“We don’t have an agreement.”
He nodded, completely unfazed, and gestured to the tray of bite-sized sins. “Eat, please.”
I looked between him and the sweets, both representing tempting threats to my body. I picked up a cocoa dusted truffle, choosing the lesser of two evils.
“I didn’t know you owned a club,” I said, because I felt impotent in our current line of conversation.
“It was my first asset, actually.” He chuckled softly at my expression. “I was twenty one years old, fresh out of university and still living with my controlling, conservative parents. It was a pretty cliché trope. I hoped, if they wouldn’t let me leave, that I could get myself kicked out and owning a club seemed like the way to do it.”
“I heard something about them. You didn’t tell me they had adopted you.”
“I didn’t tell you a lot of things, that was part of our agreement. And the subject of my parents and my fruitless rebellions is not something I like to discuss.” He glanced sidelong at me, a mischievous light in his eyes.
I found myself leaning forward, mouth slightly open like a fish hooked by the cheek. “So?”
“So what?” he said, a smug smile in his eyes.
“Did it work?”
“Not quite, but I did get a surprisingly profitable club out of it and my first million.”
I leaned back with a huff. “So not exactly a classic teenage trope.”
He laughed again, louder this time, and I realized this was the most I had ever heard the stirring sound. I wished my mind was clearer, unclouded by the copious amounts of liquor in my system, so that I could better absorb it.
“No, not exactly.”
He stood up with a grace that made my mouth water and moved to stand over me again. I kept my eyes on the confections but I wasn’t sure if it was to ignore him or because the restless submissive was shifting and fighting for purchase inside me.
“Do you want to know what it taught me, Giselle?” His voice was deeper and his faintly accented words tingled like ice sliding down my spine.
He was so close that my cheek was almost pressed to his trouser clad thigh. I wanted to take off those pants with my teeth and use my mouth, hands and throat on him.
“It taught me the art of patience. Have you ever heard the saying, good things come to those who wait?”
I shook my head slightly even though I had heard it before.
His breath was warm and whiskey scented over my crown as he leaned down to gently tip my chin up with one finger so that my neck was craned and my eyes rested on his.
“Patience is a virtue, virtue is a grace, Grace is a little girl who doesn’t wash her face,” I said.
I was close enough to see his features collapse, slowly at first like a loose domino tumbling a dozen more, into laughter.
When he was finished, he stared down at me with caged eyes filled with stars. “You always surprise me.”
The cell phone on the desk vibrated angrily and he swiftly turned away from me to answer it, leaving me mid-shrug. He picked up and listened without saying a word of greeting.
“I don’t care who his father is, get him the fuck out of my club.”
My eyebrows shot up at his harsh tone and less then formal language. I was pretty sure Sinclair never raised his voice. Triggered by his sudden mood change, the air in the room stiffened and pressed against me until I was locked into place.
He placed the phone back on the cradle with a slow calm but when he looked over at me his face was implacable, his eyes just a color.
“As I was saying, you always surprise me. But tonight, I was not happy with your behavior. Drunkenly dancing with men like that.” He shook his head. “I thought you would want to be more careful after the incident in Mexico.”
I flinched as his dart landed with deadly accuracy in my breastbone. “Don’t talk to me about Mexico. I was perfectly safe and aware tonight, Sinclair. And, if it appeals to your idiotic French misogyny, Cage was close by.”
“Still, I did not like it.” He wasn’t speaking sternly now, in fact, his accent had thickened slightly and he seemed more disturbed than angry.