She cuts her eyes at me with a small smile and hits the button, then ignores me as she steps to the wall to my left and studies her phone.

The ride to the second floor shouldn’t take any time at all, but these old elevators in the justice building seem like they’re powered by hamsters or something. After several seconds of chugging upward, the car slowly stops and the dude exits. No one else joins us, which isn’t surprising because it’s late Friday afternoon and the courthouse is pretty much dead at this time. There are only a few judges milling around hearing stupid motions like mine, with the other courtrooms usually cleared of the dockets by Thursday.

As the elevator starts its slow ascent again, I can’t help but notice movement from the vision in red. She glances down at the side of her leg and whispers, “Shoot.”

My attention moves with laser focus, and I watch as she drops one hand down to the side of her right knee, fingering the material at the hem of her skirt. Against the dark shading of her stockings, it’s not hard to see that she has a tiny tear in the silk, and I have to wonder if my briefcase snagged up against her when we ran into each other.

I expect her to just drop the hem of her skirt, but instead she raises it a few inches higher, tracing the path of the run that’s creeping up her leg. My breath catches in my throat as she slides the edge of her skirt up an inch, two, three . . . right to midthigh, and yet the run seems to go higher than that.

I silently beg her to keep going, but she drops the skirt and looks up at me with a sheepish grin. “Well . . . that just won’t do at all.”

I open my mouth to say something that I’m sure will be full of wit and charm while trying to figure out how I can get her phone number, but she stuns me when she holds out her phone to me.

“Here . . . if you don’t mind holding this.”

I push off from the wall and accept her phone under no volition of my own. She smiles at me coyly and I return the smile with uncertainty.

She stuns me yet again when she puts all her weight on her left leg, balancing herself with one hand on the wall. Lifting her right foot up and back, she bends to the side and takes off her shoe, dropping it the floor.

Shocked is not the word I would use to describe my feeling when she shoots me a grin and then starts to lift the hem of her skirt back up with both hands. She slides the silk material up her thighs and I’m helpless to look away as it climbs higher and higher. Right to the fucking tops of her stockings, which are trimmed with black lace and tiny red bows and clipped into place with red garters.

Swallowing hard, my pulse hammering madly, I watch as she uses her perfectly manicured hands to pop the clips holding her stocking up.

I see the pale, smooth skin of her upper thigh, and if she’d move that fucking skirt up just another two inches, I’d get a peek of what I’m betting is matching black lace covering her pussy. But no such luck. She then deftly hooks her thumbs under the lace edges of the stocking and slides the offending ripped silk down her leg.

Vaguely, I hear the chiming of the elevator as it passes floor after floor. My heart is galloping over the thought that the car could stop at any moment to let another passenger on, but she doesn’t seemed to be fazed in the slightest by undressing in a public place in front of a perfect stranger.

Right about the time the silk travels down over her knee, I start imagining what it would be like to have my tongue trace that same path, and I start to get hard.

When the silk finally clears her foot—which I might add is a fantastically sexy foot with cherry-red nail polish to match her suit—I finally remember to pull a breath into my starved lungs before I suffocate.

Standing back up straight, the woman reaches her hand out with the stocking in it and says, “If you don’t mind holding this, please.”

I wasn’t going to say no, so I reach out and grab the delicate material from her, rubbing it in between my fingers as I bring my own hand back toward me. My cock is now pulsing in my pants, and pornographic images of me pushing her against the wall and hammering my way inside her flood my senses.

My eyes are burning as she reaches calmly into her purse and pulls out a spare stocking.

That’s handy.

She efficiently, but in no less sexy a manner, bends over and slides her foot into the silk, pulling the edges up her calf, over her knee, up that smooth thigh, while pulling the skirt up along the way, and then she’s clipping the lace with the garters again.

Fucking beautiful.

She makes a little bit of a show of smoothing the edges of the stocking against her skin, then she slowly lowers the material of her skirt. I take a quick glance and see we’re almost to the twentieth floor, and a sense of urgency takes hold of me as I realize this sexy-as-hell woman will be walking away from me in just a few moments. I want to slam my palm against the Stop button and demand that she change her other stocking, but that would, of course, be ludicrous.

Because there’s nothing strange about a woman stripping in front of me in the elevator, right?

She reaches down and picks up her shoe, puts it back on, and snaps her purse shut. Turning to me, she gives me another coy smile and says, “Can I have my phone back?”

I blink hard, just as the twentieth floor chimes and the car comes to a slow, grinding halt. I hold her phone out to her, and she takes it, scraping her pinkie nail across the back of my hand, which causes lust to bubble hot inside me and my dick to swell larger.

“Thanks,” she murmurs, and steps toward the doors as they start to open.

“Wait,” I call out, and she looks over her shoulder at me. Holding out her stocking that I’m now clutching quite tightly in my hand, I say, “Here.”

I can’t think of anything else to say, because most of my blood has congregated south of my waist.

She grins at me, gives me a quick wink, and says, “Keep it.”

My hand drops down, my thumb and forefinger rubbing against the soft material that I’m betting smells fucking delicious.

Turning away, she starts to walk out of the elevator car.

“Wait,” I call out again and slam my other hand against the button that keeps the doors open. She turns all the way around to me and tilts her head in curiosity. She’s a fucking vision. “What’s your name?”

Cocking an eyebrow at me briefly, she leans in slightly and whispers, “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”

She then walks away and doesn’t look back. A quick glance at my watch shows me I have about two minutes to get to the courtroom for my motion hearing, which means no time to chase her.

“Then how do I find you?” I call out to her retreating figure as she makes her way down the hallway, her heels clicking against the tile.

She doesn’t even turn around, but I distinctly hear her laugh and say, “Oh, I’m sure we’ll meet again. Karma has a way.”

I release the button to the doors, and they close slowly. I practically stagger backward against the back wall and involuntarily bring her stocking up to my nose. Hints of lavender and vanilla. Yup, fucking delicious. As soon as this motion hearing is over, I’m going back down to the twentieth floor and finding this woman. I’ll get her number, and if there’s a God, I’ll talk her into going out with me tonight. And if miracles really do occur, I’ll be fucking her, too.

Grinning stupidly, I shove her stocking into the side of my briefcase and try to banish my erection so it’s not standing out when I walk into the courtroom.

I can’t believe that just fucking happened to me.

Shit like that never happens to me.

Absolutely surreal.