[ Greer's first impulse is to say something along the lines of who the hell names their kid Buffy? — but she bites it back. It's petty, and beneath the kind of woman who is much more accustomed to heads turning whenever she walks into a room. This is what she becomes around him, a reversion to the girl who allowed things like jealousy to get the better of her.

She's convinced herself, in the years since, that it never would have worked between them — not long-term. He'd always thought of her as something precious, something to be handled delicately, and she hadn't been able to voice the fact that she wanted him to hold her down, to pin her between rough thrusts and a hand wrapped around her throat, to grip a constellation of fingertip bruises into her hips so she could map them on herself later.

If he learned half of what she'd done in bed since getting to Washington, it might result in a few more gray hairs. ]

Maybe it was only a matter of time. [ Before their paths crossed again, before they ended up back in each other's orbit. She hasn't seen him in the flesh yet, but it's incredibly unfair that the sound of his voice still conjures a faint pulse between her legs, a subtle echo of her own quickened heartbeat. And then she gets a somewhat terrible idea. ]

Are they keeping you on the clock 24/7, or will you be in a position to buy me a drink one of these nights?