Lucinda Betts

The Manhattan breeze cooled her face if not her frustration. Wishing she hadn’t lost her temper, she took a deep breath as she waved for a cab. She’d be regretting this night for months.

“Do you have the balls?”

Him. Why was he throwing her words back in her face?

Zoe looked into his eyes, surprised at how green they looked in the lamplight. Moss green. She said, “You want to wager that much? Yours’ll be about two hundred gran. Grand.” She teetered drunkenly.

He grabbed her shoulders to steady her. Through the cool evening, the heat of his hands infused her shirt. “Thanks,” she said, stumbling into his chest. She stayed there.

“You’re pretty good with numbers, Ice Queen. It took me half a beer to make that calculation.”

“Did you call me Ice Queen?” Zoe tried to sound outraged, but Phillip had to be the only man alive who noticed more than her ass. If it took ice to survive Wall Street, then so be it.

“Everyone calls you that—hell, you probably call you that.”

“Your point is?”

“You’ll melt.”

“Last guy didn’t think so.” Why was she having a heart-to-heart with Phillip?

“A neophyte.”

Zoe heard inherent competence in his tone. Ah, that capability. Her drunken mind flashed an image of Phillip running his tongue along her inner thigh. Slowly.

Zoe blinked to clear the picture. “Uhh—” Why was she standing out here, pressed against this spectacular man? Oh yeah, a cab. “I need a cab.” Then she looked up into his face from his chest and saw unresolved business. “I’m definitely bed—better than you.” She thought she needed to qualify that. “My funs—funds are better.”

She watched him suppress a smile. Those martinis were dragging her mind right into the gutter, and her mouth was happily following.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “You haven’t heard the terms.”

Zoe grabbed his arms to catch herself. She could feel how well muscled he was. She moved her hands up a little bit and found more muscles. She had to stop this. “I need—I need to—”

Zoe’s vivid imagination flipped her a picture of exactly what she needed—Phillip’s hand in her hair, his lips on her neck, her eyes closed in appreciation.

She cursed herself and the martinis. “I need to go home.” She stepped away from him.

He stopped her, gently. “I don’t want your money when I win.”

Zoe stumbled again on her dratted shoes and pressed against his thigh. “What do you want?”

“You. I want you—as my sex slave.”

“You didn’t just say sex slave, did you?”

“Only if you don’t get the promotion.”

The vodka easily let her imagine granting his every sexual wish. Her heart raced, and her cheeks burned. Even if the idea were slightly appealing—and it wasn’t—could Haas—or anyone else—ever work for her if they thought she slept around? “You’ve been reading Hustler too long.”

“Who’s going to get the promotion?”

“I am. And you know it.”

“Take the bet.”

“I’m not sleeping with you—or anyone else from the office.”

“So I’d have to quit the firm?”

“Pretty much.” She staggered against him again and tried not to appreciate his masculine strength. “There’s never a cab when you need one.”

“What if we take the ’sex’ part out?”

“Want a slave? Call a maid.”

“No penetration.”

“That’s right. Not now. Not ever.” The smell of him made her want to wrap herself in his sweater.

“What I mean, is that if I lose the bet, I fork over my bonus—a sizable sum as you’ve noted. If I win, you’ll be my sex slave—with no penetration.”

Zoe’s head swam. She imagined his hand running the length of her body, an image so hot her mind skittered away from it. She then thought of the impassive New Englander and her new account. She couldn’t lose.

“I’ll do it,” she heard herself say.

“Sign here.”