One Night Wife (The Confidence Game 1)

“Sex, Cal.” Fin threw her hands up. “What happens after snuggles or before snuggles, or generally in relation to snuggles if the sex is any good.”

“You weren’t well. You were wearing a tampon.”

“A menstrual cup if you must know and what’s that got to do with it.”

“I was hardly going to—” Menstrual cup.

“And for the record, I’ve been tested, I’m clean and I’m on birth control, and I can’t believe you’re scared of a little blood.”

“We’re not having this conversation.” Cal’s face was hot. He couldn’t think of the last time he’d been embarrassed like this. “The One Night Wife is shorthand. We say Secret Baby and Hidden Heir and Blackmailed Bride, as well. It’s a way to describe roles and procedures. It’s our jargon. It’s got nothing to do with sex. And clearly, our arrangement is for more than one night, so that proves it’s virtually meaningless.”

“The only thing I hear is Cal Sherwood protesting too much.”

He put his hands to his head. Even his hair was warm. “For fuck’s sake.”

“You keep making it personal, this thing between us, personal enough that I don’t know how to process it. You hated every minute of Rocky Horror, and yet you sat through the whole thing with me and never said a word of complaint. I don’t understand what we’re doing. Are we friends? Am I a One Night Wife joke to you?”

He slumped on the couch, momentarily defeated by Fin’s indignation and his own ruthless determination to defend an indefensible position. He wanted to be more than her friend, he wanted skin on skin, to watch her come apart underneath him, but the complications that came from being with her were explosive. Whether his mother liked her or not. Sherwoods didn’t play it straight with outsiders, and he couldn’t bring Fin inside.

Her shoes came into view, killer heels, attached to her sensational legs. “Fuck you, Cal Sherwood.” He should’ve looked at her face, and he would, when he’d finished looking at the rest of her, the flare of her hips, narrow waist, the swell of her ribs. Standing so close her foot was between both of his. “You want me. I know you do.” It didn’t help convince her otherwise that he couldn’t stop staring at her breasts. “I’ve been nice about your boundaries”—he met her eyes—“but seriously, game on.”

“Meaning?”

“I went shopping per the brief, on your dime. You think I look good in these pants, you’re going to have to unzip yours to ease the pain when you see me in the rest of my outfits.”

He’d like to unzip now. Unpeel her from the goddamn pants that got to hug her. He’d like to do a lot of things that weren’t suitable for work, weren’t suitable for a One Night Wife when the One Night Wife was Fin.

He stood, surprised and outrageously delighted when she didn’t step back. “This weekend is important to me.”

He took a lock of hair and tucked it behind her ear and was gratified to see the pulse point at the base of her throat flutter. The game was most definitely on. Fin didn’t know he played games for a living, and the rules were stacked against her.

“And you know it will be lucrative for you.” He put his hand on her shoulder, an approved touch, and then skimmed it down her arm, another approved touch if you stretched the rules to allow that open palm dragging on her bare skin. “Much as I want to see you outside your clothes, it’s not going to happen.”

“Beginning to wonder if I got you all wrong.” Her chin was up, but her breathing was wrecked, and her pupils had blown wide.

“How’s that?” he asked.

“If maybe you don’t like women.”

Now that was silly. He put his hand to her ass and yanked her forward, so she could feel exactly by how much she’d lost that point.

She didn’t pull away.

He had all the chips stacked on his side of the table and all the hands would play his way because he controlled the dealer, he controlled the whole casino, but still Fin was a threat because she could read his tells—they were like a dozen kids on out-of-control skateboards, a hundred corseted Frank N. Furter, a thousand noisy burger bars. His tells were in his hands and his eyes and his voice, palpable and inevitable, and loud as a one-eyed demon cat.

“It’s never going to happen, much as we both might want it to. You don’t always get what you want when you’re a grown-up.” He let her go and stepped away to steady himself. He put the desk between them, insulated himself from her devious softness with steel and glass.

“What are you scared of, Cal?”

He sat heavily. “Isn’t it obvious?”

She planted her hands on the other side of the desk and looked down on him. “Not to me.”

He could talk circles around multi-billionaires, get them to dump a fortune in his lap without ever asking for a cent. He could break the law over and over and never fear getting caught. He was young, fit, fearless, at the top of his profession, about to secure his family’s investment pipeline and rebuild his personal fortune; more fuck-off money than he could spend if he lived till he was one hundred that he’d use to fund his own private charitable interests.

She was short, underweight, all glossy brown hair and big doe eyes, snarky as hell, and a self-confessed flake, and no one had ever made him question his own judgment more.

“I’m scared of you, Finley Cartwright. I’m shit-scared of you.”