“I can tell.”
“Ouch.” I pouted and touched my heart. Walking toward him, I pulled myself up onto the table and sat on his paperwork. “What are you working on?”
His annoyance was so heady it filled the room like smoke. I suddenly needed oxygen; to escape this room before hot flames licked at my skin. But a cool spark of adrenaline swayed me.
Sadly, irritating this man was the most fun I’d had in a while.
Meeting his stare head-on, the urge to glance away tugged at my nerves. Now so close, his eyes glittering with displeasure, it felt like an illegal act to hold his gaze. He was the kind of handsome that made a girl’s breath slow. The kind that rushed all the blood in her body to the tips of her toes.
He was a Picasso behind a wall of glass, the ticket to look upon it too expensive for me to afford.
All of his flaws must be condensed into his personality, because, as far as I could see, there wasn’t a visible one in sight.
Luck sure was an unfair bitch.
He sat back. “Why explain it when we both know it’s over your head?”
I raised a haughty brow. “I’ll have you know I was at the top of my class at Brighton High.”
He recognized the name of the shittiest public school in Chicago. “A difficult feat, I’m sure.”
I leaned back on my hands and sighed like I was reminiscing. “Although, that’s mostly because I fucked my chemistry teacher.” That was a lie. The bastard had cornered me in his classroom and shoved his hand up my skirt. I understood my psyche. I used my painful past experiences to shock and, therefore, feel like I had control of them.
In short, I was a mess.
His expression tightened in disapproval. “Who taught you to talk like that?”
“My mom,” I said seriously.
“Charming.”
“What? Can’t say ‘fuck’ from that pretty boy mouth of yours?”
“What’s on your neck?”
I tilted my head to give him a better view, purposely swinging my long, dark ponytail in his face. I bit my cheek to hold in the smile when he evaded it with a look of annoyance.
The tattoo on the nape of my neck was a geometrical triangle. No, it didn’t mean anything. I just loved the design.
“You like?” I asked.
“No.”
Because he was being rude, I shrugged just so I could toss my hair at him again. But this time, he grabbed my ponytail and yanked me flat to my back on the table. A gasp passed my lips at the unexpected roughness, and the sudden heat flaring inside me shocked me so much I practically growled at him.
Sitting back in his seat, a hand wrapped around my hair, he raised an indifferent brow. “Why swing it in my face if you don’t want me to grab it?”
“You think everything belongs to you, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
It was such a ridiculous answer I couldn’t grasp onto a quick retort, so I only glared.
Our tempers collided and condensed the space of the room. A second passed, and as if the action was unwelcomed and inadvertent, his gaze slid down my body and over the wet clothes exposing my every curve.
The touch of his eyes lit a line of fire in its wake, from the gentle rise and fall of my breasts, to the flare of my hips, to the black jeans with a frayed hole in the knee.
He released his grip on my hair with a sudden sense of annoyance and asked, “Why are you so fucking wet?”
Apparently, he hadn’t even heard the rain shower while sheltered in luxury. The sky would probably clear the moment he stepped outside.
I relaxed against the table as if this was where I wanted to be all along and stretched my arms above my head. “I don’t answer those kinds of questions on the first date.”
“This is nothing more than a poor striptease. One I would pay more to end than I’ve ever paid a stripper with actual experience.”
Amusement flickered inside me, but I forced a dire expression. “Your name doesn’t have a second or third on the end of it, does it?”
He yanked a piece of moist paper out from underneath me and gave me a dry look that implied he believed I already knew his name.
“I refuse to add a number to my future son’s name, so that’s going to be a hurdle for us to get past,” I said seriously.
“I guess we’re at an impasse then, because I’m not naming my daughter ‘Candy’ or ‘Cherry.’”
I laughed at the ridiculous stripper names. “We can agree on that. I was thinking ‘Bambi.’”
The man’s eyes narrowed at the smeared ink on his precious paperwork. He was the embodiment of broody, with a five o’clock shadow and discarded jacket. Though his features were so compelling, so masculine and perfect to the eye, I bet if I touched him he would disappear.
I sat up and grabbed the tumbler that sat on the table, took a sip, and released a soft moan when the whiskey hit my tongue. The man’s eyes lifted from his paperwork to my face, almost as if he was irritated but couldn’t stop the very male reaction to look when a woman made that noise.
“You know, I adore whiskey.” I swirled the liquid in the glass. “But not just any kind—the expensive stuff,” I told him. “If I was rich, I’d bathe in it.”
The sound of a knock on the door made me freeze.
Dark eyes watched me curiously before the man said, “Come in.”
I flew off the table and crawled underneath it, wincing when I bumped my head. Two sets of feet came into view: Italian loafers and black boots. Radio static sounded, and then a dispatcher’s voice. Shit. A cop. I’d cry if I had to sleep on a cot tonight and not my bed.
“Good evening, Mr. Romano,” Alfred said in a deferential voice as if he was talking to a king.
Romano . . . Sounded Italian. The man did have a warmer complexion. I couldn’t say the same for his personality though.
Unsurprisingly, Mr. Romano didn’t dispense in pleasantries and remained silent.
“We seem to have had . . . a breach in security,” Alfred continued.
I rolled my eyes.
“You’d think that wouldn’t happen with the amount I pay in membership fees.”
A throat cleared. “Yes, of course, sir. . . Naturally, due to the inconvenience, all services will be on the house for the rest of the month.”
I wondered what services that entailed. I bet the usual was a naked woman dancing on a pole while he ignored her.
The cop stepped forward. “Listen, sir, a . . . wet and poorly-dressed woman wouldn’t happen to be in here, would she?”
Poorly dressed? No doubt Alfred had given him that description.
“We have reason to believe she might have come in here about ten minutes ago.”
As a kernel of panic bloomed inside me, I wondered if they had a surveillance camera in the hall.
“And you think, what? That I’m hiding her underneath the table?”
A breath of relief escaped me when I realized he wasn’t going to give me away. He probably wanted to take me out back, hit me over the head, and dump my dead body in the river himself.
“Of course not, sir,” Alfred rushed to say.
“Are you accusing me of something? Should I call my lawyer?”
I stifled a laugh.
The expensive fabric of this man’s pants looked incredibly soft, like fine wool. I ran my hand down the material. He threaded his fingers through my hair and pulled my face toward his dick. I sank my teeth into his thick thigh, hard. He didn’t even flinch.