drop-lidded, maddeningly level way that made her want to reach over, take his hand lightly in hers and whisper, “Hey, big boy, why don’t you take me to the Casbah?”
“Did you hear me?” she asked instead, her voice sounding hollow and hesitant, even to her own ears. “I said I’m going to be your slave.” When he still remained silent, she elaborated further, “For one full month, starting today, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do.”
He bit his lower lip thoughtfully for a moment, his eyes never leaving hers, and gradually her offer seemed to register. “My slave,” he finally repeated blandly.
She nodded, but said nothing more.
“For one month.”
She nodded again.
“Starting today.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I see.”
Then he sipped his coffee negligently, his expression thoroughly bored, as if hers was the kind of offer he received every day. Then again, who was Lucy to say that he didn’t receive offers of enslavement from women everyday? She wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised to discover that there were scores of wemen just begging him to tie them up in his basement. Or wherever. And why did that realization bother her?
“That’s all you’re going to say?” she asked, surprised she could keep her voice steady. “‘I see?’ ”
He sipped his coffee carelessly again. “What am I supposed to say?”
She scrunched up her shoulders for a moment, then let them drop. “You’re supposed to take me up on my offer.”
“Well, since you couldn’t possibly be serious about your offer, why should I give you a serious response?”
“Who says I’m not serious?”
He rose out of his chair and leaned forward, bringing the naked upper half of his body over the table until his face was within inches of hers. His hooded eyes no longer seemed sleepy and disinterested, Lucy noted. On the contrary, they suddenly came alive with something indecent and incandescent.
“You’re offering to be a slave for a month to a man you don’t even know,” he said in that soft, slow voice, “and you consider it a serious offer?”
Well, when he put it like that, she thought, it did kind of sound a little...well...different from what she had originally intended.
“I mean, slave,” he repeated, pushing himself even closer to her, his voice growing quieter, more sinister, as he spoke. “That word just conjures up all kinds of...interesting images, doesn’t it?”
Lucy leaned back in her chair, but the action did nothing to distance her from his interrogation. “Um, now that you mention it, I guess it could, if—”
“Just what kind of woman,” he interrupted her, “would allow herself to be enslaved by a man she barely knows?”
Instead of seating himself in the chair that he’d occupied directly across the table, he plummeted into the one immediately next to Lucy and scooted forward. Then he propped one elbow on the table and settled his chin in his hand, and he leaned in close—very close—to her again.
He smelled of pine soap and wood smoke and something else she couldn’t identify, the combination intoxicating and irresistible. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply of his scent, holding her breath in her lungs for a long moment before releasing it in a ragged whisper of air.
“Hmm, Lucy?” he murmured softly. “What kind of woman makes an offer like the one you’ve just made?”
When she opened her eyes again, she found that he had moved closer to her still. If she’d wanted, she could have tilted her head just the tiniest bit and kissed him without the slightest effort. But of course, she reminded herself absently, he was actually little more than a stranger, and she didn’t want to kiss him. Not really.
Not yet.
The odd realization ruffled her, and she stammered out her reply. “One who...uh...who has a big debt to pay,” she finally managed to get out. “A really, really big debt. Huge, in fact,” she added emphatically, still shaken by her wayward thoughts. “Really...very...um...huge.”
Boone nodded, his gaze still boring into hers with a heat unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. “A huge debt, huh? Wow. I can only imagine what it’s going to take to repay a debt that big.” He paused a deliberate beat before adding, “Boy, can I imagine.”
He seemed to be pondering something that she was pretty sure he had no business pondering. Lucy observed him through narrowed eyes, wondering about the look he threw her as the wheels turned in his brain. Curiosity warred with speculation on his face, both traits inflamed by a kind of murky desire. For one heated, beady moment, she felt herself responding to it. For one heated, heady moment, a curious, speculative, not-so-murky desire wound through her.
Until she stamped it out and extinguished it thoroughly. There was absolutely nothing sexual about her offer, she reminded herself. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. Just because a man had the most come-hitherest bedroom eyes she’d ever seen, and just because the thick swirls of hair strewn rampantly across his chest and torso absolutely commanded a woman’s touch, and just because she couldn’t quite dispel the hazy, half-remembered vision of being carried to safety in those incredible arms, and just because it had been a long, long time since any man had made her this jumpy and aroused, and just because his mouth was so...so...wow, so—
Lucy gave herself a good mental shake and reminded herself of the task at hand. Just because of all those other things, it didn’t mean she had to succumb to Boone Cagney. Being his slave for a month was one thing. Being his love slave for a month was a different matter altogether.
Although, now that she thought about it...
Stop it, she chastised herself. Don’t be that stupid. Again.
Lucy had practically enslaved herself to her ex-husband during the six years they’d been married. She’d done everything within her power to please Hank Dolan, only to have him toss her out on her keester, anyway. You couldn’t trust men. She knew that. You could do everything exactly the way they wanted it—whether you wanted it that way or not—and they still weren’t satisfied. She’d be an idiot to put herself through something like that again.
“I, um,” she began. But for some reason the words she needed to say wouldn’t come. “That is... mean...” She sighed unevenly and tried again. “I don’t think you’re...”
She shifted clumsily in her seat and tried to look him in the eye as steadily as she could, then dropped her gaze to the fingers she twisted restlessly together on the table. But when that just made her more nervous, she forced herself to look at his face again.
“You, uh...you don’t seem to be taking this offer in the spirit it’s intended,” she finally told him.
“Oh?” he asked mildly. “And just what kind of spirit is it intended in?”
Lucy knew the only way she was going to get through this was to stop staring at him. As long as Boone Cagney and his chest were in her line of vision, all she could do was wonder if his lower half was
