HEAT: A Dark Romance

by Sophia Gray

  Chapter 6

  Anton

  The silence that descended after the curvy brunette announced her offer stretched for several minutes. Her words slowly sank in, and I couldn’t help but be impressed despite myself. I never would have pegged such an innocent thing like this girl as someone out for cash. I was curious as to how she had found out — this girl I didn’t know. Someone must have defied me and told her or someone else about my need. I’d find the culprit and deal with him later.

  But something she said struck me. In need of a mother for your child. Time to push her, to see if she actually knew and realized and understood what exactly this deal would entail — if I picked her. “Do you understand what you’re asking for?” I asked, watching her carefully.

  She nodded. Her gaze briefly flickered to my associates, and although I had half a mind to send them away myself, I enjoyed watching her squirm. It made her dress ride up even more on her thighs, and it brought more attention to her large chest. And besides, when someone was nervous, they tended to be careless and made mistakes. I wanted her to be uncomfortable because I wanted to see what she was all about. I wanted any mistakes or any reason not to hire her to come out now, not after the ink dried on the contract.

  “Do you really?” I asked, steepling my fingers as I leaned back. Normally I stared people down, but I was sitting, and she was standing, so she was staring down at me. It was cute in a way. She was definitely younger than me. I was thirty-two, and if I had to guess, she was maybe twenty-five.

  “Y-yes.” She nodded several times and brushed her hair back from her neck. A nice, long, slender neck. A neck I would like to suck.

  But no. I doubted very much that she understood what I would need from her. I pressed my palms onto the table but still didn’t stand. “I would get to fuck you until you get pregnant, and then you would have to give me the baby after he’s born. You won’t be the mother. You’re just a womb.”

  To her credit, she didn’t wince, and she didn’t blink. She didn’t react at all. Maybe she had realized what this would mean. Although I doubted she’d thought about this next stipulation.

  “If the baby is a girl, you’d have to go through the process all over again,” I added easily, carefully watching her to see her reaction. “The fucking. The giving up another baby.”

  It was a small movement, but she did jerk slightly. She hadn’t expected to hear this, might even be a bit muffed that a girl heir wasn’t what I was after. It wasn’t that I didn’t necessarily want a girl. The mob scene — my world — wasn’t the place for a girl. A mob run by a girl wouldn’t be run for very long, and I wasn’t about to subject a girl to that kind of life. She would have a huge target on her back her entire life. No. In this instance, it would be better to stick with tradition. For forever, the line and the title had gone through the male heir, and it would continue that way with my son. If I did ever decide to have another child, another son or a daughter, it wouldn’t matter.

  The curvy brunette seemed to grow more and more agitated with every passing second, but then she bit her lip and nodded again.

  Interesting. Very interesting. She hadn’t demanded to know about payment before agreeing to such terms. Was she that desperate? Or did she have some kind of agenda? She hadn’t told me her name, and that rankled me a bit. Was she deliberately keeping her name from me?

  I took a swig of my drink and stood, taking her by the arm. The rest of our conversation would be held privately. While I didn’t know if she would do, I would do my due diligence first before agreeing to anything, that didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to see where this would go.

  Chapter 7

  Lily

  This whole thing was unreal. Surreal. I felt like I was stuck in a dream — or maybe trapped in a nightmare.

  Anton stood tall above me, and he walked with purpose, marching almost. Without him having to wait or say anything, people parted so he could walk unimpeded. They didn’t stare, though, so they didn’t think of him as a celebrity. Man, this was so weird. A mob boss. I was thinking about being the surrogate for a mob boss.

  Scratch that. I had asked to be the surrogate for a mob boss.

  I swallowed hard and did my best not to freak out. Breathed in and out and tried to stop thinking.

  From the corner of my eye, I glanced up at him. He looked incredible. Hard lines chiseled out the features of his face, a strong jawline. When I had stared him down at the table, I had noticed how impossibly blue his eyes were. He wasn’t a man who ever did anything by accident, I could tell. Everything was calculated, for proficiency, if I had to guess. Did that mean he brought that same devotion to perfection into the bedroom?

  I gulped at the thought. He had to have been with any number of women. He would’ve had the opportunity to hone his skills beneath the sheets. That would make him an attentive lover. But we weren’t going to be lovers. It would just be “fucking,” as he so eloquently put it. There would be no reason for him to be an attentive lover. There would be no reason for me to think he would do whatever it would take to get me to orgasm, because I didn’t orgasm easily from just penetration. I only had once before. It had been absolutely amazing. Maybe it would never happen again. Who knew how long this arrangement would last. It wasn’t like I was going to go out and find a boyfriend while I was in this business deal with Anton.

  His grip on my elbow wasn’t too tight, but I could feel the strength he was holding back. His button-down shirt fit him well, and the way he moved allowed me to see his muscles beneath.

  I was paying him so much attention I didn’t realize he was going to stop walking, so I stumbled when he halted. He tightened his grip to keep me upright. For a fraction of a second, his lips curled into a tiny smile, but then his expression went blank. He even controlled his facial features. He seemed to me like he had a lot going on inside, a lot he wanted to hide. He was an enigma, and maybe it would be better to not try to solve the puzzle that was him. Let him do his own thing the rest of the time and just put up with the fucking when necessary. If he hired me. Why had he brought me here, to this empty backroom? Did he want an audition? To test me out? My stomach churned at the thought.

  Anton released his hold on me and closed the door. I stood there, hands clasped behind my back, feeling like I was in a daze. Why wasn’t he talking? I wasn’t a mind reader. I didn’t know what he wanted.

  Anton stood directly in front of me, staring down at me. The sound of his footsteps echoed in the room as he paced around me in a tight circle, giving me a close once over. I refused to squirm, but he was so intense that I found it hard to breathe. A little intimidating? Yes, but I still didn’t feel as off as I had with Alec.

  “You’re pretty,” he said in his low, deep voice.

  My stomach clenched. I sensed a “but” coming. I wasn’t one to care much about my looks, but when the job you were applying for required being bedded who knew how many times, I couldn’t blame him for wanting to sleep with a woman he was attracted to.

  And it sounded like “pretty” might not cut it.

  He completed his circle and stood before me again. “You’re pretty,” he repeated, “but not as pretty as I’d been hoping.”

  Despite working out logic to go along with his way of thinking, I couldn’t help myself from bristling. Who the hell did he think he was? Yeah, sure, he was a mob boss, but he had no reason to be so belittling.

  “I didn’t know my looks were important,” I said, lifting my chin. “Just that I can give you a baby.”

  He brought up his hand, and I didn’t flinch. Was he going to slap me for being insolent? I’d leave then. No way in hell would I tolerate that shit. Yeah, talking back probably hadn’t been smart, but I would not stand to be put down. This job was demeaning enough as it was.

  But instead, he brushed my cheek, the gesture surprisingly soft and tender, almost intimate. It wasn’t something I expected from him, and I almost stepped back to avoid his touch, even though it felt good.

  “I�
�m an uninterested in having an ugly child,” he said.

  What was looks to his heir when he would have money and power? My stomach churned at the idea of thinking of the baby — our baby — as only his heir, as only Anton’s. I hadn’t given many thoughts to having kids. I had wanted to find Mr. Right first. Then I would consider it. Maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a mother, considering I was willing to have this man’s child and just hand him over for money.

  I’m doing this for Mom.

  But that didn’t make me feel much better about the whole situation.

  Anton took a step back and crossed his arms, the strength of his biceps visible through his stark white shirt. “Tell me about your cycle. Are you on birth control?”

  This was not a topic I ever talked to a guy about before, and I could feel my face flaming. This was private information, but he did have a right to know. Heck, he needed to know if he were to hire me. I hoped I had the right answers to give because he might want a woman who already gave birth to a healthy child since she could obviously get pregnant and carry a baby to term. My womb and I were untested goods.

  I shuddered. This was so strange and bizarre, and…just a job interview. A job that wasn’t the best by a long shot, but I was desperate.

  Desperate enough to agree to this?

  Most likely.

  “I’m not on birth control,” I said. I had thought about it but ultimately decided against it because I didn’t like the idea of messing with my hormones. Would he want me to start taking it? Of course not. The idea was for me to get pregnant, after all! He was making me lose my mind. I couldn’t think clearly. “I always used condoms with my last boyfriend. I’ve always been regular. Every thirty days, like clockwork. I don’t imagine I’d have trouble conceiving. I’m healthy, and I work out. I generally eat healthy and…” And I was rambling. I snapped my mouth shut.

  During my speech, I stared at him, watching to see if his expression would change any. It hadn’t, but now that I had stopped talking, he looked intrigued.

  But he wasn’t saying anything. I had no idea what he was thinking. Was my being only pretty a deal breaker? He should be happy I never took birth control. Didn’t women sometimes have trouble conceiving if they had been on birth control for a long time?

  We wouldn’t be using condoms.

  I could feel myself grow damp, and I squeezed my legs together. I never had unprotected sex before. I never felt a man come inside of me. Would that change soon? Would this tall, powerful man standing before me be the first? How many times would we have to have sex before I would get pregnant?

  He maintained his silence, and I didn’t say anything either. Eventually, he walked away to a chair and sat down.

  Not knowing what else to do, I trailed after him.

  His hands reached out, and he seized me by the hips. He pulled me onto his lap so I was facing him.

  Startled, I stared deeply into his eyes. For a moment, I could see some emotions flicker — hope, pain, even fear.

  He desperately needed an heir, or else he wouldn’t be thinking about hiring a woman to provide him for one. That explained the fear. And maybe he was hoping he had already located that woman.

  The pain, though…what was that from?

  Anton was a mystery to me, a mystery I maybe wanted to solve. As dangerous as his world was, I could feel that tug I always felt when I found a bad boy — the tug to see just how bad he really was.

  And that was when I realized that I had to be careful, very careful, or else I just might fall under the spell of this man.

  Chapter 8

  Anton

  Was she trembling? I wasn’t sure. She was staring at me like I was a puzzle she wanted to solve, which amused me. Most women didn’t want to get to know me. All they cared about was my influence, my power, and my money, and while she obviously came to me for my money — her purse and obvious desperation alluded to that — that she was trying to figure me out made me curious.

  Who was she? I hadn’t even asked her for her name yet. She had me off kilter, and that was not a good thing. But pulling her onto my lap had thrown her some, I could tell, and I decided to press that advantage first. “I need to know if we’re compatible,” I said.

  And I kissed her.

  She was resistant at first, her hands on my shoulders, pushing me back, but I wound my fingers through her soft hair, pushing her toward me, my tongue touching her lips, outlining them. Her hands remained on my shoulders, but she stopped pushing me away. Ah, yes, I knew women. I knew how to kiss them, and when I pressed my tongue against her mouth again, she parted her lips for me. I almost laughed as I continued to deepen the kisses, and she ended up melting in my arms despite her initial defiance.

  My hands fell from her hair, down to her hips, pulling her even closer to me. I wanted to touch her, to hold her. She was a bountiful little armful, and I found myself getting harder than I’d been for a woman in a long while. Lately, women left and right had been boring me. We would fuck once or twice, and then I would move onto the next. If I was searching for something, I hadn’t found it yet. What that something might be, I didn’t know, and that was almost as frustrating as not finding it.

  As I continued to kiss her, my hand trailed up her dress, pulling it above her thighs, and the thought of having my way with her right here, right now crossed my mind.

  I didn’t, of course. This wasn’t a typical relationship. We weren’t going to fuck. We were going to enter into a business contract, which meant Is had to be dotted and Ts crossed first.

  But my cock being this hard told me all I needed to know. She would do.

  As long as everything in background checked out, of course. She was desperate for money, and I needed to know why before I could hire her. And since she might lie about it, I would have to do some digging and research her.

  I finally broke off the kiss and leaned back to get a better look at her. She was flushed, her cheeks a lovely shade of rose, and as she blinked at me, it was easy to see the haze of arousal in her eyes. I often had that effect on women, and I was more than pleased to see how much I affected her. For just one, long kiss. I smiled at her.

  She gave me a dazed one back.

  “I’ll pay you one million dollars at the beginning,” I said after a quick calculation to determine a fair and reasonable amount, “and another million after you give birth.”

  Her body had still been melted into mine after the kiss, but now she stilled at my words. Yeah, I might have sounded a little cold, but I needed to keep my distance. This was purely business. Nothing more. I never got attached to a woman before, and I wasn’t going to change that now. She needed to understand that before we even got started.

  She was trembling on my lap. Hell if that didn’t make me even harder. It took everything in me not to rub against her. “Y-Yes,” she said, nodding emphatically several times.

  “Good.” I didn’t bother to smile again. “I’ll have my men come to you tomorrow with the contract to sign. If that suits you.”

  And if my background check on her proved her worthy enough to be the mother to my heir.

  Chapter 9

  Lily

  The next day, I woke up and rubbed my eyes. Had the night before been a terrible dream? My fingers went to my lips. I could almost swear that they were still swollen. That kiss had almost been too perfect, though, so maybe I had dreamed it all up.

  Anton. The mob boss. And soon, my business partner.

  If I signed the contract.

  A knock pounded on the door.

  “Just a minute,” I called.

  Who could that be? I wasn’t expecting anyone.

  I quickly got changed — no way was I going to open the door in my pajamas — and opened the door. A man I’d never seen before stood there.

  He looked down at me. “Hello. I’m looking for a Lily Nevison.”

  “That’s me.” I nodded, but I didn’t move to open the door wider or to give him entry to the house.

  Wait
. Was this Anton’s man? I never did tell Anton my name, not even my first name. He never asked, and I hadn’t been thinking the clearest, not after that kiss, and not before it either. How had he tracked me down? Everything after the kiss was a giant blur in my mind, so maybe I had given him my name and address after all.

  Or maybe his resources were that good. Somehow the thought of being watched or studied or being checked up on made me uneasy. Had he run a background check on me? While I had nothing to hide and his wanting to do a check made sense, it still made me angry. My private home life had nothing to do with our agreement. I needed space away from Anton and his mob and his way of life.