I can't help the way my breath catches.
Of everything he's said to me since I've met him, this is the one that hits the final target.
My first name lands like an insult. Not because it's my name, because of how he says it. The specific weight he puts on it, like he picked it up and turned it over and found something ugly on the underside before he handed it back.
"Yes, sir," I say quietly, then turn back to the window and blink back tears, refusing to give him any more ammunition than he already has.
He's done enough damage.
***
I barely register that we've arrived until Bennet is stepping out of the car and coming around to my side. I put my game face on — the one I've been wearing since I was a teenager when I learned that a smile is armor — and take his extended hand.
The night air hits me as I immediately clock paparazzi, but Bennet notices them first. Before I can orient myself, he's pulled me into his chest, my back against the car, and suddenly he's right there, looking down at me with an expression doesn’t belong to the man who just told me my job was to look fuckable on his arm.
Whoever that man was, he's not here right now.
He reaches up and brushes a curl from my face, and I scowl at him. While this morning his beard had been full, he now had a neat trim all along his chiseled jaw. It gave him a sinister look.The suit hugging his broad shoulders probably cost more than Colt’s entire sweater wardrobe.
He leans down and runs his nose slowly up the length of my neck, his lips grazing my jaw, and I feel it everywhere.
"Three photographers behind us," he murmurs against my skin. "Two across the street." A beat. "Time to work."
Then his mouth is on mine.
It's too much kiss for public consumption, which I understand is entirely the point, but understanding it doesn't help me manage the reality of it all — the hand at the back of my neck, the mouth moving against mine with the kind of certainty that doesn't leave room for anything else.
I part my lips wider and get lost in the feel of his tongue sliding against mine, of the demand in his touch, of the way he pulls me harder against him with his hand at the small of my back. It feels foreign and familiar at the same time, like I know his lips and his touch from another life that wasn't meant for me.
I fight the urge to cry and I don't know where it comes from exactly, except that I'm back here again — performing on a powerful man's arm, being the thing he points at when he wants people to look, back in the shape of a woman whose value lives and dies in what she looks like standing next to someone else.
I lean into the kiss anyway because that's the job and because I don't have another choice and because his mouth is doing things to my nervous system that I resent completely.
His grip tightens at my neck. I suck on his tongue, and a moan slips out of him that I know he didn't mean to make because he immediately goes still. But his breathing and the hard evidence against my stomach betrays any excuse he could conjure. So, I wait.
He pulls back just enough to speak.
"Good girl," he says against my lips, quiet enough that only I can hear it, and I have absolutely no idea what to do with the way my body responds to those two words from this man who despises me.
Then he takes my hand and walks us both inside like nothing happened.
I school my face into the smile that has never once failed me and walk beside him and think about the fact that I have six months of this ahead of me.
I am in so much fucking trouble.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BENNET
"Right this way, Mr. Sullivan." The bouncer at The War Keys opens the VIP entrance, and we move through it, Blaire's hand in mine, both of us playing the part for the cameras and the crowd pressing at the velvet rope.
"Please escort Mrs. Monroe to our table." I lean toward the waiter. "I'll join her shortly."
I let go of Blaire's hand, motion for her to follow him, and make my way to the men's room where I run cold water over a hand towel and press it against my face and neck until my pulse slows to something manageable.
I kissed her to fuck with her. To play it up for the cameras. That's what I'm telling myself, because the alternative is admitting it had something to do with the way that dress hugs her body. How I could tell with absolute certainty the moment her assistant opened that door that she wasn't wearing a bra, her nipples pebbled against the silky fabric. How her ass moved just right against it when she walked.
I was so fucking angry at her for pulling yet another physical reaction out of me that when she asked where I was originally from; I wanted to punch the concrete all over again. I wanted to scream into the rain and get the hell away from Blaire Alexander and every single thing she does to me without even trying.
