What she wasn’t sure about was why she couldn’t shake the feeling of unease lurking in the pit of her stomach.

She still felt sick that evening when she got home to her apartment. Normally cooking and watching close-captioned reruns of Friends helped her to destress, but tonight nothing was working.

Changing into her pajamas and settling down on the couch with a family-size tub of Phish Food ice cream, Lexi decided to call her brother. Robbie always helped her put things into perspective, and for once he was actually in her time zone, playing a bunch of concerts in Pittsburgh. Thanks to Lexi’s new Geemarc screen phone, a brilliant invention that enabled her to speak normally into the telephone then have the other person’s speech translated into text in front of her, she was gradually starting to escape the tyranny of e-mail. (Kruger-Brent had made a bid for Geemarc last year but lost out to a German rival. The next morning Lexi had her broker buy as much of the acquirer’s stock as he could get hold of. Today those shares were worth three times what she paid and were still rising.)

There was no answer in Robbie’s hotel room. He must have left for the Mellon concert hall already.

Maybe I should call Max directly? Talk to him about this stuff. But there was no way she could do that without landing August in the shit. As angry as she was with August, the last thing Lexi wanted was to have him and Max getting into some sort of office feud. They’re the two people at Kruger-Brent I trust the most. I’ll need them both on my side when I become chairman.

A red light flashed on the wall above the TV. Someone was downstairs. Flicking on the video screen by the front door, Lexi saw a male figure, shoulders hunched against the wind. When she saw who it was, she smiled.

He never comes to the apartment. I wonder what he wants at this time of night?

Buzzing him up, she dashed into the bathroom and brushed some bronzer onto her cheeks. Africa had been roasting, but Lexi’s schedule had left her precious little time to tan. Traveling always made her look drained and washed out. In her hurry, she managed to spill bronzing powder all over the bathroom floor. She was still on her hands and knees cleaning up when Max walked in.

“Jesus, what happened in here? A sandstorm?”

Lexi stood up and kissed him on the cheek.

“I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I know. I was on my way home from dinner and I thought I’d stop in. But look, if you’re too tired…”

“No, no. It’s fine.” In a thick cable-knit sweater and jeans, he looked even more handsome than usual. August’s words floated back to Lexi. I think you’re in love with him.

“Drink?”

“I’ll have a Scotch, thanks.”

She went into the kitchen to fix it for him. A few moments later, she jumped out of her skin. Creeping up behind her, Max slipped two cold hands around her waist. Then, so gently Lexi could barely feel it, he dropped a kiss on the bare skin on the back of her neck.

Okay. Now, that’s a move. Surely that counts as a move?

Or does the neck thing make it brotherly?

Crap.

She turned. Max was looking at her, his predatory eyes wandering over her features, as if seeing them for the first time.

“You had lunch with August Sandford today.”

How did he know that?

“Yes.”

“Did he make a move on you?”

Lexi was so surprised, she burst out laughing.

“Is that a yes?” Max asked angrily.

“No, it’s not a yes! It’s a no. Of course he didn’t make a move. August doesn’t think of me like that.”

“Sure he thinks of you like that. Every man on earth thinks of you like that.”

Max took Lexi’s face in his hands and drew her toward him. Suddenly his lips were pressing hard against her own and his tongue was in her mouth, eager, hungry. Then, just as suddenly, he pulled away. He looked angry.

“I don’t want you having lunch with him again.”

Lexi bridled. “Now wait just a minute. I don’t know where you think you get off telling me who I may or may not have lunch with. But if-”

Another kiss. This time Max’s icy hands slipped under Lexi’s shirt, grabbing hungrily at her breasts. All Lexi’s feminist instincts told her to push him away. But her groin seemed to have missed the Germaine Greer lecture. Instead of showing him curtly to the door, Lexi found herself pulling Max’s sweater over his head and fumbling for the belt buckle on his jeans.

Oh God. What was it August said about clouded judgment?

“I thought you weren’t attracted to me,” she murmured.

“You thought wrong.”

Yanking off Lexi’s pajama bottoms, Max carried her into the bedroom. Clothes from her Africa trip littered the bed, but Max didn’t bother to move them. Throwing her down on top of the mess, he spread her legs, bent his head low, and began to lick her, his tongue darting like an eel into the slippery wetness between her thighs. Lexi moaned. She felt her muscles tense and her back start to arch. Wriggling helplessly, she tried to move his head away. I mustn’t come too quickly. I mustn’t let him know how long I’ve wanted him. But it was no use. Lexi seemed to have no control over her body whatsoever. She bucked wildly as waves of pleasure coursed through her.

The instant her orgasm was over, Max pulled off his pants and crawled up the bed so that his face was over hers. Lexi looked into his eyes. She expected to see excitement, arousal, joy. Instead she found herself gazing into two bottomless black pools of…nothing. She felt a momentary stab of fear.

You aren’t Max. You’re a stranger. Who are you?

It was a fear tinged with excitement. Even in the days when she’d convinced herself she hated him, Lexi recognized something wild and animalistic in Max. Something dangerous. It was the part of him she had always secretly wanted to possess, to unleash. Now she was about to unleash it. She could barely breathe.

Max felt her trying to read him, trying to gauge who he really was. He flipped her onto her stomach so she couldn’t see his face. Then he entered her from behind, his huge penis filling her completely, satisfying her at last.

Lexi gasped with pleasure,

This is it. This is what sex is supposed to feel like.

Soon she was aware of nothing but the incredible sensations ripping through her body.

Max, too, was lost in the moment. He tried to hold himself back, but it was impossible. Lexi’s breasts felt like his mother’s breasts. Her hair, her skin, reeked of Eve. He was doing this for his mother. It was all for Eve. And yet Max felt unfaithful, dirty, pounding away like an animal on his cousin’s bare back.

It shouldn’t feel so good. Not with Lexi. Max hated Lexi.

I hate you.

Max came, screaming his mother’s name.

Unable to see his face, Lexi couldn’t hear him.

Lexi’s affair with Max was like a child’s secret treasure: too precious to be shown to others. When Lexi was a little girl, she’d had a beautiful antique box that she used to fill with special “nature things”-a bird’s egg that had fallen from a nest and landed, unbroken, on the lawn at Dark Harbor; a rabbit’s skull with bones worn so white that they glowed in the dark. If she could, she would have hidden Max’s love in that box. Taken it out at night when she was alone, like the rabbit’s skull, and gazed at it in wonder. The fact that no one at work knew they were together only added to the thrill of the relationship.

Max said: “We’re cousins. And colleagues. People wouldn’t understand.”

Lexi agreed. One day soon, she would be Max’s boss. Everyone’s boss. Discretion at Kruger-Brent was vital.

“People” would have understood even less had they been flies on the wall observing Max and Lexi’s love life. Since losing her virginity at sixteen, Lexi had been on a sexual mission, determined not to let her childhood abuse blunt her adult libido. She’d been so busy proving her sexuality, so busy showing lover after lover how much she enjoyed sex and how in control she was, she’d never stopped to figure out what it was that she actually wanted.