Page 11 of Casanova LLC

But I’d have a drink first. Whatever the hell it was.

Besides, if this was some elaborate scam then he was an idiot. Surely, after yesterday, he understood that nothing remained to scam me out of?

I caught his eye just then and my thoughts evaporated. All except one. A new one:

I could have sex with that.

I looked quickly away, but now that I’d let that one thought in, more followed. He was gorgeous. So gorgeous. Wouldn’t I like that? Didn’t I want that? It was so unlike me, to be that superficial. To want that gorgeousness to take me, be on top of me, be inside me. It had been so long since I’d had sex and even longer since I’d wanted to.

So what if this were all a ruse? So what if the whole Casanova thing was bullshit? Look at him. Did I honestly think I could do better in a bar? Then, at that thought: “Do better in a bar?” Who are you? Like you ever trawled the bars.

He was offering one long weekend. Three full days of being devoured, not preserved. By him. He could break the glass and have at it. Which was maybe exactly what I needed. No relationship, no feelings, just…him. Me. Us.

It felt so wrong there had to be something right about it.

How long had I sat here in silence? I was so out of practice being around people, I had no concept of time once my mind wandered. I looked back to him and found he was still looking at me. Worried my thoughts were projected onto my face like a movie screen, I said, just to say something, “You’re leaving tonight?”

“I usually head back a couple weeks before my season starts.”

As if he were a farmer with a crop coming in. He looked at his very fancy watch. “When are you leaving? Am I on a cock—clock?” Good God, Claire.

He didn’t acknowledge my Freudian slip. “Car’s coming at eight. Plenty of time.”

“Well, I don’t believe I’ll need much.” No reason to delay the inevitable. I opened my purse and took out the folded pages.

“You printed it out?”

I could hear the smile in his voice. I smoothed them open on the table. “The first page… Hard Limits. These mostly make sense.” I’d already checked some of the boxes. No anal. No Daddy play. No whips. No BDSM in general. “I have to say, so many of these?—”

“May I?” He leaned forward.

I swiveled the pages around and watched him scan my selections. I could not decipher a whiff of a reaction. Surprise? Nothing. Disappointment? Not a scowl. Enjoyment? Not a smirk. But he tapped a field where I’d written a light question mark. “Did you have a question about spanking?”

The waitress reappeared. I froze, kept eye contact with Alessandro, and remained silent. She set the drinks down, turned to leave, and unasked, slid the curtains closed. They were a dark sheer and didn’t block out the ambient hum of the bar, but they had the effect of blurring what lay beyond them. “They know you well here,” I murmured.

He lifted his glass. “To being known.”

There was a seductive promise in his eyes. I tapped his glass with mine. It felt kiss-like. I drank and reined in the cough that immediately threatened to embarrass me.

He saw it, though. “Too strong? I can get you something else?—”

“No, no. I just didn’t know what I was getting into.”

“How apt.” He raised a sexually-inuendoed brow. “So: spanking.”

“Right, so…” I took another small sip. “Well, not just with the spanking, but generally: it’s a matter of degree. That’s why there’s a question mark. It’s not a simple yes or no. You know?” He stared at me. I picked the papers up off the table and looked down at them, because looking at him had become too difficult. “I don’t know if I like spanking, per se. I mean, I know I don’t want to be, like, taken across your knee, but in the heat of the moment? In the middle of…the act? What if I did want it? Not hard, but some…slapping? Tapping!” I snapped my fingers. “Tapping could feel right. Maybe. I mean…” I took a stuttery breath. I wanted to stop talking, but I couldn’t. “Obviously this doesn’t apply to whips or paddles or—” I lowered my voice—“anal. But with things that are not a flat out no, I just don’t know how much of a yes they are.” Jesus. I took a quick gulp of my drink.

Alessandro looked on, unperturbed. “This section is just about hard limits. For hard limits, if you didn’t say no, it’s got some yes. Okay?”

“Oh. Okay.”

“And at any point if you don’t want something, or, conversely, you do want something you thought you didn’t, you’re free to do as you want. Have done to you what you want.”

“Oh. Okay.” I hadn’t realized how tightly I’d been holding my neck until I felt it relax. “I can do that? I can do that.”

He stared at me for a beat, then huffed a chuckle. Scrubbed a hand over his face.

“What?”

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