Emma pressed the tip of her thumb between her lips, gnawing the already bitten nail, and started when the door opened and Damien walked in, closing it behind him.

All the headway Ben had made nearly vanished in an instant at the man’s imposing appearance. She didn’t know what it was about him, could never quite put her finger on it. He wasn’t a big guy. Tall, but lean. He was extraordinarily handsome. But that beauty held a cold ruthlessness at its core, an impenetrable, frostbitten darkness. She wondered if anyone would ever chisel through it to any sort of warmth underneath. Did it even exist?

He strolled over to his desk as if it were any other day, crossed his arms, and leaned back against it, watching her expectantly.

Emma drew herself up and faced that cold darkness with all the courage she could muster. “One week,” she said.

“Thirty days.”

“Two weeks.”

“Thirty days.” He said it almost before she got the words out of her mouth. Exasperated, she figured she had nothing to lose.

“Three weeks! Three whole weeks, Damien. Twenty-one days. That’s plenty of time.”

He stared impassively at her for a moment. Just when she thought he might concede . . . “Thirty days.”

Emma threw up her hands. “Why so long?”

“I like nice round numbers.” Casually crossing his ankles, he gave a shrug. “Two weeks isn’t long enough but I leave for Vegas around the fifteenth for a tournament. Assuming we begin on the first of next month”—only a week away! her mind supplied as he glanced back at a calendar—“I figured we’d make a vacation of it.”

A tournament. Another bracelet, another few million dollars. God. “What about my job?”

“You always have a job here. You should know that.”

“What if . . . what if I can’t do it?”

He looked genuinely puzzled. “Why couldn’t you?”

“If we . . . if you and I . . .”

“If we fuck?” The crassness of it knocked the breath out of her for a second, the hairs bristling on her nape. It wasn’t the word itself—hell, they said it all the time around here—but never with we directly in front of it. The idea burned through her with startling intensity. “You wouldn’t be the first,” he said.

Oh. Well. Goddamn if that wasn’t reassuring. Not for the first time, she wondered how many times he’d nailed Stacia, probably on the very couch where she’d slept. Ew.

“I’m assuming, however, I would be the first to spend an entire month with you exclusively?”

“That’s true, but of little consequence. We’re both adults. I won’t push you into this; it’s entirely up to you. But the offer is what it is. Thirty days, or he walks out of here still flat on his ass.”

Cold. Cold. Cold.

God. He might be a psychopath. “What, um, would you require of me?”

“Require?”

“That we fuck?”

The way she flipped the word back at him seemed to please him. He grinned his wolfish grin. “Nothing that you don’t agree to.”

“What if I don’t agree to any of it? Sex, I mean.”

“Then you don’t agree, but we have no deal.”

“So you’re doing this to get laid.”

“If you think this is what I have to do to get pussy, you’re sadly mistaken.” There he went again, throwing out words that shocked her system. But she refused to be shaken. She tipped her chin up.

“It’s what you have to do to get mine.”

That cold darkness flooded his expression again, replacing the smile of moments ago. But he cocked a mocking eyebrow at her, and she knew he saw right through her. Yeah, so he could probably have her six ways to Sunday on his desk right now, if he made the move. But he didn’t have to know that. She met his gaze as defiantly as she knew how.

People weren’t her thing. People were weird and unpredictable. Numbers were her thing; they always made sense, and if they didn’t, she’d made a mistake somewhere. Negotiating with Damien Larson made her feel dizzy and confused.

“Just don’t hurt me,” she blurted, and for maybe the first time since she’d met him, she thought she saw a fine crack in his veneer. He uncrossed his arms and braced his hands against the edge of his desk, knuckles whitening with his grip.

“One thing I can promise you with absolute certainty, Emma, is that I would never hurt you.” But then his heated dark gaze traveled the length of her body, from her bare feet to the tousle of her red hair. All her lady bits were covered but, somehow, he still made her want to cover herself. “Unless you give me permission to.”

Why would I ever do that? she wondered, ignoring the uncomfortable emptiness between her legs that had begun to bloom with that look. The look that made her want to leave this dress an emerald puddle at her feet and climb him right here.

But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She might give him thirty days’ free rein of her body, but her body was the only part of herself she was willing to give. Not her heart. Not her mind. If she could help it, not even her pleasure. “No one can ever know,” she warned him.

“Done, on my part. Who you tell is up to you.”

Of course he wouldn’t give a shit who she told. He had no shame. These fucking men. “Would I still come to work?” Or are you going to keep me chained up in your bedroom? And why did that make her a little hotter than she was already?

“If you wish.”

“So . . . I don’t have to?”

“For all I care, you can go out with your friends and shop all day. But the nights are mine.”

She chose to ignore the additional shivers that skittered down her spine. She couldn’t take much more of this. “How will we explain if I’m gone for a month?”

“We don’t have to explain anything. You’re on leave, but you’ll be back. End of story.”

“Okay,” she said slowly, her mind running a thousand miles per hour. What had she left out? There were probably so many things, because she sucked at this. At the core of it all, though, was one burning question. “Why, Damien? Why me?”

A muscle flexed in his well-defined jaw. “Maybe you have something to teach me about devotion.”

“You mean this is some sort of experiment you’re putting me through? A test to see how far I’ll go? Don’t you have better things to do with a month?”

He smirked, pushing off his desk and striding toward the door with that gliding gait of his. “No, not really.” Reaching it, he opened it and looked at her. “Do you agree?”

Moment of truth. She would’ve felt better if he’d had more assurances, if he’d told her everything would be okay, if he’d touched her . . . something. But except for that one tiny crack in his freakishly controlled façade earlier, he had showed her nothing.

He was going to make her say it. Now or never.

She thought of her mom and dad, working their fingers to the bone well into their retirement years. Their security was worth everything in the world. This wasn’t for Ben at all; it was for them. In fact, if she could take Ben’s money at the end of this and simply hand it over to them . . .

“I already told Ben this, but either way it goes, the money comes to me. Only me. I don’t trust him to do what he needs to do.”

Damien gave her a single, solemn nod. “Good. I would prefer it that way.”

His earlier question still hung heavily in the air as he looked at her, awaiting her reply. Emma shut her eyes to draw up the courage to force it past her lips. It felt rather like signing over her soul. “Yes. I agree.”

“Then let’s go do this.”

Yes, let’s. Let’s go seal my fate. When she maintained her frozen spot by the couch instead of following him, though, he turned to look at her again. “Aw, Emma. No confidence in your brother’s abilities?”

She drew herself up. “I hope he whips your ass.”

That only made him laugh, which was even scarier than his smile.