In the Dark--A Sexy Billionaire Romance Read online

  ‘Too fucking bad.’ I wasn’t polite these days and I didn’t bother to hide it. ‘Promise me you won’t pull this stunt again, then get out of here.’

  But she didn’t seem at all bothered by my tone and she didn’t move. Her skin was getting all goosebumpy and I couldn’t help noticing that her nipples had tightened beneath the silk of her dress.

  Pretty.

  No, shit, I didn’t want to think that. I didn’t want that goddamned thought anywhere near my brain, but it was there all the same. Because she was. Not beautiful, but definitely pretty. A different kind of prettiness from all the cheerleaders and other women who used to fall into my bed. One that wasn’t immediately obvious, that took time to uncover. A mysterious sort of beauty, rewarding to whoever discovered it...

  Jesus, why the hell was I thinking about whether she was pretty or not? All I should be thinking of was getting rid of her. I’d cut her out of my life for very good reasons and I didn’t want her coming back into it.

  Her chin lifted higher. ‘If I don’t go, will you hurt me?’

  ‘I don’t hurt women,’ I growled, annoyed that she would even think it, before realising that of course she might very well think it. She had no idea who I was.

  ‘Good to know.’ She tilted her head again, this time at a different angle, as if trying to see through her blindfold. ‘So what are you trying to protect me from, ace? Something kinky?’

  ‘Kinky is relative. And that’s not a question you get to ask me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Yeah, she was pushing it. Perhaps she needed to be told explicitly why this was a very bad idea.

  ‘Do you want to know what I want from the women I hire for the night, little girl?’ I asked, ignoring her question.

  Her nose wrinkled, reminding me once again—as if I needed it—of the kid sister I’d once thought of her as. ‘Not sure I like the “little girl” thing. Not sexy, dude.’

  ‘Then leave.’

  She made an irritated sound and very pointedly settled in the chair, smoothing out the blue silk of her dress.

  Yeah, all of this would have been fine if she’d just done what she was told.

  The past few years fronting the business had made me hard, and people generally responded to that by doing exactly what I told them to do. Rarely did they challenge me.

  But I couldn’t deny the way she was pushing back right now, though fucking annoying, was also...erotic. And it was getting me off.

  Bad idea.

  Oh, it wasn’t just a bad idea—it was a fucking terrible idea.

  Me getting hot for Vee wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘Tell me, then,’ she said after a second. ‘Tell me what you want from the women you hire for a night.’

  ‘Their complete obedience. Doing everything I say with no argument and no hesitation.’

  The blindfold shifted as she frowned. ‘That’s it? Do everything you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do they do it?’

  ‘Yes.’ And they enjoyed every goddamned second of it.

  ‘Wow.’ Vesta bit her lip and my attention zeroed in on it. She really had a lovely mouth, plush and so soft-looking. How had I never noticed? ‘What do they get out of it, then?’

  ‘Money. And as many orgasms as I choose to give them. Which you’d know if you’d read my profile.’

  She coloured. Which was...interesting. Was this pushy, challenging, stubborn woman she’d grown into embarrassed by the word orgasm?

  Clearly she knew she’d given herself away, because she gave a forced-sounding laugh and said with a fair attempt at bravado, ‘Hey, that doesn’t sound bad. In fact, it sounds pretty good to me. So what kinds of things do you get them to do?’

  The conversation was obviously making her uncomfortable, yet she was trying to pretend that she wasn’t. Another sign that she shouldn’t be here. Because, if she found an overtly sexual conversation with a stranger discomforting, then she wasn’t going to enjoy the actual sex part, was she?

  What? Are you actually considering using her for tonight?

  No. Fuck, no. All I wanted to do was put her off.

  ‘An example, then,’ I said. ‘I might order you to take off your clothes. To face the window. To spread your legs. To put your hands on your pussy and make yourself come.’ I paused, noting the colour that deepened in her cheeks as I spoke. ‘While I watch.’

  She was shocked. I could see by the way her mouth opened, then closed very quickly. Strange that, for all her spiky, blue-tipped hair and her tattoos and confronting attitude, she should find this shocking.

  Maybe it was because she was still the same little girl inside, shy and awkward, sweet and sensitive.

  Which means you shouldn’t be talking to her like that.

  Yeah, I probably shouldn’t. Then again, she wasn’t a little girl any more, no matter that I kept calling her one, and if I wanted to frighten her off I needed to be hard-nosed about it.

  ‘Oh...uh... I see.’ She turned her head towards the window, white teeth working at the plushness of her soft bottom lip. ‘And...um...they do that? When you ask?’

  The huskiness in her voice had become pronounced, the way a woman’s did when she was starting to get aroused. And I could see it all of a sudden—her naked in that chair with her thighs spread, still wearing those sandals with the sexy ties wrapped around her slender calves. Her skin would be flushed and her hand would be down between...

  Holy shit. Where the hell had that thought come from?

  My suit pants had got even tighter, my cock deciding it wanted in on that action, and I had to concentrate hard to shove it aside. The whole point of this was to get her to leave, not to start thinking of what would happen if she stayed.

  But ignoring my physical discomfort was something I’d had a lot of practice with the past ten years, and if you could ignore agonising pain then ignoring one inappropriate hard-on was a relatively simple matter.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘They do.’

  ‘And you get off on that?’

  ‘If you want to stay, you’re going the wrong way about it.’ I tried to make my voice cold. ‘You’re supposed to do what I tell you, not ask me questions.’

  ‘I could do that, you know,’ she said suddenly. ‘I could take my clothes off and do...what you want.’

  Christ, if she couldn’t even say it...

  ‘If you want the money that badly, I’ll pay you right now.’ I had the cash in my wallet, as the women I hired liked cash, and I had a lot of it. And in fact, now I thought of it, why hadn’t I just done that? If money was why she was doing this, then the simplest way to solve the problem was to pay her. I could afford it. I wasn’t the poor boy from the projects looking to make good, hoping to drag his family out of poverty. Not any more.

  I’d buried that boy. He was dead and gone.

  I was the selfish billionaire now, with a thriving business and money to burn, and if I wanted to pay Vee a lot of money so she didn’t go offering herself around to any other guy then I would.

  Or you could keep her safe by letting her stay.

  The thought streaked across my brain like a rocket trailing sparks and lighting up the night, and for a second I couldn’t move, transfixed by it.

  Then reality asserted itself. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. No fucking way.

  ‘What?’ She did that head tilt again. ‘You mean, not just the rate for the night?’

  ‘No. Tips as well.’ I scowled at her, though she couldn’t see me. ‘In fact, just tell me how much you need for your business and I’ll give it to you.’

  She’d gone very still except for a slight quiver, like a little cat sensing a bird. ‘So you’d pay me all of that for...what? Doing nothing?’

  ‘No,’ I growled. ‘I’m not paying you to do nothing. Firstly, I’m paying you to get the
fuck out of this room, and secondly, so you don’t pull this stupid stunt with any other Strangers client. Because no one wants their special evening ruined by some kid turning up out of the blue when they were expecting to have the woman of their choice.’

  As soon as the words had left my mouth, I knew I’d said the wrong thing.

  I could almost see the outrage swelling in her, because she got more and more still, the quiver becoming pronounced. I’d hit a nerve and, now that I thought about it, of course I’d hit a nerve. She’d basically been rejected all of her life, and now here I was, rejecting her.

  Then again, I’d been doing that for years now already, hadn’t I? While part of me regretted and felt guilty about it, the rest of me didn’t. And, as I’d let the soft, compassionate part of me die in a hospital bed years ago, it was the rest of me that was in control. The rest of me that had hardened, that was as unfeeling as the scar tissue that covered most of my torso and upper thighs. The part that had been through the flames—literally—and had come out the other side, stronger, tempered like a fucking sword. That didn’t give a shit about other people and their feelings, and never would.

  ‘A kid?’ she demanded, outraged. ‘Why would you think that? I’m not a kid. I’m twenty-five.’

  ‘That’s still—’

  ‘And what do you mean by expecting to have a woman of their choice? I am a woman. Are you saying there’s something wrong with me?’

  She was angry. Good. I wanted her angry. I wanted her enraged enough that she’d get up off that chair and storm out.

  But she didn’t.

  ‘Right,’ she said flatly. ‘That’s it. I’m not leaving. You’re stuck with me now. And I’m going to show you exactly what a ruined evening looks like.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Vesta

  ANGER BOILED INSIDE ME, which wasn’t great, when I was supposed to be seductive and sexy. Yet I couldn’t keep it locked away.

  The paying me bit was fine. Tips for nothing—who wouldn’t want that? But firstly suggesting that I was a kid, and secondly that my turning up would ruin someone’s evening, was a step too far.

  Yeah, I was stubborn. It used to be that I used my stubbornness to try to get attention from my parents. Be my pretty mom’s mini-me, my dad’s good little girl. Until I realised that neither of them really gave a shit about me, that they were never going to be as proud of me as they were of Traj, and so I stopped caring about being good and instead set about being as mulish as possible.

  Eli was the only one who’d seen my stubbornness as something good rather than yet another flaw I needed to overcome. He’d told me he admired it, and that sometimes the only difference between success and failure was the degree of tenacity a person had. Coming from him, with the success he’d managed to achieve on the football field despite his poor background, that had meant a lot. I’d felt I’d done so many things wrong, so having at least one thing I was doing right had been like being given a handful of gold.

  Whether staying was the right thing to do now, though, was a moot point. I couldn’t give up. Not when I had something to prove to this patronising, dismissive asshole, sexy voice or no.

  I gripped the arms of the chair in preparation for pushing myself to my feet, but that sandpaper voice of his cut across me, freezing me in place.

  ‘Sit the fuck down.’

  My heartbeat thumped, anger surging inside me. But there was something in the words, a note of steely command, that had me obeying him for reasons I couldn’t have articulated.

  I sat there, all my awareness centred on that hard, male presence I could sense just off to my right.

  He was angry too—I could almost taste it—and I guess he had every right to be. I was an unexpected wrench in his plans and he was pissed that he hadn’t been notified. But, hell, I didn’t understand why he was prepared to pay me all this money just to leave. Why should he care when I was just some kid he didn’t know, turning up out of the blue and ruining his evening?

  And it wasn’t as if he was even protecting me from anything seriously kinky, just a little voyeurism stuff. So what the hell was his deal? And, if it bothered him so much, why hadn’t he just walked out of the room?

  He could pay me the money right now and leave.

  Yeah, but he hasn’t. And you know why.

  A burst of sudden insight shot through me, burning bright in my head. There could only be one reason that he hadn’t walked out: I’d intrigued him in some way.

  My breath caught and I sat very still in my chair, concentrating on him.

  He made no sound, yet I could almost feel the anger coming off him, seething in the air between us. Which meant that I was right, surely? Because if there was nothing keeping him here, and he was that angry, he’d just have walked out.

  But something was keeping him here and that something could only be me.

  Also, his anger was weird too, now I thought about it. Sure, I’d kind of inserted myself into his evening, and it made sense that he would be annoyed about it. But this felt like more than mere annoyance. There had been a protective element to it too, as if what happened to me mattered to him.

  Though it was the fact that he hadn’t left that gripped me so thoroughly.

  Did he...want me?

  Heat licked through me at the thought, making my breath catch.

  ‘I might order you to take off your clothes...put your hands on your pussy...make yourself come...while I watch...’

  I’d done a bit of stuff with guys, but not a lot, mainly because I had only ever wanted one guy in my life. Only one I’d really wanted to do stuff with, and he was six-three, golden-skinned, golden-haired, built like a god...

  I used to go to all his games because I’d loved watching him play. He’d been the epitome of athletic male grace and power as he’d charged down the field, making my heart race and my mouth go dry.

  But he’d never seen me as anything more than a kid, and these days he didn’t see me as anything much at all. I didn’t exist for him and he’d made that very obvious.

  It had hurt then and it still did, even though I’d stopped trying to make contact with him a year or so ago. I didn’t even ask Traj about him the way I’d used to.

  So if this guy, whoever he was, could make me hot, then maybe there was hope for me. Hope that I could get over Eli Hart and put him behind me once and for all.

  ‘Leave, sit the fuck down...’ My voice sounded breathless in the quiet. ‘Better make up your mind, ace. A girl could get confused.’

  ‘I’ve got cash in my wallet. A lot of cash. All you need for—’

  ‘Do you want me?’

  A silence fell, but in no way a comfortable one.

  ‘Why do you ask?’ His voice was even more raspy, scraping over my nerve-endings like fine sandpaper.

  ‘Enquiring minds want to know. It’s easier by far for you to walk out, but you haven’t. In fact, if you really didn’t want anything to do with me, you could have walked out the moment I came into the room, but you didn’t.’

  Silence.

  ‘Why not, ace?’ I stared in his direction, stared hard. ‘But you don’t need to answer. I already know. You want me, and I think you don’t like that and it’s pissing you off.’

  More silence.

  I couldn’t sense him now. Was he still here? Or had he walked out? The thought that he might have made an unexpected stab of disappointment go through me.

  ‘If you don’t want to do this, then I’ll find someone else,’ I went on, wanting to goad him, make him respond in some way. ‘I’ll find some other guy who doesn’t mind—’

  ‘No. You won’t.’

  I nearly gasped.

  His voice was very close, near my ear, as if he’d crossed the space between us to come and stand directly behind my chair.

  Every muscle in my body tightened, anticipation ra
cing through me.

  ‘I won’t?’ I asked breathlessly, trying not to give away my physical reaction to his nearness. ‘And who’s going to stop me?’

  ‘You don’t need to prove yourself, little girl.’ His deep, abrasive voice was so close, sending those chills racing all over my skin. ‘Still less to me.’

  Little girl... I should have called him out again about that, but I’d lied earlier about not finding it sexy. I did find it sexy. It made all this feel just a little bit wrong, a little bit taboo, and part of me liked that very much.

  Not that I was concentrating all that hard on what he was saying as every part of me was focused on him, trying to get a sense of him. There was heat at my back. Was that him? I could smell the faintest hint of expensive aftershave, spicy and warm, like cloves or cinnamon. As well as an achingly familiar scent underneath it that I couldn’t quite place.

  ‘But what if I want to prove myself?’ My voice had become hoarse. ‘And what if I want to prove myself to you?’

  ‘Why? You have no idea who I am. Why would it matter?’

  ‘Okay, so maybe not to you, but what if I wanted to prove something to myself?’

  ‘What the fuck would you want to prove?’

  I didn’t know why I told him the truth, because it wasn’t something I’d told anyone before. Maybe it was that haunting sense of familiarity, or maybe I just wanted to shock him, surprise him in some way. Or maybe it was just that confessing things to complete strangers when you were wearing a blindfold was easier.

  Whatever it was, the truth came out whether I’d wanted it to or not.

  ‘There’s someone I need to put behind me,’ I said shakily. ‘Someone who doesn’t feel the same way about me as I do about him. I thought this might give me the chance to do that.’

  More silence came from behind my chair, and yet I knew he hadn’t moved, because I could still catch his scent. God, he smelled so good. It should be illegal for a man to smell that delicious.

  ‘You’re too honest.’ His voice was quiet. ‘You shouldn’t share that kind of stuff with people you don’t know.’

  I took a shaky breath. ‘Too late now, isn’t it?’