we got together,” John said. “You knew exactly how much time my job took.”

“I can’t take tenth place in your life forever,” Derek said. “I can’t watch you put me behind everything else. Your job is demanding, I understand that. I work hard, too. But I can’t be with someone I never see.”

John felt himself tensing at the threat behind those words. “You chained me to your bed so you could dump me?”

Derek took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “I think that you need to take a vacation.”

John sat up straight from where he’d been leaning back against the headboard, jerking against the cuffs. “Go to hell.”

“You’ve been working too hard, and-”

“You aren’t getting laid enough, and now you-”

“You’ve been working too many hours for too many days in a row. When was the last time you took a Saturday off? When was the last time you went home before eight?”

“I have meetings and presentations and conferences and-”

“You need to take a break, John. I know how many vacation days you have coming, and I’m telling you to use them.”

“And I’m telling you to go fuck yourself!” John shouted. “Vacation?! Why don’t you just fucking break up with me?!”

“You’re overworked, you’re stressed out, you’re irritable…”

“I’m not fucking irritable!”

Derek raised his perfectly arched blonde eyebrows.

John glared at him hotly, almost panting.

Derek didn’t blink.

“You can’t do this to me,” John said, his voice low and tense. “You can’t do this to me!”

“I own the company,” Derek said. “I can do whatever I want.”

John squeezed his eyes shut, thumping his head back against the headboard. He’d known better. He’d known that he shouldn’t date the boss. He’d known that he shouldn’t fuck the boss. He’d thought that he was responsible enough to handle it, that Derek was too hot to pass up.

He’d worried that someone would find out, that once people knew they’d start to judge his on-the-job performance; so he’d worked harder, put in more hours, polished every presentation, reworded every memo. All of his hard work had paid off, and he’d gotten a promotion, but now he wondered if they connected the promotion to his personal life, if they suspected that he was sleeping his way to the top, if they doubted his professional merit. That only meant that he had to step up his game.

Now he was being told to take a break? First a promotion, now a paid vacation? How the hell was that going to look?

People knew that they were together. There were comments, whispers, looks. Derek never did anything inappropriate in the office, but he wasn’t subtle, either. He’d dropped by John’s office a few times too often, for one thing. And even though they’d only gone out to lunch together four times at most, technically John was supposed to be just low enough in the hierarchy to be beneath Derek’s personal notice.

He’d known that all of this shit was going to come back and bite him on the ass. He’d known that hooking up with the too-hot, too-young owner of the company meant trouble in a bad way. But his hormones had made his decisions for him, and now he was chained to Derek’s bed being