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"Maybe. If ya are lucky."
"Pretty sure if clothes were coming off, you'd be considered the lucky one."
His eyes made a slow path down my body, then just as slowly back up, making the skin they skimmed feel warm and sensitive.
"Maybe I already am." His eyes found mine, held. "But let me tell ya, duchess. If I got ya naked, ya would damn sure consider yerself lucky."
My sex shouldn't have - but absolutely did - tighten. "Why's that?"
"Because if I got blessed enough to get to see ya naked, Lou, I'd fuckin' show ya what it is like to be worshipped. Make ya come so hard you start to believe in a higher power. With my fingers, mouth, cock. However ya want it. However many times ya want it..."
"My own personal sex toy," I snarked, not wanting him to know just how wet my panties were getting at the mere idea of him making good on those promises.
Oddly, his eyes went a bit guarded at that. Dark, almost. "If that is what ya want from me."
"What I want from you is a set of eyes that can spot this Thomas fuck across a crowded casino. That is what I want from you."
"Yeah, sure. Keep telling yerself that, duchess. Maybe it will start to be true if ya say it enough."
"Ego much?" I asked, turning away to walk toward the window that led to the balcony, pushing open the curtains to watch the snow fall, fat and faster than a half an hour before when we had first arrived. "If I wanted to fuck you, Adler, you'd be on the bed right now."
"Hm?" he asked, making my head turn over my shoulder to find him on his side on the bed, patting the empty space beside him like some cheesy movie, making a laugh/snort hybrid escape me.
"Cute."
"I know," he agreed, pushing up to sit, taking his whole mini bottle in a gulp. "So, Lou..."
"So, Adler..."
"What made ya get into bounty hunting?"
Turning, I leaned back against the wall, not quite trusting myself to stay strong if I got within five feet of him on a bed. "That was something like fate," I told him. "I had just washed up in town, trying to learn my way around, when I saw this guy chasing this other guy down the street. Normally, you know Navesink Bank, I'd have just figured it was some gang thing. But the guy chasing the other guy was all decked out in clothes that said Recovery Agent on them. And he was losing. The guy he was chasing was all of nineteen to his thirty, long-legged, chasing freedom. He had no shot of snagging him."
"So ya stepped in."
"Grabbed my tire iron out of my car, hit him right in the stomach, knocking him off his feet, before dragging him back up."
That was a good time, that afternoon.
Asher, the recovery agent, had looked relieved, like maybe he'd been on the case for a long time, was glad for it to be over. Until I informed him that he was mine to cash in on. And I proceeded to drag the kid to Geoff's office with a blackened eye from having to elbow him when he tried to escape as I drove.
"Geoff liked the idea of someone willing not to play by the rules. Someone young and hungry..."
"And, let's face it, 'cause he's a shitehead, someone gorgeous that he could maybe use his position to get in the pants of."
"Well, yeah, that too." Of course that was a factor. Especially given the fashion sense those days - jeans so low your thong was visible if you bent or sat paired with crop tops that showed off a hefty bit of belly and lower back. And me, yeah, I'd been rocking that look. Too young and naive to think anything better of it.
I learned fast.
Only using my body as the bait it was when it suited my cause.
"How'd ya get him to stop groping at ya?"
"Threatened to chop off his hand," I offered, shrugging it off like it was no big deal, even if it was one of my fondest adult memories. There was just something about insisting on respect, in being given it because you refused to accept anything less.
"I'da paid to see that," Adler said, smirking. "Bet he was fuckin' crimson."
"He was." He'd started calling me by my name then instead of Worth It, a sick little name for a sick little game he and his buddies used to play when they were anywhere that young girls might frequent in those blossoming years of their teens when their bodies were filling out, and they were proud to have them on display. The term meant they'd be 'worth' the jail sentence they'd get for sleeping with 'em. There were rules and bonus points and shit for it.
