“You’re offering me a job?” she asked, incredulously.
“Yes, I am. Before you reply, though, I should tell you that there would be conditions you’d need to fulfil.”
“Like what?” she asked, suspicion clouding her mind with possibilities. If he was about to ask her for a blow job she’d kick his balls so hard…
“So suspicious,” he said. “Do I want to know what you were just thinking?”
“Probably not,” she admitted. “Tell me your conditions.”
“You’d need to move to Dallas. There will be times you’ll travel, of course, but we would need you to be based in Dallas.”
She nodded, somewhat impatiently.
“You’d be given extensive training, of course. Knowing how to shoot and having a few defensive moves wouldn’t be enough. Plus, there would be some rules.”
Rules? She didn’t like the sound of that.
“You’d need to learn to follow orders. I would expect obedience.”
Obedience? Was he kidding her?
“Right, is that something you expect from all your employees, is it, Mr. Black?” she asked coldly.
“I expect my team to follow my orders.”
“So you told Tiny that you expected him to obey you when you hired him?”
“Tiny was a Marine. He knows how to take orders. He also weighs about three times what you do and he can kill a man with one hand tied behind his back. I don’t need to watch out for Tiny. You’re infinitely more breakable, you don’t have a military background and you’re a woman. A condition of your employment is that you will answer to me when it comes to your safety. If you can’t handle that then there is no job.”
“Fine.” She stood and turned to walk out.
“Cady,” he said sharply. “Stop.”
Keep moving, damn it. But her body wasn’t listening to her. Did he have some sort of superpower that made her body obey him?
“Look at me.”
She spun around, glaring at him. “What?”
His gaze narrowed and she swallowed hard as he just stared at her for a long moment. His piercing blue eyes didn’t miss a thing. His chiselled face wasn’t classically handsome, but he was sexy as hell.
“I don’t like the attitude in your voice, pet,” he said silkily. Fuck, that voice. So dominant. It struck a part of her she thought she’d long since buried.
Show no weakness.
“I don’t give a fuck what you do or don’t like. And I’m not your pet.”
Although the thought of being his wasn’t entirely repugnant. Cady had a feeling that anyone who belonged to Hunter would be well taken care of. He would never allow any harm to come to those under his protection.
But the price would be too much. Because he would demand all of her, and she could never give him that. She refused to ever love anyone again.
Fuck, what was her problem? He wasn’t offering her a ring or even sex, just a job.
“Thanks for the job offer, but I don’t want it.”
“You can’t keep yourself locked up behind that bitter shell, sugar. You have to let people in at some stage. You have to learn to trust a little.”
How the hell could he read her so well? She gaped at him. Maybe he really did have some freaky powers.