Gods below, myKteercould be fucking annoying.
I wanted her.
But I wasn’t going to have her.
With a sigh, I straightened, reaching for the door and stepping backward, ready to close it in her face. “Sorry, Ms.Smith. You’re good at what you do, but notthatgood.” I could tell all her attempts at seduction weren’t real. “Run back to Hendricks and tell him I want the fifty thousand, not some pity fuck from a female who doesn’t want it.”
As I began to close the door, I saw genuine fear in her face, and she gave up all pretense. “Wait!” she cried, lunging forward and slapping a palm against the door to keep it from closing.
This meant she was half inside my home, her heavy chest too close to mine as she tipped her head back to stare up into my face. I could see the panic on her face.
“Wait,” she repeated. “Please don’t shut me out.”
“Why?” With my arm on the jamb, she was more or less standing in my embrace. I had to dig my claws into the wood to keep from reaching my arm around her. “Your seduction isn’t going to work on me. I want Hendricks’ money, not his whore.”
Distaste flickered across her features before she dropped her gaze to my chin. “I’m not his whore,” she whispered.
And I remembered the threat in that letter. Hendricks had basically said I could do what I wanted with her—and she and Ibothknew what that meant—and she’d go along with it because… There’d been the threat to tell someone about something that had happened in New Orleans, and although I didn’t understand it, I understood the outcome.
Hendricks had basically announced that she would do whatever I wanted, and she was agreeing with it out offear.
There were some males out there who would have accepted this offer, maybe gratefully. The chance to bed such a female, and the primitive urgings of their survival-focusedKteers, would override their good sense. But I’d smelled her terror, not at me—when I’d opened the door initially she’d smelled of curiosity—but at what she’d been expected to do. And I wasn’t going to fuck a female who was terrified of me.
That wasn’t worth a dollar, much less fifty thousand.
“Look, Stevie,” I sighed, wondering if even that name was false. “You can’t deny Hendricks sent you here to whore for him.”
Her lips pressed together stubbornly, and she didn’t lift her gaze from my chest.
I had some sexual experiences with humans, but most of them had been tiny compared to me. This female was tall enough I wouldn’t have to hurt my back if I claimed her lips—ifI wanted to do such a thing. She was pretty, in a hard sort of way, and I found myself wondering what it would feel like to press my lips to those intriguing stones in her earlobes…
But I could smell her uncertainty.
No matter that the primitive part of me washowlingto take what she was offering, she didn’t want me.
She didn’t wantthis.
So I sighed again and turned away. “Hendricks is an idiot if he thinks I’m going to erase his debt just because he gave me a virgin to fuck.”
Her voice was tiny—too quiet—when she announced without meeting my eyes, “I’m not a virgin,” with a stubborn tilt to her chin.
One of my brows twitched. “Have you ever fucked an orc?”
Mutely, she shook her head, her gaze still locked on my chest. I felt my lips curling ruefully.
“Then, sweetheart…You might as well be a virgin.”
Her gaze snapped up to mine just as I stepped back and began to close the door again.
“Wait!” she cried again, pushing forward. This time, herpalm landed on my chest. “Wait,” she repeated in a whisper. “I need you…”
Fuck me with a tractor.
There were plenty of things I could ignore or overcome. But hearing a tempting female whisper that she needed me? Even when Iknewshe didn’t mean it in the way I wanted it to mean?
It took every ounce of self-control to reach for her wrist, to wrap my fingers gently around it, to pull her away from me.
I wanted her, but I wasn’t going tohaveher.
