She stood up and moved to him. He took her by the hips and settled her over his lap, hiking up her dress.

“No,” she snapped, hands over his. “I’m broken.”

“I’m just touching you, doll. Innocent little touches, I promise.”

She hesitated, and then let him, albeit with a look of suspicion.

He suppressed a smile. “See? I’m not doing anything. Why are you always so hard?”

“Same reason as you.”

“Power?”

“Shit childhood.”

He went still. “What makes you think I had a shit childhood?”

“You grew up on my side of the tracks. There’s no need to elaborate more.”

He frowned because she was right. “I thought your grandmother gave you a good life.”

“She did what she could, but I was always led astray.”

“Because of your mother?”

Emma exhaled slowly, scowling at him. “You went through every part of my life, didn’t you?”

He nodded, slowly. “I already told you I did.”

“Then you know what she did.”

“Yes.”

“Well, it messed me up good, and I wasn’t a very nice kid.”

He chuckled lightly. “Neither was I.”

“No? What made you a little shit?”

“My parents threw me out at fifteen. Can’t say they ever gave a shit about me, so after that abuse, it was sort of a relief to be out of there.”

Instead of looking at him with sympathy, her eyes grew hard with anger. “What a bunch of assholes.”

“Yeah.”

She waited for him to say more, but Borden hadn’t talked about that part of his life since… Well, ever. Not even to Kate.

“You know what desperation is like, right?” he asked her quietly, searching for her understanding.

She nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

“That’s why I sold drugs at sixteen. I couldn’t make it in the streets otherwise. I was wayward. Very fucked up. I latched on to some hard stuff, too. Figured taking the drugs would help me cope. I think I was searching for something to fix how broken my life was.”

“And drugs did that?”

“Yeah, they did. When you grow up so poor, so alone and isolated, so degraded by the people who are meant to love you, when you’re set free into the world, you find ways to forget all of it. Getting high worked.”

He hadn’t realized how hard he was gripping her thighs until he looked down at them. He eased his hands immediately and took a deep breath. What the fuck was he doing talking about this shit? It wasn’t important. That was all water under the bridge.

“I know what you mean,” she simply said, and that was it. No words of sympathy, no consoling him, just understanding. Pure and real understanding that he instantly felt, and it was a nice feeling, like being weightless without that extra pressure sitting in your chest.

Fucking hell, this girl… She was something else. He couldn’t shake the feeling away in that moment. Just perfection. Real perfection, not the fantasized kind.

Emma leaned forward and gently kissed him. All that tension in his stomach withered away at her soothing touch, and he wrapped an arm around her waist and kissed her back. Languidly, he roamed her mouth, stroking her tongue, taking in her unique taste that excited him like nothing else.

She lightly rolled her hips against him, and her breaths grew heavy. She wanted more of him. Un-fucking-believable.

He squeezed her ass, ready for another hip-roll when the office door suddenly jerked open. Borden tore away from her mouth and looked over her shoulder. Hawke stepped in, staring urgently at him with a screwed up face.

“Borden,” he said sharply, “we’ve got a problem.”

Borden’s hand was still on her ass when he gritted out impatiently, “What’s the problem?”

Hawke glanced between him and Emma, displeasure clear on his face. “It’s a private matter.”

“Talk.”

Emma tried to pull back, but Borden’s grip tightened. She wasn’t going anywhere. Hawke would be gone soon and then he’d be inside that wet warmth all over again. Admittedly, he wasn’t thinking straight.

“We found a man sneaking into the club,” Hawke explained. “Said he was unarmed when we caught him, and we searched him thoroughly to make sure. He had a gun in his fucking underwear. Real nasty thing.”

Startled, Emma stared at Borden with a gaping mouth. Borden was no longer paying attention to her. He was staring hard at Hawke, a thousand questions flooding through him. A simmer of anger he surprisingly hadn’t felt in a while began to surface.

“Some dickhead thought they could mill past my men with a gun on him,” he muttered, his eyes hardening. “How delusional is he?”

“He’s not talking,” Hawke replied evenly, fighting his own anger.

“He’ll talk to me,” Borden calmly said. It was forceful, but he wasn’t about to rage with Emma in their midst. She was starting to really matter to him, and the last thing he needed was her to get upset by him.

“You’ll take care of it then.” Hawke wasn’t asking. He knew already Borden would.

“Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

Hawke walked out, and silence swept the room. Emma was staring questionably at Borden.

“What are you going to do?” she asked him.

Borden didn’t look at her as he sat up in his chair and gently moved her off. He grabbed his keys off the desk, exhaling. “I’m going to take care of it, Emma.”

She swallowed hard, standing before him. “Don’t…don’t hurt him, Borden.”

“Don’t hurt him? That man was coming to hurt me. If he’d found me vulnerable, I’d be eating a bullet.”

“But he’s been caught. I’m sure he’ll be scared off now.”

“Don’t be naïve. I make a dozen enemies a day. I can’t afford to let one of them go.”

“So what are you going to do then?”

Borden just looked at her.

Her lips trembled. “Borden, don’t kill him.”

“I won’t,” Borden lied.

She roamed over his features, trying to see through his façade. “That’s not true, is it?”

He stood up, not responding. He shoved his keys and lighter into his pocket and began moving to the door.