Model Behaviour. Tamara Morgan
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of getting us a room. My apartment is undergoing a few repairs, so I thought we’d be more comfortable here. I know how much you love this place.”
She did love the Montluxe, but that was hardly the point here. The point was, well, rather pointed.
Hotels had beds. And privacy. And room service. And beds.
“Wait a minute—doesn’t a reservation at the Montluxe have to be booked months in advance?” she asked, another realization hitting her with a start. The nerve of this man. “You planned this attack far enough in advance to get a reservation? Or is this just a standing order with you? ‘Hold my room at the Montluxe in case a lady friend needs some extra convincing’?”
“Which one do you think?” He winked and handed her a small satchel he’d extracted from the trunk of the cab. “I also took the liberty of packing you an overnight bag. I think you’ll like what’s in there. I know I do.”
“It’s full of lingerie, isn’t it?” She shook the bag, a clanking rattle making her rethink her stance. “Oh, God. It’s either that or sex toys. All I can say is this bag better not be full of butt plugs. You won’t like what I plan to do with them.”
There was his gaze again, dark and intense and not supposed to be there at all.
“How would you know?” he asked, and whisked past her through the revolving glass doors.
* * *
“You’re sleeping on the couch.” Livvie barely registered the sprawling, open-floored layout of the penthouse suite as she followed Ben inside. This might be one of her favorite hotel rooms in the city, ideal for romance and all its perks, but she wasn’t about to be swayed. If nice linens and marble floors were all it took to get her to open her legs, she’d be enjoying a vastly different profession right now. “And I’ll give you until eight thirty-four tomorrow evening, but not a minute more. I don’t have time to play your games forever, and I doubt you do, either. You’ve never gone this long without work before.”
“It’s a deal.” He shut the door, the electronic latch sealing them to their fate. “I probably won’t need the whole twenty-four hours anyway.”
She threw up her hands. There was cocky, and then there was Benjamin Meyers. Bravado wrapped in balls and dipped in titanium for good measure. She didn’t know why she even tried. “You’re lucky I’m here at all, you jerk. I could have just as easily walked away.”
“I know,” he said. “But you didn’t.”
She refused to be the first to look away, even when the heavy note of meaning in his voice pulled her into a panic. There was no way his confidence went any deeper than the surface, all part of this ploy of his to win at any cost. If she remembered that napkin correctly—seven drunkenly scrawled tasks, a silly list with increasingly complicated undertakings Ben must complete before she’d be willing to sleep with him—no way would he get much further than number four or five. And he’d definitely stop before he got to seven. She’d bet their friendship on it.
In fact, that was exactly what she was doing.
He grinned.
With a grunt of irritation, she pulled the jewelry box from out of the mountain of pepper inside her purse and shoved it at his chest. “And you’re taking this stupid thing back. I don’t want it.”
He just continued beaming down at her, unruffled at the assault. “You picked it up off the table. I knew you would.”
She tried to ignore the way Ben’s chest felt where it rested solidly under her fingertips, the heat of him drawing her in. Although he almost always wore a suit and tie, his deceptively uptight businesslike appearance could never hide his latent strength. She knew the strength was there, lurking under the surface, but she’d always made it a point to ignore it. The occasional hug or air kiss, that one time last year she’d missed a friend’s funeral and sobbed in his arms for a good two hours—those were all the intimacies she allowed herself.
“I could see the hostess eyeing it from the front of the restaurant. Did you really want me to leave several thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry on the table to try and prove my point? Here—take it, will you?”
“Nope. That’s for you. You can put it in the hotel safe if the burden of carrying it is too much. Of course, you could also just open it and see what’s inside. How do you know it’s worth thousands of dollars? Maybe it’s a breath mint.”
He didn’t make a move to grab the jewelry box, but he did lift a hand to her face. His thumb grazed along her cheekbone, as if wiping away a smudge, and he didn’t stop there. Fingers kept trailing until he wove them through the upsweep of her hair, tugging just enough to render the strands askew. “Is the idea of you and me together that abhorrent?”
No. It wasn’t. That was the problem.
“I’m reasonably attractive. I take a shower every day. I like to think I can make you laugh even when you’d rather throw me out a window.” He licked his lips, taking his time with the movement, as if he knew she was imagining the way that tongue might feel on every inch of her skin. “You’re the last woman on earth I’d ever want to hurt, Olivia. You have to know that.”
But he already had hurt her—that was the thing. He’d hurt her the second he pulled out that napkin and tilted her world on its axis, trading in their friendship for a chance at something more.
His friend from the Beck concert had been right about her. She hated flattery, and she would have chewed up and spit Ben out if he’d tried his smooth man-about-town routine on her that night. Rich, powerful men were a dime a dozen when you had a face and a body as famous as hers, and she didn’t need the Benjamin Meyers of the world to croon in her ear about how much they wanted to fuck her.
Sex was just sex, and if experience had taught her one thing, it was that men would say anything to get it. They lied and they spewed compliments. They dangled money and they offered modeling contracts. Sometimes they followed through with their promises, sometimes they didn’t. That was the way the world worked.
But this—these five years of friendship, that feeling of comfort when Ben walked into the room, the long nights in Tokyo when only his voice would do—it was rare for her to have something so consistent in her life, and he knew it. That was what hurt the most. He knew it, and he was still willing to jeopardize everything.
“What could you possibly know about pain?” she asked, her voice strained.
“I know enough.” His grip on her neck tightened, and she could feel the pulse in his thumb throbbing against the one in her throat. “Every time I see you, I feel as though the breath has been knocked out of me, and it takes me days to fill my lungs again. Missing you is like missing a part of my soul, and I find myself searching for you even when I know you’re halfway across the world.”
“Don’t, Ben. Please.”
“I have to. The next twenty-three hours or so are mine to command, and I don’t intend to waste them. I can tell by the panicked look in your eyes that there’s a good chance I’m going to ruin everything by being so honest with you, but it’s a risk I have to take.”
“But we work so well as friends. No pressure. No obligations. Why are you determined to wreck that?”
“Because I want you,” he said simply, and dropped his hand. And that was it. Ben saw. Ben wanted. Ben would stop at nothing to get. A man didn’t get to his level of success by age thirty without a stubborn and reckless streak. And a man didn’t get to his level of charm without leaving a trail of broken hearts behind.
Her body flooded with annoyance, and she welcomed it, grateful for all the other emotions it cast aside. “You know the harder you push, the harder I’ll push back, right? I’m not one of those women who only needs a few cheap compliments before she gives in.”
“You thought those compliments were cheap?” He pulled his lips down in a mock frown. “Damn.