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He plated my food and served me, just as he’d done for breakfast.

We ate together. He sat so close our knees touched throughout the meal. Every so often his hand would rest familiarly on my thigh. Every so often he fed me a bite from his own plate.

It was delicious and dangerous.

Every time he showed even an ounce of humanity, I wanted to fall onto my back and open my legs.

And worse, I felt myself soften toward him a little.

What the hell was wrong with me?

By the time I was done, I’d eaten too much and I was squirming in my seat. Every time his hand returned to my thigh it moved a little higher. Was he teasing me or testing me?

I experimented by placing my own hand on his thigh.

“Don’t touch me,” he said softly. “I can’t last a second with your hands on me.”

I leaned toward him, tilting my face up to him.

He stared hard at my lips, but he didn’t kiss me.

I’d almost forgotten. He never kissed me on the lips unless we had an audience. It was always for show. In private, he pointedly avoided it.

I was glad I’d thought of it. It made my soft heart harden a little. Enough to keep me sane. Enough to ground me back into reality.

“So I hear the VS people were giving you a hard time about my conditions,” he stated blandly.

So they were his conditions. “Not me,” I responded. “But they certainly got into it with Asha.”

“I understand that they agreed to everything I requested. You’ll be adequately covered for the show?”

I kept my expression perfectly blank. “It seems so. Asha was happy.”

“Good,” he nodded. “Good. You show enough skin as it is. The world does not need to see you in lingerie.”

It was literally a lingerie show. What the hell else did he think I’d be wearing? But I didn’t say any of that aloud. I wanted the job and the exposure that went with it. I’d deal with his reaction after the fact. If and when it came.

“I was surprised to find you here,” I admitted to him. A change of subject wasn’t a bad idea at all.

His mouth curved into something between a smile and a frown. Whatever it was, it wasn’t happy. “You make me feel deprived. Do you know that?”

I felt a minor quake move through me.

“What do you mean?” I asked carefully.

He touched my trembling lips, rubbed them softly with the tips of his fingers.

A major quake now.

“You’re mine,” he whispered.

A sharp liquid throb started up in my loins.

“Legally and literally. I’m with you right now, but I feel like I’m doing without. I have you, but it feels like you’re eluding me. How do you do that?”

Of course I didn’t answer him. I didn’t have an answer. But it was a fact that I felt it too. Exactly as he was describing it.

He didn’t seem to need an answer. Abruptly he pushed his chair back from the table. In one impressive motion he grabbed me by the hips and perched me on the heavy table in front of him. I didn’t have to ask what he intended when he started tugging my sweat pants and panties off, slowly peeling them off my hips and inching them down my legs. They were loose and soft, so it was an easy job. When he had my bottom half bare, he pushed my legs wide apart with his hands and just stared at me for a time.