She looked a little less confident, then. Or a little less self-righteous, as the case might be. “My mother named me Aurora, but no one’s ever called me that.”
“Why not?” he asked. And he almost called herlittle one.The way he would if this was a scene.
He put down his glass of water. And then, internally, shrugged. Because why not enjoy himself? He couldn’t be the only man who’d long had the fantasy of coming home from a business trip to find a pretty girl in his house. He could play a little.
Without actually playing, of course.
Clearly his cock was already all in.
“I don’t likeAurora,” she said. “It sounds like an old woman.”
“It’s a beautiful name.” He laughed at himself, but he did it anyway. “Little one.”
“Did you...?” Rory blinked. “It’s actually really demeaning to be calledlittle one, you know. It basically reeks of toxic masculinity.”
Conrad smiled faintly. “Then leave.”
He was still only toying with her, but she didn’t turn around and head for the door. She stayed where she was, those astonishingly beautiful brown eyes of hers looking faintly dazed.
Conrad noted she didn’t move.
And he felt all the dark in him catch fire, then blaze.
“Paris is just outside,” he said. “If you wish to take on the patriarchy, I suggest you use the front door, let yourself out, and get on with it.”
“Well, I just...” She didn’t finish that sentence. She seemed to lose track of it halfway through.
Conrad braced his hands on the marble counter in front of him and regarded her.
“I don’t need a cleaner,” he said with a certain quiet intent. “I’ve just returned from a two-week business trip and I’m tired. I need a shower and then I need to fuck.”
Rory blinked. “Are you hitting on me?” She sounded scandalized.
“I do not hit on people, as a rule.”
His gaze was steady on her, so he could see the beat of her pulse in her throat. He could see the way she kept shifting her weight, moving from one foot to the other, and he was as sure as he could be that it wasn’t that her feet hurt in those clearly overly comfortable shoes she wore. He had no doubt that if he reached between her legs, he would find her hot and wet.
For him.
Like the good girl it was possible she was after all, deep inside.
“So you just like talking about fucking in a general sense, then?” she demanded, as if she had the upper hand. Or as if she thought she was discouraging clumsy attempts to flirt with her in some dreadful bar.
Conrad took his time rounding his counter. He found it amusing when she stood her ground in the great arch, her chin tilting a little farther into the air with every inch he closed between them.
Like she thought she could fight him.
Or that he would fight her in the first place, when he didn’t need to. Not when she was so busy fighting herself.
“If you don’t want to fuck me, then don’t.”
He stopped when he was a little too close, because he’d never met a boundary he didn’t like to push a little, just to see what happened. In this case, the effect on her was delightful. She stiffened. Her nostrils flared. She looked flushed.
“Are you...asking me to fuck you?”
“I don’t ask women to fuck me,” he said, trying his best not to laugh. “They beg me for the honor.”
He expected her to react to that, and he wasn’t disappointed. Rory pulled in a breath, ragged and obvious, and blinked rapidly, as if she didn’t quite know what to do with her face.