no choice,” I purred. “As far as I’m aware, the Senator has a wife. He also has a reputation to protect. I’m not sure he’d be happy if any of those made it onto the National Enquirer’s front page. Not when he’s just trying to shore up his image to take a run for the White House next election.”
She reached up and clutched her throat. The self-protective gesture was enough to make me smile at her—I knew what the absence of hope looked like.
There’d been a time when that had been my life, too.
“But, on the bright side,” I carried on, “this can all be wiped away if you sell.” As her gaze flicked to mine, I added, “As well as if you do something for me.”
For a second, she was speechless. I could see she knew what that something was. Had my body language given it away? Had there been a certain raspiness to my tone?
I wasn’t sure, and frankly, didn’t give a fuck.
There was a little hiccoughing sound that escaped her lips, and she frowned at me, then down at herself.
“Is this a joke?”
“Do I look like I’m the kind of guy who jokes, Aoife?” Fuck, I loved saying her name.
The Gaelic notes just drove me insane.
Ee-Fah.
Nothing like the spelling, and all the more complicated and delicious for it.
“N-No,” she confirmed, “but . . .”
“But what?” I prompted.
“I mean . . . you just can’t be serious.”
“Oh, but I am.” I grinned. “Deadly. You’ve wasted a lot of my time, Aoife Keegan. A lot. Do you think I’m normally involved in negotiations of this level?”
Her eyes whispered over me, and I felt the loving caress of her gaze as she took in each and every inch of me. When she licked her lips, I knew she liked what she saw. I didn’t really care, but it was helpful for her to be eager in some small way—especially when coercion was involved.
Aidan had called it bribery. I preferred ‘coercion’. It sounded far kinder.
“No. That suit alone probably cost the mortgage payment on this place.”
I nodded—she wasn’t wrong. I knew what she’d been paying as rent, then as a mortgage, before some kind benefactor had paid it all off. Free and clear.
“I had to get my hands dirty, and while I might like some things dirty . . .,” I trailed off, smirking when she flushed. “So, as I see it, we have a problem. I want this building. You don’t want anyone to know you’re having an affair with a Senator. Or, should I say, the Senator doesn’t want anyone to know he’s having an affair with someone young enough to be his daughter . . .”
If my voice turned into a growl at that point, then it was because the notion of her spreading her legs for that old bastard just turned my stomach.
Fuck, this woman, the thoughts she made me think.
Because I was startled at the possessive note to my growl, I ran a hand over my head. I kept my hair short for a reason—ease. I wasn’t the kind of man who wasted time primping. It was an expensive cut, so I didn’t have to do anything to it. Even mussing it up had it falling back into the same sleek lines as before—a man in my position had to look pristine under pressure. And very few people could even begin to understand the kind of strain I was under.
The formation of igneous rock had less volcanic pressure than Aidan Sr.
She licked her lips as she stared down at the photos, then back up at me. “And you want me to sell the place to you, even though this is my livelihood and the livelihood of all my staff, and then sleep with you?”
Her squeaky voice, putting suspicion into words, had me crossing my legs at the ankle. “We wouldn’t be doing much sleeping.”
Another shaky breath soughed from her lips, then, those beautiful pillowy morsels that would look good around my cock, quivered.
“This is crazy,” she whispered shakily.
“As far as I’m concerned, all of this could be avoided if you’d just sold to me a few months back. Now you have to pay for my time wasted on this project.”
“By spreading my legs?”
Another squeak. I tsked at her question, but in truth, I was annoyed at her using those same words I had to describe her with that old hypocrite of a Senator.
I didn’t move, though. Didn’t even flex my arms in irritation, just murmured, “Small