The skin on her thighs looked so soft when it rubbed together. He could imagine burying his face between those thighs.
Don’t cry out. Don’t make a sound, or I’ll stop.
“Arthur? Everything all right?” She was staring at him.
He drew a deep breath through his nose. “Certainly.” He cleared his throat and let his voice drop again. He grappled with his phone and set the timer. “Now, look at me.”
She stared at him, and her dark eyes were still dewy. “What do we do?”
“We just stay here. Look at me. Don’t look away.”
Both of them were bracing themselves on the back of the couch, their arms lying back there. Arthur’s fingers stole over and touched her wrist.
Her hand flinched backward.
“Hold my hand,” he said.
“I thought we were just staring at each other.”
“You are fine with holding hands. We’ve done that exercise several times. No backsliding.”
She nodded, and her fingers curled around his.
He stared into her eyes, and she stared into his.
“How long?” she asked.
“Fifteen minutes.” He had pulled a number out of the air when he had set the timer on his phone.
“That’s an awfully long time. In fifteen minutes, you could reconsider quite a few of your life choices.”
“Every one of them brought us here. They must have been worth it.” Where did that come from?
“I—” she blinked. “I guess so.”
He looked into her deep, dark eyes, and she looked back.
In the beginning, this had seemed like an innocent exercise to accustom her to a man looking at her, even staring at her.
But now she was looking back at him, and her gaze was staring into his soul. Arthur felt like she was stripping all his defenses away from him.
He felt his eyes widening, and his lips opening.
He held onto her hand because he felt like he was falling.
She clutched his hand, too, and she was looking back and forth between his eyes.
Searching.
Finding.
And practically devouring him.
He couldn’t look away.
He didn’t want to.
Long minutes went by, and he drowned in her eyes. He could have sworn that she saw into the deepest parts of him, the parts that he kept hidden, the parts that must remain secret.
Ba-beep.
The timer on his phone chimed softly, and he pressed his thumb to the screen to turn it off.
Arthur sat back, leaning on the pillow behind him. He didn’t let go of Gen’s hand. Her fingers were so soft and small in his, and he desperately wanted to pull her into his arms.
Instead, he asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she said, but she was still staring at him. Her wide eyes didn’t look like she was scared, not exactly. “You?”
“Of course,” he lied.
His fingers firmed around her hand, testing. If he were to just tug on her hand, what would she do?
Gen broke the eye contact and looked at his hand. “I have an early day tomorrow,” she said.
“Right.”
“Early meetings.”
“Of course.”
“Really early.”
“You always do on every day except Wednesdays.”
“Yes.” She bit her lip.
Arthur started to loosen his fingers.
She didn’t.
So he clasped his hand around hers again.
He ought to shake her off and go to his room.
He wanted to pull her across the couch or leap on her himself, gather her body underneath his, and kiss her until she was whimpering for him to strip that red silk right off of her.
The torment was nearly unbearable.
He asked, “What’s your early morning meeting about, tomorrow?”
“Just the usual,” she said. “Just a commitment.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She bit her lip.
Arthur took three breaths before he said, “I’m glad you’re going to these charity events with me.”
“Yeah?”
“I like the company.”
“Oh.” She nodded, but it seemed like a disappointed nod.
He said, “I like your company.”
She looked up at him. “I like your company, too.”
Her fingers squeezed his.
He wasn’t making a move. Because she was his barrister, she could be ousted from her chambers and disciplined by the Bar’s ethics committee if she became involved with a client.
He didn’t want that to happen to her, no matter how much his body strained to touch her, to press against her, and to move inside her.
Arthur opened his hand and dropped her fingers. His hand was instantly cold, and he had to stop himself from scrambling after her hand to pick it back up.
He said, “It’s late.”
“It’s late,” she echoed, and she held out her hand for their customary evening handshake.
He caught her fingers in his and drew her knuckles to his lips, kissing her hand.
“Arthur—”
He dropped her hand. “I’m drunk, and I can’t help myself. It doesn’t mean anything because I’m drunk.”
They both knew he wasn’t.
“Good night, Genevieve.” He stood and straightened his jacket.
“Good night, Arthur.”
She was looking up at him from where she was sitting on the couch, her dark hair framing her oval face and those huge, brown eyes, and she could not realize that she looked almost exactly as she would have if she were sitting, naked, at his feet.
The look in her dark eyes was not fear. The wide-open emotion looked like longing.
Someday.
The word pinged through his mind even though he knew it was unlikely.
Someday, she would sit naked at his feet, and then he would drive her mad, perhaps strip all this propriety and self-control away from her until she was a trembling thing, exhausted from ecstasy, ruined for other men.
After he was through with her, she wouldn’t flinch from men’s advances. She would just know that they wouldn’t be good enough to make her scream the way that she had screamed his name.
Arthur walked away and got all the way to his bedroom before he realized that he hadn’t been breathing. He closed the bedroom door behind himself and leaned on it.
He was sweating under his clothes. His arms and legs trembled.
This was lust. Gen was his barrister, and so he couldn’t have her. That was all this was. Lust.
It just didn’t feel like all the other times.
Arthur had not felt sexual frustration since high school, probably. He certainly hadn’t felt any in college, not with women falling over themselves to be with the billionaire nobleman. Nor since.
That’s all this was. He just wanted to get her into bed, and he couldn’t.
Forbidden fruit.
Lust that made him not able to stop thinking about her, and worrying about her, and wondering if she was okay when he wasn’t with her, and wondering if she was happy.
It was lust because it couldn’t be anything else.
Arthur was thoroughly experienced with lust.
Anything else, not so much, so it couldn’t be that.
His shirt was sticking to his back. He needed a shower.
On his way to his bathroom, he turned up the thermostat a few degrees. His bedroom had become chilly. That must be why he was shaking.
Maybe he was coming down with a cold or something.
It couldn’t be anything else.
He liked her, yes.
He liked Gen’s silly sense of humor when they joked around, he liked her kindness to his dog and his staff, he liked her industriousness at work, and he liked her lovely face and her masses of silky hair that he wanted to see spread over his pillows and clenched in his fist, and he liked her legs.
Gen ha
d long, sexy, curvy legs that went on forever.
He wanted his hands on them. He wanted them wrapped around his back. He wanted to bury his face between them, and he wanted to see them tied up, spread, on his bed while he decided what he was going to do to her to make her beg for him.
Yes, he definitely needed a shower.
FIFTEEN MINUTES--GEN
Gen stood with her back to her door, resting against it, her heart racing.
Staring into Arthur’s eyes for fifteen agonizing minutes had exhausted her. The intensity in his gaze had drained every cell in her body.
Leaving him had been even harder.
Those silvery eyes of his, tinged with blue, had always been sexy as hell, but she hadn’t really looked before.
She hadn’t seen.
Once he had looked into her eyes, his whole attention had riveted on her. She wasn’t pinned back. She was drawn forward, toward him. He compelled her.
She hadn’t wanted to look away.
She hadn’t wanted to let go of his hand.
She hadn’t wanted to leave him.
But their relationship was strictly defined. Yes, she could pretend to believe that no one would find out about them, but someone invariably would. James fucking Knightly would spread it all over chambers that she actually was fucking her client until even David Trent would believe him.
And what would she do if she did reach out to Arthur, if he touched her face and her hand and her neck and—
Gen stopped there, unable to go on even in her mind.
What if she freaked out like the stupid, scared idiot that she was? What if she screamed and cried and had a full-blown panic attack?
What if he saw that?
She shuddered, thinking about that horror.
Okay, even though she felt shredded inside and yet completely whole, she needed to sleep. She had an early morning the next day visiting her mother.
Gen changed into her jammies, dragged the comforter off the bed, and rolled up in it to sleep on the loveseat, cramming her long legs into the tiny half of a couch.
DEVILLING AT THE DEVILHOUSE
The next week was a busy one for Gen as she worked through Arthur’s files, trying to get ready for his case.
The balance in her mother’s bank account sank lower with every passing week even though Gen worked her butt off to supplement her mother’s care.
Gen started dropping by the Devilhouse twice a day, once in the morning and once after lunch, to pick up extra work from Violet Devereux. She wrote briefs on so many different subjects that her head spun. The bar course hadn’t been nearly as varied as a week of devilling for Violet Devereux.
She managed it all, somehow, keeping up with her visits to her mother, devilling for Devereux, her pupillage work from Octavia, preparing for Arthur’s case which loomed ever closer with each passing week, and her increasingly less-than-sham relationship with Arthur.
Indeed, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
A DEVILHOUSE DISCUSSION
Gen was sitting at a small cafe table with Arthur, waiting for their lunch.
Arthur was leaning back in his chair, his hands in his pockets, looking at something on his phone.
Below the table, Gen’s ankle rested against Arthur’s. They never did anything so gauche as to play footsie, but his leg warmed hers.
She hated to admit to herself that she liked it. Any touch of his flushed warmth through her body.
Ever since they had done that staring thing, nothing about Arthur scared her quite so much. When he touched her, it didn’t feel like electric prickles and static shocks. His warmth soothed Gen, and she began seeking ways to feel that warmth like a cat searches out the heating grates.
A waiter placed their plates in front of them, grilled chicken and salad for Gen and some falafel kebabs for Arthur.
Gen mentioned, “I went over to the Devilhouse to earn some extra money today.”
Arthur jumped in his chair. His silvery-blue eyes widened. “I beg your pardon.”
She pierced the salad with her fork. “Yeah, I got several briefs.”
He sat back in his chair and coughed hard, banging his chest with his fist. His black hair swung around his head.
“Jeez, are you all right?” She jumped up and ran around the table to pound him on the back.
“Fine. I’m fine. Gen, why would you go to the Devilhouse, of all places?”
“All the other pupil barristers are doing it.”
“That doesn’t mean that you should be doing it.”
Gen made a face at him. “Why shouldn’t I? Everyone devils.”
He dropped his hands to his chest and clutched his shirt. “You’ve made it into a verb?”
“Devilling? It’s been a verb for years.” She flipped her napkin onto her lap.
“For years? I didn’t even know there was a Devilhouse in London.”
“Of course there is.” His distressed tone perplexed her.
He said, “I must call a friend of mine. He could have saved me dozens of trips to the States. But why?”
Gen told him, “There are lots of them.”
“What?”
Man, she might as well have told him that there were dozens of alien spaceships landing in London. “Of course. Seriously, everybody devils. Well, all the pupil barristers, of course. Can you imagine a QC doing that?”
Arthur combed his hair back with his fingers. “I knew that barristers often frequented places like the Devilhouse, but I didn’t know that they worked there.”
“There’s a Devilhouse at pretty much every law firm, or at least a lot of little devils.”
“At law firms?” Arthur froze and then squinted at her. “I think we may be talking about two very different things.”
Gen frowned. “What are you talking about?”
Arthur settled his hands in front of him. “Oh, no. After you. I insist.”
She explained, “The Devilhouse is Violet Devereux’s office in chambers. She farms out brief-writing to pupil barristers for a cut of the hourly fee. It’s called devilling.”
“Ah.” He mopped his forehead with a napkin. “Yes, we are speaking of different things.”
“What were you talking about?” Gen asked.
“Oh, no,” Arthur said. “Never mind. Truly, trust me on this one. Never mind at all.”
VALENTINE’S DAY
Arthur waited in his apartment by the doors of the elevator, holding a small, red box and fidgeting like a schoolboy.
Maybe he should have gotten jewelry. Women loved diamonds. No one ever returned diamonds. Or rubies or something. Rubies seemed traditional. They were red.
He should have gotten her flowers. Probably roses. Not red roses. Red roses symbolized romantic love, and he shouldn’t imply that, not when they both agreed aloud that this was a sham relationship for the cameras and to keep himself out of trouble. Maybe pink or yellow roses. Yellow symbolized friendship.
Yes, he should have gotten her some yellow roses, maybe three or four dozen.
Arthur kept wiping his clammy hands on his suit trousers. Why would his hands sweat? His hands never did this.
In addition, his heart thumped in his chest like he had been running.
For a moment, the symptoms caused him to worry about poison. Some intelligence agencies, such as the Russian FSB, poisoned people for no good reason at all.
That was paranoid. Arthur was not paranoid.
But he should have gotten her a few dozen yellow roses.
Or white. Or pink. Perhaps blue.
Maybe five dozen to fill her bedroom with sweetness.
Even though vibrant, red roses would pair so much better with her dark hair, lustrous eyes, and exuberant laugh.
Gen skidded around the corner, wearing a clinging, red cocktail dress and holding a blue box. “Arthur, I didn’t know what—”
She saw the box in his hand and stopped talking.
Arthur waved the box in his hand a bit and shrugged. “I realize that
our arrangement is not a relationship in the most common definition of the word, but it seemed particularly unfeeling to ignore such a tradition, so I, well, Happy Valentine’s Day?”
Good God, who was that idiot speaking?
“You didn’t have to,” Gen said, walking closer and smiling.
He lifted it toward her. “It’s just a token. It’s nothing, really. I should have done more.”
She held out the blue box toward him. “It’s also nothing. Just a little bitty thing.”
They exchanged boxes and opened them.
Arthur opened his box and found chocolates. The inside of the lid said they were vegan.
“I didn’t know what to get—” she said.
“They’re perfect,” he said, smiling. She’d remembered his vegetarian inclinations, and his chest felt too small for his thumping heart. “Absolutely perfect. Do you like yours?”
Gen looked in the box, and her lips opened. “Chocolate-covered strawberries are my very favorite. I love them.”
“I’m glad.” He was.
They stood, eating chocolate and taking care not to drip it on their clothes while laughing, before they turned, entered the elevator, and went to that night’s charity function where they would, once again, pretend to be in love.
MORE WEEKS
The weeks rolled down the calendar.
Arthur became an integral part of Gen’s routine, as much as visiting her mother, work at Serle’s Court Barristers, sneaking away for lunch or coffee with Rose and Lee, and the constant, subconscious panic over which of the six pupil barristers would be the one to obtain tenancy.
Oh, Lord. Even though the decision about who would be offered a spot as a tenant in chambers was months away, office politics felt like a free-for-all frenzy-fight among six yappy little dogs, and the stench coming out their farty little butts was the looming tenancy decision.
During the afternoons, Arthur often met Gen for lunch and came to observe her in court. If he had little notes, they were relevant and short.
Stiff Drink: Runaway Billionaires: Arthur Duet #1 Page 24