Page 45 of Player For Hire

She turned those big blue eyes on me. “No. I think we’re friends, right?”

“We are. I just... I didn’t mean to get that intense, is all.”

“It was amazing.” She flushed. “My ex-boyfriend pretty much rolled off me and started snoring most of the time.”

I sagged back against the cushion and turned my head toward her. I couldn’t imagine anyone doing that to someone as amazing as Naomi. “That sucks.”

“No, what sucks is I was with him for two years.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “It was easier than breaking up with him.”

“That sucks more.”

She laughed. “I agree. Why I guess losing my job has been more of a blessing than I thought.”

“Even more when you finish that book.”

She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know about that. But I went ahead and looked at my old manuscript when we got back from the Library Café. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Except for one thing it was missing.”

“Sex?”

She nodded. “It’s kind of important to the plot. I think if I could figure out how to write that part, it might really be something.”

“You just have to believe it, Naomi.”

“I totally don’t. Mostly because I don’t know the first thing about how guys think. Not just the sex part. My dad is great, but he’s not the component I need, if you know what I mean.”

I laughed. “I do. And if you did, that’s a whole different kind of book.”

Her quick laugh popped the bubble of weirdness that had formed around us. “That’s for sure.”

I dug into the pastry bag and handed her one, then I took the other. “Your life is about to change.”

“Again?” She ducked her head.

Did she realize what those comments did to a man? To me?

She took a big bite of her hot cross bun, then she gave me a whole new moan to add to the Naomi Wiki page I was building in my head. Goddamn.

After she finished, and washed her hands, she came back with her phone. I was learning Naomi was tidy and had a fastidious bent. But she could be distracted when I got my hands on her, which was a tick in the plus column as far as I was concerned.

She sat back down beside me. “I was making some notes about some of the things I wanted to go over. I know you have a job that takes up a lot of your time, so I was hoping we could make a schedule.”

“A schedule?” I stretched my arm across the back of the couch as I relaxed beside her. “To fuck?”

Her shocked gaze shot to mine. “Makes it sound so...”

“Transactional?”

Her cheeks reddened. “Point taken. It’s just because your time is valuable. I want to pay you for your time, especially when I pick your brain about things other than your incredibly talented mouth.”

“Incredibly talented, huh?”

“You know you are.” Her fingers flew over the bottom of her phone as she typed something. “Since there’s a dragon component to my book, I actually think I need more of that conversation we were having.” She cleared her throat. “I would never think what you said, so I’m glad I asked. And there is that part of the mating thing for the story. The animal side.”

My fingertips dug into my leather sofa. “So you want to role play?”