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“Please take your hand off of me,” she stated less than convincingly.

The man flashed a devilish grin and licked his upper lip as if he could sense her doubt. “Is that what you really want?”

Without answering, Elsa snatched her wrist out of his grip and stepped back.

“Please, Elsa. I have a proposition for you. Sit,” he ordered and just like that, she knew his commanding presence wasn’t something to be taken lightly.

Slowly, she sat back down. Turned on by the way his mouth formed her name, she never once took her eyes off of him, but despite her attraction to him, she had presence of mind to keep her fingers firmly wrapped around her canister of mace. So Mr. Beautifully Creepy had a proposition, did he? Her curiosity was piqued.

Easing back into the vinyl, her eyes widened. “Go on.”

Running his index finger across his bottom lip, an expression of casual irony flowed over the stranger’s face. “Don’t you want to know my name first?”

She pondered a moment before responding. “No. I’d rather hear your proposition before I become invested in you,” she answered with a facile tongue.

“Touché, Ms. Cassidy. I’ll get right to the point then,” he countered with a bitter edge of cynicism in his voice. “I seek a physical association with you.”

She sat quietly for several long, seemingly never-ending seconds trying to put into logical sense what his statement meant. “Are you asking me out on a date?” she finally responded

“I don’t date.” His throaty voice and tone revealed nothing and his eyes remained cool when he answered her, leaving her perplexed yet again.

“Then, what?”

With no emotion but an undeniable sparkle in his eyes, he answered, “A physical association is all that I seek from you. Sex to be exact.”

She didn’t know whether to be offended or angry from his bluntness, but in all honesty, she was neither. Undoubtedly she was freaked out, but more overwhelmingly, she was hot and bothered. This was the thing she needed and even prayed for; a no-strings-attached, no-sentimental-BS kind of relationship. Just sex. Plain and simple.

Bringing out a folded piece of paper from his inner jacket pocket, he pushed it across the table to Elsa. “I’m clean. I brought my papers along with me to prove that.”

She almost laughed out loud. ‘His papers,’ made it sound as though he were a kenneled animal up for adoption. Had he been neutered and did he have his shots, too?

Moving right along, he continued, “I have a place picked out where we can meet…”

She suddenly felt panicked. She hadn’t even agreed to anything.

“Aren’t you even curious as to whether or not I’m clean?”

Looking past her and out the window, he replied, “I already know everything I need to know about you at this point to move forward with this arrangement.”

“And how is that?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. She knew the answer as soon as she smelled his cologne. He had been the one following her that evening and parked out in front of her apartment for at least a week. Maybe longer. Her inner self-preservation was screaming at her to run the other way, but that other part of her – the one that liked things naughty, was keeping her ass firmly planted in the seat.

“I always do my homework before I make an offer like this,” he simply stated without elaborating.

Elsa couldn’t help but wonder just how many offers like this had he made in the past. Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? Eyeing the piece of paper on the table, she picked it up and opened it to see the name of the man in front of her. Victor Laurenzo.

“Victor,” she whispered.

“I expect you to call me Mr. Black,” he stated tersely.

Glancing up at him, she knitted her eyebrows and questioned him in a low and troubled voice, “How do I know you are who you say you are? If you’re telling me to call you Mr. Black, then who is Victor Laurenzo?”

Victor sighed loudly and pulled out his wallet and quickly flashed his driver’s license in front of her face. He was, indeed, Victor Laurenzo. Why then did he want to be called Mr. Black? Perhaps he was into role playing. So be it. Mr. Black it was. She had already entertained this conversation much longer than what would seem appropriate. She knew she shouldn't be questioning him as much as she should herself for still sitting here, yet she couldn’t stop from wanting to hear him out.

As he pushed his ID back into his wallet, the overhead light glinted off a brass badge, but Victor’s movements were too swift for her to make out what the ID hidden in the leather folds was. Was he a police officer? An FBI agent? Some kind of foreign dignitary? Wonderment surged through her but only for a brief moment. The reality of her luck would probably reveal him to be just some paper pusher for the Food and Drug Administration.

“Are you married, Mr. Laure… Mr. Black?” she corrected herself.

He leaned forward and let out a long, audible breath before answering in a hushed voice, “I don’t answer personal questions about my life outside our arrangement, but if it will put your mind at ease, just this once I’ll divulge. No, I’m not married.”

His voice, though quiet, had an ominous quality, just as everything about him did and Elsa couldn’t be sure he was being honest.

“All the paperwork on our meeting place will be finalized within the next few days.” Reaching into a different pocket, he pulled out a small slip of paper with an address written on it and held it out to her. “Our first liaison will be this Saturday at 10:00 a.m. We can go over the particulars that day. Be prompt and ready to begin when you arrive, Ms. Cassidy.”

Shaking her head and trying to clear her thoughts, she responded, “I haven’t agreed to anything yet. Something about you frightens me. You’ve been following me and snooping around my private affairs, which, by the way, is disgusting. I need time to think this over.”

Victor smiled smoothly, betraying nothing. “Define disgusting.”

Unflinching, she answered, “Horrible, repellent, repulsive.”

“It would’ve been more repulsive if I had made an offer such as this without proving my sexual cleanliness, no? Disgusting is subjective, Ms. Cassidy, and it’s a fact that when a person is aroused, they’re less likely to think something is disgusting.”

Her brows knitted together. A fact according to whom? This guy was something else. “It just so happens that I’m not aroused.”

One side of his mouth lifted in a crooked half-smile and his eyes lit up. “Not yet.” When she opened her mouth in rebuttal, he cut in. “Everything I’ve done has been done with forethought to your and my needs. What you think is repellent, others might find necessary,” his voice resonated with depth and authority.

Necessary? This man knew nothing of her needs. “Following me around reveals nothing about me.” The sound of his voice affected her deeply and when she responded, her voice was shakier than she would have liked.

With a hard, cold-eyed smile, the lines around his eyes tightened. “You couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve learned a great deal about your habits and schedule, and even some of your personal preferences by following you. Everything else I plan to learn about you will come with time; something I’m willing to invest in you. Time and attention is the greatest gift another person can bestow on someone. Consider yourself fortunate, Ms. Cassidy, because neither of those things is something I share with just anyone.”

The tensing of Victor’s jaw let on to his deep frustration, but he remained eerily calm. Sipping on her diet Coke, she became entranced with the way he was casually circling his index finger on the table. Lascivious thoughts filled her mind as she envisioned him tracing the fullness of her breast with that same digit. Abruptly interrupting her fantasy, he rose from the booth and stood at the side of the table leaving her reeling from his statement and her arousal. Gliding the back of his fingers down her cheek, she shivered and his sureness melted her resolve. Maybe she was the fortunate one.