Sure, he’d lived in a modest home for several years with his guardians, but his inheritance had been sitting there waiting for him to turn eighteen, and when he had, the playboy lifestyle had been on full throttle.
“I’ve seen one side of you — not the best one — plastered all over the gossip rags,” she finally said.
“We all have a story. You didn’t bother to find mine out. You just assumed I was an asshole. Do you still think that of me?”
Damn! This man didn’t pull his punches. She didn’t know how to reply to that question. Should she just be honest with him? Or was this all part of his rich-man games? If only she had a crystal ball.
“I guess I would say yes and no.”
Tyler sat there for a moment and then he surprised her when he laughed, true merriment shining from him.
“I enjoy your honesty, Elena. It’s refreshing, especially in the world I live in, where everyone besides you is constantly kissing my ass,” he said. “Let’s move to the living room and finish this.”
Without waiting for her assent, he stood up, grabbed the bottle of wine, and began moving. Elena was left with no choice but to follow him. She was almost eager to see what was coming next. How perverse of her, she thought.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tyler settled down on the couch and put a bottle of wine on the coffee table in front of him. Where would Elena choose to sit, he wondered? But he knew.
She looked at the couch, and then over at the chair, which was about as far from him as she could get. Predictably, she began heading toward the chair.
“Join me on the couch. We have documents to look over,” he told her, and she turned toward him with a look almost akin to fear. “I’m not going to bite, Elena,” he said before smiling. “Not unless you want me to.”
That comment earned him a contemptuous glare as she walked stiffly toward him and sat so tightly against the arm of the couch that not even a wisp of air could slide between her and the leather. He made her nervous. And he liked that.
“Do you really want to know, Elena, why I asked you to be one of my attorneys?” He scooted closer to her. She gulped from her wineglass. “Maybe you should slow down with that.”
“I have a driver and I’m an adult,” she said, taking another drink.
He could mention that she was also on the clock. He chose not to.
“Yes, you most certainly are an adult,” he said instead.
“You were going to tell me why you really hired me,” she told him, her eyes wary.
“I think about you day and night. I think about the taste of you, about touching you, teasing you, finally making love …”
Her eyes dilated. Good. She was more responsive than ever before. But the problem with his words were the way they were affecting his own body. He shifted on the couch as his jeans became far too uncomfortable.
“I haven’t been able to work at all lately, and that’s not good — I have a lot of important projects underway. But I can’t focus on anything but you.” Tyler stretched out his hand and rested it on her thigh.
He didn’t move his fingers, just let them stay there, let her adjust to his touch. He knew he could take her, knew she would like it. But he wanted her to beg him, to need him. She’d rejected him, and now he wanted her pleading and begging instead.
“Why me?” she finally whispered.
“Why not you?”
“I can’t think right now. You’re confusing me,” she said, setting down her empty wineglass and holding her head in her hands.
“What’s wrong?” Was this another act she was putting on?
“I think I drank too much.”
Tyler sighed with frustration. He never should have brought the wine to the table. This wasn’t how he had planned on his night ending.
“Is that an excuse, Elena, or are you running from me again?” he asked, his voice probably less than pleasant.
“I don’t have to run from you, Tyler. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want to,” she snapped.
“And you want to make love to me.”
She held her head back up so she could glare at him. “It must be nice to be so confident.”
“Why play modest when I know who I am?”
Her sweet lips opened in an exasperated expression. Tyler wanted to close his around them and end this debate, but he’d never before taken a woman to bed who wasn’t fully accountable for her actions.
“I think I hate you,” she finally told him.
“No you don’t, Elena. You might wish that you hated me, but you certainly don’t.”
“I’m ready to go home now, Tyler,” she told him through clenched teeth.
“And I’m not ready to let you leave,” he said right back.
They scowled at each other for several tense moments and then her expression changed. He couldn’t figure out what was going on. She leaned forward and lifted the bottle of wine — their second bottle, and he hadn’t had much from the first. She refilled her glass and then sat there and drank it down before looking at him again.
“What are you doing now, Elena?”
“Isn’t this what you want, Tyler? You aren’t going to leave me alone until you get exactly what you’re after, right?” she said. “Me drunk and in your bed. I toyed with the rich playboy, so now I need to put out, of course.”
She reached for the bottle again, but this time he stopped her. This game had changed in a way he didn’t want it to. Now she was playing the victim. He wasn’t such an asshole that he was going to actually use the woman sexually in her condition.