Page 16 of Games We Play
“I don’t see the problem, unless you’re not attracted to me.”
Sloan didn’t hide the way she looked Leah up and down.Not like I don’t know what she looks like beneath her clothes.Or felt like, for that matter. Poor Sloan had been staring at that cleavage for half of dinner.So what if I want to bury my face in it again?Didn’t mean she would. Up until that point, she hadn’t seriously thought about inviting Leah back to her hotel room.I have a plane to Chicago to catch tomorrow. You think I’m going to spend half the night having sex with a woman I mistakenly thought was a sex worker?
“If you’re insecure, then you’re terrible at showing it,” Sloan said.
“Usually, I am.” Leah had already finished eating half of her dinner, whereas Sloan still had yet to start hers. “But I figure I have nothing to lose here. This might be my only chance.”
“Only chance to what?”
That grin was what finally killed Sloan – stabbed her right in the heart, like an icepick come to chip her away. It was rare for a woman to grab Sloan like that. To make her look twice and think about what it would be like to go all the way, not once, but twice. Three times.
All night. All year.
Leah went from an acceptable partner to the kind of woman Sloan was willing to kill to have. All it took was one look… and her saying, “To be with a woman like you.”
Chapter 6
Leah had no idea who the woman inhabiting her body was, but it definitely wasn’tLeah.Not the good girl who tried to stay out of trouble. Leah had used up her allotment of trouble in middle school. She was supposed to spend the rest of her life being as boring and safe as possible – or so her mother drilled into her.
This? Returning to Sloan’s car and going back to her presidential hotel suite in downtown Portland?This?
This wasn’t the Leah she had trained herself to be. This was the Leah who fucked up her life. Why? To prove a point? To feel like she had lived a life worth living? What if it really was her nature, after all? What if Leah couldn’t help but be a giant fuckup who took one whiff of sexual adventure and ruined her whole life with it?
Every time she choked on those thoughts, she looked at Sloan and was reminded that she was an adult now. For fuck’s sake, Leah wasthirty!She could make decisions for herself. That included deciding who she slept with. Just because she had denied herself for so many years, didn’t mean her brain development had stagnated. She was more mature now. She knew what consequences and responsibility meant. Besides, how much trouble could she get into with Sloan? The woman had an ex-agent driving her around Portland. She took security seriously.
Which was why Leah didn’t flinch when she saw a muscular woman standing outside Sloan’s hotel suite. They exchanged quick pleasantries before Sloan entered the room and pretended the bodyguard stationed in the hallway didnotexist.
Until then, Leah and her date had kept their hands to themselves. No coy looks in the car. No grazes of the fingertips or words of seduction.You’re not the seducing kind, are you Ms. Sloan?That’s what Leah had assumed after their dinner conversation.
Then she ended up against the hotel suite wall, a woman five inches taller than her pressing upon her.
“Ground rules,” Sloan said, her cat-like eyes narrowed into fine slits. “Transgress them, and you’re out of here. I don’t have patience to deal with you otherwise.”
What sounded like something terrible to other women was like tracing a feather down Leah’s spine. “I wouldn’t want to displease you.”
“I’m sure.” Sloan backed off now that she had Leah’s attention. “First, don’t go through my things.”
“Why would I go through your things?” It must have happened enough to Sloan that it was the first rule to come to her head. “I mean, no. I won’t do that.”
“Good. I also won’t tolerate drug use in my quarters.”
Leah smelled something she often encountered on the streets of Portland. “Smoking’s cool, though, right?”
“Why? Do you smoke?”
“No, but you do.”
“Third rule.” The edge in Sloan’s voice grew stronger. “Well, suppose the third rule is that I don’t want any bullshit.”
“I don’t have a lot to give.”
Sloan cocked her brow. “Everyone is full of shit. Even you.”
“Evenyou?”
She removed her jacket and flung it across an empty tub chair. “Especially me.”
Leah remained in the center of the suite, waiting to be told where she could sit or where she could go. Sloan always seemed two seconds away from deciding this was a mistake and kicking her out. Someone that volatile… Leah had no business getting mixed up with her. She didn’t need drama in her life. She could make enough on her own!
