she wasn’t entirely sure if he was his mask or not.
He held it out, yet didn’t hand it to her.
“You can have it,” he told her. “But it’s not a donation. You’ll have to work for it.”
Zair watched her pale. And he was a lost cause, a twisted creature all the way through, because he liked it, for all kinds of reasons. Chief among them, the fact that she didn’t back down, pale as she’d become. How far would she take this?
“Is there a problem?” he asked, calm again. Cool, while she stared back at him with wide, worried eyes, and he liked that, too. “Because surely you must know this, Nora. This is what hookers do.”
* * *
Nora opened her mouth to automatically object to him calling her a hooker—but caught herself in the nick of time.
Tonight, she was a hooker. It was easier to keep that in mind when she was the one saying the kinds of crass, come-hither-with-cash things she imagined hookers might say. It was a lot harder when Zair did it. It veered a little bit too close to a host of shameful, hurtful feelings she’d assured herself she was immune from because she had reasons for doing this. Because it wasn’t a choice she was making, it was a mission.
This isn’t about you, she reminded herself then. Fiercely. Or him. Or whatever happens here.
“Of course,” she said, forcing that calm note into her voice. She held out her hand and his mouth twitched slightly as he slapped the envelope into her palm. “We can do whatever you want, Zair. Just tell me what that is and we’ll get going.”
There was something different about the way he was looking at her, something she might have called indulgent in a more optimistic frame of mind, but she told herself she was imagining it.
That kiss had rocked her. She could still feel it, everywhere, as if he’d changed the chemistry of her body and she was something different now, something new. She’d thought kissing him on that yacht was hard enough, mind-blowing and insane. Here, all alone, with the sparkling lights of the beautiful French Riviera gleaming down below and a mess of stars above, it had been like throwing herself off the side of the nearest cliff.
She wasn’t certain she’d landed yet.
But she couldn’t let herself think too much. She’d decided in the car ride on the winding roads that led up into these hills that she had to concentrate on getting through this night with him, and that was all. She couldn’t let her age-old fantasies about this man confuse the issue.
And if she had to have sex with him to prove she was the whore she was pretending to be, well, she could do that. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t wanted to sleep with him for years. Maybe if she closed her eyes, she could convince herself that this was all romantic, somehow. That it was something more than a cold, hard transaction and that Zair, too, was something more than a rich, dissolute john.
And meanwhile, Zair was studying her in that disconcerting way of his, as though he was taking her apart and analyzing every piece of her, and she needed to focus. This wasn’t some random guy with a yen for deviant sexual behavior; this was Zair. She had no doubt that he feasted on political intrigue for breakfast, thanks to his job, and she already knew he was lethal. He was formidable and dangerous on every possible level. If she wanted to keep her secrets from him, it was going to take every last bit of her concentration.
“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?” he asked, proving himself something like psychic, his cool green eyes seeing far too deep inside her head.
“You mean other than fucking?”
“No matter how many times you throw that word at me,” he said with a certain quiet menace she felt spear through her, making her feel breathless and needy and deeply anxious at once, “it won’t make this charade of yours any more convincing.”
Nora realized, in that searing moment, that she’d anticipated having to do this—if she’d truly had to do it at all, as she’d indulged in a rather sepia-toned fantasy sequence of spotting Harlow the moment she set foot on the yacht and the two of them breaking for land before any transactions took place—with a stranger. She hadn’t imagined she’d have to put on this act for someone who knew her.
She’d certainly never imagined doing this with him.
Nora tucked the fat envelope into her clutch, buying herself a little bit of breathing room, and then she eyed him again, wishing she’d thought to wear some kind of body armor tonight. Alas.
“You don’t actually know me very well, Zair,” she said, and she stopped trying to pretend she was the Happy Hooker. She just said it, flat and matter-of-fact. “I’m sorry if you can’t handle this. But it’s not up to you to decide what I get to do for fun.”
“Fun?” He looked so relaxed, suddenly. He tucked his hands in the pockets of his trousers and shifted back on his heels, and Nora knew, somehow, that he was the most furious she’d ever seen him. It should have terrified her. Instead, it made her…tingle. Everywhere. “This is what you find fun? Sucking the cocks of strange men in foreign countries? For cash you don’t need?”
“If I needed the cash, it wouldn’t be fun, would it?”
“And what pleasure do you get from this, exactly?” He shook his head, his gaze darker and more tormented than she’d ever seen it before—but surely that was a trick of the light. It was gone in an instant. “If this is an adrenaline thing, you should consider more extreme sports. Flinging yourself from planes and down the backs of unmapped mountains would be far safer, don’t you think?”
She smiled. “I appreciate your concern for my well-being. Do you extend the same consideration to all the women you buy?”
That fascinating mouth of his moved into something too dark to be a smile in return. “How often do you do this?”
“As often as I feel like it.” Nora tilted her chin up when he looked dubious. “I don’t need your approval, Zair. It’s none of your business.”
“That is where you are wrong.”
“I think you should spend some time thinking about how you only seem to find my participation problematic,” she told him, ignoring the simmering way he was looking at her. “If women selling their own bodies is a bad thing, then it must be equally bad for everyone on that boat. Yet you went there to buy someone. And you only left with me.”
“You were the only woman in the room related to my best friend,” he gritted at her. “What was I supposed to do?”
“You’re wasting my time.” She squared her shoulders when he glared at her, and she wished that she felt as tough as she was acting. Or that he didn’t still appeal to her, despite all of this. “You dragged me away from a boat full of prospects. I didn’t come to France to sit through a lecture. I’m calling a cab.”
She started for the door with her head high, though she was prudent enough to give him a wide berth as she went. Her heart was clattering against her ribs and her knees felt weak, but she thought she could hold herself together long enough to make it into a taxi.
Then she could spend the rest of this terrible night in the fetal position, crying for the death of the Zair al Ruyi who had clearly never existed outside her childish fantasies.
And then start this whole thing over again tomorrow.
She had her hand on the front door and she didn’t hear a thing—Zair simply came up behind her and slapped his own hands against the tall, smooth wood on either side of her, caging her there. He didn’t touch her. But she could feel the heat of his hard body like a furnace, roaring just there at her back, easing into her bones and making her feel weak and greedy.
She was suddenly, powerfully glad that the huge, heavy door was right there in front of her, propping her up. It kept her from sliding into a heap on the ground when he leaned in close, swept her hair to one side,