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Loud ones.
“He offered you a thousand dollars,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And you gave it back.”
“I did. It wasn’t hard.”
The corner of his mouth moves before he can stop it. Gone just as fast.
“Tell me why.”
I think about lying. Then I think about how he watched me do it, and it seems pointless.
“Because the money wasn’t for pouring champagne,” I say. “And if I take it, then he gets to believe I was for sale. I’m not giving that man a story where he wins.”
“Most people in this room,” he says, “would have kept the thousand.”
“Most people in this room already have a price tag,” I say. “They just had it tailored.”
That gets me something. A low sound in his chest, almost a laugh, rough and warm. It rolls through me and lands right between my thighs.
“Bunny,” he says, tasting it. “It doesn’t suit you.”
“The agency picked it.”
“The agency was wrong. A rabbit runs.” He considers me for a moment. “Bella. That suits you better.”
He finally picks up one of the glasses, turns it in his fingers, doesn’t drink. “You didn’t run from the lion.”
“That particular lion wasn’t worth running from.”
“And the wolf.”
He sets the glass down and leans forward, out of the shadows, and the booth gets smaller. Close enough now that I catch it. Black pepper and smoked amber, and under it something darker, like rain hitting hot stone. My stomach tightens. I want to lean in and breathe it properly.
His eyes take their time. My mouth. My throat. The pulse jumping at the base of it.
My mouth goes dry.
“I haven’t decided about wolves,” I say. It comes out lower than I meant it to.
“You have.” His gaze drops to where my pulse is giving me away. “You just haven’t said it out loud.”
Well, then.
I am working. I am in a borrowed dress in a room full of criminals, and I have a deposit to scrape together, and a man with no name is flirting with me like I’m the only thing in this room worth his time.
And I’m flirting back.
“What happens to the women who stare back at you?”
“I’ll let you know. You’re the first in a long time.”
The first. It hits low and sweet, and for a second I forget how to breathe. Then my brain catches up. For all I know, he says that to a different woman every night and takes her home after. Lord knows he could.
My pulse doesn’t care. It’s already doing something reckless.
