Page 60 of Underground Prince

“Mr. Strausen has a way about him,” she said while she strode ahead. “You may not be as quick as you think.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to say to that.

The maid waved us through carved double doors and I wandered in, picking out paintings on the muted beige walls and guessing that if Picasso was in the corridor, these must be freaking treasures. With topless ladies, horses, and…bloodhounds?

“Hello, dear.”

A man sat in a loveseat below a painting of a naked woman reaching for a place beyond her painting’s confines. He puffed on a cigar with a newspaper draped over his crossed legs. The couch was encased in oxblood leather, a fabric that would probably feel slippery as skinned flesh if I drifted my fingers across it.

“Hi,” I said, overly conscious of my wild misplacement in this setting. “I’m here to collect. From last night.”

“So I’m told.” He closed the paper with languid care, uncrossing his legs and tapping his cigar, the ash floating onto a silver ashtray. “I remember you.”

“Yes, I recall your face, too.” I hadn’t a clue who he was or where he was sitting last night, but there was a time and place to be honest, and this drawing room, illuminated by amber-colored lamplight and framed by first edition books, wasn’t it. “You did well.”

“As did you.” He held out his hand, which I took.

“Thank you,” I said. With a clandestine flick, I wiped my hand on my jeans, his velvet skin seeming to leave a film of grease. Something about him gave me an edge, a sharp point to address him with, even though he’d been nothing but pleasant. He was taller than me but shorter than Brodie, thin without being scrawny, with a curved, pointed nose carved between two wide-set, dark eyes. He smelled of smoke and suede, and while he would be good-looking to some women, there was something too poised about him that had me wanting to shy away.

“Do you have a moment?” He gestured to the couch.

I hesitated, searching for Brodie but noticing for the first time he wasn’t in the room. He must be standing outside the door, which I now figured out was shut. Theo’s words from last night came to me, his warnings and my declarations.

“I’m not sure I have time,” I said. My heartbeat fluttered, my pulse picking up the beat.

“It will only be a second or two.”

He sat without cajoling or asking me to do the same, probably well used to others obeying his commands.

I balanced at the end of the couch, avoiding crunching my butt on his newspaper.

He took my purse from my hands, laying it beside the ashtray on the table. “Now. Your name.”

Amy, I wanted to say.Nicole, Katie, Joanna.An ancestral part of my brain did not want to hear my name escape through the wet coating of his lips, but Theo might have already told this man who I was, and lying about it seemed juvenile when I was trying to prove to Theo I could handle this. “Scarlet.”

“Beautiful,” he said with a caressing tongue. I smelled mint on his breath, mixing with the acrid scent of a cigar, still smoking on an ashtray. “You are one of the most intriguing girls Saxon has sent over.”

“I’m probably not the usual, no.”

“Yet he sends you to me.” His eyes crawled down my body. “He must know I’m bored.”

“I’m not here to excite you.” I shoved my zipper up, closing him off from my chest. “If you could please hand me a check, or—”

He cocked his head to the side, a bird of prey. “You expect a tip?”

“No, not at all. I meant for your…” I drifted off, reluctant to say loss. This man was not one who preferred his failures voiced. Every part of me vibrated that this was so. “Or maybe you could send a messenger to Sax, if you’re not comfortable. I can go.”

He stopped me from standing with a finger. Just a touch on my forearm, barely there and yet weighted with a thousand tons of stone.

“Your expression.” Strausen curved away from me and smiled. “Such contained anger. What have you gone through to get to this point, I wonder? Too much, or not enough?”

“I’m pretty sure I have a piss-poor teacher,” I said, standing and thinking of Theo, quaint and warm in his luxury sedan. “It was nice to meet you, Mr. Strausen.”

“Please. Eric. And you’re not going anywhere. At least not yet.” He reached over the armrest to pick up a tin box that had been nestled in the corner. Settling it on his lap, he scrolled through the combination, each rattling click snapping against my nerves. I winced at those fingers, lithe and long as spider legs, crawling across the metal and splaying apart as he tilted the lid.

“I’m gonna go.” I turned, the exit a world away from me.

“Do you know what this is?”

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