I lowered my voice. “I’m interested in what you want me to be.”
Mild amusement lit his face. “Very pretty. Actually, your erstwhile profession is what I came to talk to you about.”
I glanced around the large room, with its wall-to-wall marble flooring and columned door frames. “Here? I think this may be the one room we never christened.”
“Talk wasn’t a euphemism. Come, sit.”
Oh, fine. We had an entire relationship built on empty sex, but now he wanted to talk. I perched on the cool leather recliner while he took the one opposite me.
He stared out the distant window, unseeing, then turned to me. “Last night, I was…hasty. I was stressed out and fell back into our routine, but I didn’t mean to have sex with you, and not that way.”
“I’m shocked. Are you apologizing to me?”
“No. I’m saying I should have taken the time to negotiate. Clear terms make sure everyone is on the same page.”
“Ah.”
“I’d like you to reconsider the situation with Ella.”
I made a noncommittal sound.
“It wouldn’t be as…sleazy as it may have seemed before.”
“Sleazy is not a word I associate with you. Perverted, deranged—”
“All right, your point is made.”
“I’m not selling her to you.”
“And I wasn’t planning on paying you. I find that sex by the hour holds less interest for me now that a certain woman is out of the game.”
“How flattering,” I said flatly.
He shrugged. “Money is a means to an end. You know that. You were perfectly happy with our arrangement at one time.”
“That’s true.”
“Fine, so I’m feeling a little guilty.”
I shook my head in affectionate exasperation. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had to make a guy feel better about what I do, but I never expected to do it for you.”
“I had everything perfectly justified in my head.” He scowled. “Until she came here.”
“She has a way of disrupting the status quo,” I agreed.
“With you, it was different. You had been doing this already. You knew what you were getting into. It was a job for you, and you did it well.”
I inclined my head. “Thank you.”
“But she’s…”
He looked lost in thought, bewildered.
“I don’t know what she is. She seems so young, and yet she’s clearly old enough. She’s innocent, but she swears like a sailor. She wants to have sex, but she doesn’t… She hasn’t…”
“A virgin. I think that’s the word you’re looking for.”
“Christ. Is she really?”
“Pretty sure.”
“How unsavory.” He looked fascinated.
“Hmm. You remember that you promised to keep your hands off. Do I need to fit her with a chastity belt around you?”
His arousal thrummed through the air. “Only if you want me to physically pry it from her body and fuck her raw.”
Of course, if her purity turned him on, it made sense that chastity would too. Apparently he’d found a new fetish, although whether his trigger was purity or just Ella, I wasn’t sure. “Never mind. We’ll just have to rely on your honor.”
“We really are in danger.” He grew serious. “I want to keep her, but if I did… If she were really with me, she wouldn’t be able to go back.”
“She doesn’t belong here. She’s not like you and me.”
“So get her the hell out of my house,” he snapped, but his anger deflated quickly.
I spoke quietly. “I don’t see why you’re in knots over her anyway. You were like meat on a slab to those women when we went out. And yet you never fucked any of them.”
“I had you,” he said.
My heart melted a little at the simplicity of that statement. As if he had no reason to look elsewhere when he had me. As if we had been a real couple.
“You could have slept with other women when we were together. It’s not like I would have quit.”
“I wouldn’t have. I thought of you as my girlfriend.”
His honesty was touching and guilt inducing. Sure, it had been the girlfriend experience all the way. He hadn’t just taken me out on dates. I had lived here. The envelope that appeared on my bedside table could have been an allowance in a certain kind of relationship. And I had cared about him. I still did.
But if it was possible to cheat on him emotionally, I had done so. All along, I had wanted another man. From the look on Philip’s face, self-deprecating and a little weary, he knew it too.
Chapter Eighteen