“This is a guest room in my apartment. You are my guest.”
“Really? Do you kidnap all of your guests in dark alleys and tie them up blindfolded before torturing them?”
“No,” he said, grinning slyly. “Only the ones I like best.”
“Hrmph,” I said. And yet my mind screamed at me. Liked the best? He liked me. Jake Carville liked me. He--
His hand reached out and for a moment I thought that this was the moment. He’d made me wait, but now he would take me. Take my virginity. My pulse began to beat harder.
But no. He was only reaching out to stroke my hair, tucking one strand behind my ear. It was an oddly touching gesture for someone who had spent the past hour denying me an orgasm.
“Well, Lacey? What do you think? Have I punished you enough?”
“Why are you punishing me?”
The question came to my lips before I knew it was there. My breaths came hard and fast. My body was twisting inside. I needed him to touch me, just a little more pressure, just a little—
“For your disobedience.”
Breathe in. Breathe out.
“What disobedience?” I asked, trying not to sound too sarcastic.
“Staying out late. I told you to rest.”
My jaw fell open. So much for not being sarcastic.
“Are you serious?”
“Of course,” he said, frowning. His dark brows slanted over those piercing green eyes, but there was no humor in them. He wasn’t teasing me. He wasn’t joking.
“I had to work,” I said, frowning right back at him.
“I ordered you to rest,” he said. He emphasized the word ordered.
“And my landlord ordered me to pay rent. Sorry for not wanting to get evicted.” My arms were already crossed, but if I could have crossed them again, I would have. Of all the jerk moves, this was absolutely the worst.
His eyes narrowed. Good. All of my arousal was quickly turning into anger. If I could just stay mad at him, I could calm my body down.
“If you aren’t going to obey me for some idiot reason—”
“Not having money is an idiot reason?”
Jake’s nostrils flared. I could tell that he wasn’t used to being interrupted in the middle of a sentence. Well, too bad. If he didn’t want me interrupting him, he shouldn’t have had his henchmen grab me off the street like I was in some Liam Neeson movie.
Instead of yelling at me, though, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a checkbook.
“How much?”
“How much what?”
“How much is your rent?” he asked with concealed impatience, like I was asking him stupid questions. He was the one asking stupid questions, and if I didn’t want him so badly I might have stormed off to find the elevator out of his gorgeous palace of an apartment.
Instead, I swallowed, breathed in and out, and answered his question.
“Six hundred.” Six hundred for a closet that someone thought made a good studio apartment.
“That’s it?”
“I guess my penthouse apartment is just a better deal than yours,” I said, smirking sarcastically. “How much is your rent?”
Jake didn’t answer. He wrote a check and set it down on the bed next to me. I stared down at it, then picked it up gingerly, holding it as though it had teeth. I read the number.
At first I thought he had heard me wrong.
“This is too much. Way too much,” I said. “That’s…uh…it’s…” I tried to do the math in my head and failed horribly. I didn’t do well with numbers, even when I wasn’t burning at the groin with a hot billionaire sitting next to me in a silk-sheeted bed.
“It’s a year’s rent.”
I stared at him dizzily. A year? A whole year?
“No more excuses. If I say rest, you rest. Understood?” He eyed me meaningfully.
“Why do you care so much about my good night’s sleep?”
“I don’t think you understand. I’m protecting my gift.”
Whoa. I put the check down and lifted both hands in the air. This needed to stop.
“Okay, first? I’m not your gift. Lucas, whoever that is, didn’t give me to you.”
“I know that. The woman he’d picked out wasn’t quite as nice of a gift as you.”
“I’m not a gift.”
“Sure you are,” Jake said.
“Oh? Please. Explain that to me, if Lucas didn’t give me to you.”
“The universe gave you to me,” he said, smiling.
Man, this guy was an arrogant ass. I put on a sarcastic smirk.
“Lucky you, that the universe would do you such a favor. Wow, the universe just plopped me down on your doorstep, didn’t even leave a gift receipt or anything! You must just be the luckiest man in the world.”