He shook his head. Fancy pink diamond. Right.
Back to business.
“Should we proceed with the plans?”
Sydney Morgan asking to please kiss him and practice…licking his nipples…moaning beneath him…
“Or do we request a new blueprint from the master cutter?”
Shit.
Damien pinched the bridge of his nose, forcing himself back to the diamond. It was spectacular. Fancy Intense Pink, in the rough. If they managed to preserve the color when cutting it, the diamond would be priceless. Priceless. It was a rarity in the world, so perfect it made you want to not cut into it. It was everything that money could not buy. It was Sydney Morgan to him.
As it stood, the project mentioned cutting it to circle around the major inclusions, so that the rough could produce a larger forty carat polished oval, a twenty-four carat round, and several smaller ones in varied shapes, with a value that could exceed two hundred million dollars—or go up to more, if the fancy intense pink tone was managed to be preserved. However, fancy diamonds were unpredictable. If you cut it at a certain angle it didn’t like, you could end up losing not only some of the color—but all of it. Turning a priceless fancy colored diamond into a white one. The stone’s value, if this tragedy happened? Dropped so much, you’d want to shoot yourself.
The decision had to be made whether to polish the stone and go for everything, or sell the stone as rough at perhaps eighty million.
Sydney Morgan saying touch me…
Ahh, hell.
“Let’s do it. Let’s start getting the big one out first—then we’ll see. Only Lupe, the master cutter, touches this. Got that? We need exact precision or we’re screwed.”
“Yes, sir. Also, the models down at the photoshoot are inquiring if you will be there?”
He rubbed the back of his neck, wondering if he was in the mood to go down and greet the models, maybe select a few to take to bed and screw a little red head out of his brain. He’d tried that yesterday—not only had he been unable to get it on with his girls, but he’d only ended up more frustrated than when he’d begun. And he’d begun supremely frustrated. “I don’t think so,” he grumbled.
He should. He really should. But his mind kept returning to Sydney Morgan and her ugly brown hair, and her bony little body, making him hot as hell. What was going on there?
He remembered her at fifteen. A baby. Begging to be his baby.
She’d stood at his doorstep, shocking him to the core. He only saw her a gatherings, he’d never even known she knew where he lived.
“You’re leaving town, Damien?” she’d asked in a tear-filled voice. “Why?” she’d demanded, not even waiting for his reply.
?
??To work, Sydney. I want to be at the mines.” To get out of San Francisco and out of my father’s hair. Did you know I’m no longer a Knight as of yesterday? Why are you looking at me like I’m the big shit when I’m nothing?
“Damien…” She clutched his hand then and pressed it to her heart, which was beating like a thoroughbred racing to the finish. “Make love to me before you leave.”
“What? Sydney, have you lost your senses?”
“Please. I love you.”
“Find a guy your own age, Jesus!”
“I don’t want anyone but you!” she cried.
“You’re fifteen!” He scowled, tempted to bury all of his frustration inside her, taste from her pretty mouth. “Go the hell home, Sydney. I don’t like you and I certainly don’t want to fuck you and I sure as hell never will.”
It had crushed him to see her face when he’d told her to go, the things he’d had to tell her to make her go. But she’d been a junior, and Damien had already been out of college. He’d had another woman in the bedroom waiting for him, and he’d never, in his life, expected that troublemaking, delicious little redhead at his door, making his boner even harder.
Rejecting her that night? Hell, that was about the only honorable thing he’d ever done in his life.
He sat back in his desk and scraped his hands down his face. Why should he care if she wanted to give some nerd her virginity? No. He didn’t care at all. Not one bit. He was the last man on earth to judge a virgin, in the first place, plus the last one to consider deflowering one. Scowling, he pulled off the Band-Aid from the blood test he’d stopped by to take this morning. Suddenly he’d needed to know that he was clean as a fucking whistle. Not because he was going to fuck an innocent at all. He’d given her his word not to fuck her, and he wouldn’t. But he still had to know he was…clean.
He didn’t feel clean enough for her. He probably never would.