Page 35 of Dr. Bad Boy

Her eyes flare wide, but she presses her lips together. My gut tugs in pleasure at her compliance.Kitten. Yes, we’ll be using that again.

“I understand I hurt you, and—”

She opens her mouth to protest and I lift my hand, pressing my fingertip to her parted lips. Heat swirls up my arm at the contact.

“Before I met you, I liked my sex life a certain way. Contained. Controlled. Constructed to protect me from…” I sigh. “A lot of things. People who want more from me than I’m able to give. Secret fans. Anyone interested in being Mrs. Max Donovan, because Mr. Max Donovan isn’t interested in a wife. I even had a reporter infiltrate a sex club I went to back in my twenties.”

Shock ripples over her face. I lift my hand, but not quickly enough to miss the puff of surprised warm air as she breathes my name. “Oh, Max. That’s awful. I never knew…”

“Nobody does. Obviously it hasn’t come up yet here, but this is why it’s important to me to have a top-notch law firm working on my behalf.” I grimace. “I’ve had to take more than one so-called news agency to court before.”

“How did you…” She trails off, and I can practically see her mind whirring through case law, trying to figure out how I stomped on freedom of the press.

I shrug. “Most of that was a decade ago.” And cost me a lot more money than I’d ever like her to know about. Something tells me she wouldn’t approve. “I conduct myself differently now.”

She blinks three times in quick succession. “I’m not judging. I’ve been to sex clubs, too.”

Jesus. I don’t want to know that. There’s no way that Violet of the walk-up apartment and sensible sedan can afford the dues on any club I’d consider acceptably secure. “And we can talk about that once we’re done with this.”

She shakes her head. “No we can’t.”

I give her a stern look. “Violet, this would go a lot faster if you just let me get to the point.”

“And what point is that?”

“I want you. Nothing is going to change that, and we’ve both agreed that we don’t want each other to be with anyone else. So for the immediate future, I’d like to find a way for us to discretely have an arrangement.”

She steps back, her face tightening. No problem looking at me now, and her gaze is sharp. “An arrangement.”

I’m not a relationship expert, but when a woman repeats your words back to you, cold as ice…that’s not a good sign.

“One we would negotiate, of course.” I frown. “You can set the terms.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’d really deny yourself?” I can’t wrap my head around that. I don’t want much, but what I want, I take.

“I’m not sure what you were expecting.” She frowns at me. “I didn’t like being mistaken for a hooker the first time. What makes you think I’d want to re-play that experience over and over again?”

Dumbstruck, I just stare at her.

“This was a mistake.”

“No.” I find my voice, thank fuck. “Whoa. Stop. Do not jump to any conclusions. I just used the wrong word.”

She crosses her arms. Jesus, we’re having our first fight and she doesn’t even know we’re dating yet.Use that word, a voice whispers at the back of my mind.

Ha. No.

Instead I turn on the charm. When in doubt, use what works. I give her a bashful smile and shrug my shoulders. “You know this isn’t something I do often.”

“Makearrangements?Actually, I don’t know that. I thought that was your entire modus operandi.”

“That’s not what I mean. And it was, yes. Before you.”

Her chest hitches unsteadily. “That’s a lot of responsibility to put on me.”

I shake my head and soften my voice. I think of that first moment that I saw her, perched on that barstool. The surge of desire I felt, sudden and forceful—and how weak it compared to how she made me feel once we were alone in my hotel room. “That I can’t forget you is all on me. But you keep telling me that’s what I need to do, and I don’t want to. I want to…”

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