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He offered me his phone, on which a recording was already playing.
“How’d you get in? You sent me two tickets.”
“I wanted to make sure you had a spare in case one got lost, so I purchased the entire row.”
Motherfucker. That was swoony as all hell, but in a jerk sort of way, because he still worked under the assumption I was not going to have my shit together.
I snatched the phone from his hands. “How do you know I won’t go through your messages?”
“How do you know it’s my personal phone rather than the one I use for work?” he clapped back.
I shot him a whatever look. Because, apparently, the current age gap between us wasn’t enough. I just had to act like a teenager.
“Watch it.” He jerked his chin to the phone, unbothered by my evil looks.
“You recorded the whole thing?”
Not very many people had the ability or talent to shock me, but this did. I was usually the one raising a scandal.
Devon picked up a red Sharpie, reading through the material in front of him, still not sparing me any attention. “Correct.”
“But why? I screwed you over.”
“And I’m about to screw you senseless. Your point?” His impalpable face did not waiver. “Now, please watch the opera while I read through the contract one more time.”
For the next forty minutes, I did just that. Watched the opera as he worked. The first ten minutes, I stole glances at him. It was nice, knowing I was about to be under this potent, sophisticated male.
But ten minutes into the opera, something weird happened. I started … well, kind of getting into it. La bohème was a story about a poor seamstress and her artist friends. The whole thing was in Italian, and even though I didn’t know one word of the language, I felt everything the heroine was feeling. There was power in it. The way the music tugged at my emotions like I was a marionette on a string.
At some point, Devon slid his phone from my hand and tucked it back into his pocket. He was sitting closer to me now.
“Hey!” I sent him a dirty glare. “I was in the middle of something. Mimi and Rodolfo decided to stay together until springtime.”
“The ending is exquisite,” he assured me, sliding an expensive-looking pen out of his briefcase. “You’d have loved it, had you joined me at the opera.”
“I want to see the ending.”
“Play your cards right, and you will. Let’s go over the contract together.”
“And then?” I raised an eyebrow, folding my arms across my chest.
“And then, my dear Emmabelle,” he smiled devilishly. “I’m going to fuck your brains out.”
One hour and twenty-three minutes.
That was how long it took Devon and I to go over all of the provisions in the contract he’d drafted for us.
He then proceeded to show me his STD test—the man was as clean as a whistle—and proceeded to let me know that he agreed to waive my own test on the grounds of trying to create a respectable and trustful working environment.
I liked that he referred to the arrangement as work. It felt clinical, detached.
Problem was, by the time we were done going over legal documents, it was the middle of the night, and I was curled on the couch next to him, yawning into a throw pillow. I was still in the same corseted dress I wore for work and looked like a medieval prostitute who was about to corrupt the king’s first son.
“Is this your secret weapon? Exhausting people into submission?” I purred into the pillow, fighting the unbearable weight of my eyelids.
I heard Devon putting the signed contracts back into his leather briefcase and zipping it shut.
“Among others.” His jaw ticked, and I thought I saw something cold and emotionless pass across his face.
I let my eyes rest for a few seconds.
“Hmm,” I replied, hugging the pillow I was resting against, curling around it like a cat. “I believe you’ve just met your match. I never bow to anyone.”
“Have you ever had a boyfriend?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“And you?” I was already half-asleep when I asked it.
“No to a boyfriend. I’ve had a few girlfriends. None of them survived the six-month mark, though.”
“That’s whaddathought,” I slurred, letting out a soft snore. At this point, I was snoring into my own armpit, in an exhibition of bursting allure and delicate femininity.
“Sweden.” His low voice rolled like a dark cloud above my head. “Up you go.”
“You going to Sweden?” I was drooling over my throw now. The cold, sticky saliva gluing my cheek against it.
He chuckled. “Not Sweden, Sweven.”
“Oh.” A pause. I was still asleep, but still somehow talking to him. “What’s that?”
“A dream, a vision. Something that comes to you in your sleep. You’re a fantasy, Emmabelle. Too good to be true. Too bad to be experienced.”
