Polished. Handsome. Regal.
Yet he had an edge. Not visible to the naked eye. Something that dulled the smile of a bubbly receptionist and awakened something in me. Fed something in me.
I drank in his broad shoulders, his tall, powerful, sculpted form. Even though I still felt him inside me, I thirsted for more.
When he turned, it was clear I was wearing my emotions on my face. His lips turned upward in a satisfied and arrogant grin that should’ve pissed me off but only endeared him to me more.
No, endeared was too soft, too pure a word for it.
He was trapping me. With my own past. My own needs. With the darkness inside of him. The danger in him. I’d willingly given him the fucking blueprints on how to hold me captive. How to fuck up my world.
Wordlessly, I walked across the office. The space was large. Huge, in fact. Real estate in the city was precious, expensive. He had the whole top floor and a giant corner office, expensively appointed with a personal bathroom and a wet bar.
That didn’t impress me or intrigue me, his money. I’d been around plenty of wealthy men. It was just a detail. It wasn’t his wealth that I wanted to know about. What intrigued me was where he got it.
For now, I took the glass he held out to me, filled with amber liquid and ice. Our fingers brushed, and electricity rushed through me. The man had been inside me minutes ago, but that simple, innocent touch sparked a fire inside of me.
I didn’t know what I expected Cristian to do, this moment was unprecedented. We weren’t playing by any of the normal rules. If such a thing as normal existed.
Cristian moved purposefully, behind his desk, deliberately creating distance between us.
It didn’t hurt me. I wasn’t soft enough to be pricked by conceived slights, building up gestures in my mind. It merely intrigued me. He was mimicking our positions when I’d first entered, formulating a businesslike setting. I followed suit, moving to the chair I was sitting in. My panties were nowhere to be found. He’d taken them.
That caused my lips to stretch into a satisfied smile as I sat down.
It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t speak immediately. I liked it. The fact that we were both bathing in our own thoughts.
I was absorbed in the silence, no longer thinking about my plans for setting fire to my life. Not even about what lay ahead. The whisky burned my throat as it went down, and I reveled in the warmth that spread to my fingertips.
“You didn’t bring me here for just that,” I said, gripping onto the crystal tumbler. As explosive as our connection was, something I knew wasn’t one-sided, I also knew that there was more to this.
Cristian took a sip before he answered.
“No, I did not,” he agreed.
“You need a lawyer,” I said. “For something that needs to be handled with care?” At least that was my assumption. Our firm had a reputation for being the best in the city. We dealt with only the wealthiest of clients, handling every kind of case from corporate to criminal. Something inside of me guessed that Cristian’s needs leaned closer to the latter than the former.
Cristian’s eyes were unyielding. His face gave nothing away. “Many things in life need to be handled with care, but I do not need to hire a lawyer for that.” His words were spoken like butter. Rich. Smooth. But they rubbed against my skin like blades.
Something cold moved inside of me, and I felt the earth move underneath me. “I’m not here because you want to retain our services?” I asked slowly.
He leaned forward to clasp his hands together, resting his elbows on the desk. “Actually, I already am a client. I paid a rather handsome retainer late last night.”
Though this should’ve been cause for relief, my shoulders did not sag, my muscles did not loosen. Everything inside me was coiled tight, my heart thrumming against my ribs. My instincts were in overdrive. I’d been desperate to see this man again. To feel paralyzed and powerful beneath his stare. To inhale the air when it smelled like him. To feel the danger he carried around with him.
But something made me feel uneasy. Terrified.
What was worse, I liked that feeling.
I took another sip of the whisky, which I started to suspect he offered me because he knew I’d need it. Need to calm my nerves. “But that’s not why I’m here,” I surmised.
“No, that’s not why you’re here,” he agreed.
His expression was cold, calculating, eyes glowing with something bad. Something fucking evil.
I waited. He made me wait. Though I was smart, educated, intuitive and imaginative, I could not fathom a realistic reason for Cristian to have brought me here. Unless it was some kind of sick power play. But I didn’t peg him as petty. So my mind was racing. I knew this wasn’t some romantic bullshit. He wasn’t trying to woo me, trying to fucking date me. No, that’s not what this was.