Lies That Sinners Tell (The Klutch Duet 1)

I nodded slowly. Well, there was my answer. Jay was in to something shady. If he was just another businessman, he wouldn’t have answered with such cold evasion or threat weaved in to his tone. Or perhaps this was just another part of the game, another attempt to control all the variables, keeping me in the place he’d carved out for me.

Neither one of these options were particularly good, but I was in too deep now.

“I’m not going to stay here, sitting around, waiting for you,” I responded, not even bothering to comment on his command that I refrain from trying to get to know more about him. “If you’re not here, then I’m not here. I don’t have a mysterious life that I keep secret, and it may not impress you, but I do not have a conventional work week either. My business, in large part, is conducted on the weekends. My job is important to me. It’s crucial to my ability to do things like pay rent for my unimpressive apartment, feed myself and shod myself in the shoes I adore. Now, I’m sure I’m not scary or intimidating at all to you of all people, but if my ability to buy outrageously overpriced and beautiful shoes is hampered by this arrangement, I will scare the fuck out of even you,” I scowled, crossing my arms. “I have worked very hard to cultivate my career, and I will not compromise it for any man or any arrangement.”

There it was. My stamp on this arrangement that most likely had been designed with no particular woman in mind, that however many women before me had agreed to. It was the sole thing that I could hold on to, telling myself that I was still a feminist because I’d argued for this one single thing.

I expected there to be a fight, of course. This man was not used to arguments, that much was clear. And I got it. I really did. Despite all of my convictions, my independence, I was sorely tempted to agree to everything, no matter what. Out of a desire to please him, a desperation to have him.

Jay, surprisingly, didn’t argue. He was silent for a long time, though. Perhaps purposefully. Leaving me hanging.

“Very well,” he agreed finally, face returning to its original icy façade. “You will have no other man,” he continued. “That is non-negotiable. While you are mine, you are mine. I don’t share. If I find out you have been giving what is mine to another man, it’s over.”

There was a threat in his words. Something chilling.

But I nodded, nonetheless. This ... arrangement hadn’t even begun, and I couldn’t imagine fitting another man in to my life. Jay was making it clear he intended to monopolize every space in my life.

“Are you on the pill?” he inquired, and I nodded again slowly.

“You will get the birth control shot this week,” he continued. “I’ll be present when you get it. Then, if this arrangement continues, I will also be there when you get the next one.”

“But I’m on the pill,” I told him.

“Yes, you are on the pill. But I will not be present to witness you taking it each day. This is non-negotiable. If you have a problem with doing this, you are, of course, free to walk away right now. But I am firm on this point. As I am on us both presenting paperwork that we are free from any disease.”

His insistence on this point was just further proof of the kind of man he was. He was a very particular man. A wealthy one who lived a certain kind of life. One who needed control, who lived a mysterious, quite likely dangerous life. He did not want some woman thinking he could be trapped in to a pregnancy.

“Why haven’t you had a vasectomy?” I queried.

He looked up, eyes narrowing on me as though no one had ever asked him that. No woman had put the burden of contraception on him when he laid out his terms.

“As I said, this point is non-negotiable,” he repeated, not answering my question.

Which pissed me off. A lot. More than a lot. “I’m supposed to change my routine, change the amount of hormones being put into my body, because you don’t want to get snipped?” I snapped.

A part of me was baiting him. Daring him to get angry, show some kind of emotion, passion. I craved seeing that in him.

But he merely stared, his expression infuriatingly void of emotion.

I began to sweat under the weight of his stare. Of this decision. There was no convincing him otherwise. He had no guilt, no compassion. No goodness. This was a cruel man who would not bend even an inch for me. Yet he expected me to break for him.

I hated him. In that very moment, with all of my being, I loathed him. I despised him for thinking he had the right to stipulate this. That he was forcing me in to this.