by Claire Adams
“Wait! Did I say I was done?” I said more harshly than I had intended. “Sit back down.”
“But you said that-”
“The bank cannot give you a loan right now, but that does not mean you there aren’t other ways you can make that money.”
Her eyes widened. “No!”
“You haven’t even heard me out yet.”
She was shaking her head vigorously. “I can’t sleep with you for money. That’s wrong. And illegal.” She looked horrified and softly added: “And I’m a virgin.”
Oh fuck. I hadn’t considered that a possibility at all. A girl so attractive should have caught every guy’s attention, which meant she was a virgin by choice. Did I really want to go through with this? Regular girls could be troublesome to get rid of, but virgins were on a whole other level. But I wasn’t paying her to sleep with me. The document in front of me mentioned nothing about sexual favors – though I had assumed that would naturally be the outcome sooner or later, and that she would initiate it. This changed things. But those damn thighs and that damn skirt and most importantly, that goddamn restraint of hers.
“That’s not what I was going to propose,” I said, making the decision to go forward with the plan. “But glad to know you hold me to such excellent standards.”
That got a laugh out of her. “What? You’re really going to sit there and act surprised that that’s what I assumed after relentlessly hitting on me? Even the note on your bouquet said you were counting down the days until you supposedly convinced me to sleep with you.”
“That is not inaccurate.” Why was she so bold? It was endearing and it pissed me off. “But hitting on you and paying you to get naked are two completely different things, I would say.”
I leaned back in my chair with confidence.
“Are they to you?” She looked genuinely surprised.
“You’re really flattering me here with your allegations to my character.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to do that. But you do have quite the reputation.”
“Huh.” I raised my eyebrows. “Tell me about this reputation that I have.”
“Well, the three tellers that were let go last month, all of them had this thing in common, you see,” she winked. The girl actually had the nerve to wink at me. “Well they had two things in common actually. An apparently mind-blowing night with you, and the ability to tell tales about it.”
“This is different, Aria.”
“I’m sure they all thought so too,” she snapped.
“I never made the proposition that I am going to make to you. Never had to, really. Trust me when I say that this really, truly is different.”
“Yeah, cause you’re like in love with me because of the conversations I have with our customers regarding my future as your wife.” She was laughing hysterically now.
She used the word love. That was a trigger.
“Look, Aria, I don’t want to mislead you. I don’t do relationships or romance or any of that bullshit. This is honestly 100 percent about me wanting to take your clothes off and have my fucking way with you.”
Her face erupted into flames and I could swear I saw her shiver as she started to speak. “I-”
“No, let me finish,” I stopped her. “There is no question that I want your body and hope that you will willingly give that to me at some point. But I am not offering to buy your body. Even I am not that much of a scumbag, despite this reputation I seem to have accumulated around here. I don’t need to buy your body when there is plenty of ass that I could get with the snap of my fingers.”
“Then what are you offering?” She looked utterly confused.
“I am offering to buy your time.”
“What?” She looked like I had just said that I was flying out to Mars tomorrow.
I moved the rose to the side and handed her a copy of the document I had drafted.
“This is my offer: I will pay off your mother’s hospital bills in six installments, one for every month you spend dating me.”
Her mouth was open. “What do you mean dating you?”
“What the hell do you think it means? A guy and a girl dress up and go places together. Dinners, movies, parties, whatever they like. At the end of the night there is usually some kissing and usually something more.”
She rolled her eyes. Damn. She was ballsy with her own boss. “Thanks for the pop-culture lesson, but I am aware of how dating works. I may have even experienced it in practice here and there.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her acting feisty.
“Then does that sound like something you’re interested in?” Things were starting to look positive on that front.
“Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?”
What? Fuck no. Why would there be a legal document in your hand if that was what I was asking? I thought she was smarter than that.
“Not exactly,” I said with caution. My next words would make or break the deal. “I am asking you to go on dates with me whenever I ask and spend time with me on my schedule for the next six months. You know what I wish to accomplish in that time, but that is not a requirement in this deal. If at no point in those six months you feel like you want to sleep with me, then hey, I tried, and we part ways. If you do, then I get what I wanted. In either case you get what you need, which is money to pay for your mother’s surgery. It’s a win-win for you any way you look at it, but quite the risk for me because there is no guarantee that I will get what I want. A risk I am willing to take.”
I also needed a date for upcoming events I had to attend to keep the businessman’s wives occupied while I tried to secure important deals. She didn’t need to know that. She looked at me and the document back and forth a few times, her mouth agape. She finally burst out laughing.
“You’re joking. Is it April first?” She looked behind her as though expecting to find an answer there. “Are there cameras around here? I’m being pranked.”
“No, you’re being fucking ridiculous,” I said, slamming my fist on the desk.
“But- but this is too damn easy to be true! You’re saying you will pay 60,000 dollars for me to get pretty and go out on dates with you, with no obligation for me to provide any sexual favors.” She scanned the documents again. “I mean, there has to be a loophole somewhere. Some clause where it says I have to let you tie me up in a dungeon and-”
“Seriously, Aria, a little respect would be nice. You have already made it clear what you think of me, and you’re not that far off, but there is no need to constantly stab me with your scathing opinions. I’m still your boss.”
“I’ll have to have my lawyer take a look at this,” she said laughing. I was not amused. “See, that’s funny, because I don’t have a lawyer. Us regular people in regular people land don’t have lawyers or butlers or-”
“Do you want me to hire you a counsel before you sign anything?”
She rolled her eyes. “Humor, Mr. Sinclair.”
“Zayden. There is a clause in there about calling me that,” I said, pointing to the contract.
Her laughs got hysterical. “There is a clause? So what, if I don’t call you by your first name you take money off my contract?”
I furrowed my brows. “I wouldn’t do that. But I’d like it if you called me Zayden.”
“Only if you add a clause that says you need to work on your sense of humor.”
“Yeah, we can make that work.” Her eyes were twinkling. “Oh. You are being facetious. Very meta.”
I laughed and then I realized that she was agreeing to the contract.
“So you are accepting!” A kind of excitement I hadn’t experienced in a long time started to bubble up.
“I have two conditions.” My lips started twitching again but she added: “Real ones.”
“Oh. Go on.”
“First, the money will be a loan, not a gift. I don’t feel comfortable taking your money just for spending time with you.” She noticed my smirk and added, “I guarantee you this w
on’t end in me sleeping with you, so you are not going to get what you want. It’s not fair on you, in any case.”
“We will see about that,” I said, the smirk still on my face.
“We won’t. I already know the outcome of this Zayden.” She was at least calling me by my name already. “Hypothetically, though, if I were to sleep with you, I would be especially uncomfortable taking money from you. That would kind of make me a prostitute.”
“I never intended to make you feel like-”
“It doesn’t matter, since I will not actually be sleeping with you. It’s a loan, which I will pay you back in monthly installments, with a 10% interest after I graduate from college.”
Her words combined with the fiercely confident look on her face made her all the more attractive. “I refuse to take interest, but sure, if it makes you feel better about the whole thing, after you have spent a few years working a real job you can start paying me back. I won’t hold you to it though. I have plenty of money.”
“You will have to, it will be in the contract. And 5%, starting a month after I graduate.”
“Zero percent interest, but you can start the payments six months after graduation. And I’ll put it in the contract. Final offer.”
She sighed. “Okay, fine.”
“What’s your other clause?”
She opened her mouth and closed it a few times, as though unsure if she should speak her next words. “You cannot be physically involved with any other woman during these six months.”
Wait, what?
“That’s fucking ridiculous. I don’t think I can do that. Especially since you keep stressing on just how much I am not going to be sleeping with you either.”
She shrugged. “If we are going to be dating, in public, I cannot be okay with the idea of you going home at the end of a date to entertain some other woman while thinking of me the whole time.”
“It’s cute you assume I’d be thinking of you.”
“You have obviously never been on a date with me.”
“It’s not going to happen, Aria. Anything else?”
“I know that seems somewhat unfair but-” She was screwing the corner of her mouth, looking like she really did feel bad about what she was asking. “But I have been cheated on before and it was one of the worst feelings in the world. I know it wouldn’t be cheating in this case, since we aren’t going to be in a relationship, per say. But if I know you have been sleeping around, it will be difficult for me to spend time with you without some kind of resentment. I do appreciate you offering to help me out and I don’t want to feel resentful towards you. You obviously don’t deserve that. So if this is too much to ask, we don’t have to make the deal at all and I will still be grateful for your offer.”
I hated the fact that, even with 60,000 dollars in my hands, the ball was in her court and I was the one playing by her rules, yet it made her all the more fascinating, the challenge more exciting. Backing out now would be accepting defeat and Zayden Sinclair did not do defeat. I would make Aria Roberts beg to join me in my bed, if that was the last thing I ever did. Agreeing to her terms would definitely not mean six months of celibacy, since I was going to have her in no time.
“I will add your terms to the paperwork and have you sign it tomorrow,” I finally said.
She grinned.
The game was on.
CHAPTER 5
ARIA
“You did what?” Stacey was staring at me with a mixture of complete horror and amusement.
“I signed a contract to date Zayden Sinclair for six months.”
“But Aria, is this what you want? To lose your virginity over some contract with some-”
I hadn’t even told my best friend that I had already lost my virginity. I was embarrassed that it was some guy from a bar. No one was ever going to know if I had anything to do with it.
“I’m not losing anything, that’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you. He just wants me to go on dates with him.”
She eyed me suspiciously. “Are you sure? Did you read the contract? There wasn’t some footnote involving a dungeon of some sort?”
“I said the same thing,” I laughed. She joined me, to my relief. If I was going to do this, Stacey’s support was essential. If she didn’t support this I would hear about it every day. “But no, I read it cover to cover. No loopholes, no dungeons, no sex. Just spending time with him. And I’ve been thinking about that, it can actually be beneficial to me!”
“Well yeah, that’s a lot of money and you can help your mom out,” she said, jumping on to the edge of my bed and grabbing my stuffed turtle. I threw her a pillow from my desk.
“Yes, that, but also, he has an insane knowledge of the banking industry,” I said, mindlessly scrolling through my computer screen. “He can teach me things when we hang out.”
“He is a CEO, a title he inherited. I doubt he knows much about becoming a loan officer.”
“He owns a chain of banks.” I looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“I guess he’d better know a lot about loan officers, huh?” She was hugging my pillow.
I shrugged. “Won’t hurt to ask. Plus I am taking advanced Macroeconomics classes; he has a Masters in Economics along with an MBA, so at least he can help me ace my classes.”
“Somehow, Aria, I don’t think he means he wants to help you with homework when he says he wants to date you. He very likely has other things in mind.”
“He does,” I frowned. “But since he is not going to get what he has in mind, we will have to find something to talk about during these ‘dates’ or whatever, and I might as well steer the conversation in a direction that helps me do better in school. It’s not a colossal waste of a time that way.”
“Or you could just jump his bones.” She was now flipping through the copy of ZEN magazine with his interview on it.
“You jumped ship pretty quickly. Weren’t you just lecturing me about the sanctity of my virginity?”
“Nope, I was just asking you if that’s what you wanted to do. If it is, then by all means make hot… passionate… love to this divine creation. I wonder how big his-”
“Nick!” I screamed loudly, cutting her off. “You need to come in here and get your girlfriend, she’s getting out of control.”
“Shhhhhh,” she hissed. “He won’t find this funny. We haven’t done it in two weeks.”
“What? Why?”
“We are saving it for our anniversary. Have to keep things spiced up.”
“By actively not, you know, spicing them?” I shook my head. “You sex-having people and your weird ways.”
“You’ll get there soon enough. Very soon according to your boss.”
“Please tell me you believe I can resist him.” I could. I really, truly could. Why was I trying so hard to convince myself when it was obviously the truth? My first time having sex was a mistake and no way was my second time going to be too.
“You are stubborn enough to,” she said, flipping through the magazine. “But if I were you, I would have some fun with this whole thing. I mean how often do sexy gazillionaires pay you to date them? I’d do him for free, if he asked.”
“Don’t make me shout for Nick again.”
She threw the pillow back at me and I caught it right before it hit my head.
“Fine. You sit here and be boring on your computer, I’ll go find my boyfriend.” She got up and left mumbling: “who is probably sitting on his computer and being equally boring. What does one have to do for some fun roommates around here?”
---
As the work-day came to an end and people started evaporating away, I felt a strange knot in my chest. Zayden had sent me an email earlier:
Aria,
Hang around after 5. Our deal begins today.
Best,
Zayden
Zayden Sinclair
Chairman and CEO
South National Bank
I wondered what he had in mind for today. He hadn’t mentione
d anything about going out, and seemed perfectly comfortable lying on his office couch typing intently on his MacBook. Yep, we definitely weren’t going anywhere. Just as well, I could ask him questions for my Econ paper on progressive taxation. There was nothing else I could think of for us to do within the premises of this bank except that, because that was just not happening.
When everybody else cleared out, I wasn’t sure whether to walk over to him or wait for him to summon me; he seemed occupied by whatever was on his computer. Maybe he wouldn’t even notice if I quietly snuck out. I did have tons of homework to get to. I tentatively started packing up but the phone rang.
“Who said you could leave?” He was staring at me. “You signed a contract.”
“You seemed busy and I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be left alone.”
“If I wanted you to leave me alone, you would know Aria.” With just that much he hung up the phone and went back to typing vigorously on his laptop. What the hell was I supposed to do just sitting here? I pulled out my phone and started texting Stacey.
“it’s weird as fuck. he’s just sitting there doing work but I’m not allowed to leave.”
Stacey wrote back immediately.
“ask him if he needs anything. offer to make him some coffee.”
“and set feminism back a few decades?”
“it’s just a nice gesture, nothing to do with you being a woman. he’s helping you out, be nice.”
“fine. whatever.”
I called him back. “Would you like some coffee?”
“Not if it is to be delivered with your clothes on.” A grin formed on his face. I rolled my eyes. “Come on, I’m just teasing. Easy on the eye-roll.”
“You can see that?” I rolled them again involuntarily.
“And that. I’m good with the coffee, but thank you. Dinner should be arriving soon. I’ll get off my computer when it does, I promise.”
“What? Dinner?”
“Yep, it’s a particular kind of meal, usually served in the evenings, usually the last meal of the day.”
“You think you are so funny, don’t you? I didn’t know we would be having dinner.”