Three Hard Lessons (Blindfold Club 2)

I picked his jacket up off of the floor and went to the table so I could set it beside his shirt.

“Come back,” he said.

Unsteady feet carried me to the silk robe hanging on the hook. My hand shook when I pulled it down and slipped it on, and turned to finally face him. He was devastatingly handsome, even when his face was full of confusion.

“Please get dressed.” My voice was hollow since I was terrified by what I was about to do. “I have to talk to my manager.”

He already had the condom off and knotted it, and dropped it into the trash. My eyes were fixed on him as he stood and pulled up his pants. I watched the muscles in his lean arms flex as he did the zipper and then the button, his gaze pinned on me.

My whole body shook. My stomach was lined with lead.

“Why do you have to talk to your manager?”

“Because the deal’s off.”

chapter

FIVE

Dom froze mid-buckle of his belt. “What?”

I took a hesitant step toward him, then another as my nervous hands tightened the sash at the waist of my robe. “Stay in the room, don’t leave until I get back.”

Because if he stepped out into the hall, that was it. The transaction was complete and Marquis would escort Dom to the payment room, where I’d never see him again.

The disorientation was clear on Dom’s face. “Why is the deal off?”

“Because I didn’t do what I was supposed to.”

I watched the confusion grow larger in his magnetic eyes. “Which was what? Give me the best sex I’ve ever had? Believe me, Paige, you delivered. And then some.”

My goddamn knees turned to mush. He stormed at me, a blur of skin stretch over muscle and pulled me roughly into his arms.

“What is this?” he asked.

Maybe he thought this was some sort of ploy. A shake-down for more money. I wasn’t anywhere near a good enough actress to pull off the fractured feeling I was sure to be displaying.

“I don’t want your money,” I gasped. “It will make what just happened . . . not real.”

My brain scrambled, desperate to find a way to come out the other side of this. I’d rather have this night as whatever the fuck it was, than my percentage of his thirty grand. I’d have to drive myself to the ER after I left here, because something was very, very wrong with me.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “I have the money. I mean, I got a huge bonus last month. I can pay–”

“Don’t, just wait. I don’t know what I’m doing.” I shook in his arms. “All I know is I don’t want you to be another client. Don’t take what we did away from me.”

Oh, god, I wanted these foreign emotions to get the fuck out. It helped that Dom looked at me now like I had two heads.

His voice was barely a whisper. “Real?”

“Terrifyingly real.” How was Joseph going to react when I told him what I wanted? How was I going to pull this off?

His arms were tight, crushing me to his sweat-damp chest. Beneath it, his heart was racing as fast as my own. A tight laugh rumbled in him, shuddering his shoulders.

“Well,” he said finally, “tonight did not go how I thought it would.”

“No fucking kidding. I wasn’t even supposed to be here,” I muttered, distracted with thoughts of the man upstairs with the bank of monitors behind his desk and an earpiece to alert him to any situations. Did Joseph know how big of a situation was brewing in Room One?

“Me, neither,” Dom said. “I was supposed to go out with my friend tonight, the one that got engaged, but apparently he’s sick.”