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She bit down on her lip. “I can’t just leave. Sorry. I know you believe the worst of me, but you’re really wrong.” She shrugged. “Obviously I think you’re… um…” she bit down on her lip, “I mean…” she gulped. Her mortification was acute. “I’ve never felt like that before.” It was a whisper into the dark. She closed her eyes against what she was admitting. “I surprised myself. I mean, I think I actually would have… had sex with you… right there in the middle of the terrace… if Hank hadn’t interrupted us.” She pressed her face against his shoulder in heart-wrenching shame. “What if we had? And he’d interrupted that?”
His intonation was without emotion. “He would have learned a thing or two.”
“This isn’t funny,” she berated. “You were probably born with a thousand trust funds to your name but I wasn’t. I have to work. This is a nightmare.”
“No, it isn’t.” The solution was handed to him, by her, on a platter. He reached a hand down and linked his fingers through hers. “In fact, I have a perfect solution for us.”
“There is no us.”
“You need a job. You need money. I have money. And I,” he paused to pad a finger along her lower lip, “I need you.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m not what you think I am.”
He lifted his hands in a gesture of silence. “I think you’re stunning. I think you’re absolutely satanically sexy. You should be outlawed.” He ran a finger around the outline of her lips. “I would simply like to pay you to not have a job for a while.”
She furrowed her brow, her breath thick in her chest as her mouth began to throb with his sensual draw. “Why would you do that?”
“Because, Jane, I would like to be able to snap my fingers and have your full attention.” He grinned, in a totally seductive way. Her heart turned over. “Whenever I wanted it. If you had a job, particularly in your previous line of work, it would be very difficult to pursue the kind of relationship I’d like with you.”
She shook her head slowly. “And what kind of relationship is that?”
He leaned forward and pressed his lips against her ear. “A very adult, very consensual, very sensual one.”
Her body felt like it had elevated to a higher plane of existence. She sucked in a breath. “So, to be clear, you would not be paying me for sex.”
He nodded. “That’s right. Just to be… free to see me.”
She bit down on her lip. Her straightened finances were truly dire, and yet… she hesitated. “I’m not sure.”
His frustration was pronounced but he concealed it deftly. “What is the problem?”
She screwed up her face. “I had an understanding with the agency. I can’t do days. I’m only available from around seven at night. I can’t do weekend days either. And there might be some times where I’m not available at all.”
“Why the hell not?”
She stiffened. “I’m not prepared to discuss it. It’s just the way I am.”
He waved a hand through the air. “What happens to you in the days? Do you sprout wings? Scales?”
She rolled her eyes, and went with the same line she’d told the agency. “I need the days to prepare for the nights, okay? I go to the gym. I get my nails done. My hair. I shop. I know it sounds frivolous but these are all a part and parcel of what I do.”
He bit down on the urge to tell her these things were not necessary to him. Her manner told him she didn’t want to argue the point. “Fine. But nights are mine.”
“Every night?” She asked breathlessly.
His smile unfurled a seed of longing deep inside her. “Possibly. I will certainly require your availability every night; whether I choose to see you or not is another issue.”
She bit down on her lip. “I don’t understand. Why me?”
“That’s a good question.” He simply knew that he needed to get her out of his system. That only unfettered access to her would achieve that. “Are you in?”
She focussed on a point over his shoulder, her mind swamped by conflicting wishes. “I don’t know.” Something occurred to her out of nowhere. “Aren’t you here on a date? Won’t she be wondering where you are?”
“I don’t frankly care.”
“That’s kind of cruel.”
He shrugged. “When I see something I want, I pursue it. And I want you.”
