Page 39 of Skin Trade

She’d lost herself somehow with Josie’s death, lost balance on herself and the way she thought about things. It was a startling realisation about her frame of mind. In all the things Creven did to her, to her friends, she never once let him back her into a mental corner like this and get her into a mess where she doubted herself or even walked around with her head down, but one trip out with Seth and she had done just that.

Damn him.

The lift doors opened on the first floor, and she paused, pressing her hand against the doors so they couldn’t close again. But she didn’t step out. Not at first. This was the moment. She could choose to go back to her room, to hide away in there and just enjoy the peace from what this world demanded of her, or she could get off the lift and walk to Seth’s office.

“Perhaps he isn’t in there.” But she knew damn well he was. She could feel him like a beacon inside her body. He was raw power, heat, a magnetic force that seemed to pull harder on her with every second.

She’d go and see him. Ask him what he had done to her to make her feel this way. Because with Creven and his men, with any of them, no one had ever got inside her the way Seth was, and she didn’t like it. Not one bit.

Seth’s office door was closed this time. Maybe he had learnt his lesson to stop wandering guests from entering without his permission. She pressed herself outside the door, put her ear to the wood and listened. There was movement in there and the low murmur of a voice.

“Just knock.”

Payton jumped. God, they had to stop doing that in this place. All the silent walking. She’d be putting bells around their necks. “You gave me a fright.”

Sky was standing just behind her, a tray of drinks in her hand and a plate of chips. “Sorry, if you’re looking for Sir, he is in there. He won’t mind. Just knock.”

“He sounds like he’s busy. I’ll come back.” She went to back up and head back to the lift, but as she moved, the door opened.

“Payton,” Seth said. His voice was back to that teasing sing song way he had of speaking. “Come in.”

Beyond him, Payton could see a topless woman perched on his desk. She wore a garter belt, stockings, and thankfully some panties. But the rest of her was on full display and it wasn’t hard to know what they’d been doing.

She stepped back, her pulse a drumbeat in her ear. “You seem busy. Another time.” She moved so fast, and she’d forgotten Sky was behind her. She slammed right into the tray Sky held, sending the drinks and chips scattering across the floor. “Shit,” she said and bent to help pick them up, but Seth grabbed for her. She shrugged away from him. “Don’t,” she said. “I thought …” she shook her head. “Forget it. Idiot.”

He looked at her with a bemused expression. “I’m an idiot?”

“No. I am.” She sucked in a breath. His shirt was open at the top, his tie hadn’t come off, but it was hanging low enough down on his chest that it soon would be. “Just forget it. I’m sorry.”

“Payton,” he called. But she was already out of sight, out of his sight, and running … running to where, she didn’t know. Just anywhere that wasn’t there.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Payton’s heart thudded in her chest as she dashed back to the lift. Why had she even gone down there. She should have stayed in her room, stayed alone. She reached the lift, only to find its doors had closed and the lift itself had risen up a couple of floors.

Desperately, she hammered at the call button, because that was going to make the lift come faster. In her mind at least.

It did come, though. But not before Seth caught up to her, shirt all flapping at his sides, his tie hanging loosely around his neck, and dark hair flicked down his forehead, because obviously he needed to look hotter than he had before.

“Payton, wait.”

She shook her head and stepped onto the lift. If she stopped, if she waited like he asked, she’d give in to her body. “Don’t,” she said to him when he got close. “Just don’t.”

He gripped the edging to the lift, the same way she had done outside his office before Sky had turned up. It made his shirt raise to one side, revealing even more of that smooth, toned skin she so desperately wanted to touch.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to my room.” She held her arms around herself, a recent habit she’d picked up since being told she was going to be put up for auction. But it was comforting. “I wasn’t coming to see you. I was asking where I could find some food … if I can have food.” A lie. He knew it and she knew it, yet she didn’t want to hurt her pride by saying otherwise, by admitting she’d been looking for him.

He frowned, seeming confused by her statement. “If you can have food? Of course, you can have food. Do I look like the kind of man who would deprive you or not allow you to eat?”

She sucked in a breath, pursed her lips. It was on her to say yes. To hurt him—to insult him. This man standing right in front of her was a different man to the one who’d got in the shower with her the night before. “You look like the kind of vampire who is just the same as every other vampire I have met.” Cold, ruthless, selfish. “Now please, let go of the door. I would like very much to go back to my room so I can be of no burden to you anymore.” The words were like ice as they came out of her mouth. Maybe directed at him but aimed at herself for reading into her dumb feelings … for thinking about things more than he had.

“Let me take you for something to eat. There is a restaurant on the ground floor.”

“Like this?” She swept her hands down her front because she was still in her robe and nightgown. Not exactly what she would want to wear to a restaurant. Especially not to one in somewhere like Skin Trade. “You want me to go down like this?”

That smirk again. The way his lip curled at one side and seemed to light his eyes with teasing heat. “You can always take it off if you want to. I certainly have no problem with that.”

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