I attempt to relieve her. “That doesn’t mean you won’t be promoted. David said you’re quite capable, and I’m sure you’ll get the position without my help. I may own The Sky Launch, but I am not your boss. David is your boss and will continue to be unless the business no longer thrives under his command.”
She lets out a sigh and I believe she’s reassured.
Now, with that out of the way… “But I didn’t invite you here to discuss the club.”
Her body tenses again. “Why did you invite me?”
It’s the moment to drop my bomb. But I can’t help but flirt around the other option that has probably crossed her mind. “Perhaps I like you.”
It’s not until after I’ve said it that I realize the depth of its honesty. I do like her. I’m often intrigued by people—not to the level that I am with Alayna, but there are those who do attract my interest. It’s rare, though, that I like them. And I like Alayna. Quite a lot already.
She shudders, and I adore that I’ve flustered her. She takes a sip of her drink. “Perhaps I’m seeing someone.”
Even more, I adore that she challenges me despite being thrown off-kilter. It helps take my mind off how off-kilter she’s thrown me.
I know she’s single because of my research, but I would have guessed it even without my spies. “You aren’t. No man would let his woman wear the outfit you wore yesterday.” Now she bristles, and I wonder if I shouldn’t have brought up the encounter where I’d chided her. My thoughts wander to the tight-fitting corset—how her breasts spilled beautifully over the top. I wouldn’t mind seeing it on her again. In private.
So I add, “Not in public, anyway.”
Her eyes spark at the obvious innuendo I’ve made, yet her jaw clenches defiantly. “Perhaps I’m not into controlling boyfriends.”
Touché. “Very well, Alayna.” I cock a brow. “Are you seeing anyone?”
I’ve got her now. But she doesn’t fold, and that’s to be admired. Instead, she sits up straighter and borrows one of my favorite tactics—diversion. “That isn’t why you invited me, Hudson. You have an agenda.”
“An agenda.” I stifle my laugh. She’s so straightforward with me. It’s alarmingly refreshing. “Yes, Alayna, I have an agenda.”
I’m not prepared to share my agenda just yet. Or, rather, she’s not prepared. I play my next card instead. “I presume you enjoyed your time at my spa last week.”
I wish that I could leave the spa as an anonymous gift, wish that I didn’t have to pull it into this game. But the truth is I’m afraid that she will not accept the even larger gift that is part of this scheme. I have to lay the path, get her comfortable with my wealth. If she can see that she’s already taken advantage of what I can offer, then it won’t be so out of her comfort level to concede to more.
“Oh, I didn’t realize you owned…wait...” The moment she registers what I’ve admitted is clearly shown in her expression. “The gift was from you?”
“Yes. Did you have a nice time?”
“No. Way.” Her mouth drops open in surprise.
“No way?” This isn’t an answer to my question, I know. It stems from her awe. I’m glad now that I had to give this secret away. It makes me want to explore what other ways I can surprise her. Particularly ways that involve no clothing.
“I mean, yes, I had a nice time—a wonderful time, in fact—but no way could you have done that. Why did you do that? You shouldn’t have done that.”
“Why ever not?”
Alayna’s eyes are wide and electric. “Because that’s big!”
“Not for me.” I’m not an idiot. I know how it looks. It was an extravagant gift from a stranger. She probably thinks I’m trying to get her in my bed. I am, but the gift was given independently from that.
“But for me it is. It’s huge! And you don’t even know me! It’s completely inappropriate and unprofessional and unprecedented and inappropriate. And if I’d known it was from you, I never would have accepted it.”
Despite her statement, I do not regret my actions. I’m a man with money. I’m not often generous, but I’m rarely refuted when I am. “It’s not inappropriate at all. It was simply a gift. Think of it as a golden hello.” I’m diverting again. Or trying to, at least.
The tactic doesn’t seem to be working. “But you don’t give gifts like that to women who work for you unless you’re running an entirely different kind of club.”
“You’re overreacting, Alayna.” Though she’s actually quite adorable when she’s this worked up.
“I’m not!” Her expression changes from frustrated to quizzical. “And what do you mean a golden hello? You mean, like a signing bonus?”
“Yes, Alayna.” I’ve toyed with her enough. “That’s my agenda. I would like to hire you.”
“I already work for you and I’m happy where I am.” She’s startled and confused.
But I have her attention.
“Again, I don’t feel that you do work for me. I am not your boss. I own the establishment that you work for. That is all. Is that clear?”
I relax when she nods. This is an important delineation for me. As her boss, I’d have the opportunity to work with her closely. However, I want her to choose that for herself. It has nothing to do with the scam Celia is playing—it’s simply how I desire to interact with Alayna. I want our relationship to be unforced. I want it to develop naturally.
I’m a fairly humorless person, but that notion makes even me want to laugh. How can any of it be natural when every bit of it is a ruse?
Well, not every bit of it. Fuck, I don’t even know anymore myself.
It’s then I realize that now that I’m the owner of the club, Celia has nothing to trap me with. I could walk away from this here and now, couldn’t I? I could spend time with Alayna on my own terms—ask her out on a real date, even.
But the idea is too absurd. I never date. And I know Celia—she won’t give up that easily. Also, I’m not a person to make decisions impulsively.
“This wouldn’t affect your employment at the club.” I lean toward her. “Maybe hire is not the correct term. I’d like to pay you to help me with a problem. I believe you’d be perfect for the job.”
“You win. My curiosity is piqued. What’s the job?”
I have her exactly where I want her. I pause to heighten the suspense. “I need you to break up an engagement.” God, how I’ve mastered the art of drama. It’s pathetic; it really is.
She coughs. “Um, what? Whose?”
Leaning back, I reveal my bombshell. “Mine.”
She gapes and I’m lost again in naughty thoughts about her lips. “Close your mouth, Alayna. Although it’s quite adorable to see you flabbergasted, it’s also very distracting.”
Though she closes her mouth, I can see she’s still aghast. I pass her my wine. She takes a swallow—her taste mixing with mine—and then speaks. “I didn’t realize you were engaged.”
She blushes as she says it and I have to look away. She’s too delectable. I consider abandoning the scheme and focusing on seduction instead. But there’s still a lot of groundwork to lay so I deny myself a little longer, and explain to Alayna Withers the strange relationship that Celia and I have found ourselves in. Though much is omitted, almost none of what I say is a lie. I tell her how our parents are friends, how they want us to marry, how my mother thinks there is no one but Celia for me.
I don’t say that our parents’ belief that we should wed is based on a relationship that Celia and I never had. The Werners and my mother—they’ve partnered Celia and me in their minds ever since that summer ten years before. That’s not an important part of this charade, though, and it’s a time I prefer to not think about. So I leave that out.
I leave too much out. Because she soon says, “I’m missing something.”
I nod. “I suppose you are.” I take my glass back from her and finish it off before clearing up the last detail. It’s another truth—the most important truth of this scheme, and one
that I’ve never been ashamed to admit. Until now. “Alayna, if there is anyone in the world who has any power over me, it’s my mother.” And Mirabelle, but that’s neither here nor there for the moment. “My mother knows that I am…” I don’t need to search for the word, but I pause anyway. “…incapable…of love. She worries that I will…end up alone. A marriage with her best friend’s daughter, at least, insures that won’t happen.”
I wish I had more to drink as a new doubt starts creeping in. Am I really incapable of love? Or was it merely an idea planted by a psychiatrist in my teenage years with no basis in reality? I’ve never cared to challenge the notion, and suddenly, out of nowhere, I wonder if I should.
But that challenge could threaten to disrupt everything I know.
So I quickly abandon it, and move on with the setup. I explain that if I were in love with someone else, our parents would be delighted. More than delighted—my mother would have a fucking heart attack. Or she simply wouldn’t believe it. That is the more likely scenario.
At one point, Alayna narrows her eyes and asks, “So I’m supposed to be the floozy you’re in love with?”
This amuses me greatly. There is nothing common or lowly about the woman sitting across from me. “No one would ever mistake you as a floozy, Alayna. Even when you dress like one.” I was particularly naughty with that last line. It was an excuse to think of that corset one more time. Fuck, she was lovely in it.
She’s not quite so happy with my comment. “Why don’t you hire a real floozy to put on your charade?”
“My mother would never believe I’d fall for a floozy. You, however, have particular qualities—qualities that would make the story quite believable.”
“What sort of qualities?”
Her patience is wearing. Frankly, so is mine. I can’t skirt my desire for her any longer. I catch her up in my stare. “You are exquisitely beautiful, Alayna, and also extremely intelligent.”
“Oh.”
She’s stunned. As am I. Because in her eyes, I see the reflection of my own want and I yearn to explore it further. Yearn to explore her further. Carnal fantasies fight for playtime in my conscience. The things I could do to her…
Not yet. Soon.
I break the eye contact. “And you’re a brunette. All three make you ‘my type’ so to say.” I don’t date, but I do fuck. The women I fuck are beautiful. They are intelligent enough for me to make it through an evening in their company. And they are, by and large, brunette. I don’t know if I like them dark simply because of preference or if it’s got something to do with Celia being blonde. Whatever the answer, Alayna fits the bill.
She fits the bill so entirely that it’s all I want to think about.
But there are details to work through. I lay out the hook of the scheme. Payment.
As I suspect, she laughs at my offer to pay off her eighty thousand dollars in student loans in exchange for her participation in the scenario. She doesn’t realize that I’ve already paid it, and I’m sure if she knew, she’d be gone by now.
She isn’t gone, though. She’s still here listening intently to my every word, but Alayna isn’t buying my proposition. I feared it would take convincing, and it seems I was right. It doesn’t help that I’m distracted from my task. All I can think about is getting her beneath me.
But that’s not the point of this meeting, I remind myself. My goal tonight is to get her to agree to pretend to be my girlfriend. The salary should have been the selling point. It wasn’t, and I’m glad of that.
Still, she wants to know more. I’m glad of that as well.
“What exactly would you want me to do?” she asks. It’s beyond her better judgment. She can’t help herself.
I relax. My scheme hasn’t caught her interest yet, but I’m near done trying to entice her to play the game I’m asking her to play. “Pretend we’re a couple. I’d invite you to several gatherings where my mother would see us together. I’d expect you to hang on my arm and behave as though we’re madly in love.”
“And that’s all?”
“That’s all.” That’s not all I want, but it’s all I had planned to ask tonight. My plans are on the verge of changing.
It’s only because I’m studying her so closely that I notice her swallow.
“This pretend relationship—to what extent would I be expected to perform?”
I don’t know if I’m angry or turned on that she’s so nervous about the prospect of sleeping with me.
Turned on, I decide. The way her eyes dart up and down my body, the way her gaze keeps returning to my lips—I know she’s as attracted to me as I am to her. She simply doesn’t want to be considered a whore, and neither would I want that for her.
She’ll have to become more comfortable than that if she expects me to give her what she wants—what she needs. I can tolerate innocence but I won’t take ambiguity when it comes to a physical relationship. “Don’t pussyfoot about it. You’re asking about sex.”
It’s then that I make my decision once and for all. Though it isn’t supposed to be part of the arrangement, though it’s not what I meant for tonight, I have to have her and I can’t wait any longer for her to know. “I never pay for sex, Alayna. When I fuck you, it will be for free.”
Her eyes widen and unmistakably darken. She wriggles in her chair. I’ve revealed her weakness for me and she doesn’t know how to react. She’s helpless.
And I’m turned on as fuck at her discomfort.
“Maybe I should go,” she says.
“Do you want to?” I know she doesn’t. I’m inviting her to stay.
“I’m n-not sure. Yes. I think I should.” She stutters her response.
It’s sexy as hell. I want to hear her shaking and stuttering with my tongue in her cunt. I’m hard at the thought.
“Because you’re uncomfortable with my proposition?” I can’t stop myself—I have to make her squirm more. “Or because I told you that I’m going to fuck you?”
“I’m…yes. That.”
I tilt my head, intrigued. Is she playing hard to get or is she ignoring the chemistry between us? “But I‘m certain that’s not a surprise to you, Alayna. You feel the electricity between us. Your body language expresses it quite well. I wouldn’t be surprised to find you’re already wet.”
She blushes and I almost take her right here.
I flash a smile. “Don’t be embarrassed. Don’t you know I feel the same?” My cock grows harder and it’s my turn to shift in my seat. “If you were to carefully read my body, you’d see the evidence.”
Fuck my agenda for the evening. There’s no use talking about it anymore, the only thing that interests me now is her—her mouth, her breasts, her long taut legs. It’s my club and I could easily bend her over the table and drive into her, my balls slapping along the back of her thighs, her pussy clenching around me.
The only thing stopping me is that it’s also where she works. It wouldn’t be fair to her, so I must control myself.
But as uncomfortable as it promises to make me, I’m not ready to end this heated flirtation. So I don’t. “Let’s table my proposition to hire you for a moment and discuss this other thing further. Please understand that they are very separate from each other. I’d never want you to think my sexual desire for you was in any way part of a sham for my parents and their friends.”
“I’m—I don’t know how to react to someone stating they desire me.” She’s flustered. Surprised.
I’m at a loss. I frown. “Has no man told you that before?” Surely she knows how attractive she is. Her beauty goes beyond her physical looks—it’s her aura, her carriage, the way her eyes shine and the way her forehead creases with worry. She is a combination of strong and weak—like a beautiful vase that has been shattered and glued back together so perfectly that you can only see the cracks when looking very closely. She epitomizes the rising of the phoenix from the ashes. Many a man must have burned up in her presence.
She fumbles with her glass. “Not in s
o many words. Actions sometimes. Certainly not so bluntly.”
I almost curse at her admission. “That’s a shame.” How has no one recognized the preciousness of the gem before me? She doesn’t recognize it in herself, even. It’s disappointing. Heartbreaking, if I were the type who had a heart.
Without meaning to, I find myself reaching across the table for her hand. I stroke my thumb across her unbearably soft skin. “I plan to tell you every chance I get.”
Now where the hell did that come from? But no sooner are the words out of my mouth than I know they’re true. I’m breaking all my rules with this woman, acting outside my very nature. Maybe other men have survived her flames, but I fear I’m already burning.
She pulls her hand away. “Oh.”
I see the wheels turning in her head. She’s retreating. Fast. “I, uh, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed. I need to go. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
She stands and I do too. I don’t want her to leave. My pulse speeds up and there’s sweat on my brow. Is this panic? It’s an unfamiliar sensation, and I feel like I’m spiraling out of control.
I practically plead to Alayna to stay. “I wish you wouldn’t. But if you must…”
She won’t meet my eyes. “I’ve got to get to work.”
She heads for the door, and I follow. Just as she places her hand on the knob, I press my palm on the top, preventing her from opening it. This is not in my script. This is not on my agenda. All I know is that I cannot let her leave.
I lower my head to her ear and it takes all I have not to nibble on her lobe. “Wait, Alayna.” My cock stiffens as I breathe her in. Her scent is shampoo and bodywash and sweet musk—none of those flowery perfumes cover up her natural aroma.
Without premeditation, I speak, letting the words flow naturally. “I apologize for overwhelming you. That wasn’t my intent. But I want you to know that whether or not you decide to help with my situation, I will continue to seduce you. I’m a man who gets what he wants. And I want you.”
Then I can’t help myself anymore—I do nibble on her ear. She gasps and leans her head to the side. With her neck exposed, I am a kid in a candy store. I nip and lick along her neck. She grabs my arm and that’s my invitation to wrap my other arm around her. I palm her breast. She leans into my hand, and I feel her nipple pebble through her dress. All I can think about is sucking on it, pulling it with my teeth.
Complete Fixed: The Complete Fixed Series: Books 1-5 Page 94