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“It means I have no idea where he is.” She lets out a sharp, humourless laugh. “I have no idea if he’s dead or alive. I couldn’t even tell you his name.”
Sometimes I wish my father had never been around to inflict the harm he did on my family, but then I hear the hurt in her voice and I know this option isn’t any better. “He abandoned you and your mother?”
“Before I was even born. He didn’t stick around to meet me, took off the second he found out my mother was pregnant.” Her eyes are burning hot, defiant. Angry. “And my mother thinks she partied for too long and that was her punishment. She’s worried I’m going to be left on the shelf, and that I’ll be miserable like her and die alone.”
“Wow.” I let out a snort of disbelief. “That’s messed up.”
“So you’re not the only one who’s got more than their share of familial baggage, Mr. Moretti.” She pokes my chest in a way that’s almost playful, daring. Like she’s trying to show me she understands without saying the words aloud.
Something deep inside me wants to reach out and touch Ava. To connect with her. To be soothed by her. I want to lose myself in something good for once, in a pleasure so strong and deep it burns away every bad memory and hateful word, turning it all to ash in my palms.
“I don’t have any ulterior motives here,” she says softly. “I feel like you keep waiting for me to do something to prove you shouldn’t trust me—”
“It’s not that.” Although maybe it should be. It wouldn’t be the first time someone got close to me and tried to use it to their advantage.
“Then what is it?”
She steps closer, her beautiful copper-flecked eyes glimmering like embers. In the dim light, my senses are heightened. I smell the perfume on her skin—sweet and girlish, vanilla and flowers. I feel the heat radiating from her. I sense the flutter of her heartbeat, the quickened pace of her pulse.
“I’m sick of talking, to be honest.” I rake a hand through my hair. “Sick of questions.”
“What would you prefer?” She steps closer again, her hand brushing my arm. It’s all so innocent, so innocuous. And yet... “Silence?”
Need grips me at the base of my cock and I’m harder than I’ve ever been in my whole life. I want her. I want to be lost in her. I want her cries to erase the worries in my head.
I need...
“We should go to bed.” My voice is low, rough as gravel. I’m holding on to the promise I made her—this relationship is for show. Behind closed doors we’re nothing to each other. And I expect nothing from her.
“We?” she whispers, trailing her hands along the line of buttons on my shirt, mimicking the way I touched her that first night.
I stand my ground, even though my entire body screams at me to claim her. “You were the one who was concerned about making sure our arrangement didn’t include sex.”
“I said you weren’tentitledto it,” she clarifies, her big eyes looking up at mine. Moonlight and the flickering city reflect off her skin, creating shadows and hollows. “I wanted you to understand that paying me doesn’t mean I owe you my body.”
It makes sense. Her mother believes that only a man can give her a proper life and here she is, making a deal with a man for the benefit of her future. It must eat her up inside.
She’s going to regret this in the morning.
I know that with certainty.
“Go to bed, Ava,” I say, taking her hand and removing it from my shirt. No matter how much I want her—needher—right now, what I need more is her playing the part outside my apartment. I can’t mess that up. “Yourbed.”
I don’t wait to see her reaction. Instead, I turn on my heels and head toward the metal staircase and climb the steps two at a time until I’ve got enough distance from her. My entire body pulses and aches. She’s under my skin already. It’s too much, too quick.
It’s not her. It’s this whole damn situation. You’re messed up and it’s affecting your thinking.
I head straight to my shower, undressing as I go, trying to think about anything but how I’m never going to be able to fall asleep knowing she’s lying downstairs.
But I have to try.
The conversation with Marc tonight was a disaster. He’ssoconvinced I betrayed him. And I won’t let anyone see it, but... It fucking hurts. It hurts like he’s taken a knife and stabbed me right in the chest. He’s my little brother and I’ve loved him since the second he was born. I took care of him for years, taught him all my soccer moves until he did them better than me. I helped him with his homework, taught him to drive a stick, showed him how to tie a Windsor knot.
All the things I had to learn on my own.
I walk naked into my bathroom and wrench the taps until hot water jets out and steam fills the glass cavity. I step under, slapping my palm against the tiles as the hot water hits my back.
How could he accuse me of this? Ever since I was named CEO, things have been different. It’s like he resents me getting to be number one. But I’m the first son. My uncle has been grooming me for this since I was a kid.
