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“You have your safety word,” he reminded her.
That relaxed her. A little.
“Is there a reason you’re not telling me?” she tried.
“Is there a reason you need to know?”
Answering with a question clearly irritated her. She retorted, “I asked first.”
He crossed his arms. “You want to know why? Because not knowing amps up the anticipation.”
With a swallow, she looked away. If his answer rattled her, it was her own fault for asking.
“What’s your need to know?”
She met his challenging gaze. “I want to know what I’m getting into. Like you said before, I don’t like uncertainty.”
“Did you know what you were getting into when you signed up for the Scarlet Auction?”
“I imagined the worst.”
He cocked his head to one side, finding her response strange. “Only the worst?”
She seemed to regret what she said. “I mean...I had heard stories that didn’t turn out so well. Some guys can be real jerks, you know.”
“But you needed the money badly enough that you were willing to risk it and have sex with a jerk.”
“Something like that.”
“If that’s what you’re committed to, why are you so worried about what’s behind curtain number three?”
“Does it involve BDSM?”
“You told the Silent Auction you were into BDSM.”
“I said I was open to it with the right person.”
“I’m the right person.”
Her lower lip fell, and it was all he could do not to bridge the distance between them, yank the towel off her, and take those lips. Lips that he had paid two hundred thousand dollars for.
He did push off the dresser, and she immediately tensed as if bracing for fight or flight.
“So what’s it going to be?”
She looked at his cell, which he had placed on the dresser.
“You’re going to honor the safety word, right?” she asked when she returned her gaze to his, her eyes piercing into him. “It said in the legal contract that you would.”
She had spoken quickly, as if she didn’t believe her own assertion.
He held her stare. “I didn’t sign any contracts.”
Her face fell, but she gathered herself. “But one could argue that the terms of the contract apply to extensions of the original arrangement.”
He wasn’t a lawyer, but it seemed like she was grasping at straws. “You can sue Jake for breach of contract. And you could sue me, too, just for the hell of it, but how does that help you in the here and now?”
Her eyes steeled against him. She was a smart woman. She knew, even if her claim about extending the terms of the contract to third parties held any water, that (a) he wasn’t afraid of lawsuits; (b) she didn’t have the resources to go after him; and (c) the real damage would have been done long before any lawsuit could occur.
