Great Exploitations: Sin in San Fran Read Online Free Page B

there was Rob Tucker. Clumsy didn’t begin to describe the way he worked his mouth. When he pulled back, he studied me for a few moments while I kept my sweet smile and worshipful eyes in place.
    “What happened to that lively girl I met last week who convinced me she deserved a name like Fiona Fiend?” he asked, watching me like he was just waiting for her to burst to the surface.
    “The one you literally and figuratively beat out of me?” I raised an eyebrow, keeping my smile in place. “I thought you’d be pleased to see her gone.”
    “I’m pleased to see you showing me the respect I deserve, but you can show me that in more than one way.”
    “In what other kinds of ways?” I asked, genuinely confused. One minute he wanted the lowered gaze, obedient woman I was pretending to be, and the next he wanted the barracuda takes-no-shit-but-has-no-issues-giving-it woman that I actually was.
    “For starters, knowing what I want when I want it,” was his intelligent reply.
    Instead of rolling down the window and leaping from it like I wanted to do, I forced myself to crawl onto his lap. “And what is it you want right now?” My low voice reeked of desire, my expression hopefully matching. “Because if you don’t have any ideas . . . I might have one.” To hint at what that idea was, I circled around on his lap.
    His eyes clouded over with that unmistakable surge of want, and the next instant, I was flying across the bench seat. Thankfully he didn’t shove me away hard enough to knock the wind out of me, but it hadn’t been gentle either. The back of my head throbbed from where it hit the window.
    “What was that for?” I had to work at keeping my voice controlled. I had to work harder to keep from going at him with my fists and high heels.
    “For getting wrong what I want right now,” he replied matter-of-factly.
    “What did I get wrong? I don’t remember answering.” I adjusted both my outfit and myself, keeping a careful amount of space between us.
    “You didn’t answer in words. Your answer came in the form of a second-rate lap dance.” He chuckled, smoothing the wrinkles out of his slacks left by my “second-rate lap dance.”
    I bit my cheek. “What is it that you want then?”
    “I can tell you what I don’t want, and that is for a second-rate lap dance to progress into a second-rate screw.” His gaze swept down me like there wasn’t a scrap he found satisfactory.
    My eyebrows came together—I was deep in confusing territory again. “So you don’t want to—”
    “Let me clarify,” he interrupted. “I don’t want our first time to be inside of a limo when you look like some shabby housewife. I want our first time to be somewhere special, when you’ve put on something nice and look like the eleven I know you are. We’ve come through this much; if I can wait another day or two, so can you.”
    I opened my mouth to say something, but his finger covered it.
    “This conversation’s over. Not now, but soon.”
    When he lowered his finger, I resisted the urge to snap it or bite it. I’d been shushed, and if that wasn’t unforgivable by itself, I’d been shushed with an index finger smashed against my lips. I could say with certainty that I preferred his fists to do the quieting, because it didn’t get much more demeaning than a finger against the lips.
    Thankfully, he was quiet for a few minutes after that. If he had opened his mouth and expected a response from me, he wouldn’t have gotten what he was expecting. I didn’t doubt I’d start spewing steam if I opened my mouth.
    When another few minutes passed in silence and my rage dimmed just enough so that I could reclaim a scrap of reason, I recognized that I was letting Rob get to me. I was letting him go five layers too deep, and if I didn’t find a way to buffer him, I wouldn’t wrap up the Errand in seventy-two hours. Yes, Rob Tucker might have been a thorn on humanity’s stem, but he wasn’t the first I’d dealt with.