Avenge Me

She was stupid enough to come back to his hotel room, either by design or by accident. She was stupid enough to come into his father’s office today. Alone.

Or maybe naive was the better word.

He thought about how tight she’d been when they’d been together. The fact that she’d never been with another man...

Yes, perhaps naive was the word.

“You will speak to me now, or I will march you in there and we can have this conversation in front of Treffen. Which do you prefer?”

“What’s your connection with him?” she asked, her voice breathless.

“It’s genetic, I’m afraid. Now, let’s go outside.”

She didn’t argue this time. She let him lead her. Past reception—and a wide-eyed Stephanie—and into the elevator.

The doors slid shut behind them and she rounded on him. “We seem to spend a lot of time in elevators,” she said crisply.

“We’ve spent a vast amount more time in bed, but yes, some time in elevators. But what we haven’t done is talk.”

“We talked. About shrimp, and you told me to get on my knees.”

“So we did,” he said, his tone clipped. “But I think we skimmed over something very important. Katy Michaels.”

“You remembered. I would have thought it would have sunk down into the annals of your memory by now. Just one of the many women you’ve deflowered in that ridiculous hotel room. It looked like a vampire brothel, by the way.”

“One, I have never used that particular connection before. But a man would have to be an idiot not to keep said offer in his back pocket. Because he never knows when he might need a vampire brothel, as you called it. Two, I’ve never been with a virgin before, and I never do one-night stands.”

“I have one nightstand but that’s completely different.”

“Entirely.”

The doors opened to the lobby and he waited for her to go first. Like he had that night. Except he didn’t own the right to do that now. He never had. To give her orders. To make her his.

He shook his head and continued behind her, out the front door and to where his driver was waiting. “Get in.”

“This is like bad déjà vu.”

“Would it be so bad?” he asked, and then he closed the door and took a deep breath of the cold air before rounding to the other side of the car and getting in.

When he closed the door and settled in, she looked at him. “I think, after the way things ended between us, yes, it would be so bad now that you mention it.”

“You like bad, though,” he said, his eyes fixed firmly ahead, on the divider that kept his driver out of the conversation. “I remember.” And so did he. A slug of desire hit him in the gut. Wrong time. Wrong place.