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You have an agenda, I reminded myself. An agenda that doesn’t have anything to do with stopping the reverberation between your thighs. I’d spent a lot of time on my get-close-to-Reeve plan so I had a basic idea of what to do next, but since it was a mission that relied on improvisation, I didn’t have everything entirely ironed out. I’d look for signs of Amber, of course, and, ideally, I would earn Reeve’s trust to the point where he would let something slip.

Yeah, real likely with Mr. I’m N. Charge.

Maybe if I got in his inner circle – if I got him to take me to dinners with Vilanakis or even other friends of his – maybe then I could find a solid lead.

So much time had passed, though, and even Joe hadn’t delivered any information recently. There was a good chance that I was chasing after a trail that was long dead.

But even if I was too late to rescue Amber, I had to know what happened to her.

Or you want the excuse to wrap yourself in Reeve. There she was again, her voice ringing in my ear as clear as if she were sitting next to me.

“Maybe that’s true, Amber,” I said quietly. “But it’s about you, too.”

“Did you say something, Ms. Wayborn?”

I looked up to find the driver looking at me in his rearview mirror. “Sorry. Just talking to myself.”

He smiled awkwardly, probably unused to conversing with the people he drove. It was an opportunity for me, though, and while I was sure that Reeve had spies in all of his employees, there had to be something I could glean from him.

I leaned forward. “It’s Emily, by the way.”

He nodded with another awkward smile that told me he’d never call me anything but Ms. Wayborn.

“And you are…?”

His eyes darted from the road to the mirror and back to the road. Finally he said, “It’s Filip.”

Reeve seriously had his men trained. Getting even a simple name shouldn’t be like pulling nails.

And now that I had his name, I’d reached a dead end. I considered a second. “Is that an accent I hear? Where are you from, Filip?”

He answered with less hesitation this time. “Egaleo, Ms. Wayborn.”

I’d never heard of it, but I made a guess. “Is that Greece?”

He nodded. “Just outside of Athens.”

Reeve either really liked being able to communicate with his employees in a language most people didn’t know or he liked surrounding himself with people from his homeland. His parents’ homeland, actually. It was hard not to immediately want to say the whole thing smelled of mob. I grew up on Hollywood stories, though, and was smart enough to realize that the most scandalous of options was not always the most correct. So I had to give it the benefit of the doubt.

Except then we were at Reeve’s house, and Filip opened the door for me to climb out of the back. He wasn’t wearing a tie, and as I passed by, I caught the edge of a tattoo peeking out from under his shirt.

I stopped and bent toward him. “That’s an interesting tattoo. What is it exactly?”

Filip tugged at his collar, covering the design. “It’s nothing. Mr. Sallis is waiting for you inside, Ms. Wayborn. Just go on in.”

But I’d seen it before it had been hidden. A V, stylized to match the ring of Michelis Vilanakis.

No one greeted me at the door and the handle turned when I tried it. I headed through the foyer, the heels of my shoes resounding in the quiet house. Once the walls opened up to the main living space, Reeve was there, dressed in a sleek gray suit with a black dress shirt and gray tie and I forgot all about Filip and his tattoo. Reeve was so striking, so overwhelmingly captivating – I needed a moment to catch my breath.

I didn’t get it.

He came to me immediately and pulled me to him, setting one hand on my hip and threading his other in my hair. Holding my head like he had that morning in my kitchen, he kissed me. Claimed me. Devoured me. He licked into my mouth with bold, possessive strokes, painting his presence with his tongue, stealing the air from my lungs, spinning my world on its axis.

Soon, he moved his hand off my hip and up, up my torso where he finally – finally – clamped his palm around my breast. His grasp was strong, his fingers kneading into me as he squeezed and released, mirroring the way my pussy begged to clench around his cock. I clutched to his lapels for balance, ready for him to push me to the couch, to the floor, to the wall. Ready for him to ruck my skirt up around my waist and plunge into the warmth of my body.

Just when I was thoroughly dizzy and lust-swollen, he pulled his mouth away. “Thank you for coming.” His smile lit his face, matching the one I was sure was on my own lips. “And before you make some tacky joke about not having come yet, I’ll assure you that you will.”

I half-giggled, half-groaned. Half-melted in anticipation. “Well, glad that’s out of the way.”