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Her white-blond hair was in delicious disarray, and her silver eyes looked darker in the dim light of their room. Leo wanted to kiss her. “Who would he sell their phone numbers to? And why? And what does that have to do with the ring?”
Amelia bunched her lips to the side, and that made Leo want to kiss them more, just to feel her mouth relax against his. She sighed. “Well…maybe he’s in financial trouble. Both he and Vanessa,” she amended, because they’d discussed what Leo had found out from Robert earlier. Her eyes brightened, and she put her hand on Leo’s thigh. “He’s scrambling to make money. Maybe he’s selling this information to a competitor?”
She was so beautiful and clever and magnetic. Leo stared into her eyes and felt an uncomfortable tightness in his chest. In this moment, despite the conversation they were having, he couldn’t give two shakes about a missing ring. He wanted to haul Amelia over his lap and kiss her until she made those delicious little moans again, and then he wanted to do it again a hundred times over.
“That’s a good theory,” he grated, trying to keep a handle on what she’d said.
“Because Vanessa would be angry that he’s compromising her,” Amelia said, excited. “She’s already in some kind of financial trouble, and now he’s risking her job, so she’s mad.”
“Doesn’t mean they took the ring.”
Amelia slumped. She bit her lip. “Right. Selling contact information isn’t exactly the same as stealing a crazy-expensive piece of jewelry.”
Needing to shake off the tightness in his chest and the odd heaviness of his emotions, Leo shifted his gaze to Amelia’s tablet. “What’s next on your spreadsheet?” He cleared his throat and forced himself to say, “We have to get you a date by the end of the week.”
She looked down at her lap and swiped the tablet to unlock it. Deft fingers tapped on the screen, and Leo shifted to grab a bottle of water he’d left on the coffee table. He needed to cool himself down. Being this close to Amelia was rattling him in a way he wasn’t accustomed to.
But she didn’t want him, not the way he wanted her. She only wanted him for his expertise in sex and seduction, which was all he was good for in the first place. The only reason she was enjoying herself right now was because she was curious about the ring. Amelia liked problem-solving, and he’d brought her here and handed her a thorny one.
She didn’t actually likehim, and why should she? Besides his job at Goodhew, seduction was the only thing he’d really applied himself to mastering in the past decade. He wasn’t good at anything else.
Cool water ran down Leo’s throat as he took a long drink. Meanwhile, Amelia tip-tapped on her screen. Half his water was gone by the time she spoke again.
“Next,” Amelia proclaimed, “is blowjobs.”
THIRTEEN
Water spewedout of Leo’s mouth in a fine spray, speckling the table, their legs, and Amelia’s tablet. Beside her, Leo began to cough and splutter, his body racked with violent spasms. She tossed her tablet aside and smacked his back in a panicked attempt to help.
“Are you okay?” she half-screeched, whacking his broad back once more. Jumping off the couch, she rushed to the bathroom and grabbed a towel. She tossed the towel at Leo and watched him wipe his face, then his chest, then the table, then her tablet.
Finally, Leo lifted his gaze to meet hers and growled, “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Are you okay?’”
“Before that.”
“Oh,” Amelia whispered, her skin suddenly hot all over. “That.”
“Yes,” Leo rumbled, tossing the towel at the armchair. It landed on the arm, then slid to the ground. Neither of them moved to pick it up. His eyes were dark and hot and dangerous, and Amelia couldn’t move from where she stood on the other side of the coffee table.
She wrung her hands. “Well,” she started, when the silence stretched too long. “You see… I don’t…” She huffed. Didn’t they have a deal? Wasn’t this a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to talk to an expert? This was no time to get embarrassed! They had a simple exchange, and yes, things had gotten more complicated, but a deal was a deal. She squared her shoulders. “I want to learn about blowjobs.”
A small, wheezing sound escaped Leo’s lips. After a beat, he forced out, “Blowjobs.”
“Yes. Oral sex.”
“I know what blowjobs are, Amelia.”
“Right,” she whispered. “Well, I’m not very good at them, and I hear from my friends that it’s really not that complicated, but in the past, I’ve been told by partners that—”
“Who?”
Amelia jumped at the vehemence of the word as it exploded from Leo’s mouth. She smoothed her hands over her stomach to wipe away the dampness that had started to coat her palms and took a small step back. “What?”
“Who said that to you?” Then, oddly, something shifted in Leo. He went from looking angry and intense to slowly, purposefully relaxing back into the sofa. He unclenched his hands, which had been gripping his knees, and spread his arms across the top of the couch cushions. He nodded to the seat she’d vacated a moment ago. “Sit down.”
“You know, I really don’t appreciate being ordered around like that,” she mumbled, but somehow her feet didn’t get her strong-independent-woman memo, because they were already carrying her toward the sofa. She sat down as far from Leo as she could.
