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He winked at me before he disappeared. I spent a moment fantasising about hurling his empty cup at him before I turned my attention to Axel. “Thought you would have already been off somewhere creating a hot new set of implants for me to celebrate your success.” The only thing I could do was play it cool, but I was pretty dismayed. Dad had just basically given him licence to stay as long as he liked, and when I’d warned him Axel was not the kind of guy you gave any licence to, as well.
“I prefer the original,” Axel said.
“Funny, you haven’t even seen the original yet.”
Axel leaned forward and set his cup down on the coffee table, then he picked it straight back up again and leaned back. “That’s why I’m still here. Time to get the second half of our agreement sorted.”
I grabbed onto the wall to support myself. I’d always thought our house was a really comfortable size, especially compared to Callie’s place, but now the walls were closing in around me. It wasn’t that I even had an issue with carrying out the second half of our arrangement: I figured it would be a bit weird, but my mental image of getting one over him while I was giving him exactly what he wanted was too good to pass up. But just because I’d agreed to do it didn’t mean I was mentally prepared yet for the idea of… well, actually doing it. “It’s late, Axel. I’m not in the mood to play your games right now. I just want to get to bed.”
He put that damn coffee cup down long enough to clap his hands together. “Perfect, we can retire to your bedroom and you can get changed.”
I didn’t even know what he’d arranged with my dad. I didn’t dare just throw him out… but there was no way I wanted to do this right now. And no way I wanted him to realise how much I didn’t want to do it right now either.
Unfortunately I thought from the way he was cocking his head at me he already knew. “Ah, Aileen, I know you won’t see it this way, but I’m making this offer for your sake. Do you really want to have to arrange to meet me privately elsewhere, another day, to take care of this?”
I would happily not do it at all, but that couldn’t factor into the discussion now.
“This feels like the best way to proceed for both
of us,” Axel said. “We’re both here, nobody around, but it’s a safe place for you. You could do a lot worse.”
The nerve of this guy, manipulating me into doing something I would never have offered to do and then making out the circumstances were a gift to me. The worst thing I could possibly do was go into my bedroom with him and take off my clothes.
But if I did, maybe it would finally be over, one way or another. He couldn’t possibly come up with anything more to throw at me, he’d know I wasn’t someone to mess around with as he pleased… I would even have kept Tamara and Callie happy, for whatever that was worth. In a way, we would all win.
I turned away, gesturing to him to follow me. “Don’t make a racket, I’m not sure how my dad will feel about this.”
“Oh, he loves me,” said Axel… and the thing was with him, it might not be bullshit.
“If what you really want is to watch me in my bedroom, I’m surprised you haven’t just gotten one of your contacts to hack into my webcam, see if you can get in some spying without the inconvenience of talking me into it.”
Axel shrugged. He was walking far too close to me, almost like he was planning to link arms with me or something. One thing I was certain of: absolutely nothing about this was likely to be an old-timey romantic movie. “Not my style. If I want something, I’d rather drive a hard bargain for it, get it fairly.”
“You have some very strange ideas about fairness, Mr. Bennett.”
His laugh was a little shaky. “Now if you’d called me that a few times while we were doing our negotiations, maybe you’d have gotten a lot more of what you wanted.”
It just figured that what got him off was being made to feel more powerful than he actually was. I turned to him as he shut the door, realising that little extra piece of information was making me feel even more nervous. Maybe it was entering my bedroom that had done that. With Axel in there too it was a lot smaller than I’d realised. I wouldn’t be able to get a whole lot of distance from him as I did… what we were there to do.
I tried to keep it light and sassy. “Is it too late to start now?”
“It’s never too late.” Axel was watching me carefully as I backed up against my desk and put my handbag down on it. “But if you start negotiating at the wrong time, the advantages you can hope to gain will change.”
“You know what I think?” I realised I was just saying what was on my mind without taking time to filter it first, something I knew better than to do these days. Something I’d done once with him, and was still reaping the consequences of. “You might make out you care about fairness, but I don’t believe you intend to deal with other people fairly. You have one goal only: to be the one in control. And I think you’ll do whatever you have to do to make sure it happens. Change the rules on the fly, bully whoever is standing in the way of the pieces you need to fall into place… anything.”
That didn’t please him nearly as much as Mr. Bennett. Tough for him. “We all do whatever we have to do in the circumstances that find us, Aileen. Now, contrary to what you might believe I don’t have infinite time to mess around here, so if you want to sleep tonight you’d better get it off.”
“Yes, sir.” Another retort that pleased him. But the confidence it gave me to talk back like that was short-lived. I didn’t want to do this. I’d been an idiot to agree to it, to think there was any way I could win at this game. My stupid arrogance.
There was no way he was going to physically make me do it, either. That was the trick. He wanted me to choose to humiliate myself. I wasn’t supposed to find a way to win.
I was going to try to find a way anyway. I started unbuttoning my shirt.
“Good girl.” Smirking, Axel sat down on my bed, folded his long legs up, and brought his mug to his—he’d brought his fucking coffee in with him.
“Were you hoping for popcorn to be catered?” I asked him on the second button, right over the middle of my bra.
He toasted me with his mug. “Wouldn’t say no to a splash of milk in my coffee.”
