“Cash,” Abby breathed.
Cash ignored her. “I’ve paid for the right to be familiar with you when I want, where I want and I’ll give detail to that too.”
She decided she didn’t want any more detail.
She didn’t have a choice, Cash kept going. “I’ll be touching you, kissing you, holding you and whatever the hell else I want to do with you in private and in public.”
Abby was back to pressing against his chest.
Cash was back to resisting her efforts.
He went on. “If I ask you a question, you answer it honestly. You don’t hold back and you don’t evade. I’ve paid quite generously for you to play the part of the devoted, adoring girlfriend. I’ve paid for you to play it convincingly, when we’re alone and when we aren’t, in all that being my girlfriend entails in these modern times. I’ve paid for it and I expect to get it and it’s what you’re going to give me.”
Abby stopped fighting because she was concentrating on breathing.
“Do you have any questions?” Cash asked, his tone polite, the underlying firmness of it resolute.
Abby, no longer having a voice, shook her head.
He’d been, she thought, pretty thorough.
“I’m giving you the chance to back out now, transfer the thirty K back into my account by close of business today and you’ll never see me again,” he told her, paused for a second then continued. “If you don’t back out, that means you agree to these terms for the length of our arrangement and we’ll not discuss this again. Is that understood?”
Abby, still not having a voice, nodded her head.
Cash, still calm, his face still hard, watched her.
Then he asked, “What’s your decision?”
Abby found her voice and whispered, “I need some time.”
“You’ve got two minutes,” Cash returned.
Abby felt her eyes grow round.
“That isn’t time!” she cried idiotically, because it was, just not much of it.
A muscle in his jaw leapt and Abby watched it with concern because it was an indication that he was not at all happy and she had a feeling that an unhappy Cash was a very bad thing.
He spoke. “We’ve already set the plan in motion. You back out now, I’m f**ked. I don’t have time.”
She had thought two days ago that she’d done something immensely stupid.
She’d been wrong.
It was catastrophically stupid.
But the truth of the matter was she needed the money. It meant security and freedom and it meant that she could keep hold of the only things left in her life, outside of Kieran and Jenny, that meant anything to her.
And if she backed out now, Cash was, indeed, f**ked.
And for some bizarre reason she didn’t like that idea either.
She made her decision. It terrified her but it was the only choice she had.
She asked so quietly her voice was barely discernable, “Do we have to start right now?”
Something intense and unfathomably deep flashed in his eyes at her words and Abby felt a corresponding emotion in the region of her heart.
“Yes,” he replied, her heart sank and he dipped his head to touch her mouth with his. “And no,” he went on, speaking against her lips and her heart leapt.
“What does that mean?” she whispered.
“Put your arms around me,” he commanded, his throaty, deep voice had grown gruff.
She did as he asked, sliding her hands from his chest, around his sides to wrap them around his back.
“Now, Abby,” he started, “I’m going to kiss you and you’re going to kiss me back. Then you’re going to go back to sleep and I’m going to work. Then tonight, after you make me dinner again, we’ll begin.”
Without giving her a chance to reply, he did as he said he’d do, his head slanting and his mouth opening over hers.
The minute his tongue touched her own, her body liquefied and even though she didn’t will herself to do so, she kissed him back. One of her hands slid up his spine to plunge her fingers into his thick hair, the other arm wrapped tighter around his waist.
The kiss was shattering, tearing through her, hot, sweet and wet. It was long, it was hard and it was unbelievably, delectably thorough.
She’d never experienced anything like its fiery intensity.
Never.
Not with Ben.
Not in her dreams.
Not in her whole, damned life.
When his mouth disengaged the only thing Abby could think was that she wanted more.
A lot more.
Everything.
But she didn’t get it. Instead, his eyes moved over her face and they were blazing as fiery hot as his kiss. Something he found in her face made his expression shift to a soft satisfaction before his head bent and he kissed her neck below her ear.
“Go back to sleep,” he murmured there then without another word, he was gone, knifing away from her out of bed. He flicked the covers back over her, turned off the light and headed to the bathroom.
Abby lay in stunned silence, listening to the shower and knowing that there was a very good possibility that she’d never sleep again. She thought there was a slim chance she might spontaneously combust. And she realised with a flash of guilt that mixed with heady longing that she felt wetness between her legs and an arousal the intensity of which she’d never experienced in her life.
And if you told Abigail Butler that she would turn and curl her arms around Cash Fraser’s pillow, tucking it to her body and smelling his cologne combined with the scent that was all him, and she’d fall promptly to sleep after her latest drama, she would have laughed in your face.
But that was just what she did.
* * * * *
Dressed and ready for work, Cash walked into his dark bedroom, his eyes on Abby’s form in his bed.
He was very pleased to note that she’d not lied during the negotiations in the pub.
It was abundantly clear that Abigail Butler may sell her time and her presence but she most certainly never sold her body.
He sat on the bed in the crook of her lap, half-hoping to wake her, half-glad he didn’t.
He bent low and kissed the skin of her exposed shoulder. Then he lifted his hand and slid the hair from her neck and he kissed her there.
She twisted her head in sleep, not to dislodge his touch but to deepen it.
He smiled against her skin.
He got to his feet, pulled the covers over her shoulder and left the room.
He didn’t give a f**k if that very day any of his clients’ entire multinational conglomerates were stolen out from under them.