"Aria, what are you doing?" Damien hissed.

His large hands shot out, clamping around her wrists, pinning them firmly against the leather console.

Aria blinked, struggling uselessly against his grip. "I am trying to help you ice your balls!"

"You don’t want to do that," Damien gritted out.

"Why? Are you shy?" Aria challenged, arching a brow. "I’ve seen it a dozen times, Damien."

"That is not the issue," Damien ground out, leaning closer as his voice dropped into a low whisper. "If your hands are on me, touching me down there, I am going to get hard. And if I get hard, the blood rushing to bruised, inflamed tissue is going to hurt ten times worse."

Aria froze.

A slight blush reddened her cheeks, rushing all the way down to her collarbones.

"I... I wasn’t trying to seduce you!" she stuttered, her eyes wide and defensive. "I was just trying to help apply the ice!"

Damien’s golden eyes darkened, his gaze dropped to her parted lips.

"You don’t have to try, Aria," Damien murmured, his voice a dark, velvet rasp. "You turn me on just by existing."

Aria’s breath hitched. The tension in the car was so thick it was almost suffocating.

HOOOOONK.

The blaring horn of a car directly behind the Maserati shattered the trance like glass.

Aria snapped her head up. The traffic light had turned green.

She ripped her wrists out of his loosened grip and slammed her foot onto the accelerator.

The Maserati shrieked as she tore down the avenue, weaving through the morning gridlock. Aria drifted the car around the corner, slamming on the brakes. The vehicle screeched to a violently abrupt halt right in front of Zoe’s apartment building, the tires kissing the concrete curb perfectly.

Zoe was standing on the sidewalk, clutching a garment bag and her large tote. She looked exhausted, stressed out of her mind, and deeply confused. Her eyes darted around the street, clearly searching for Richard and the familiar SUV.

The tinted window rolled down.

Zoe’s eyes zeroed in on Aria sitting behind the steering wheel. The confusion instantly flash-boiled into terror.

Zoe’s jaw dropped. She almost inhaled a bug as she gasped, stepping toward the car.

"Aria! What the fuck are you doing in the driver’s seat?!" Zoe shrieked. "Didn’t your license get revo—"

"SHUT UP AND GET IN THE CAR, ZOE!" Aria yelled loudly, her voice pitching up in a frantic, nervous panic to completely drown out her best friend’s words.

She shot a glance at Damien, who was already raising a highly suspicious eyebrow.

"WE ARE SO LATE!" Aria continued to yell over the engine. "HURRY UP!"

Zoe yanked the rear door open, threw the garment bag across the seat, and dove into the back of the Maserati headfirst. She slammed the door shut just as Aria floored the gas pedal again.

Zoe scrambled to buckle her seatbelt, gripping the leather door handle for dear life as the G-force pinned her back against the cushions.

She looked at the front seats, restraining the overwhelming urge to scream at her best friend for being so late. But she wasn’t about to lose her mind in front of the man who actually paid her salary.

"Good morning, Mr. Sinclair," Zoe greeted stiffly, plastering on a professional smile.

Damien, who was gripping the handle above his window with white knuckles as Aria cut off a city bus, didn’t turn around.

"Good morning," Damien replied politely, though his jaw was locked tight.

Zoe leaned forward slightly, that was when she noticed it.

Damien’s belt was unbuckled. His trousers were unzipped. And sticking visibly out of the top of his fly was the bright blue, plastic corner of a gel ice pack.

Zoe quickly looked away, leaning back, telling herself that what they do in their sex life is none of her business. Glancing one more time at Damien staring straight ahead, she changed her mind, her curiosity could not be contained. She’ll ask Aria later.

The rest of the ride was a blur of G-force, swearing, and aggressive lane-merging. Aria drove like a stunt double with nothing to lose.

But Manhattan traffic is the ultimate equalizer.

They hit a wall of standstill gridlock just five blocks away from the studio. It was a bumper-to-bumper parking lot of misery.

"Move! Move your stupid Prius!" Aria screamed, laying her hand flat on the Maserati’s horn.

In the backseat, the loud, shrill marimba ringtone of Zoe’s phone shattered the tense air in the cabin.

Zoe pulled her phone out. The caller ID flashed brightly on the screen: EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - GOOD MORNING AMERICA.

Zoe stopped breathing.

She checked the time on her phone.

8:55 AM.

They were exactly five minutes away from the live broadcast. Five minutes.

"Oh my god," Zoe whimpered, her hands beginning to violently shake. "It’s the talk show director. They’re looking for us."

"Tell them we’re pulling into the lot!" Aria panicked, white-knuckling the steering wheel as she tried to inch the car forward into a gap that simply didn’t exist. "Tell them I’m in hair and makeup!"

"I can’t lie to them!" Zoe hyperventilated, a full-blown meltdown activating. "They have eyes, Aria! They know you aren’t in the building! If you miss this segment, the network will blacklist you! You will be permanently banned from daytime TV forever! Your career is literally dangling over a cliff!"

The phone kept ringing.

Ring. Ring. Ring.

The stakes had never been higher. Zoe was too paralyzed by anxiety to swipe the accept button. Her finger hovered over the screen, trembling. Aria was losing her mind in the front seat, swearing at a pick-up that refused to move forward into the space.

The ringing was about to stop. It was a few seconds away from going straight to voicemail and sealing Aria’s fate.

Damien calmly turned around in the passenger seat. Zoe stared at his outstretched palm. She numbly placed the vibrating phone into his hand.

Damien swiped the green button, accepting the call right before it rang out and put it on speaker.