Sweet Persuasion

She trembled, and he tightened his grip on her hand as if to soothe her.

“We need to talk about what happens afterward,” she said.

“Yes, we do. I’d like a week where I have you completely and wholly to myself. You mentioned a month’s time frame for your fantasy, and I realize you can’t take the entire month away from your business, but can you arrange to have a week off directly after the auction?”

She licked her lips and found herself clutching at his hand. “I’m sure I can. What happens after that week, though? When I go back to work?”

He smiled. “You go to work just like any other day. But at the end of your work day, you return to me and surrender to my care and keeping.”

“And when I have obligations outside work?”

“You will, of course, keep them. I’m not a monster, Serena. All I ask is that when you’re with me, your time is mine.”

She nodded. “Okay. I can agree to your terms.”

“They’re your terms,” he said calmly. “I’m only fulfilling your deepest desires.”

“Yes, I know. And thank you. I think.”

She smiled as her voice came out all quivery. He smiled back and squeezed her hand reassuringly. “Give me a chance to make you happy, Serena.”

She cocked her head sideways to look at him. “You know, somehow I can’t imagine not being happy with you.”

He raised her hand and brushed his lips across her knuckles. “It is my goal for you to enjoy our every moment together.”

She leaned back in her seat, hazy with contentment. Damon did that to her. Relaxed her and made her feel at ease. Like she could trust him. Which was absurd when she thought about it. She’d known him such a short period of time, but he got her. Without question, without reservation. He didn’t judge her. He accepted her.

He kept her hand in his lap for the duration of the drive. When he wasn’t stroking her fingers, he ran his fingertips up and down her wrist and up the inside of her arm.

It was addicting. He was addicting, and the scary thing was that their relationship had yet to go beyond a simple touch, a light caress or a sizzling look. He could spell trouble for her in a big, big way if she wasn’t careful.

He drove to the same restaurant they’d had their first meeting at, and they were ushered back to the private dining room. At night, it took on a whole different atmosphere. The lighting was dim and more intimate. The drapes were drawn back from the large picture window, and the city skyline twinkled brightly on the horizon.

“I feel decidedly underdressed,” she murmured ruefully as she looked down at her jeans and T-shirt.

“I’m not wearing anything dressier,” he reminded her. “Besides, we are alone, and there is no one to see us.”

Her expression eased as she smiled. He made it so easy for her to relax and not worry about anything beyond the immediate moment.

He settled her into her chair and then took the seat across from her. A waiter hovered close by, and Damon ordered a bottle of wine.

“Would you like to see a menu?” Damon asked her.

She sat back in her chair, holding her wineglass to her lips. “You choose,” she said softly. She knew it would please him to do so, and she didn’t question her burning wish to accommodate his desires.

Damon related his choices to the waiter in a low voice, and in another moment, they were left alone.

“Tell me more about yourself,” she said as she set her glass back down on the table. “I don’t even know what you do for a living. Do you have family? Are you alone?”

He gave a self-conscious grimace, and it was the first chink she’d seen in the self-assured ma

“And have you ever failed?” Serena asked, though she already knew the answer.

He stared levelly at her. “No,” he said simply.

“What is your latest acquisition?”

He tapped his fingers on the table, and an excited gleam entered his eyes. “I picked up two chip mills farther east that were on the verge of bankruptcy. I fully expect to have them showing a profit in under a year’s time. It’s all in hiring the right people and making sound financial decisions.”

“You sound much more cutthroat than I am when it comes to business,” she said. “I fully admit that I don’t always make the best business decisions and let my heart get ahead of my brain. Carrie tells me that I’m way too soft and that I’ll never wear brass balls.”

Damon smiled as he leaned back in his chair to study her. “And yet your business is profitable, you have no debt and you have happy clients.”

“You’ve been checking up on me again,” she muttered.

“Not again. Just the once. I just made sure it was a very thorough investigation. I’m very curious as to how you ever got into this sort of business. I’ve never known of another like it.”

She shrugged but couldn’t contain the bite of excitement that gripped her when she talked about her business and what inspired the idea behind it.

“It started off quite fanciful, actually. I’ve always been somewhat of a dreamer. Okay, a big dreamer. My mother used to swear that I spent ninety percent of my time with my head in the clouds.”

“Dreamers never die,” Damon said.

Serena smiled. “That’s so true and such a lovely sentiment. At any rate, even at an early age, I loved to fulfill other people’s wishes. If I overheard a friend or a family member express a desire for something, if it was in my power to give it to them, I did.

“After I graduated with my MBA, I spent a couple of years working in office management. Long enough to figure out I was bored stiff, and I hated working for other people.”

“Ah, a rebel,” he said in amusement.

She wrinkled her nose. “’Fraid so. It’s not that I can’t get along with people or that I buck authority. I’m just happier when I’m making my own decisions and I’m working in a job that motivates me. In short, I didn’t love what I was doing. I do now, and that makes all the difference.”

“I bet you get a lot of interesting requests.”

She rolled her eyes. “That’s an understatement. Some of them are obviously crackpots out for a laugh, but the worst are the insanely off-the-wall serious requests. These come from people who genuinely want and expect that I can fulfill their bizarre fantasies, and as weird as I may find them, they’re still just people who are longing for something just out of their reach. It’s hard to have to tell them that I can’t help them.”

“You have a soft heart,” he said in a gentle voice.

She grimaced. “Coming from you, I doubt that’s a compliment. My business decisions would probably horrify you.”

He looked at her in surprise. “Do I come across so ruthlessly? I sincerely meant it as a compliment. And as your business is a success, and you’ve made so many people happy, I hardly think your decisions would horrify me.”

Warm pleasure suffused her cheeks at the approval she saw in his expression. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that you were ruthless. It’s just that, as you discovered in your research, I’ve subsidized more than a few of my client’s fantasies when it was clear they couldn’t afford the expense involved.”

“And you think this is a weakness,” he stated.

She shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe not a weakness, but I lecture myself on setting limits and then find myself unable to say no to a client because their fantasy doesn’t fit their budget. Don’t get me wrong; I’m choosy. I don’t particularly feel sorry for a guy whose fantasy is to orchestrate the photo shoot for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, but when a mother comes to me because her daughter is ill and wants to be a princess on a cruise ship, I won’t tell her that I can’t help her because she’s several thousand dollars short.”