Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 53725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 269(@200wpm)___ 215(@250wpm)___ 179(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53725 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 269(@200wpm)___ 215(@250wpm)___ 179(@300wpm)
Chapter Twenty-Four
Damion
Alana folds her arms in front of herself again.
Apparently, this is her way of telling me she’s not okay with the idea of touching me. And she is definitely not ready to admit she wants me to touch her. We’re fire and ice right now, but I’ll melt the ice and enjoy every moment of it. “Are you going to grant my favor, Alana?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Contrary to what you think, I’m not my father. Yes, you always have a choice. If you need to think about it, I’ll have the driver take you home. Give me your phone and I’ll input my number.”
“So now I rank high enough to get your number?”
“You know why I did what I did.”
“I know why you say you did what you did,” she says, reaching in her purse and retrieving her phone. “Obviously, you don’t need mine. You have my human resource file.” She hands me her phone.
At least I have her arms unfolded. I accept it and make damn sure our fingers brush. There’s an instant charge between us that I really haven’t felt with another woman since Alana. I wasn’t sure I would with her again. I’d almost convinced myself it was childhood folly, as my father would say, but it turns out it’s just me with her. It’s us that complicates the situation at hand, but it can’t be helped. There’s a connection, but it’s not like this. Alana has always been my weak spot. She just has no idea how much of a weak spot I have for her. I’m not sure there is a path forward where she doesn’t find out this time.
I type my number into her phone and add it to her address book before texting myself the number. I offer it back to her. When she accepts it, I catch her hand and pull her to me.
“Damion,” she objects, in a breathless tone. “What are you doing?”
“Showing you what this favor includes. If we do this, you have to get used to this, Alana. You have to play the game with me. You have to let me touch you, and you have to touch me. And we aren’t going to do that and feel nothing. Say you know that,” I order.
“Why? What does that change?”
“Say you know, Alana, because I do. I know I’m not going to feel nothing. That’s why we’re good for this. That’s why we’ll be convincing. Because we are fire. We always have been. Say you know—”
“I know,” she whispers.
“Good. Which leads us back to choices. I need you to make this one. I need you all in or all out, so you can either go home and think about how this feels and decide if you can handle it. Or don’t, and let’s go to dinner. I made reservations at an Italian place I thought you’d like. But if we do that, we have to act like a couple.”
“I don’t think I’m ready for that, Damion,” she says, pushing away from me, and I force myself to let it happen. “I need to think about this,” she adds. “If that’s really an option.”
And there it is. The reason I knew I had to let her go.
She thinks this is a demand. She thinks I’m holding her captive just like my father.
And there is no way I get what I really want if she believes any of those things. “The driver will take you anywhere you instruct him.”
She exhales as if she was holding her breath, waiting for me to reveal an alter ego that resembles my father. “Thank you.”
I give a short incline of my chin and she faces to the door only to turn back to face me. She opens her mouth to speak but swallows whatever she wanted to say, obviously deciding better. Then she’s facing the door again, opening it, and leaving me alone.
And damn it, I want to know what she almost said to me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alana
I can still feel Damion’s hands on my body when the driver drops me at the door of my apartment building in Midtown West, Manhattan. It’s hard to believe anything that just happened with Damion, really happened. It’s hard to believe he’s even back in the States after ten years gone. It’s hard to believe everything right now.
After bidding the driver goodbye, I enter my building, a high-rise in a good zip code, with a ridiculous price tag per unit. I’d have gone to a different building, but my parents freaked out over the potential damage to our reputation. Not that I don’t like my apartment, and the fancy gym and coffee shop in the building. I do.
But it’s complicated.
So much so, that those complications are controlling my life.
Hurrying through the building, I’m cool and calm on the surface, appearing unfazed by the events that have unfolded, even waving at the guard. But when I finally enter my apartment, all bets are off. I collapse against the door in a rush of barely contained emotion. Damion wants me to pretend to be his fiancée, and that includes a whole lot of his hands on my body and mine on his. In other words, we’ll end up sleeping together if I do this. It was in the air between us, the sexual chemistry that, of course, is just about sex only. I don’t seem to do that kind of thing with him successfully.