about my slippers?” he says when I walk past him. “I’m disappointed, Dani.”
“Maybe I’m not here for jokes,” I say, turning on him.
He sips his whiskey, regarding me with his dark eyes. “You have my attention.”
I roll my eyes. “What a jerk thing to say. ‘You have my attention.’ Like you’re the fucking pope or something—”
“Oh no, Dani, I’m much more important than that.”
He meets my eye, smirking slightly. I can’t help but smile. “You’re an ass. Do you have another one of those?” I gesture at the whiskey. “It’s been a hard liquor sort of day.”
He nods at the bar in the corner. “Be my guest.”
We walk over there together. I feel Angelo watching me, his gaze flitting to my ass in the gym leggings, the only clean clothes I had in my locker. I can feel his lust, smell it, sense it. It’s an animal awareness that triggers something in me. But I push it down for now as I pour the whiskey.
After taking a sip, I tell him about Wyatt’s situation. He listens closely, watching me carefully.
“And you want to know if I can make it go away,” he says when I’m done explaining.
“Can you?” I ask, a little too eagerly.
“I can,” he says. “But you know what I’m going to ask in return.”
“The wife thing.” He’s looking at me like he wants to own me, which should piss me off. But I want him to own me, too: with parameters, with the understanding that it’s not for real. “I still don’t understand this, Angelo. Why exactly do you need me to pretend to be your wife?”
He finishes his whiskey and lays it on the bar, and then leans close to me. “A powerful man needs to believe that I have a wife. The exact reasons are not your concern. All you need to know is this: it will not be forever. A few months at the most. I can get your brother back into college, providing that he does not fuck up like this again. And you will be paid well for your services.”
“So I’m a hooker now,” I drawl. That services comment stung a little too much. But what do I care? Isn’t this why I came here anyway?
He slides his hand across the bar and touches my wrist. It’s like he’s deciding which part of him he wants to let loose: the crazy animal part or the—what?—the gentler part. Or I could just be imagining that he even has that side to him.
“Not a hooker, Dani,” he says. “My woman. You’ll have the finest things. You’ll have staff to care for your every need—”
I pull my hand away. “I don’t need any of that,” I tell him. “All I need is Wyatt to be able to go to college, graduate, and get a job someplace he isn’t surrounded by drugs all the time. Okay? I’ll still be working as an EMT. Whatever ‘wifely duties’ I’ve gotta perform, fine. And by that, I mean dinner parties or whatever, before you get any ideas.”
“But it’s too late.” He walks around the bar way quicker than I’d expect from a man like him. “I already have a lot of ideas about you.” He presses me against the bar, his body rock-hard, his expression intense. “So you want to be my wife, Dani?”
“‘Want’ is a strong word,” I say, placing my hand on his chest. “But if you can help my brother, then yeah, that’s what I want.”
He brings his face close to me. Our lips touch. His are rough. He smells like whiskey, but then, so do I.
“I can help,” he says. “But first you have to help me.” With an arrogant grin, he grabs my wrist and guides it to his crotch. His cock is already solid, feeling like it’s pulsing, ready for me. “You see, Dani, I’ve had this problem ever since you walked in with those leggings on, showing me every curve of your perfect ass, every muscle in your legs.”
“You’re sick,” I rasp, stroking him up and down. I squeeze a little tighter. “So you’re saying if I take care of this little problem, we have a deal?”
He kisses me. “There is nothing little about this problem.”
I give his lip a bite and then say, “Or what? Are you going to punish me?”
He kisses me harder, passionately, and I rub his manhood even faster in response. I feel my body responding to him as it always does, but it’s tinged with something else