“I was fortunate.”

“Damn fool for going back in, but it made you look good.” He laughed quietly. “Pity it had to be Dempsey who saved you.”

“She did a good job.”

“And now you’re rewarding her for it. People are loving the two of you together.”

Not just people, Eli thought. He rather liked the idea of the two of them together himself, clearly a little too much, because he’d been in a foul mood since her rejection. Two weeks since he’d made Alexandra Dempsey scream with his mouth sucking on her gorgeous breasts and his fingers slicking through her tight pussy, and he was feverish with want. She had accompanied him to a few events since—the opening of a charter school for gifted children on Chicago’s North Side, the Women’s Business Development Center’s annual luncheon. All calculated moves by Madison that kept the press in a frenzy about the budding romance between the mayor and the firefighter.

He was trying to respect her boundaries, but he also recognized that their chemistry was so potent that it was uncontainable by those walls she had built. Now he’d had a taste, and satisfaction wouldn’t come until he’d claimed every inch of her.

“We’re all about pleasing the people,” Eli said in response to Sam’s comment.

“You can control her?”

God no. “That’s what people like. The fact that I can’t. The fact that she has a mind of her own and she’s not afraid to speak it.”

“You taking her to the gala?”

Eli gave a noncommittal grunt. Tomorrow night he would have to poker up even more than usual. His father, the greatest and most beloved state’s attorney Chicago had ever seen, would have an award named after him at a glitzy gala. Called the Weston Cooper Justice Award, in the future it would be given to someone who represented the late public servant’s principles of truth, justice, and the American way.

What a joke.

Eli turned in time to catch Sam staring at that photo of Weston Cooper shaking hands with Mayor Daley. He was so young then, just appointed as state’s attorney, a life of promise spread out before him. That Sam dared to look at it enraged Eli to the point he had to grab the windowsill to prevent him from pummeling the older man.

“Just watch she doesn’t get too mouthy,” he said with a derisive sniff. “You screwing her yet?”

The roar in his blood at Sam’s disrespectful tone made Eli’s hands itch to commit murder, but he’d learned long ago the virtue of keeping his emotions in check. Show them—the other candidates, Sam Cochrane, even the good people of Chicago—weakness, he might as well withdraw from the race now.

But with her . . . losing his shit with her, whether it was fighting or fucking, that would be downright liberating.

“I happen to admire her greatly.” It came out sounding pompous.

“After all that shit with my car, how you tried to protect her, insulate her . . .” Sam shook his head. “I should have sued her into the grave. But I could see you had a soft spot for her.”

Not soft, all hard. He wanted her and it was making him insane. Other women repelled him because they weren’t her.

“Firefighter Dempsey is good for my numbers, that’s all.”

“She’s never been one for impulse control. Her father was the same.”

“You used to be Sean Dempsey’s closest friend,” Eli said casually. The reasons why Sean and Sam fell out were a mystery, and Eli would never ask him about it outright. One day, Sam would tell him.

But not today.

He pivoted in the mayoral throne, facing Eli. “The city council is still bitching about the sign. Are they going to give me trouble?”

Eli sighed. Sam wanted to mount his name in twenty-foot-tall letters on one of his skyscrapers along the river walk. It would be a blot on the downtown landscape and the city council was not impressed. “There’ll be a vote on the ordinance next week.”

“Trump got away with it a couple of years back.”

“And that’s what you’re aspiring to?”

Sam parted his lips to form a shark’s smile. “Every Gotham needs a villain, Eli. Just be glad it’s me and not you.” Unsubtly, his eyes flicked to the photo of Eli’s father. The one that spelled all that soon-to-be-crushed promise.

“Make sure it happens.” He stood with an exaggerated brush of his lapels. “It’s a small thing to do in the grand scheme of things, don’t you think?”

With Sam’s departure, Eli was left to think about those small things. Death of his soul by a thousand cuts.

E n Cachette.

Alex blinked at the antique silver-framed nameplate by the door and studied the email on her phone again.

En Cachette, 69 E. Schiller, 2 p.m. Please don’t be late! —W

She might be within spitting distance of the tony boutiques of Oak Street, but she had never heard of an exclusive clothing store on the top floor of a five-million-dollar brownstone in the middle of Chicago’s wealthy Gold Coast. Perhaps it was some sort of kinky sex club—and why did that idea in the same headspace as Eli Cooper excite her so much?—but that seemed less likely when she remembered that Eli’s assistant, Whitney, had sent her the address for her sartorial makeover.

Apparently, the mayor didn’t trust her to dress herself. Alex was inclined to agree, but she would have been much happier to spend a few mind-numbing hours at Macy’s with her posse rather than be prodded by whatever lay behind this door. Tomorrow night, there was an award gala dedicated to Eli’s father, and guess who was going as his date?

Alex Dempsey was about to kick it Cinderella-style.

The last two weeks had been torture, leaving her as horny as a three-balled tomcat. At the events she attended with the mayor, they were never alone, a state of affairs she suspected he had manufactured. His polite, respectful distance confirmed it, the “fake dating” scenario he had promised. But when a girl’s had a sex ninja like Eli Cooper yielding orgasms with the lick of a nipple, she was bound to be feeling a touch dissatisfied . . . with her own hand in particular. The empty spot inside her craved fulfillment she suspected only he could give.

She knew what the bastard was doing. If she wanted to get off, she needed to get on board the Eli Cooper Sexpress. Come sin with the sinner.

She pushed the buzzer, and after a few seconds heard, “Bonjour?”

Bonjour? Holy croissan’wich, this shit was for real.

“It’s Alex Dempsey. I was sent here by—”

“Oui, oui.” The door clicked, making the barest of moneyed hums to signify she was invited in. She climbed up a narrow stairway until she reached the top floor, made up to look like a French brothel circa 1859. The décor consisted of grosgrain ribbon wallpaper, lavish drapes, and furniture that looked like it’d collapse if your eyes rested on it longer than ten seconds. Onyx black mannequins dotted the space languidly, wearing a lace bra here, skimpy panties there, as if someone had started dressing them and lost interest midway through.

A petite brunette emerged from behind a screen in a cloud of perfume that stung Alex’s nostrils from ten feet out.

“Meez Dempsee? It eez a pleasure!” She gave Alex the wet fish handshake, all while assessing her with a cool, judgmental gaze. “I am Odile. We are going to have a lot of fun, you and I.”

“Sure.” Alex would be the judge of the fun levels. “I’m here for a dress. There’s this gala thing . . .”

“Oui, oui, I know all about it. Come with me.”

Alex was ushered into a dressing room with a rack of prom-like dresses, a triptych mirror, and plush carpeting. Without so much as a by-your-leave, Odile whipped off Alex’s parka, scarf, and hoodie with a skill that rivaled the mayor’s.

“You are . . .” She fluttered a perfectly manicured claw over Alex’s outfit of jeans and a tee emblazoned with the slogan “Silly boys. Girls want fire trucks, too.” “. . . More full-figured than Monsieur Mayor led me to believe.”