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‘Oh.’ Her expression relaxed. And then she frowned. ‘Why?’
Naturally she would have questions. She was nothing if not curious.
‘I have some things that need attention and I haven’t been back for a while.’
Years, in reality. Fifteen of them, to be exact. But she didn’t need to know that.
He turned her hand over in his, stroking her palm with his thumb. ‘It would please me very much to take you with me.’
She glanced down at her hand, enclosed in his. ‘But what about my job here? Camille wouldn’t like it if I suddenly left with no word.’ Another troubled expression crossed her face. ‘She wouldn’t like it if she knew what I...what we...’
‘Leave Camille to me.’ He stroked her palm reassuringly, noting how she shivered yet again. ‘And, like I told you, I have another position in mind for you.’
She looked up at him, her gaze very direct. ‘What position? Your lover?’
There was a challenging note in her voice and he couldn’t help but like how unafraid she was to confront him. She was strong, that was for certain, and although she might have been an innocent when it came to sex, she wasn’t an innocent in anything else. She’d lived for years on the streets. She would have seen all kinds of cruel things, seen the basest of human nature. She knew how the world worked and knew that it was not kind.
If you tell her the truth she’ll understand. She, more than anyone, will know what it’s like to lose everything.
It was true. And if she didn’t—well, there was always the money option. Either way, it wouldn’t be an issue.
‘Is there a problem with that?’ he asked casually. ‘You seemed to enjoy it well enough last night.’
She glanced down once again at her hand resting in his, at his thumb stroking gently her palm. ‘So will that now be my job?’
The question sounded neutral, but he knew it wasn’t.
‘To be your whore?’ The word was like a stone thrown against glass, jagged and sharp. ‘Will you pay me more to be in your bed, Cristiano?’
The question sounded raw in the silence of the room. It wasn’t a simple challenge now, because there was something else in her tone. She sounded...vulnerable, and he had the sense that he’d hurt her somehow.
You have hurt her.
Anger twisted sharply inside him and he dropped her hand and pushed himself off the bed, striding restlessly over to the window, trying to get his thoughts in order and his ridiculous emotions safely under control again.
The issue, of course, was that she was right. That was exactly what he’d been planning to do. Pay her to be his wife. And since he was also thinking their marriage would include sex, essentially he was paying her to sleep with him.
‘Would that be so very bad?’ he asked harshly.
There was a brief silence, and then she said in a small voice, ‘So that’s all last night was? Just a...a transaction?’
Ah, so that was what this was about. She thought the sex had meant something.
It did.
No—and he couldn’t afford it to. His emotions had to remain detached, and already they were more engaged than he wanted them to be. His anger was far too close to the surface and she had an ability to rouse it too easily. He had to make sure he stayed uninvolved—that his feelings for her didn’t go beyond physical lust.
‘I thought last night was all about mutual pleasure,’ he said, keeping his tone neutral. ‘Though if there was anything transactional about it I apologise.’
‘Oh.’ Her voice sounded even smaller. ‘I see.’
Cristiano’s jaw tightened. He hadn’t thought about her feelings and he should have. Because of course the sex for her wouldn’t simply have been physical. It had been her first time, and she didn’t have the experience to tell the difference between great sex and an emotional connection.
Are you sure you do?
He shoved that thought away—hard. Oh, he knew the difference. He wasn’t a boy any more. But he couldn’t have her thinking that the sex between them had meant more than it had. He also couldn’t have her getting under his skin the way she was currently doing.
Which left him with only one option.
