At Any Price (Gaming The System) (4 page)

I unclenched my jaw just long enough to reply. “Recent medical clearance is not sufficient for me. I’d require celibacy for at least the previous six months, so—”

“Then there isn’t a problem.”

I highly doubted that. I opened my mouth to call him a liar when Heath leaned forward and put his hand on the table in front of me.

Drake’s lawyer cleared his throat, throwing a bland look at me and turning to Drake. “We can work all these details out later in mediation. Mr. Drake does have a plane to catch later today.”

Drake’s eyes darted to Heath and back to me. I could tell he was trying to gauge our relationship. It wasn’t the first time a person had looked at the two of us in that unsure, questioning way. Heath was not obviously gay in any way. He wasn’t “fabulous” or flamboyant. He was very masculine in his behavior and mannerisms, so he rarely set off people’s gaydar.

My gaze turned back to Drake, drawn to him like a flame pulled into a hot, dry wind. I resented the heat on my cheeks. I was not a habitual blusher. Hardly ever, actually. But this man was bringing my Irish up, as my mother liked to say. And what was worse, the more annoyed I grew with him, the more amused he seemed to be.

Drake flicked a glance at Heath and then his lawyer. “Gentlemen, could you excuse us for a moment? You’re free to wait just outside the door.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he glanced at me.
“If,
of course, that is okay with the lady?”

My face flamed hotter and I folded my hands on my lap. “Fine,” I said, wondering if the thirty-something New Yorker was still interested in the deal. There was no way he could be more offensive than this jerk.

Heath looked at me for confirmation and I nodded. He patted me on the shoulder and the two men exited, leaving the two of us across the table from one another, staring.

Finally he cleared his throat and laid his hands on the table before him, lacing his fingers together and dropping his gaze. “I’m sorry if my bluntness has offended you. I assumed that a woman who has placed herself on the block like you have would be comfortable with straight talk.”

I laughed. “Oh, is that what that was? I just thought you were being an asshat.”

When he smiled, the arrogance was gone and the most delicious dimple appeared at the side of his mouth. I wanted to lick that dimple, to know every nuance of its taste. I shifted in my seat, furious with myself. Why couldn’t I control these crazy, darting thoughts?

“Mr. Drake. You are not leaving me with the best impression of yourself—”

I cut off at his dry chuckle. “Do I need to? I thought my bank account did that for me.”

Anger sizzled hot and my muscles tensed. I breathed in one long draught and then released it. “I am not a prostitute and I’ll thank you not to treat me like one.”

“You’ve sold yourself. You may not see yourself as one, but clearly…” His eyes traveled down my body again.

I shook my head. I couldn’t understand his motivation for provoking me like this. As beautiful as he was, each time that he opened his mouth I was finding it harder and harder to picture myself in bed with him. “One night in my life and a bit of broken skin does not constitute prostitution.”

His dark gaze intensified, as if with one long, determined gaze he could break through my defenses. I drew back.

“Sex for money is prostitution.”

I shrugged, determined not to let him see that he was getting under my skin. “I prefer not to put a label on it. One night of my life does not define me.”

Those generous, sexy lips turned up in a knowing smile. “A lot can happen in one night.”

I couldn’t look away no matter how much I wanted to. My heart pounded, pulse screaming through my veins in concerted throbs, but my head kept telling me to kick this asshole to the curb. There were many things I would do for almost a million dollars. Submitting to this overinflated jerk might not be one of them.

He looked at me with an analytical expression that I might wear while studying platelets under a microscope. “It takes a curious type of morality to save one’s self for so long only to sell off that asset to the highest bidder.”

My jaw tightened. It was getting harder and harder to cloak my irritation with him. “You didn’t pay to get inside my
head,
Mr. Drake.”

To cover my discomfort, I pushed Heath’s stack of papers across the table to him. “Here’s the fine print—everything that I could think of.”

He flicked a glance at them and then away, almost bored. “I’m not going to read through that now, obviously. And, of course, I’ll have addendums of my own. Along with a nondisclosure agreement.”

I frowned. No one had said anything about an NDA to me. “You do know that I’m a blogger, right?”

“Of course. But, aside from your Manifesto, you blog exclusively about gaming, not your sex life. The document is pretty standard, with a little extra wording about our special situation”

He pushed a single sheet of paper across the desk to me. I looked it over. It did, indeed, seem standard, and it specifically mentioned the fact that I could not blog about our night together. I’d never planned to go into any details. I don’t write that kind of blog. But I did plan to mention that it had happened. I did have credibility to maintain, after all.

With a bored sniff, I asked for a pen, surprised that he handed me a two-dollar plastic thing instead of a platinum- and gold-plated ostentatious rich guy’s pen that shouted, “Look at me, I’m disgustingly wealthy.” I hurriedly scratched out my signature on the form.

As I pushed it over to him, I said, “I’m going to need a copy of that.”

He bent and signed the paper as well and I had a chance to admire him unnoticed for a few seconds. He really was unbelievably handsome. My heart hadn’t stopped drumming its silly ska tempo since he’d walked in the door.

“Of course,” he murmured, taking out a shiny chrome-plated smart phone from his breast pocket to photograph the document. After a moment, he typed some commands into it and looked up at me. “Heath Bowman now has a copy in his e-mail. He can forward it to you. I’ll have a physical copy mailed to you as soon as possible if you put your address on the back of the form.” I bent and complied, hurriedly scratching down my address.

I straightened, ready to give his attitude back to him, now. “It’s too bad, really, that I won’t be able to write about it. I could have made it sound so mind-blowing—I might even have thrown in a few ‘earth-shatterings’ for good measure.”

A smile played about his sexy mouth as he tucked his pen back into his jacket. “Oh, our encounters will be all that and more.”

I shook my head, hiding, yet again, the shock at his words. “It’s one night, Mr. Drake. That ‘encounters’ should have a parentheses around the s.”

His look could only be interpreted as smug. “
Encounters…
no parentheses necessary.”

My heartbeat slammed against my ribs. Why was his arrogance turning me on? I wanted nothing more than to slap that smug look off his handsome face.

His gaze brazenly lowered to my cleavage and breasts, lingering there. My nipples tightened in automatic response and without looking down I knew he could see. I cursed the fact that I had opted to wear a thin, white blouse.

His eyes returned to mine and this time his face split into a boyish grin. “This is going to be
fun.
”

Self-consciously I folded my arms tightly across my chest, covering my traitorous breasts. I fumbled for something smartass to say in return but failed.

“I’m sorry to make this brief, but I’m on the way to a business meeting. We can work out all the details so that we’re both satisfied. I’ll be reachable by e-mail, however. Or you can text me.”

I almost fell over in relief at the news that he was leaving. I wasn’t sure I could take ten more minutes alone in a room with him. Which didn’t bode well for our night. Alone together. Naked. In a bed.

A bead of sweat trickled down the side of my temple. How did he manage to look so cool and crisp in his umpteen-thousand-dollar suit? And how did he manage to look so young and yet act like a thirty-something businessman at the same time?

I cleared my throat. “My cell phone isn’t working.”

His forehead creased for a moment and he opened his mouth, shook his head and then closed it as if he’d changed his mind about what he was going to say. “I have nothing but your best interests, health and safety in mind, Emilia. Both physically and legally.”

Nothing else?
Again, I highly doubted that. My skepticism must have been apparent because he settled back, dark brows rising just a little. “Well, I do have my own expectations of how this should go, of course.”

I smirked, hoping this time to get some kind of reaction from him. “Of course you do.”

But his eyes only narrowed as he stood. I mirrored his actions and he waited for me to come around the table before walking toward the door alongside me. He stood so close that his jacket brushed my shoulder once and I thought my heart would go into arrest from the electric shock that zinged through me. I waited while he reached out to pull the door open. I could see no one beyond the frosted glass of the conference room door.

But he didn’t open the door. Instead he turned to me, pinned me down with that dark gaze.

“Was there something else?” I hated how breathy my voice sounded. I took a step back to put some space between us, but it didn’t seem to matter. The intensity did not let up.

Then that willful smile again. “No. I’d better not ask,” he muttered, almost to himself and I wondered what he’d had in mind. But he still didn’t move. His hand on the chrome door handle tightened, the skin around his knuckles paling. This close I could see every feature, his glossy black hair, his dark eyes, his long straight nose and strong jaw. I swallowed and glanced to the side.

“Mr. Drake—”

“Adam,” he said, his voice quiet, firm. Then he did something I could hardly believe. He put his free hand to my chin, tilting my head up so he could look into my face. His thumb ran along my jawline and I forced myself not to jump back. I didn’t hate the touch—quite the opposite. Even as my nervousness grew, I had to remind myself that he’d be touching a lot more than that very soon. I met his gaze, managing not to flinch.

“Call me Adam,” he said, brushing his thumb over my jaw again. “It’s only fitting, given that we’ll be seeing each other naked soon.”

My mouth dropped, cheeks flushing. The reaction seemed to amuse him. I knew this must be some kind of test to gauge my response. I didn’t care. Things were finally starting to get real. I stepped back from his grip and lifted my chin. “This isn’t a done deal. I could always change my mind.” I said, hating how my voice trembled.

He nodded. “You could. And if you can’t bring yourself to hear it talked about, you probably
shouldn’t
go through with it.”

It wasn’t that he was talking about it. It was the
way
he was talking about it. But I stayed silent, strongly wishing myself out of this room and miles away.

He leaned toward me so that our faces were only inches from each other. I caught a whiff of his clean scent. My senses reeled, my heart hammered. “In the end, after all the legal talk, after all of the technical Latin terms we’ve been throwing around, this is going to be about two people. In bed—and probably other places. Fucking.”

The guy had the social skills of a caveman. Any minute I expected him to grab me by the hair and drag me out of the place with a club resting on his shoulder. Maybe he had to pay regularly to get his sex. He was a computer geek, after all. A hot computer geek, I’d admit, but still. Those guys planted their butts in front of the computer for hours, crunching code. When did they have the time to go out and pick up a girlfriend?

I decided to give him a little of his own medicine, giving him the once-over, resting my eyes on his chest, his crotch. Unfortunately, that didn’t bring about the desired effect.

He had that boyish grin again. “Yes, this is definitely going to be fun,” he said.

“You’ll be paying enough for it.”

The amusement evaporated from his eyes and they hardened so suddenly that I almost gasped to see the change in them. “We’ll be in touch, Emilia.” He stepped back and jerked open the door, waving me to pass through before him. The gentlemanly gesture came too late to impress me.

I straightened and managed not to wobble on my heels, remembering to keep my shoulders back. My mother’s voice about my poor posture rang in my head. Maybe it came from all the time I spent hunched over my keyboard playing video games.

It occurred to me that I still had no idea who this guy was. Video game designer? Multimillionaire? How does a designer get so rich? What was his story? He was really young. I would have pegged him for younger than twenty-six, yet still so arrogant, so in command and sure of himself.

Well, there was always the Internet, where no question need go unanswered. At least I had been able to cover my bill for the month. I didn’t really care about the cell phone, but I’d go without water and gas before I’d give up my Internet. It helped me put food on the table, at the very least.

I’d go home and Google him, of course. He was bound to come up, even if he was, as he claimed, a “very private person.” He couldn’t make the whole damn world sign an NDA.

When I caught Heath’s eye, he turned from his discussion with Drake’s lawyer. The tight ball between my shoulder blades had migrated to my stomach, twisting and knotting as we made it to them. Drake and Heath shook hands again and we went our separate ways. I made sure he was out of sight before I balled up my fists and spoke to Heath through clenched teeth.

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

“What?”

“Seriously,
that’s
the guy you picked? How in the hell did you think I would tolerate him?”

Heath shot me a puzzled look. “I actually thought he had a lot in common with you.”

“What, because he makes video games and I like to play them
—too
much, yes, I know—and review them on my blog?”

“Look at it this way, doll. If you don’t like your time together, you can give every product he’s made a shitty review.”