Read Online Exclusive Contract by Ava Lore - Free Book Online Page A

leaped straight into my throat.
    Good thing, too, because it blocked the scream that threatened to break free there.
    “It's me.”
    Kent. The band, the contract, the new house.
    And of course it was Kent. Who else would be so audacious as to sneak into my new room right after he told me we needed to keep our hands off each other?
    I remembered I was naked and snatched the sheet to my chest.
    “What are you doing in here?” I hissed. “Didn't you just tell me we had to stop touching each other?” I couldn't see his face. In the darkness of the room he was a hole cut in the world.
    He shook his head. “I didn't come here for that.”
    I stared at him, not buying it, and he appeared to have a brief attack of conscience. “Well,” he amended, “not entirely.”
    “Then what are you doing in here?” I demanded.
    He spread his hands. “You were crying,” he said simply.
    My mouth dropped. “Crying?” I said. “I wasn't crying.”
    “Our rooms are very close,” he replied. “The head of your bed meets mine. I thought I heard you weeping...”
    The revelation that he had set me up in a room literally next to his freaked me out, but not enough to override his insistence that I had been crying of all things. I'd been dreaming, but I couldn't remember what it had been about. Surely not something so bad it made me cry.
    I brought a hand to my face, just to reassure myself, and I was startled when my hand came away wet.
    “Oh,” I said after a moment. “I guess I was crying.”
    “May I come in?” he asked. His voice was gentle, nothing like the hard-ass business man that I'd first met, nothing like the pushy, sexual rock god who loved to eat pussy and wanted nothing more than to fuck me until I screamed his name. This Kent was... sweet. This must be the caretaker Kent, I realized, the one that's worrying himself into his grave over his baby brother.
    “Um,” I said. “Yeah. Sure.”
    He walked further into the room, his steps slow and sure. A small easy chair sat in the corner next to the window, and when he reached it the small glow coming from the streetlamps down the street lit his face very softly through the curtains. Sitting down, he stretched out lazily. He wore only a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of pajama bottoms. “Rebecca,” he said.
    I swallowed and waited. I loved the sound of my name on his lips. It sounded like something he wanted to eat, a delicate dish he was ordering at a restaurant.
    “Rebecca, I'm sorry.”
    I blinked. “I'd never expected him to say that. “What do you mean?” I asked him.
    The thin line of light falling against his cheek and jaw bent supply, a sign of his teeth clenching. “I mean,” he said, “that I've been taking advantage of you. Sexually.”
    A tiny snort escaped me, and he shifted. “What's so funny?”
    I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. “I mean, I guess you could say you've been doing that. But it's not like I'm not a willing participant.”
    His sharp intake of breath told me that he hadn't been quite sure, and I realized that while he had been preoccupied with keeping his hands off of me, there had been a fear in the back of his mind that I may have been under duress. I needed a job, after all, and he was in a position of power over me.
    “I suppose that is true,” he said after a moment. “It's still inappropriate. I was attracted to you the first moment I saw you. I thought the airplane could scratch the itch, and, if you were the right candidate for the job, then there would be no further trouble...” He cleared his throat. “That's obviously not the case.”
    My heart was beating faster and faster, adrenaline spiking in my veins. My core was wet and my breasts suddenly felt heavy, anchors weighing me down. The need to touch myself, to touch him, was almost shocking. I clenched my hands tight. “So?” I said.
    He sighed. “So now you're an employee. I decided that I would make you Carter's girlfriend because it solved a number of