Not even what side of the bed he slept on.
She wanted to launch into a passionate defense of herself and how she happened to be here in this room, clearly breaking all the rules. Rory considered herself pretty fluent in excuses, after the past few years of what her father liked to call unfortunate aimlessness.
But when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.
It was him.
He was...forbidding.
He was tall and built like none of the men Rory tended to date. He was not willowy and slim, with tousled hair. He did not look as if he could wear a smaller size of trousers than she could. He looked like he was intimately acquainted with his own body and decidedly physical. There were lean muscles everywhere, and it was obvious that if he were to strip naked, he would look like the sort of glorious male sculpture that belonged in one of the museums here.
He looked as strict as he did beautiful. It was those eyes of his, so decidedly dark blue and cold, like the Atlantic in winter. And his mouth, set in a hard, firm line. His dark blond hair was close-cropped and only made him seem that much more masculine. That much more. There was obvious power and authority in him that he wore as easily as he did the dark trousers he had on and that leather jacket that whispered of near incalculable amounts of money, particularly because it did marvelous things for his wide shoulders.
Or maybe that was just his shoulders.
If asked, Rory could have given a dissertation on the kind of man she liked. A boyish-faced, agreeable poet sort. Wispy, nonthreatening men who wanted to sing her songs and tell her about their dreams.
That was not this man. At all.
He looked as if he might have been fashioned out of a hatchet or sword, all planes and angles, all solid. Not only deeply, inarguably male, but very much as if he might at a moment’s notice turn himself into a weapon.
Or already was one.
Rory had no idea why looking at him made her knees feel weak.
“Do I need to call the police?” he asked in the same cut-steel voice.
Rory told herself that his voice was getting to her because he was speaking French. That was all. It was flawless French, though she could hear the hint of an accent, and she always had to play catchup when people were speaking French. Even though she’d imagined herself fluent after all her years of studying the language in high school and college.
“I understand French,” she told him. Maybe a little hopefully. “But I’m much better in English.”
“Forgive me,” the man said with exaggerated patience. He still stood there, taking up the entirety of the arched stone doorway and all of the oxygen in the room, and he didn’t look as if he was all that interested in forgiveness. “I cannot think of a single reason why an American should be in my home at all. Much less in this room.”
He said all of that in English. So that she could be certain to hear the derision in his voice when he said American, Rory assumed. But that made this interaction feel something like normal, so she beamed at him.
“I’m happy to clear that up,” she said brightly. “I’m your cleaning service.”
“You do not look like a service. You look like a single person. And one who is not where she ought to be.”
Everything about his voice and that cool, assessing way he looked at her made her heart kick around inside her chest. It made that warm thing expand, hot and unwieldy and barbed, almost.
As if he was electric. And inside her, somehow.
“I’ve been cleaning this property for months,” she told him, as if that should make him feel better about her invasion of his privacy.
“Have you indeed.”
It didn’t sound like a question, but she took it as one anyway. “I have. I hope you’ve noticed the care I’ve taken with your things. That’s part of what we promise at CleanWorks.”
“And were my instructions unclear in all this time?”
There was something about the way he continued to stand there that should have scared her, she thought. He was so still. So focused.
So...intent.
But instead, the warmth in her turned into a blast of heat. And it made her pussy ache.
“There were six pages of instructions for this property,” she said, trying not to stammer as unfamiliar sensations flowed through her. Her breasts felt heavy. She could feel her nipples harden. She thought she might even be sweating. “Single-spaced. To be honest, I skimmed them.”
An expression moved over his face that she thought might have been laughter, if he’d been someone else. On him it looked like a storm.
“You skimmed. And you feel comfortable telling me this as you stand here in the middle of the room I expressly forbade you to enter.”
“The door was open.” She shrugged casually, as if she felt in any way relaxed or at her ease while her lungs stopped working and her whole body was...freaking out. “I thought maybe that meant you wanted it cleaned this time.”
“No,” he said. With quiet conviction. “You did not think that.”
His words seemed to fill the room. Or maybe it was the way he looked at her, those dark blue eyes so intent that she nearly collapsed to the floor and started blurting out confessions. Anything to make him stop looking at her like that.
But he didn’t stop. And to her astonishment, she felt herself flush. She felt her cheeks get hot, and somewhere in her belly, she felt a little curl of shame.
Which was even more unusual than the heat everywhere else.
She opened her mouth to protest, but he stopped her. He did something with his head, barely shaking it at all. He just looked as if he might shake his head, and whatever she’d been about to say died unsaid.
“I will ask you not lie to me,” he said.
In that same quiet voice that was all steel. Steel that didn’t have to flash or carry on—it was just steel.
And it was bizarre, then, how she suddenly wanted to impress him with the force of her honesty.
“Maybe...” Again, that almost shake of his head, and she pulled in a shaky breath. And dropped the maybe. “I wanted to see what was in this room.”
“Why?”
“I guess...”
“Don’t guess. Tell me.”
It occurred to Rory to wonder why she was still standing there, trying to impress a man who looked as if nothing could ever impress him. Or worse, as if she was desperate to keep talking to him when she didn’t even know his name.
When he obviously—and rightly, something in her piped up, straight from that flush of shame inside her—thought the worst of her.
“I guess I’m the curious type.”
“You guess? Or you are?”
She had no idea why she felt chastened. Or why she, who could talk to anyone about anything and usually did, stood there. Silenced.
“Not only curious,” he continued. “You thought you should document your findings. What do you plan to do with those pictures you took?”
Rory had completely forgotten that her mobile was in her hand. She stared down at it, as if it was a scarlet A branded on her palm. “I... I don’t know.”
“Don’t you?”
Her cheeks felt even hotter than before. “I take a lot of pictures. And okay, I post some of them online. All of my friends are back in the States, and I like to make it clear that I made good choices in coming to Paris. Plus, you know, I have followers.”
“Followers,” he repeated, as if the word felt foreign and unpleasant on his tongue. “Are you a student?”
“Um, no. I graduated from college almost four years ago.”
“A tourist, then. Cleaning houses for fun as you travel? Or perhaps to raise money for the next leg?”
“It’s actually my company,” she said, and she felt as if she was back on even ground again. Or more even ground, anyway. “CleanWorks is more than just a hous
ecleaning service. I like to call it an artisan experience that results in housecleaning.”
“Does this experience normally include an invasion of your clients’ privacy, or is that a bonus?”
He didn’t move when he said that, and still, she felt it like a shock to her system. A literal electric shock. As if he’d leaped across the space and done something with his hands—
Though she almost staggered back a step when she realized that no small part of her wished he had. What was happening to her?
“I really did think the door was left open because you wanted this room as part of your clean this time,” she said loftily, because it was better to double down on something that he couldn’t prove was untrue. “My bad. I’ll just pack up—”
“No,” he said in the same mildly reproving way, all steel and disappointment, shaming her all over again, “you did not think that. And I believe I’ve already told you that I dislike lies.”
She took a breath and realized she couldn’t remember if she’d done that in a while. And once she did, she could again feel the wild racket her heart was making.
Meanwhile, that ache in her pussy was bordering on astonishing. She felt...slippery.
And something like needy.
“Do you know what I use this room for?” he asked.
“Unless it’s an art installation, I imagine you use it for sex,” Rory replied, matter-of-factly.
She had always taken particular pleasure in being provocative. In talking about sex as if she’d done it all a thousand times over, for example, to people who expected her to stammer or blush. She liked to give them a direct stare, a faintly superior sort of smile, and a frankness they never saw coming.
But none of that worked here. With him.
He only gazed back at her, one dark brow raised higher than the other, and she felt herself...quiver.
“Yes,” he said in that voice of his, with that accent she couldn’t quite place. “Sex. But not just any kind of sex, obviously. I like tools. And props. And all kinds of games. It’s a very particular kind of sex that I don’t care if you understand or not. But I prefer, all the same, to do the deciding about who I share that with.”
“I get it,” Rory said, nodding maybe a little too vigorously. As if that would make all the dark, wicked images his words had stirred up dissipate. It didn’t work, but she kept going. “I grew up on Fifty Shades, so...”
The man did not sigh. He did not roll his eyes. Yet somehow he gave the impression of doing both.
Without moving an inch or lifting that navy blue, winter sea gaze of his from her.
“There are normally consequences for lying to me in this room,” he told her. Very calmly. “Consequences I have no doubt you would not wish to pay, for all your posturing.”
“I’m not posturing—”
“What you are is fired.” This time his voice was all steel, and though he didn’t change his volume, it wasn’t quiet. “But before you leave here, never to return, I would like you to give me your mobile.”
Rory blinked. She would do nothing of the kind.
But before she knew she meant to move—or even breathe—she found herself crossing back to the door, her hand outstretched toward him, so caught up in that stare of his she thought she might have leaped off a cliff—
She only caught herself at the last moment, rocking to a halt and frowning at him in a flush of confusion.
“Wait.”
But he reached over and tugged her phone from her grip, managing to do it without touching her at all.
Something that shouldn’t have made her feel so...raw.
“You really can’t go around taking people’s phones,” she protested. “Right out of their hands.”
He tapped a few buttons, deleting the photos she’d taken, and then raised that cool gaze to hers again. “It is such an invasion of privacy, isn’t it? I understand.”
And she felt that rawness inside her turn into something else, too quickly, as if he’d flayed her open with such a mild reproach.
The shame inside her seemed to swallow her whole. It was hot and awful, and she couldn’t seem to feel anything but the press of it.
And the way he looked at her, as if he knew.
“I’m sorry,” she heard herself say, as if from a very great distance.
In a voice that didn’t sound like hers at all.
The man handed her phone back to her in a peremptory way that nearly had her thanking him. And then he studied her, something about that slow, intense perusal making her fight to keep from shivering.
She wanted to back away from him, but she didn’t.
“I think that’s the most honest thing you’ve said to me so far,” he said. And she had the strangest notion that he approved.
A kind of glow lit her up, washing through all the places she’d felt shame, like a changing of the tide.
She didn’t know what the hell that was.
“Look, Mr.—” but she stopped. Because she realized she had no idea what his name was.
His eyebrows rose even higher, and for a dizzying sort of moment she was sure he looked as amused as he did astonished. “Vanderburg. Conrad Vanderburg.”
And it wouldn’t occur to her until much later that he paused after he said that, clearly anticipating that she would recognize his name. She didn’t.
She plowed on. “Okay, Conrad. I think this is a terrible misunderstanding. I should never have come in here and I’ve apologized for that. I probably shouldn’t have taken pictures, either, but really, I was just...doing what I do. I didn’t think about it.”
“Do you make a habit of thoughtlessness?” Conrad asked in that same low, steel-infused way. It shouldn’t have bothered her. It shouldn’t have registered with her at all.
But there was something about the way he asked those calm little questions that made her think her entire body might shake itself apart.
Right here and now, with her spray bottle hanging off her jeans, her hair in the work braids she preferred, and all this shame she couldn’t seem to jettison.
And shame wasn’t what was coursing through her, making everything ache.
“I don’t think you should fire me,” she threw at him, desperately. Or maybe she imagined she needed to challenge him? You want to challenge him, something in her whispered. You want to see what he’ll do. “I feel like that’s a pretty over-the-top response, all things considered.”
He studied her. It wasn’t as simple as holding her gaze. He saw too much, too deep.
And for the first time since Rory had looked up and seen him standing there, it dawned on her—really dawned on her—that she hadn’t thought any of this through. For one thing, she didn’t know anything about this man. Except that he was nothing like any man she knew. That was obvious at a glance. He was too...intense.
Too controlled, in a way that sent alarms ringing through her whole body, straight down into her toes.
Dangerous, that same something in her whispered.
Even though, in the very next moment, she felt the strangest certainty that, dangerous though he clearly was, she was perfectly safe.
It felt like whiplash.
And then Conrad made it worse.
He laughed.
Copyright © 2020 by Caitlin Crews
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ISBN-13: 9781488062278
Pure Attraction
Copyright © 2020 by Rebecca Hunter
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Pure Attraction Page 17