No sentimental strings attached.

Which is why it's so alarming to me that, with my limbs wrapped around Parker, with his body driving into mine in powerful, passionate thrusts that make my head spin, there's nothing perfunctory about it. Just like everything else in my orderly life, Parker took one look at my rules of intimacy and chose to break every single one.

"Zoe," he rasps, moving faster. "Open your eyes."

I don't fight him - my lashes flutter open at his command. In the past two hours he's possessed me entirely, orgasm by orgasm, stripping away my armor until I'm laid bare beneath him. Utterly defenseless.

"Look at me, Zoe."

Through the cloud of lust, I force my eyes to focus. His gaze traps mine, razor-sharp. The hazel of his irises is so bright, so intense, I feel like I could drown in the depths of his stare.

"Who's touching you?" he asks, pounding into me.

I gasp. "You are."

"Say my name, Zoe."

"Parker," I breathe, arching my back.

His forehead drops to my neck when he hears his name on my lips and he groans. "That's right, baby. I'm fucking you. You're mine, now." His mouth crushes mine in a carnal, brutal kiss. "This is where it starts. You and me." His strokes are getting faster, deeper, harder. "You hear me? No more running."

His hips move in a circle and I nearly shatter. I feel it building again inside me - I don't know how much more I can take before I explode under his hands.

"Say it, Zoe."

"No more running," I manage to gasp as he pushes deeper.

"You and me," he repeats. "Together."

I nod and pull him closer, nails digging into his back so hard I'm afraid I'll break the skin. "Together."

"That's right baby."

He drives deep one last time, his shoulders shaking as he finds release, and I cry out his name as my world flips on its axis again.

It's just sex, I think as I lay beneath him, trembling from the force of my attraction, from the things he made me feel, from the boundaries he pushed, both physical and emotional.

Just sex.

So... why is it suddenly so unimaginable to think about having another throwaway one-night-stand ever again? And why don't I protest when he cradles me close to his chest, his lips in my hair and his hands splayed across my skin, like he can't quite bring himself to let go?

I don't know.

All I do know is...

Lying inside the span of his arms is the safest place I've spent a night since my parents were killed. And that's not something you question.

It's something you treasure.

I don't wake him when I slide out of bed a few hours later and pad my way over to the bank of computers by the far wall, tugging his giant black sweater on over my head as I go. I've decided I'm not returning it; after a week in my possession, I've grown too fond of it to let him take it back.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

I make sure to toggle off the volume as the monitors power up, so as not to wake Parker. I can't sleep. No matter how I've tried to quiet my mind, thoughts of Lancaster and the Lynn Factory keep haunting me, playing over and over until I have no choice but to confront them.

It's late, so Luca's probably asleep, but I send him a quick text anyway, reminding him to check out the factory pipes if he has a chance tomorrow. Then, I crack my neck, flex my wrists, and dive down the rabbit hole.

The Clover virus has spread completely through the LC network, by this point - I have access to almost all their files and servers. Which is great... but it's also a lot more information than I thought it would be. It'll take me several years to pour through all of it.

I feel like Sisyphus pushing a damn boulder up a mountainside as I attempt to read through emails and business contracts, ledgers and financial reports. Any headway I make feels imperceptible in the face of so much material.

An hour ticks by, then two. Legal jargon blurs before my bleary eyes as they fly over the screen. I'm practically asleep on my keyboard when I finally discover something - well, I think it's something.

Deep in the archives of permits and safety inspections, there's a bevy of deleted documents, left behind like invisible strands of DNA at the scene of a homicide. The average computer user will drag and drop a file into their desktop trash bin and assume it's gone forever.

That's rarely the case.

The file still exists until it's been permanently scrubbed from the hard drive. If you're looking for something suspicious on a computer... My advice? Search for the things they tried to delete from existence. That's usually a good place to start.

And it's exactly where I find the first clue in the LC case.

The single-page document looks like a hundred other documents I've scrolled past, tonight, but a short, four-letter word catches my eye.

PIPE.

My eyes widen as they read. It's a work order for new pipes to be installed at the Lynn Factory.

In itself, that's not particularly earth-shattering.

The weird part is... it's dated two days after the plant closed for business. Those shiny pipes I saw when I snuck in were brand new.

So, Lancaster replaced them after closing the place down.

But why?

The question nags at me like a paper cut on a knuckle, refusing to heal over no matter how long I stare at the screen. When Luca suggested we take down Lancaster, I was hesitant. Now that I've started digging, I'm too invested in the project to turn back. I have to know the answer, have to solve the mystery.

Before I fall asleep at my desk, I email a PDF of the work order to Luca and print out a copy for my own files. I've just popped the last Reese's cup from my stash into my mouth when I feel two hands settle on my shoulders and a warm, wet set of lips hit my neck.

"Come back to bed," Parker murmurs, his voice still husky from sleep.

"Can't," I say around a mouthful of chocolate. "I'm working."

"It's two in the morning."

I shrug.

He sighs and crouches down beside me to peer at my screen. "This the Lancaster case?"

I dart a wary glance at him and nod.

Parker's eyes are still on the screen. "What are you looking for?"

I pause, searching for the right words.

He must notice my hesitation, because he looks over at me with a small smile playing on his lips. "Still don't trust me?"

"It's not that I don't trust you." I swallow. "I just don't know how much of this I should share with you. WestTech has done business with Lancaster Consolidated in the past. Anything I say could complicate business matters for you."

"My father is the one who worked with scumbags like Robert Lancaster." Parker's lips twist. "Since I took over, I've been weeding through our corporate partners a bit. Clearing house - quietly, of course. Don't want investors to panic or stocks to take a tumble. But I'm hoping within a year, WestTech will be free of its less-than-upstanding connections, for the most part. It's one of the priorities I brought into the company, when I decided I was taking over. I refuse to run our family business the way my father did - through schemes and manipulation and bribery."

I stare at him in silence, a little awed.

"What?" he asks, brow knitting.

"Sometimes I forget that you're kind of a big deal," I whisper, laughing lightly. "You're such a-"

Playboy. Man-child.

His brows lift.

I bite back the word. "I mean, you don't act like a normal CEO. Most of those guys are total tool bags."

He shakes his head, grabs the seat of my rolling desk chair, and spins me toward him so he's kneeling between my legs with his hands on either armrest.

"Darling, a lot of people mistake being a dick for being in charge." His eyes crinkle. "But I've found you don't have to stomp around like a tyrant to earn respect. Life as a CEO isn't all that different from life on the road. Bottom line - you treat people like shit, they'll be shit workers. Treat them like gold..."

"Let me guess," I interject. "Everyone gets gold stars?"

He grins. "I was going to say and you all make a fuckton of money, but that works, too."

"A CEO who doesn't have a god-complex, power-trip, or obsession with belittling people," I marvel. "What is the world coming to?"

He chuckles and before I can react, he leans in and kisses me - hard, uncompromising, his tongue invading my mouth.

"You taste like peanut butter," he murmurs as he pulls away. I watch his eyes dilate as his hands slide around my waist beneath the bottom hem of his sweater. "This is mine."

"It was," I correct. "I'm confiscating it."

"Looks better on you, anyway." His gaze flickers down to my mouth. "I like you in my clothes. Almost as much as I like you out of them..."

A pulse of heat shoots between my legs. "I have to work."

"Uh huh." His hands slide higher, up my ribcage. The sensual scrape of his calluses against my skin makes my teeth sink into my bottom lip.

"Parker," I protest weakly.

It's the wrong thing to say, if I was hoping to deter him. Hearing me breathe his name only seems to make him more desperate for me. And apparently I'm equally desperate, because when he guides me to the floor and pulls the sweater up over my head, there's not an ounce of hesitation in my mind as I wrap my arms around his back to bring him closer. All thoughts of conspiracy theories and corruption disappear from my head as he makes slow, sweet love to me beneath my desk.

"What are you doing tomorrow?" Parker calls from the next aisle over.

Waking up this morning to discover there was absolutely no food in my refrigerator besides some expired milk and what, at one point in the distant past, we think may've been a banana, he dragged me down the street to the small convenience store where I occasionally stock up on groceries.

And by groceries I mean chocolate peanut butter cups and Diet Coke.

Breakfast of champions.

But of course, Parker is some kind of crunchy granola health-nut who likes to start his day eating cereal that looks like it was made for rabbits while drinking organic pomegranate juice out of an eight-dollar plastic bottle. Needless to say, he doesn't exactly approve of my highly-nutritious eating habits.

"Tomorrow?" I call back, staring absentmindedly at the small selection of flowers behind the glass doors in the corner.

No more grocery store roses for me.

"Yes, tomorrow." Parker rounds a corner with one of those little plastic carriers in his hands. It's filled to the brim with things I will never eat.

"What is all that?" I ask, staring at the groceries.

"Ho boy. We're going to have to start from scratch with this one, aren't we?" He shakes his head, like a kindergarten teacher with one of his students. "This green stuff is called lettuce. And the other stuff, right here, is called broccoli. Can you say bro-cco-li?"

I shoot him a death glare. "Shut up. You know what I meant."

"Did I?" He grins.

"Why are you getting all that food?"

"To eat." His head tilts. "Why? What do you usually do with your food? Do you have some weird fetish I should know about, where you strip naked and cover yourself with- "Seriously, don't finish that sentence."

His lips clamp shut to hold in a laugh. "Fine."