She hunted around the room for her dress and underwear but couldn’t find her panties.

Why did it have to be her panties?

She dressed hastily and was thankful that her walk of shame would span only the length of his room to the connecting door that led to her room. Nobody else would see her.

When she had the door firmly shut behind her, she wobbled over to the bed, where most of the contents of her suitcase were chaotically strewn all over the duvet cover, and sank down in relief. Her entire body still shook in the aftermath of the best sex—and the biggest mistake—of her life.

She buried her face in her hands.

“It’s just sex,” she told herself, and was embarrassed by the unsteady pitch of her voice.

And by the lie. She was definitely embarrassed by the blatant lie, even if the only person she was trying to deceive was herself.

That wasn’t just sex. That had been the most mind-numbing, bone-melting, awe-inspiring forty-five minutes of her life, and there was no getting around that.

The irritating man certainly knew his way around a woman’s body.

Her nipples ached just thinking about it, and to be frank, everything else was still tightening and convulsing in the aftermath of the soul-shattering orgasm she’d just had.

But to sleep with Dante Damaso?

She shuddered in a way that had nothing to do with the microexplosions still tingling all over her body and everything to do with the fact that she could barely stand the man.

So what if he was mouth-wateringly gorgeous?

He was still an obnoxious, misogynistic jerk with a smug self-assurance that rubbed her the wrong way every time he spoke.

Then there was the way he practically sneered every time he said Miss Knight, or the way he couldn’t seem to look at her when he talked to her, or seemed incapable of a single please or thank-you.

And—horribly—after one stupid mistake on her very first day of work, he now insisted on painstakingly checking every single letter she typed for him before she was allowed to e-mail it.

It was humiliating, and while the mistake hadn’t been repeated since then, he made it absolutely clear that he did not trust her to do anything more challenging than make coffee, water the plant, and send his kiss-off notes.

Of course, he didn’t micromanage the rest of his staff the way he did Cleo, and she knew if he weren’t one of her brother’s buddies, Dante would probably have fired her within the first week.

But she was damned if she’d quit, the way he obviously expected—wanted?—her to.

And she had slept with him.

She couldn’t even blame alcohol, exhaustion, or temporary insanity . . . hold on.

Maybe she could blame temporary insanity.

She must have lost her mind.

Why else would she have slept with the condescending, arrogant bastard?