His face has taken on an odd glow when he looks up at me. “Fair enough. I stand by my first response, but if I had to choose again, I’d be back on a beach in Hawaii, out surfing, giving lessons. I think that was the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. When I had no money and often no roof over my head. Just my Jeep and the surf. I never needed anything else.”

I raise an eyebrow. I’ve only ever seen him in the button down shirts and the pressed pants. I try to imagine him on a beach, shirtless, wearing board shorts, sand in his hair, and I can’t. Is he making all this up? Trying to make himself relatable?

“That’s what I was doing before all this. I was happy. My parents didn’t understand it, and neither did my brother. They thought it was a phase I was going to outgrow. That I’d eventually realize I wanted to work for the family business and not live out an endless summer on a beach. I didn’t have a ton of money, but I sure as shit didn’t wake up every morning and put on a white-collared shirt.”

“You’re not happy now?”

“It’s all relative, I guess. We’re conditioned to use money as a measure of success, so when you suddenly find yourself as one of the world’s richest men, it’s hard not to feel that you’ve succeeded on some level, even if you didn’t do much to get the money to begin with. I mean, I didn’t build this business. I didn’t amass the contacts and the employees. It just all sort of fell on me, because that’s what it said in my dad’s will. But you want to know something?” He leans forward a little. I find myself doing the same thing. “I was going to sell it all to the highest bidder. Or just let it crumble into ash, one of the two. I was just going to cut and run. But then…I realized I had people I needed to take care of here.”

Everything he’s said tonight is a surprise, but this even more so. He thought about leaving it all behind? He really didn’t care? That makes me nervous. After all this time and effort and nights spent awake, dreaming of how crushed he’s going to be when I take every last red cent he owns away from him…after all of that, he’s not even going to care if he loses it? At this stage, it sounds like he might even thank me. I’m going to be giving him exactly what he wanted all those years ago.

It’s okay, though. I have other plans now. Losing the business will sting, but it won’t finish him. No, it’ll be falling for me that does that.

A third martini appears. This time I catch the waitress; she brings it over when she clears our plates. My face is starting to feel warm, my mouth drawing into the ghost of a smile, despite the fact that none of this is funny. Not really.

I stretch my legs out and feel Aidan’s leg with my foot. Instead of pulling back, I leave it where it is. I look him right in the eye as I move my foot up his leg, to let him know that I’m absolutely doing this on purpose.

Would I be doing this without the alcohol? Probably. Would I be feeling as good about it? Probably not. All I know is Aidan Callahan needs to invite me home with him tonight. And I’m going to make it happen.

FIFTEEN

AIDAN

Hot damn, she’s raising the stakes now.

It’s entirely possible that I’ve been misreading the situation all night. You certainly couldn’t fault me for it; she’s been sending mixed signals the whole time. Showing up almost an hour late because of some uninvited male visitor? I wouldn’t describe myself as the jealous type, but there was a part of me that wanted to know if this male visitor was someone that she’d slept with before. Maybe she was late because she was fucking him.

Regardless, I’m done playing cat and mouse with her. “You want me to fuck you, don’t you?” I say, lifting my glass to my lips. My dick is already stirring in my pants, growing hard at the thought of what might happen if she says yes.

Essie looks momentarily shocked, but then a slow smile spreads across her face. “Are you always this forward?”

“Are you?” I can still feel her foot rising gradually up the inside of my leg.

“Maybe. I just didn’t think Mr. Straight-Laced Aidan Callahan was so sexually charged.”

I grin, unable to help myself. “I’ve always been sexually charged, Ess. I like to fuck. I’d go so far as to say it’s my favorite pastime.” I’m imagining sliding my hands up her thighs, on my knees, pushing her dress out of the way as I open her legs. I can imagine what I’ll find there. Her pussy is shaved, guaranteed, one hundred percent. She’s not the kind of girl to even leave a hint of landing strip. I’m an advocate for a little bush every once in a while, but this girl’s naked pussy is going to taste sweet as honey, and I am going to die and ascend all the way up to Heaven while I’m eating it, I can already tell. Can already taste it on the tip of my tongue. Fucking perfect.

Essie shifts on her chair, squirming like she can tell exactly what I’m thinking and it’s setting her on edge. Her foot rises higher under the table, getting even closer to my crotch. If she carries on just a little further, she’s going to find out for herself how much heat I’m packing.

“Come back to my place,” I tell her. It’s not a request; it’s a command. “I do love getting down and dirty in public, I’ll admit, but I think the first time between us might be…difficult.”

She gives me a cocky look that tells me she’s intrigued. “And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I know just from sitting here and talking to you that you’re not someone I’d usually take home with me. I like girls who are a little more…subservient than you. And I know you’re just the kind of girl who likes to humiliate the guys she’s fucking.” Arturo told me as much. It was common gossip that went around the office when Essie started working at M, G & H. She fucked one of the junior lawyers and apparently ruined him for all other women. Even without the inside information from Art, I would have been able to read that on her anyway. I can see the cogs working inside her head from a mile away. Essie rocks back into her chair, eyeing me intently, a little color rising in her cheeks. She looks irritated, which just confirms my suspicions. She hates that I already have her figured out. Or at lease this one thing. Everything else is a total mystery.

“I’m not going to be your fuck toy, Aidan,” she tells me. “I just won’t.”

I raise my glass and toast her. “And I won’t be your puppy on a leash.”

“Then how do we proceed?”

The blonde waitress from earlier approaches the table, still twisting her pen nervously over and over in her hands. “How is everything for you this evening? Can I offer either of you our desert menu?”

“No.”

“No.”

Both Essie and I answer in unison, neither one of us looking away from the other. The blonde makes an awkward, strangled sound in her throat and backs away from the table.

“How do you want to proceed?” I ask.

“I don’t know. You could let me be in charge this once and see if you like it?”

I shake my head. “Not going to happen. Of course, you could defer to me and try the same experiment?”

“No way.”

“Then we’re water and oil. We both walk away.” I say this, but even as I shape the words and they leave my mouth, I know neither of us are walking away. We’re both too headstrong.

Essie’s foot finally rises up those last couple of inches. She places her sole in my crotch, the length of her foot resting heavily over the length of my hard cock. Just the pressure of that contact is enough to make my heartbeat quicken. Fuck, I want her. If I’m honest, I’ve wanted her for years. She’s been the ultimate challenge that I’ve been smart enough to stay the hell away from. But, now, this is different because she came to me. She instigated this whole thing. To what end, I have no clue, but I’m going to find out.