Modern Romance March 2021 Book 5-8 Carol Marinelli (ebook reader computer txt) 📖

“Sex, yes. And anything else I desire.” He laughed at the expression on her face. The one she tried to hide. “That could mean accompaniment. The ability to charm business associates at tedious dinners. Clever conversation, sparkling repartee, and all while looking like a bauble most men cannot afford. But if I were you, Kendra, I would focus more on the sex. I require rather a lot.”

He was fascinated by the way her expression changed, then. By the way the color on her face matched. If he didn’t know better—if he didn’t know to his detriment that she was a loaded, aimed weapon—he might have been tempted to think she was doing this against her will. Or if not precisely against her will, without the level of enthusiasm he would have anticipated from an operator like her. Like all the members of her family.

Because surely she had done things like this before or why would they have sent her?

You know she’s done things like this before, he reminded himself sharply. She’s done it to you.

“Are you prepared?” she asked him after a moment, and though her voice was slightly husky, there was no hint of uncertainty about her. She was hiding it well—another indication this was a role she was playing. “If you take me as your mistress, you will be linked with my family. In a way I’m guessing you will not like.”

“I do not think that I am the one who will dislike it most.”

“You and I can stand here and speak of a business arrangement, but I think you know the tabloids will assume that it’s a more conventional relationship.”

“If the tabloids did not make assumptions, they would not exist.” He made a dismissive gesture. “This is of no interest to me.”

“All right then.” She squared her shoulders as if prepared to march forth into battle. “How do these things normally begin?”

He might have admired her bravado had it not been predicated on how little she actually wanted him. And how little she was attempting to hide that fact from him.

“I have not invited you to be my mistress, Kendra,” he rebuked her. Mildly enough. “This discussion, while illuminating, is nothing more than academic.”

“What do you mean, academic?” Color flooded her cheeks again, and he found himself far more interested than he ought to have been. Fascinated, even, despite himself. “I’m offering myself to you.”

“But you cannot be trusted.” He shook his head sadly. “You are a Connolly, first of all, and by definition a liar. More importantly, you have already attempted to lure me in once.”

“You thought I was attempting to...” When Kendra shook her head it was as if she couldn’t quite get her balance. She blinked. “My mistake. You’re apparently playing strange games. If you did not wish to do business, you should have said so.”

“I admire a woman who can barter. Particularly when what she is bartering is herself. No coy games. No fluttering about like all the rest, never quite getting to the mercenary point.”

Her eyes flashed. “If you’re not interested in the business arrangement you suggested, tell me what would interest you instead.”

Balthazar was intrigued, and that should have worried him when he knew her to be an empty, grasping liar, like all the rest of her family. She was treacherous and as dirty as the rest of them. But he could not deny that he was hard. That he ached for her.

There was only one way to soothe that kind of ache, no matter what manner of woman inspired it.

“This particular kind of business arrangement requires, shall we say, a down payment,” he told her. Matter-of-factly.

“A down payment. On sex.”

“But of course. I prefer my sex—”

“Abundant,” she clipped out. “I heard you.”

“Abundant, yes. But I also require a certain level of excellence, or what would be the point?” He smiled at her, edgily. “All I know about you is that you are selfish. And a tease. And entirely too willing to do your family’s bidding. None of that, I must say, suggests to me that you would be any good at all in the bedroom.”

He thought he heard a sharp sound, like an intake of breath.

“Am I to understand, then...?” Her eyes had gone a brilliant shade of bright amber, but her voice was precise. Crisp and to the point. “That is to say, I assume what you’re asking for is an audition?”

“We’re talking about more than two million dollars, Kendra,” he said with no little dark amusement. “I need to be certain I am getting my money’s worth. You understand.”

He expected her to turn and run from the room, screaming perhaps. No matter how many times she’d attempted to vamp her way out of trouble—a notion he could not say he enjoyed entertaining, though he shoved it aside—he doubted very much that anyone had ever spoken to her quite like this.

All those preppy, pastel-wearing country club scions of this or that supposedly elite family, as if there was such a thing in this adolescent country. All those Ivy League boys. All this American nonsense so many millennia after his own country had taken shape and changed the world.

It was something, all these pretensions to aristocracy. It really was. Balthazar could never tell if he admired these brash people or pitied them.

Still, he didn’t like imagining any of them with Kendra.

And if there was something in him that regretted what he planned to do here—what he should have been delighted to do here—he shoved it aside.

But to his surprise, she only shrugged in return. “That sounds fair.” Her voice was so nonchalant it poked at him. She arched an elegant brow. “Right here?”

He felt that like a shot of electricity, straight to his sex. When he should have felt nothing of the kind. When he had anticipated feeling only the sweetness of his long overdue revenge. And had perhaps imagined she would run from him again.

Still, he did not back down. He was Balthazar Skalas. Backing down was not