It was a motto he’d lived by.
He fired off a reply before he could help himself.
Honest to god, that was a mistake. Quadding. I’m going to take you quadding. I bet you’ve never been. You probably haven’t been out of the city. Ever. You’re stuck with the flowers just like you’re stuck with me. Sorry. Clause 89b of the contract.
In less than a minute, her response came through.
Tear up that stupid contract. It’s never going to happen. I was suffering from momentary insanity. It’s something I’ve since rectified. And I’m not going quadding. I have a job to do. Not calling in sick. My boss is a real prick. He’ll probably give me hell. Just saying.
His response was less than savory, but he couldn’t help himself.
I agree. Your boss can be an asshole. He wasn’t raised right. His parents set terrible examples. His mother thought he was hopeless. As for being a prick, I don’t know about that, but he definitely has a nice one. You’ll find out soon. Picking you up tomorrow morning at eight. Don’t wear a dress.
This time, Colette’s email contained the vomit emoji and the emoji of the hand flipping him off. Nice. He’d come closer to confessing the truth to her than he ever had to anyone else. That was the thing about money. It could buy a person anything, including a fresh start. If only she knew. He’d disguised the truth in jest, the asshole kind of jest that he knew she’d never think about hard enough to get the underlying meaning.
Don’t make me come over there and drag you out of that cubicle. I’m torn, at the moment, between punishing you and making good on what you asked me to do. And no, those things aren’t likely to be exclusive, just so we’re clear. Also, I get it. I’m a jerk. This is my attempt to not be a jerk. The only way I know how. Can I please pick you up tomorrow morning? I promise it will be the most fun you’ve ever had. You know. Because you haven’t slept with me yet.
She responded quickly. Too quickly. Like she didn’t need time to think about it. He grinned when his eyes scanned over her response.
Just to be clear, it’s never going to happen. If I go quadding with you tomorrow, and trust you not to kill me getting me there, and if it involves a certified instructor and separate quads, you have to promise me you’ll burn that contract and leave me alone. Make it clear that we are not dating. That it was some kind of stupid joke because you’re the world’s biggest narcissistic asswipe. BTW, I threw the flowers in the trash.
Blaze leaned back in his chair and grinned like a motherfucker. He didn’t care that he wasn’t going to follow through on his end of the deal. By the end of the day, she’d be begging him to pop her cherry. Or something along those lines. Getting intimately acquainted with each other’s private areas using their mouths would be alright too. The cherry could wait.
His fingers flew over the keys and he sent a response, half hoping she could picture his satisfied smirk and the dirty glean in his eyes.
Deal.
After all, he lived for the hunt.
CHAPTER 10
Colette
In her thoughts about Mr. Sex, which she hated to admit she’d actually dubbed him, though it wasn’t a friendly kind of term and certainly wasn’t an endearment or any type of wishful thinking, she often pictured him gliding through the skies in his private jet.
Because every billionaire had a private jet, right?
Wrong.
It turned out this billionaire didn’t. Or, if he did, he hadn’t chosen to impress her by flying her to Arizona into the middle of the desert. At least not in any kind of jet. He had instead flown her. Himself. In a little rickety antique looking plane that she very much doubted would even fly when it was sitting on the runway.
It had taken Blaze a good twenty minutes to talk her into getting in it. When she realized he was the one flying it, she nearly bailed again. If she hadn’t been strapped in, she really would have. Unfortunately, she was as good as tied up and had to squeeze her eyes shut tight- like that would save her- and bear it.
For a good few hours.
Once they got up in the air, it wasn’t so bad. Not really. The plane bumped and bounced like it might fall out of the sky and by the time they touched down, she was nearly deaf from the roar of it, but they were still alive. That had to count for something.
Colette inhaled a breath of relief when Blaze led them to the rental car agency and rented a shitty sedan, like everyone else. It was new, but Colette termed it shitty because it wasn’t some foreign make or model that had eight hundred horsepower and cost more than a mansion.