Page 10 of Bought
Silly girl. Did she think she could fight me? Because if so, she was mistaken. I’d had two fiery, passionate women in my life. Both who’d matched wills with me and sometimes bested me, and both whom I loved. But I’d lost them. One had died and the other had put so much distance between us that I barely knew her these days.
I’d lost my taste for battles. There was only obedience to my will or nothing at all.
I tightened my grip, my fingers pressing against her jaw, and slowly her gaze dropped. And that’s when I saw it, the telltale flush to her cheeks as her lashes lowered. So. It seemed she hadn’t been entirely indifferent to our battle of wills.
And neither were you.
I didn’t want it to be true, yet I could feel the rush asserting my dominance always gave me, as well as the heat I felt in response to her submission and that flush in her cheeks.
Are you sure you don’t want to take her home?
No, I’d made my decision. I’d indulged myself by holding her a fraction too long and then staring her down, but that was the only fight I’d have tonight and now it was done.
She must have thought so too, because abruptly she jerked her chin out of my grip, shoved herself from the chair, and went past me, walking over to the curtained window, her cloak sweeping in a crimson wave after her.
Again, I felt my interest catch, that fishhook digging deeper into that rock.
She’d been by turns afraid, determined, challenging, and then…aroused, perhaps. A complicated woman. Another reason to send her on her way.
Still, I couldn’t understand what she wanted from me. Once we’d both agreed that I was the buyer of her virginity, the money would be transferred into her account. She wouldn’t have to sleep with me to get it, which was surely preferable for her. So wanting to come home with me made no sense unless it was for some nefarious purpose, which is what I had to assume it was. I had too many enemies for it to be anything else.
Not that her motivations or reasons mattered. I’d give her the money she’d earned and then I’d be gone.
“If you won’t take me home,” she said at last, still with her back to me. “I won’t agree.”
The warmth of her skin lingered annoyingly against my fingertips. I put my hands behind my back and straightened. “You won’t agree to what?”
She glanced over her shoulder at me, her gaze cool and direct. “I’ll exercise my right of veto and refuse you as my buyer.”
There was no sign of the shy innocent that had entered the room not ten minutes earlier. The look this woman was giving me, assessing and calculating would have done a CEO in the boardroom proud.
“And what would that achieve?” I asked.
“They’ll have to run the auction again.” She gave me another of those challenging looks as if she hadn’t learned anything the first time. “Someone else will buy me.”
“I fail to see how that is my problem.”
Her lashes swept down, her hands clasped in front of her, once again the picture of innocence. “Who knows who will buy me this time? Perhaps someone who won’t be as kind as you are.”
Was she trying to manipulate me?
“If you think I’m kind, then you’re making a very big mistake,” I said coolly. “I also do not like being manipulated.”
Her lashes swept up again, her gaze glittering. “Please. This isn’t the first virginity auction you’ve attended, Mr. Fox. You can’t tell me that you buy virgins and never take what you paid for just for the hell of it. You’re rescuing them.”
This time it was my turn to be shocked. No one knew about my little catch-and-release program with the virgins I bought. No one except the virgins concerned. So how did this young woman know? Perhaps she’d talked to some of them. Perhaps she’d tracked them down to ask them about me. But if so, why?
What was it that she wanted? Money, obviously, yet I’d guaranteed her money already, so there had to be something else. Sex perhaps?
“Does it matter?” I asked. “Look if it’s money you want, you have—”
“Sure, I want money,” she interrupted as if I wasn’t one of the most powerful businessmen in the city and had a thousand people at my beck and call every day. “But I also want to go home with you tonight. Is that so much to ask?”
Impatience gripped me. Impatience at myself and my unwilling interest in her. I didn’t want to stand here arguing. There was something about her that got under my skin and had from the moment she’d stood on the dais in the auction room and met my gaze. Something confronting that I shouldn’t like yet that called to the Dom in me in a way I hadn’t felt for years.
I couldn’t give in to it. I wouldn’t.
“Coming home with me is not what’s on offer,” I said icily. “Sex is also not on offer. What is on offer is a hotel room with a security guard. Take it or leave it.”