“That sounds okay,” he said, blushing when Blackwell smirked at him.
“If it gets too much, just tell us to back off.” Blackwell moved his hand up and to his hair. The weight of his hand pushed Sebastian down into his seat, making him feel wonderfully small and vulnerable.
When Blackwell removed his hand, putting it back on the wheel, Sebastian let out a sigh of disappointment.
“How was that?” Blackwell asked, and Sebastian realized it had been a test. He tore his gaze away from Blackwell’s hand and looked up at his face.
“Nice,” he mumbled, unable to look at the satisfied way Blackwell was smirking without going red.
He needed to stop blushing all the time.
“Good.” Blackwell’s voice was all satisfaction. He reached back over and tugged on Sebastian’s earlobe. “I like the way you blush when I put my hands on you.”
Sebastian didn’t say anything to Blackwell’s confession, wishing he could hide his face so that Blackwell wouldn’t see how much it affected him.
The tugging on his ear was going right to his cock, only making it more difficult to think.
“Do you have any questions?” Blackwell asked, rubbing the shell of his ear between his thumb and index finger.
Sebastian didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He had more questions than he could shake a stick at, and some of them he wasn’t sure he was brave enough to actually ask.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Blackwell said, shaking his head with a rueful grin. He let go of Sebastian’s ear. “Hit me.”
Sebastian asked the first thing that popped into his mind,
“What do you do for a living?”
It wasn’t the question Sebastian most wanted an answer to, but it was a good place to start.
“I own a consulting firm. We help companies navigate product standards across different markets.”
The answer was not what Sebastian had expected. The feeling must have shown on his face, because Blackwell grinned and shot him a look.
“What did you think I did?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Bodyguard or something?”
Blackwell, with his intimidating appearance and impeccable suit, was pretty much the definition of what Sebastian imagined an expensive bodyguard would look like.
“Not really enough money in that to be recognized as a pack alpha,” Blackwell said.
“Are you rich?”
Blackwell was making it sound like money was an important part of being an alpha. Given the fact that Blackwell was essentially buying him, he didn’t think the question was too crass.
“Depends on what you mean by rich,” Blackwell hedged, giving the standard rich person answer to Sebastian’s question.
“So you are,” Sebastian said. Morbidly curious, his next question popped out before he could stop himself. “How much did it cost to pick me?”
Sebastian wasn’t sure how muchhe’dactually been paid for signing up with Life Mate – they had negotiated the cost of his mother’s treatment with the hospital directly and never disclosed the sum they paid – but he knew it was a lot.
“The scent samples cost around a thousand dollars apiece, and then the matching fee when I picked you was about a million and a half.” Blackwell’s words were matter of fact.
Sebastian had known that getting a human had to be expensive, but that was insane.
“That’s a lot,” he finally said. He didn’t know if he could live up to a price tag of over a million dollars. “Did you have to get a second mortgage or something?”
Blackwell laughed and shook his head, glancing at him like he’d said something funny. “No, I paid in cash.”
