Page 9 of The Price of Power

He arched a brow. “Do you want me to show you?”

“Right now?”

“Right this second.”

I blinked. “You want me to leave the hotel with you?” He couldn’t be serious.

But, of course, he was. “I do.”

A thrill ran through me—a whole body shiver from top to toe, and in that moment, I realized just how out of my depth I really was.

Sure, I’d flirted with men before, but nothing this intense. And definitely not with men like Gabriel.

What the hell was I saying? Even after just a few minutes of conversation, I was pretty damn sure there were no men like Gabriel. He was his own creature—singular in the world.

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because…Because my dinner is still coming.”

He quickly batted that pathetic excuse to the side. “Don’t worry. I’ll feed you and a hell of a lot better than some wilted salad.”

“Where would we go?”

“My brother just bought a nightclub not far from here.”

I shook my head. “I don’t dance.”

“You don’t have to,” he said. “It’s not that kind of club.”

It wasn’t? What other kinds were there?

“I still need to pay the bill,” I tried, grasping at straws.

This time, Gabriel didn’t answer with words. Instead, he pulled out the largest roll of cash I’d ever seen, peeled two hundreds off the top, and slapped them down on the table before arching a brow as if to say anything else?

One after the other, he’d knocked all my reservations down, until there was only one left. The only real one I had.

I let out a small, defeated sigh. “But I don’t know you.”

“I thought that was the point,” he said. “No ties. No responsibility. No consequences.”

A taste of real freedom. It was tempting. So very tempting.

Not that my rational, practical brain was about to give up that easy.

“Right, but how do I know you’re not a serial killer or something?”

“I guess that depends on what you mean by or something,” he said. “That’s vague enough to cover anything.”

That coaxed a smile out of me. There was no denying how charming he was.

Then again, that’s what they’d said about Ted Bundy.

“Fine.” I drew a deep breath, reading myself to put it in plainer terms. “If I leave here with you right now, how do I know that I won’t end up axe-murdered in your basement?”

“Because I don’t have a basement,” he answered with a straight face.