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Zach looked at Nora and saw something flash across her eyes, some secret worry of her own.

“I’m sorry,” Nora said and Zach could tell she meant it. Zach ran a single finger over Nora’s forehead and down her face. With his thumb he caressed her full bottom lip.

“Thank you. So what’s the new game? This one’s about to drive me to quit drinking.”

“Perish the thought. Ever played ‘I’ve never’?”

“I’ve never played I’ve never.” Zach knew he was as drunk now as he’d been in a long time.

“Fun game. Very easy. I say something I’ve never done, and if you’ve actually done it then you take a shot.”

“What haven’t you done?”

“A few things. For example, I’ve never…” She leaned in toward him. She moved close enough he could smell her perfume and even taste it on his burning tongue, close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body. “I’ve never let an erotica writer handcuff me to her desk and go down on me.”

Something caught in Zach’s throat. He looked into Nora’s eyes and felt the foundations of his resolve shudder. He’d never let a woman handcuff him and do anything to him. But tonight…he looked down at his shot glass.

“Never done that. Never will.”

“You sure about that?” Nora stared him down. He reached out to touch her knee, and she slapped the handcuffs on his right wrist. “Look familiar? I thought we should put your prankster’s gift to good use at least once.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“And you’re so turned on right now you can hardly breathe. Your pupils are dilated, your skin is flushed, and it’s not from the whiskey and we both know it.”

Zach met her eyes and said nothing.

“Thirteen months, Zach. You don’t need to be afraid of me anymore.”

He had a vague memory of standing on Nora’s porch thinking that if he crossed her threshold tonight for any reason other than her book everything would change between them. Zach took the shot glass in his hand. He looked down at the amber liquid and then back into Nora’s eyes. Raising the glass to his lips, he downed his shot. He watched a grin spread ear to ear across Nora’s face. For a single moment she was all smiles.

“Good boy.”

For someone he thought was as drunk as he, Nora moved with a swiftness and precision that almost terrified him. She pushed him on his back, yanked his arms over his head and cuffed his wrists around the leg of her desk. Straddling him at the stomach, Nora unbuttoned her black silk pajama top and let it slide off her arms. He felt the wisp of silk brush his face before she threw it aside and on top of his coat. Under her shirt she wore a black bra that revealed far more than it concealed. He couldn’t take his eyes off her curves, off her pale skin and shoulders.

Nora slid her hands under his T-shirt. Her hands on his bare skin sent every nerve firing. She bent over and kissed the center of his stomach. Unzipping his jeans, she worked them down low enough to expose the top of his hips. Zach inhaled sharply when she bit his hip bone.

“Nora—”

Nora rose up and covered his lips with one finger.

“Soren used to call me his Siren,” she whispered, bending over him until she hovered an inch away from his face. “He said the things I did with my mouth could blow any man off course. Don’t you want to know what he meant by that?”

Zach didn’t answer but Nora didn’t seem to care. She started at his neck and kissed her way down his body. A soft sigh escaped his lips as she took him in her mouth. Not even all that alcohol could blunt the pleasure of what her tongue, her lips did to him. Her hair covered her face like a veil. The tendrils of her curls tickled his stomach.

So long…it had been so long since he’d felt something so intense, so sharp that he could almost mistake the pleasure for pain. Zach ached to touch Nora but when he tried he remembered the handcuffs.

“Relax, Zach. Just enjoy.” Nora paused to kiss his stomach again. “Your only job right now is to surrender.”

Surrender? He’d forgotten how. He took a deep breath and laid his head back as she kept working on him. Pressure built deep in his hips.

“Nora,” he gasped a warning that she didn’t heed. He flinched hard and came with a ragged breath. Through the haze of alcohol and orgasm he saw Nora sit up on his thighs. She picked up the whiskey, poured it and downed him and the shot in one swallow.

She looked down at him.

“I love a whiskey chaser.”

* * *

Zach opened his eyes and immediately regretted the decision. He closed them again when he realized he wasn’t in his flat. He was still at Nora’s.

With grave reservations, Zach dragged himself to a sitting position. The movement jarred his already ringing skull and had the unfortunate side effect of jarring his memory into recalling last night’s events. Nora and he had… No, almost. Zach leaned back and rested his aching eyes. Shame flooded his system when he remembered how he’d succumbed to her and let her… God, he let his writer go down on him.

Zach opened his eyes again and looked around. He sat fully dressed and on Nora’s living-room sofa, not in her bedroom. Where she was he had no idea. He stood and wandered to her office but she was nowhere to be seen. He picked up her phone and called for a taxi to take him to the train station. He hung up and found the downstairs bathroom. On the mirror Nora had taped a note—“Morning, Sunshine,” it read. “Catholics-1, Scousers-0.” Zach ripped the note off the mirror and tossed it in the wastebasket. He noticed she’d left a toothbrush out for him and a bottle of aspirin. He made quick use of both. When he opened the medicine cabinet door to return the aspirin to the shelf, his eyes caught Nora’s name on a pill bottle. He knew he was being shamefully nosy but he couldn’t stop himself from squinting his aching eyes to read the label. Why on earth, Zach wondered, would Nora take a beta-blocker, the same drug his father had to take for his heart trouble? Zach couldn’t believe someone who seemed as alive and vibrant as Nora could have such a serious health problem. With a shaking hand, Zach returned the bottle to the cabinet and shut the door.

Stumbling from the bathroom, Zach heard a noise coming from the direction of the kitchen. Every part of him wanted to grab his coat and leave before anyone noticed he’d awoken. But he knew he’d have to face the morning-after awkwardness sooner or later. And after finding that terrifying pill bottle, he had to see Nora and make sure she was well.

He found Nora and Wesley bustling about the kitchen attempting to cook breakfast in a manner that appeared more combative than collaborative.