Caspian’s hand closed over my wrist. It was not a reassuring grip. Under different circumstances I might have liked being held that way, trapped and controlled. But right then, not so much.
I tried to pull free and his fingers tightened, the message undeniable: he wasn’t letting me go. He was probably about two seconds from dragging me, struggling, out of the conference room like I was the heroine of a 1950s Hollywood movie. That had also recently been a fantasy of mine, but at the moment, it was such an awful vision that I stopped fighting.
I’d done enough damage for one day. Make that one lifetime. Maybe in sixty years I’d be able to find this funny. Hey, your granddad once…No. Just no. Even imagining looking back on this made my stomach fizz with shame.
Caspian’s gaze flicked to his colleagues. “We will continue this after lunch.”
And then he hauled me out of there.
Past the hot blond guy and into what was probably his office—corporate grandeur and the gray London skyline—where he practically threw me into a chair. My wrist throbbed with the impression of his fingers.
“Um—” I tried again.
“Don’t ever do this again. This is my place of business.”
And that was when I got it: he was furious with me. Not just a loser interrupted my meeting furious but coldly, personally furious. And he was way better at it than I was. He really did look invulnerable as he stalked across the room.
He was dressed in a three-piece suit (so far so city) but he wore it like armor, the hard contours of his body perfectly framed by bespoke tailoring. It wasn’t usually a look I went for and it could easily have crossed the line into fussy or old-fashioned, but on him? Maybe it was his height, or the way he held himself—utterly controlled—but he looked ridiculously fucking good. The epitome of modern masculine power. A predator in pinstripes.
And still, in spite of everything, I wanted to be on my knees for him. Unburdening him, my most ungentle knight, until we were nothing but skin and surrender.
He stood with his back to me, etched in cold light, staring out at the horizon. While I just huddled there, shaking. No idea what to do or say.
At last I managed, “Well don’t treat me like that again.”
“I have already expressed regret for my behavior.” He folded his hands behind his back, the set of his shoulders unyielding. “And tried to make amends.”
Just when I thought he couldn’t hurt me any more. “You regretted fucking me so much you made amends with millions?”
“I didn’t fuck you. It was oral sex.”
“That’s semantics. You join your body with someone else’s in pursuit of pleasure, that’s fucking. And if you pay them afterward, that’s prostitution.”
His fingers clenched. I remembered them on me. Rough in my hair, soft against my cheek. I imagined touching them now, easing the tension from them.
Idiot.
“You wanted a donation for your college,” he murmured. “That was why you contacted me in the first place.”
I was going to cry. End of a perfect bloody day. “It wasn’t why I sucked you off.”
There was a long silence. The phase sucked you off belonged here about as well as I did.
“What do you want, Arden?” He sounded weary suddenly. Not angry anymore. Just sad, like me.
And I didn’t know how to answer him. All the revenge fantasies I’d let run riot through my head were just that—fantasies. The things I truly wanted were stupid and impossible: I want it to have meant something to you. I want you to like me, just a little bit. “I…”
“There’s no need to be timid. You’ve made your point.”
“I have?” I wished he’d look at me. It was eerie talking to his back and the wavering ghost of his reflection in the window.
“Why else would you come to my office?” He half turned, showing me the pale edge of his jaw, the line of his nose. “What will you do? Go to the press? The police?”
The plot. I had completely lost the plot. “Uh, what?”
He put a hand to the glass, the bones all ridging up beneath the whitening skin. “Stop playing games with me. Is it money? I’ll pay.”
“Oh Jesus.” Now I got it. “You think I’m blackmailing you?”
