Page 9 of Dirty Game

"What did you expect?"

"Tears. Pleading. Maybe an attempt at seduction to secure your position." His lips quirk in what might be amusement. "Not a forensic accountant who finds seven hundred thousand dollars of theft and debates whether to tell me. Not someone who watches me beat information out of a man and doesn't run screaming."

"Would seduction have worked?" The question slips out before I can stop it, and heat floods my face again.

He moves close again, sudden as a strike, and I'm trapped between him and the desk.

His hands bracket my hips, not touching but claiming the space around me. "Do you want it to work?"

I can't breathe.

I can't think.

He's everywhere—his scent, his heat, his presence consuming all the air in the room. "I don't know what I want."

"Liar." His breath ghosts across my lips. "You knowexactlywhat you want. You're just afraid of it. Afraid of me. Afraid of what it means that you didn't run when you saw me with blood on my hands."

"Should I run?"

"Every instinct you have should be screaming at you to run." His hand comes up, fingers threading through my hair, tugginggently until I'm looking directly at him. "But you're not running. Why?"

"Because..." I swallow hard. "Because you make me feel safe. God help me, you terrify me, but you make me feel safe, and I don't understand it."

"I don't fuck virgins who shake when I walk into a room," he says, and the crude word makes me flinch. "I prefer my women willing. Eager. Choosing to be in my bed because they want to be there."

"And if I never want to be there?"

His hand tightens in my hair, not painful but commanding. "Then you'll balance my books and find my thieves and live in comfort and safety until your father's debt is paid." He leans closer, lips almost brushing my ear. "Three years, ten months, two weeks. That's what six million dollars buys at the interest rate I'm charging."

I calculated it myself weeks ago, down to the day. "And then?"

"Then you're free to leave. Or stay. Your choice."

"Would anyone stay? After being payment for someone else's sins?"

His smile is dark, knowing. "You might surprise yourself, little mouse. You've already surprised me."

He releases me, steps back, and I have to grip the desk to keep standing. "You didn't run when you saw me with Phillip. You didn't even look disgusted. You looked... interested."

"I looked terrified."

"That too. But also interested. Like you were cataloging my methods. Analyzing my efficiency." He picks up the brass knuckles from the desk, slips them into his pocket. "It's the same way you look at numbers. Like you're solving a puzzle."

A clock chimes somewhere in the penthouse.

Three AM.

I've been awake for twenty-two hours, running on coffee and fear and the strange adrenaline that comes from being near him.

"Go to bed," he orders. "Jensen will bring the files at nine. I want a full analysis by evening."

"All of them? That could be thousands of?—"

"Then you better get some sleep." He walks to his private office—the one with the soundproof walls and drains in the floor, the one where he was conducting business before he found me. "And Rosalynn?"

I pause at the door. "Yes?"

"Next time you find something like this, you come to me immediately. Three hours could mean three bodies in the Fraser River. Understand?"