were involved with anyone else.

But still. Like I’d told Nuni in his office, it should be easy to maintain that professional boundary. It should be so fucking easy to just not have sex with someone.

Would she lump me in with her douchebag ex if she found out? Even if she didn’t fire me, her opinion of me would drop massively. She’d stop respecting me as a colleague, a professional. She’d stop trusting me.

“I can’t,” I told Nuni, unable to stop the regret bleeding into my voice. “You’re a client.”

“Okay.” He let out a breath. “Yeah, of course. So that… clears that up then.”

Genuine disappointment made my shoulders sag. Which was ridiculous. It was just sex. I could go and find someone else to have sex with. So could he.

“So what about the, uh… irrational horniness?” He cleared his throat awkwardly, and his voice was gruff when he admitted, “Because it’s not… just you. You’re still super annoying, but you’re also… I’m attracted to you too. Obviously. So yeah. We still have to work together on the event, so…”

I swallowed, trying to ignore the way my pulse had leapt at hearing him say he was attracted to me. “Well, you could hand over the event stuff to Lipa. She knows you well, so she’ll know what you’d be happy with.”

There was silence, before Nuni muttered, “I guess.”

“Or we just…” I said quickly, because the idea of never getting to interact with him again was making me jittery. “I mean, it’s not like there’ll be any situations that will allow for us to… for that to happen. Honestly, aside from the food-tasting, we won’t need to meet much. At all, really. We can just correspond through email.”

Another silence. I picked at the hem of my pyjama bottoms, scowling down at them. I was right, though. I didn’t need to take up any more of his time. That was why his firm had hired an event planner. To take it off their hands.

“Okay,” Nuni eventually said, his voice just the tiniest bit sulky. “So it won’t be a problem then.”

I swallowed. “It shouldn’t be, no.”

“So we just… don’t.”

My thighs clenched together. I knew what he was saying without him actually saying it.

We just don’t have sex again.

This was a surreal conversation. Were there many situations that required two people to mutually agree to never have sex again, even though they both clearly wanted to? Probably not many good ones.

“We don’t,” I agreed woodenly.

We lapsed into silence. Now would be the time to politely thank him for his time, tell him I’d be in touch soon about the event, and hang up. We wouldn’t have to speak outside of office hours again until the night of the event. Well, unless we bumped into each other at the gym.

Maybe in the sauna.

Or maybe the showers. Maybe one day the women’s showers would be broken, so I’d have to use the ones in the men’s locker rooms. Maybe I’d accidentally step into the shower he just so happened to be using, and he’d be all wet and naked and…

“So we just go back to annoying the fuck out of each other,” Nuni said, still sounding a little sullen. “Professionally.”

My mouth quirked into a non-smile. “Looks like it. At least until the event is over.”

“Yeah.” He was quiet for a moment. I heard him take a breath to speak, but he said nothing at first. Until, “Would you—”