This is dangerous. He’s my boss. I’m committing professional suicide here. Caz runs scalding hot and icy-cold, he’s bound to turn on me. Is this what happened with Harper? She got too close and then . . .  “Hey, I tagged you,” I whisper into his hair. “What do you intend to do about it?”


******


I spin around and stare at him. The candlelight lends everything a witchy, theatrical flair. Figures, after all, it is Halloween. 
His face is a fast moving flurry of emotion: fury, that elusive, unnamed sadness, and could it be—a glimmer of sudden lust? 


My chest fills with waves of unexpected, guilty desire. “Am I close?” I whisper, mirroring his words.


“Close,” he whispers back, his voice thick. He rises and stalks slowly toward me, locking onto his quarry, the inked panther on his neck rising and falling.

******


“Fun’s over,” he huffs.
I quirk up an eyebrow. “We can always have more.” What’s with me? A second ago I was thinking that we’d never work together. It’s his fault! He’s so adorable even when he’s fuming that I can’t make promises, even to myself.
When he rises and stalks off toward his studio, I know I haven’t softened him. 


“I have work to do,” he announces. “I have a big career.”

My mood slips right back into darkness, to stark, raw reality. Fuck your big career.