“I mean I don’t want lessons anymore. Our time together tonight—both the good parts and the . . . not-so-good parts—made me realize a few things. While I’m bad at sex, I’m even worse at relationships. I think I’m better off spending my time working on that. Before today, I never shared ice cream with someone or held hands while I walked down a sidewalk. I never had a dinner conversation that wasn’t filled with long stretches of painful silence or those embarrassing moments when I accidentally offend people and drive them away.”
He ran his thumb over her knuckles before he considered her with an unwavering gaze. “I didn’t see any relationship problems—except for when you tried to abandon me, but if I’d actually been kissing her, I would have deserved it. You did fine tonight.”
“That’s because I was with you.”
He thought that over for a pensive moment. “Maybe it’s because you feel like you’re in control when you’re with me. Because you’re paying me, there’s less pressure, and you can relax.”
“That’s not it at all. I relax with you because of the way you treat me, because you’re you,” she said with certainty.
His eyebrows drew together, and he went still for several breaths. “Stella, you shouldn’t tell me things like that.”
“Why? It’s true.”
Emotions crossed his face faster than she could read them. He shook his head, swallowed. A smile hinted at the edge of his lips before he withdrew his hand from hers to rub his jaw. He cleared his throat, but his voice still came out rough when he said, “Tell me about this new proposal.”
She stared down at the back of her hand, missing the warmth of his touch. “I want you to teach me how to be in a relationship. Not the sex part, but the together part. Like tonight. The talking and the sharing and the holding hands. New things are scary for me, but with you, I can handle them and even enjoy them. I want to hire you to be my full-time practice boyfriend.”
His lips parted, but he didn’t speak for the longest time. “What do you mean, ‘not the sex part’?”
“I want to take the sex out. I don’t want to be like that woman at the club and force you to be intimate with me. My hope is that if I get good enough at the together part of a relationship, a man won’t mind working on the sex part with me.”
“Who said anything about forcing?” he asked with narrowed eyes. “Everything I’ve done with you up to now has been voluntary.”
She suppressed a grimace and laced her fingers together so she couldn’t tap them. “The next time a man kisses me, I need him to do it because he wants to.” Without a monetary incentive. After seeing Michael with his ex-client, everything they’d done thus far left an unsavory taste in her mouth. Her reasoning when hiring an escort to teach her sex had been oversimplified. “I know you weren’t initially interested in doing repeat sessions, and my new proposal would require even more face time. Because of that, I’m willing to pay you fifty thousand dollars up front for the first month. Maybe we could try this for three to six months—at the same rate? Is that a good time frame for a practice relationship? Everything is negotiable, of course. I don’t know what the industry standard is for this type of arrangement.”
“Fifty thousand . . .” He shook his head like he was questioning his hearing. “Stella, I can’t—”
“Before you say no, think about it,” she said as her heart rate jumped. “Please.”
He pushed away from the table and got to his feet. “I need some time.”
“Of course.” She stood up and held her breath, nervous, unsure what to do. “As much as you need.”
Wrapping a hand around her upper arm, he took a half step toward her. He leaned down a few inches before he caught himself. Eyes intent on her mouth, he outlined the edges of her lips with his fingertips, sending shivers of awareness outward. “I’ll tell you by next Friday. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine.”
He bit his teeth into his bottom lip like he was thinking about kissing her, and her own lips tingled in response. “Good night, then, Stella.”
“Good night, Michael.”
In a state of breathless numbness, she watched as he let himself out.
{ CHAP+ER }
12
Jab, jab, cross. Jab, jab, cross. Cross. Cross. Cross.
Sweat trickled into Michael’s eyes, burning him, and he swiped a forearm over his face before slamming a fist into the punching bag again. Whenever thoughts crept back into his head, he hit harder. Too many fucking thoughts, too many fucking feelings.
Jab, dodge, hook. Jab, cross.
His arms burned, and he welcomed the pain, welcomed the way it seared everything out of his brain. There was nothing but the hard resistance of the sand in the bag and the jolting impact that shocked up his arm and down his leg.
Jab, jab, jab, cross, cross, cross. Harder. Could he punch the bag straight off its chains? Maybe. Cross, cross, cross, cross—
Loud knocks distracted him midpunch, and he glared at the front door. His annoyance quickly morphed into worry. Shit, was it the landlord?