Page 54 of Skin Trade

It took a second for her to realise. “Please, don’t stop,” she said. She was on the edge, right at the edge.

“Payton.”

“Don’t,” she said. “I want you to--”

He flipped her onto her back. Her legs hung down over the side of the bed. He rested between her thighs, supporting himself on his arms so he could look down at her. “I would never--”

“I know.”

They held each other’s gazes for what felt like hours. He was a warm caress inside her body. She’d never made the first move on a man before, never had the chance. With Creven and his men, it was always very clear what they wanted. But with Seth, she raised her hand up to him, slid it around the back of his neck to pull him down. Any uncertainty in his eyes vanished when he truly believed this was what she wanted. And she did … every part of him, every part of this. He made her feel things she wasn’t sure about. Made her body react in ways she’d never experienced.

She dug her fingers into his back when she started moving again. The difference with Seth, what he took from her, he gave back with staggering generosity.

When she came this time, he held onto her, thrust at all the right times so the pleasure of her orgasm rode her body once, and then rode it some more.

She was sweaty and breathless by the time he was done with her. Her entire body having melted with every touch. She lay against his shoulder, arm across his chest, his fingers making loose circles along her arm.

They lay there quiet for a moment, although Payton’s mind was anything but.

“Do you like being what you are?” she asked.

“Devilishly handsome?”

“No, smartarse. A vampire. Do you like it?”

From this angle, when he spoke, she could see into his mouth. She’d never realised that it wasn’t just the fangs that were sharp, but the teeth on either side of them had shaped into smaller versions. That was why vampires could do so much damage, she supposed.

“That’s like asking if you like being human. What else would there be?”

“But you weren’t born a vampire.”

“No. I was born poor, a nothing. Now I am someone, something, and I am far from poor.”

“Your mother was a …”

“Was a prostitute.”

“I wasn’t going to say it like that.”

“It’s what she was. It’s what many young women were back in her day. If they didn’t have families and rich fathers to betroth them to other rich men, they had to make money some other way.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just …”

“My mother wasn’t bad. She tried her best and she loved me. She just got caught out and I became the burden on her life. Not that she ever said that to me. She always put me first, right until the day she died.” He rolled onto his side, making it so Payton could still lean against his arm. “Who is Joseph Mathews?”

Payton’s heart lurched at the question. Not that it was hard. But with Seth facing her, she couldn’t not answer him. “My father,” she said.

He nodded. “That would certainly explain why you were snooping around in my office.”

“I was not snooping around.”

“It looked like snooping to me. Did you find him?”

“I don’t know. I found an article. Maybe I found him.” She lowered her voice. “He was supposed to come and get me. He was supposed to save me. I was thirteen years old.”

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