I chuckled. “I don’t know what kind of perv Mr. Chase is, butIwon’t make you watch…”
He smiled and nodded graciously. “Then I’ll be back in an hour or so. Please don’t maim each other while I’m gone. Or at least, give me some warning if I’m returning to a crime scene so I can have Asha keep it out of the press.”
“Will do,” I said with a smile.
We arrived on the tenth floor, but Rami stayed in the elevator, leaving me to walk the short distance to the end of the hallway alone.
I would’ve usually opted to wear something understated, but as I was getting dressed found myself becoming more and more determined to put this arrogant ass in his place. He might have been named Sexiest Man Alive, but he was a man nonetheless. In an act of war, I had elected to wear my corseted pinup dress and my favorite strappy stilettos. Time to bring Alex Chase to his knees.
He immediately answered the door when I knocked, wearing a white button-down and a pair of faded jeans and his feet were bare. There was something unexpectedly charming about seeing him so relaxed that he wasn’t wearing shoes.
He gave me a devastating smile and all I could think was, fuck him for getting to go through life distracting everyone that easily. I bet he’d forgotten what the wordnoeven sounded like.
He gestured for my coat, so I shrugged it off dramatically.
“That looks uncomfortable.” He indicated my cinched waist with a wince. “Can you even breathe all squished up like that?”
Not quite the reaction I’d been expecting.
“I can breathe just fine, thank you,” I took a deep breath, letting my bosom heave at the top of the dress. His eyes dropped for just a second before he blinked and went to set my coat down. Point to me.
I looked around at the massive empty space. It was all basically one room, but said gigantic “room” was at least 3,000 square feet of concrete floors and neutral walls. There was a kitchen area with lots of dark marble and stainless steel appliances where Alex had gone to lay my coat on a counter.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” he asked, returning with a glass of red.
“No, thank you,” I responded, primly, “I don’t drink when I’m working.”
He took a deep gulp before leaving it on a table. Under his breath he said, “Apologies. Didn’t realize I’d hired the fun police.”
“What was that?” I snapped, unable to stop myself.
“Hmm? Nothing. So, how do we do this?”
I nodded towards the only furnished area that had a couch and a few chairs, and he followed me over there. When I perched on the couch, he sat next to me instead of taking the chair like I’d intended. He hadn’t sat closer than was appropriate and yet it felt like he’d violated my space.
I was the one who did the violating around here. I wasn’t going to be cowed by his nearness. I angled towards him, bringing our knees unnecessarily close, but not quite touching.
He glanced at the few-inch gap between us, grinned at me, and made a show of settling comfortably, manspreading until his knee knocked against mine, almost playfully. I refused to knock his back, and wasn’t going to scoot away, so now I was stuck trying to ignore the warmth of him that I could feel through his jeans.
They claimed he was wholesome and inexperienced, but the sonofabitch was giving me every vibe of being one of the most intensely dominant men I’d ever encountered.
“Why do you want this role so badly?” It was a question I’d been pondering ever since I’d found him sprawled on a couch in the penthouse. There was something more to his presence than fame and confidence.
“I’ve never played a part like it and this franchise is going to be huge.”
I studied him, wondering how well he even knew himself. “That’s not the whole story. Something in him spoke to you. You liked the idea of being the morally ambiguous baddie that everyone fantasizes about. You wanted to know what it would feel like to inhabit his head.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t everyone?”
“No, Mr. Chase. Most of us want to know what it would feel like to inhabit hisbed.”
I gathered my thoughts, reminding myself I was a professional. “We’re going to start by focusing on the physicality of dominance since that’s what will be critical on screen. That’s what will make or break the authenticity of your performance.”
“Physicality. Got it.” He grinned, glancing at the spot where our knees were touching and he was clearly already exerting his dominance, awakening that instinct in me to submit.
I needed to focus or this wasn’t going to work, so I jumped up and moved far into the center of the open space.
“We’re going to start with a fundamental way power has been exchanged between couples for centuries.”
