“Take it off. Fold it neatly.”
His goddess was not a waifish model or a cold-eyed socialite. She was Anya. Anya Rodionova, his former head of security, a woman whose thighs could crush a watermelon and whose mind could unravel a corporate conspiracy before breakfast. Her authority was not performative; it was elemental, like gravity.
He swallowed. “Yes, Anya. I was wrong.”
He bent lower, pressing his forehead to the cool, polished wood of the floor. Then, he took her right foot in his trembling hands. He began with his lips, a whisper of a kiss on her instep. He could feel the latent strength in the tendons beneath the skin. He kissed again, firmer this time, trailing his mouth along the ridge of her arch, breathing in the clean, human scent of her—soap, a trace of the leather from her boots, and the faint, unique pheromone that was simply Anya .
