Page 3 of Start With A Slap

Fist in her hair, cock in his hand, he frowned. “Jason married a?—?”

A floorboard creaked, and a girl about Ivy’s build and coloring — slim, small-breasted, yellow ochre in the color wheel — dropped to all fours and crawled into the room, comfortably naked.

He stared at the girl, then down at Ivy. “You’re—” He let go of her hair. “Jason got married.” He stepped back, quickly closed his zipper. “To— to you.”

“Forget it.” She tried to sound normal, peppy even — or, as peppy as one could sound when confused for a sex worker and felt up by one’s notorious father-in-law. As she stood, hastily pulling up her skirt and fixing her blouse, she said, “I was never here. This never happened.”

“Wait—” she heard behind her as she scrambled out of the room.

Ivy hurried down the hallway and wiped at her eyes. She wasn’t normally a crier, but this wasn’t a normal moment.Please don’t come after me, please don’t come after me, please don’t?—

“Oi!” Behind her, he pawed at her arm, started to say something, and reflexively, she jerked out of his grasp and slapped him. Hard.

He kept his head in profile for a moment as what she’d done seemed to sink in. As it sank in for her, she covered her mouth.Oops.

She heard something behind her: it must have been the guard. Sever called him off with a raised hand.

Was he smirking at her? Was helaughingat her? Slowly, as if she were a child or didn’t speak English, he said, “You forgot your handbag.”

She noticed the pleather clutch he was holding. Letting her fingers fall from her mouth, she said, “Oh.”Thank you?

Body language loosening, he stuck one hand in the pants pocket of his Italian suit and held out the other. It took her a moment to recognize the gesture, and she tentatively complied, though she wasn’t quite sure what they were shaking on.

“Sever Mark,” he said. “And you are?”

She felt like she’d swallowed a mouthful of sand. “Ivy Tyler.”Now for the ironic follow-up:“Mark.”

Eyes crinkling at the edges, he stared at her and squeezed her hand and almost smiled, and somehow, this made her feel more exposed than any nipple tweak ever could.

“Welcome to the family.”

CHAPTER 2

Snake

This never happened. I was never here.

These words looped in her head even while she stood before the person she’d never met in the house she’d never set foot in. After the handshake, there was an awkward pause. Awkward for her, anyway—he was unruffled as an obscenely rich white guy with hollow cheeks, a sharp jaw and a full head of hair.

“Um,” she began, “Jason doesn’t know I’m here, so I’d uh, appreciate it if this...”

“Stayed between us?” At her nod, Sever squinted again. “If he doesn’t know you’re here... Why’d you come?”

She’d had a perfectly formed answer for this, before. Now all she could say was, “I’m not sure. Misguided optimism?”

“You want us to bury the hatchet,” he surmised from that. She would have been impressed at his insight if her head wasn’t so spun—and his eyes weren’t so distracting. “Thatisoptimistic.”

Was he that callous? “Why is that so hard to imagine?”

“I expect he’s told you why.” Off her look of embarrassment, he said, “Oh. He hasn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter.” The way he read her thoughts was unsettling. Ivy straightened her posture and said, “This was a mistake.”

“Nonsense,” he said, as if this kind of thing happened to him every day. “You’ll stay for dinner.”

Dinner?Where the hell did that come from? “What? No!”

“Why not?” he asked innocently.

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