Beautiful Stranger

me to the afternoon team meeting. But ten minutes into discussions about a lingerie marketing campaign, and with the memory of Max slipping my skimpy lace panties down my legs still playing on a loop inside my head, I found an excuse to get up and go back to my office to retrieve it.
    No message. Damn.
    Returning to the conference room, I found Bennett flipping through slides at lightning speed. It was okay for me because I’d seen the deck beforehand, but I could tell the newly arrived junior executives wanted to throw up their lunches.
    “Slow down, Bennett,” I came up and said to him quietly.
    He snapped his attention to me, his temper barely tied down. “What?”
    I swallowed. Colleagues or not, he still scared the hell out of me. “I think you clicked through the marketing segmentation too fast,” I explained. “You just finished it yesterday, when these guys were on a plane. Let them digest it.”
    He nodded tightly and looked back to the screen.I could almost feel him counting to ten in his head as he let them read the slide, and I looked across the table at Chloe. She was watching him, biting down on her pen to keep from laughing. I doubted Bennett had any sympathy for the RMG employees who had just uprooted their entire lives and were expected to have memorized seventeen tables of market figures in twenty-four hours.
    “Good?” he asked, clicking to the next slide without waiting for an answer.
    Catch up or catch the next train. That’s what I’d overheard Bennett saying to a new marketing associate named Cole.
    My phone vibrated loudly on the table and I picked it up, apologizing under my breath for the interruption. Thank the universe for Bennett Ryan and his endlessly entertaining, impatient perfectionism; for two whole minutes I’d forgotten to wonder if Max was still interested in meeting.
    New York Public Library has some fascinating volumes. Schwartzman Building. 6:30. Wear a skirt, your tallest heels and skip the pants.
    I grinned down at my phone, thinking Max was a pretty lucky bastard that all I would need to do was remove my panties before meeting him. When I lookedup, Chloe still had her pen between her teeth, but this time she was watching me, eyebrows raised.
    Looking back to Bennett, I studiously ignored her stare, but I couldn’t seem to lose my giddy grin.

    There were altogether too many iconic buildings in New York. Every building seemed familiar or laden with history. But few were as immediately recognizable to me as the New York Public Library, with its lion statues and hulking stairs.
    I’d seen him four times since the first night we had sex, and even though this was a planned meet-up, I still felt like the breath had been kicked out of me when I spotted my beautiful stranger. He stood far above everyone around him, and as he searched the crowd for me, I took a few seconds to just drink him in.
    Black suit, dark gray shirt, no tie. His hair had grown out in the last couple of weeks and although he kept it longer on top, I liked it messy like this, imagined tugging on it with his head between my legs.
    He cut quite a shadow on the steps, as people parted around him. I want to see you naked in daylight, I thought. I want to see pictures of you with me in full sun.
    Max found me then, and I was totally busted for ogling him. A knowing smile spread across his face and he hooked a finger at me, beckoning.
    When I drew closer, he teased, “You were staring.”
    I laughed, looking away. “Was not.”
    “For someone who so enjoys being stared at in her most intimate moments, you’re awfully shy about being caught playing the voyeur.”
    I felt my smile shrink a little as something ached beneath my ribs. I spoke before even really planning to. “I’m just really happy to see you.”
    This clearly caught him off guard. He recovered with a bright smile. “Ready to play?”
    I nodded, oddly nervous despite the rush of heat that spread across my skin. We’d had an audience of a hundred mirrors last week, but had otherwise been entirely alone. Here, even at six thirty on a Friday night, the library was bustling.
    “This looks interesting,” I mumbled, turning to lead us inside when he pressed two subtle fingers to the small of my back.
    “Trust me,” he said, leaning forward to whisper, “this is right up your alley.”
    Once inside, he moved in front of me, walking ahead as if we were simply two strangers passing through the library entryway and headed in the same