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"What about me?"

He glances down at my outfit, his eyes lingering everywhere. It should feel degrading and crude, but...I just want to bask under his gaze.

"First of all, what the hell?" he grinds out.

I fight the urge to fidget under his scrutiny.

"What?" I say nonchalantly.

"You didn't have anything else to wear?" he asks.

"Do you have a problem with how I dress, Mr. Sinclair?" I ask, tilting my head at him.

"Yes, it makes my cock hard," he says. "But you already knew that. Maybe it's what you wanted."

I suck in a sharp breath.

This man actually just said that out loud.

"What's the matter, Emma?" he asks. "You're looking at me like you weren't begging for my touch last night."

His words are harsh, but there's more to it. There's a panic in his eyes. It was born when he held my waist to keep me from falling.

"You don't like physical touch," I comment.

There's a flash of something in his eyes. In that single moment, I see the past versions of him that existed before the world stole his innocence. But it's gone before I can make sense of it.

"You're the nanny, Miss Turner," he says. "Stop trying to play therapist."

His words are meant to sting. And they do.

I've always been self-conscious about only having a high school diploma. And the words he just spat at me hurt a part of me that was already wounded.

I clear my throat. "Did you pull me aside just to say you don't like what I'm wearing?"

"Oh, I like what you're wearing," he says. "If anything, I like it a little too much. And you can see why that's a problem, right?"

"I don't see what's wrong with my outfit," I say, tilting my chin up at him.

"It makes you look like you're trying too hard," he says. "I see what you're doing, and it's pathetic, really."

I grit my teeth as I stare back at him. This man reeks of arrogance, and I want nothing more than to put him in his place.

"Since you're sharing your opinion so freely, I'll share mine, too," I say. "I fucking despise men like you. You think you can say whatever you want to whoever you want and get away with it. Even though I've been nothing but respectful to you, you insist on being an asshole to me."

His jaw clenches once, twice as he watches me.

"That's where I disagree," he says.

"What?"

"You said that you were respectful to me, but that's not the case. I find your short little skirt very disrespectful. In fact, I find it downright offensive."

The way he's looking at me makes hot lava form inside me. It makes me forget all the reasons I'm supposed to stay far away from men like Klaus Sinclair.

I become heated from the inside out.

I can't deny it.