A small laugh escapes me as I face her again. “Because I feel like it, Olivia, and I do what I want. All I wanted to do tonight was to taste your pussy, and we’re starting to lose the plot with all of this talking. It’s simple: If you can’t handle this, you can go. I’m not going to follow you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Olivia crosses her arms, looking defiant. “You’ll need to try harder than that.”
Hell. Right when I thought I was on the cusp of winning, she tells me that I have miles to go before I sleep.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
“You’ll stick around and take what I give you,” I go on, glaring in challenge. “Like a desperate, insatiable whore with no self-respect.”
“So you’re into humiliation now,” she reasons incorrectly. “That’s your new kink, right? You get off on degrading women?”
“Sure.”
“Liar.”
“Shows what you know about me,” I counter, even though she’s right; I am a liar.
I’m also guilty of breaking the cardinal rule of business, game theory, and even war: Never underestimate your opponent. I thought she would be storming out of here right now, ruing the day she walked into my office. To my surprise…she’s taking off her clothes.
“What the hell are you doing?” I question, unable to look away as she drops her dress onto the floor.
“I thought I was sleeping over,” she replies, looking at me like I’m an idiot. “Right? Isn’t this what it takes to get the money I’ve earned?”
“You’re a fucking piece of work,” I mutter as I walk back to the bed, forcing myself to turn my back on her. Deep down, I want to watch this exquisite woman strip, and yet a conflicting part in me is so damn frustrated that no matter what I do, now matter how much I pivot, I cannot best this woman.
We lay down, side by side, both of us half-naked and staring up at the ceiling. It’s weird as shit, to say the least. For a few minutes, the only sound between us is the sound of us both breathing.
“Davis?” she whispers upwards, still refusing to look at me.
“Yeah?”
“You’re such an asshole.”
I let out the most condescending sound I can come up with, a cross between a scoff and a chuckle. “And yet here you are.”
“You didn’t let me finish what I was saying,” Olivia protests.
My sideways glance finds her facing me, watching me now. “So finish.”
“You’re such an asshole,” she reiterates before her gaze travels down to my half-erection in my boxer briefs, “but I want to make you come.”
Jesus, fuck. “Not tonight,” I force myself to say.
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t feel like it.” I don’t tell her the truth—that this night was supposed to end with her storming out and I couldn’t make that happen; that I didn’t plan any further than asking her to sit on my face; that despite how frustrated I am with her, she still makes me so nervous that I can’t even be cruel enough to her to get her to break this contract.
“So you’re paying me ten thousand dollars to have dinner with you, to come on your face, and to sleep with you in the fanciest apartment I’ve ever seen in my entire life?” Olivia clarifies, like she’s rubbing table salt into an open wound on my skin with one of her delicate fingers.
Apparently. “Must make you feel like a real piece of shit for what you did to me in Amsterdam,” I deadpan.
It’s supposed to be a joke, but I can immediately tell that it doesn’t land well. Olivia’s shoulders tighten before she turns away from me, facing the wall.
Surprised, I roll onto my side and study the elegant line of her back. She’s smooth all over, looking pristine even when I know that she’s anything but on the inside. A few beats pass before she lets out a breath and rolls back in my direction. We’re face to face now, looking at each other with our cheeks against the pillows. Her stare is hard and unrelenting, so I mirror her expression.
“What happened to you?” she finally asks.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I meant what I said. The guy I slept with in Amsterdam never would have said those things. He was so…you were so sweet, Davis. I had never met a guy like you, let alone slept with a guy like you. The men I slept with were such assholes—to me, to everybody. You were different, and yet you were the only one who I hurt back. Sometimes I wonder if it was because you were the only one capable of being hurt like that.”
I breathe out slowly, wishing that she would drop it. “I didn’t proposition you because I wanted closure. I did it because I want to fuck you. I want to fuck you hard, and I want to fuck you often, and I want to do it on my terms. So if I don’t feel like coming tonight, it’s not because I’m hung up on an incident from eight years ago. It’s because don’t feel like it. That’s it.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“And you don’t have to. Doesn’t change anything.”
Her expression is skeptical. “So you don’t need any closure? You’ve moved past it somehow?”
Screw this beautiful girl and her uncanny window into my soul. I lie and shake my head. “The only thing that I need closure about is that piercing,” I finally say.
Both of her eyebrows shoot out the stratosphere. “I’m sorry, but what?”