Page 11 of The Cost of Corruption

All in all, it was a dream situation...and only an idiot would risk endangering it all by flirting with his enemy’s untouched daughter.

“Don’t worry, Chastity,” I assured her. “Your father’s not here.”

Someone else might have missed the rush of gooseflesh that ran down the smooth column of her neck as I spoke her name.

“Theresa,” she corrected me, but this time her voice trembled. “SisterTheresa.”

“Right.” I nodded. “But you don’t really strike me as the Saint Theresa type. She wasn’t exactly thehide-in-the-loungetype. She wouldn’t have been afraid of me or my club.”

“Neither am I,” Chastity protested a little too vehemently. “And watch your mouth. You’re talking about a saint.”

Oh, I knewexactlywho I was talking about.

“A saint who told a story about an angel thrusting a fiery staff inside her until she was overcome with ecstasy.”

“Religiousecstasy,” Chastity rushed to clarify.

“You don’t have to convince me,” I assured her. “I’ve seen Bernini’s statue in Rome. The look on her face made it clear the act was quite the religious experience.”

“Don’t be vulgar.”

Oh, but something about the way her teeth grazed against the full softness of her upper lip as she enunciated that last word made me want to be even more suggestive.

“You think sex isvulgar?” I asked.

Her blush deepened, shifting from innocent pink to passionate red. She shook her head so forcefully that the fall of her plain white head covering whipped over her shoulder.

What color was her hair under there? That same shimmering golden brown of her eyes? I scolded myself for not remembering.

“I don’t think about sex at all,” she answered.

You didn’t need my keen sense of people to know that was a lie.

The truth was written in her whole body, from the way she suddenly could no longer bear to look me in the eye to the white-knuckle tension in her hands as she wrung her glass back and forth between them.

But there was no point in calling her out on that falsehood…not yet.

“Is that right?” I asked, relaxing deeper into the cushions behind my back before finishing my last measure of vodka soda.

Choosing to mirror my actions instead of answering my question, Chastity followed suit and drained her own glass.

“Here,” I said, reaching out for her empty tumbler. Instinctively, she held it out to me, and when she did, I wrapped my hand, not around the glass, but the warm and supple skin of her wrist, and guided her down to the couch, saying, “Sit.”

“I shouldn’t,” she protested, even as she settled herself down on the very edge of the seat.

“Because of your father?” I asked as I slipped the empty glass from her grasp and settled it on the table at my side. “Again, he isn’t here.”

“Not just him,” she said, shaking her head. Still, I couldn’t help but notice that now that she was down and my fingers were no longer around her wrist, she didn’t try to get back up. “It’s just this whole situation. It’s not…right.”

“No?” I let my head fall to the side as I studied her face. Framed against the stark black wool of her habit, her features looked particularly delicate. Soft. Fragile…And so very tempting. How had I never noticed that back in school? “We’re just two people in a room, talking. There’s nothing sinful about that.”

“I didn’t say it wassinful,” she rushed to say.

“But it’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it, Chastity?”

“Theresa,” she insisted again, though less adamantly this time. “SisterTheresa.”

“I’ll start calling you Theresa when you start acting like her,” I told her flatly.

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