CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – CONFESSIONS
Talon
The table between us is silent. My heart’s in my throat as I gaze at the gorgeous girl before me because what is she going to say?
I’ve stated my desire to talk, but I’m not sure Kat’s onboard.
She looks wary, her plush pout pulled into a line, fingers wrapped tight around her mug as if she’s afraid it’ll get up and leave.
Her posture says she’s ready to bolt, but her eyes keep pinning me, waiting for the confession I promised.
My hands are sweating. I try to hide it by tearing open a sugar packet and dumping the grains into my Americano, but I doubt she’s fooled. The whole room smells of burned beans and bookstore dust and something tense, like old paper about to catch fire.
I clear my throat, stall, trying to summon my courage. “You want the truth. Not the teaser, not the back-cover blurb. The unabridged version.”
Kat gives a single nod, eyes never leaving my face.
I drum my fingers on the table, look at the surface of the coffee, the oily sheen swirling like a black hole.
“You know how in my books, there’s always a twist?
That’s not just a device, it’s a disease.
I’ve been doing this—setting up traps, second-guessing everyone, myself most of all—for years.
It’s the only way I know how to get close to people. ”
The blonde goddess lifts the cup, sips. “Okay, but get to the point, please. It sounds like you’re stalling.”
Fuck. Of course Kat’s ten times smarter than any woman I’ve ever met, and she knows all of my games already.
“Yeah. I am.” I put the cup down, force myself to look her dead in the eye.
“I’ve been an author for a while now, and it hasn’t been smooth.
The creative process can be torturous, and the first time I had writer’s block, I lost it.
I was holed up in my cabin, drunk off my ass and six months behind on my deadline.
Jonah—my agent, you know this—he said, ‘Why not rent some female company? Would that help you?’ He gave me a card for Sweet Lies and told me he knew a number of men who’d used the service.
‘Keep your head clear, stay focused, blow off steam safely,’ he said.
‘Let’s see if it helps.’ It sounded smart. ”
Kat’s jaw flexes, and she leans in just slightly. “So you ordered me the same way you’d order pizza. Research with benefits.”
I wince. “It started that way. Yeah.”
She laughs, but it’s brittle as glass. “Started that way?”
I nod, and it feels like I’m peeling my own skin off.
“I never had any intention of writing romance novels. Not from the start. But Jonah came up with the idea of hiring a personal assistant for my alleged genre change in order to entice higher caliber women. I’m not sure if it was even needed, to be honest, because Sweet Lies is a business and the girls know what they’re getting into.
But my agent said it’d attract a sweeter type of woman, and I’d had some ladies the were rough around the edges in the past. So I went along with it.
I told Sweet Lies to send a woman who had romance on her mind, and who was interested in exploring creative processes.
She’d show up, share her curves, and get paid for her trouble while helping me research my alleged new book. ”
Kat’s so still that for a second I think she’s stopped breathing.
I force myself to go on. “It was supposed to be easy. Clinical, almost. After all, I’ve done it a dozen times now—different girls, different seasons, always under a fake name.
Never felt anything more than a quick jolt.
They’d stay a week or two, and then I’d send some money to the agency and never think about them again. ”
Kat’s lips twist, like she’s swallowing a fistful of glass. “How many, Talon?”
The sound of my name in her mouth makes every hair on my arm stand up. I shake my head, embarrassed as hell. “I don’t know. More than ten, less than twenty? Some stayed a weekend, some lasted a month. Never anyone twice. Until you.”
The curvy girl leans back in her chair, arms crossing tight, blonde hair spilling over her shoulders. “So it’s a pipeline. Cabin. Girl. Hot sex. Writing. Then send her home. Like an assembly line.”
I rub the bridge of my nose, wishing I could hide somewhere, anywhere. “That’s how it worked, yeah. But with you—”
She cuts me off, voice sharp as a razor. “Don’t. Don’t try to tell me it was different. I don’t need the marketing copy.”
I should stop, but the need to confess is like an abscess; it hurts less when it’s out.
“Okay. But you deserve the whole truth, Kat, even if it’s painful to hear because it gets worse.
Sometimes, when I was really blocked, Jonah would send two girls at once.
We’d see how much chaos it took to snap me out of my rut.
There were threesomes, whole weekends of debauchery, my semen all over the furniture.
Sometimes it worked, sometimes it just made me hate myself more because I didn’t give a shit about all that tits and ass.
But I never wrote a woman into a story before. Not even a cameo.”
The blonde goddess closes her eyes, slow and deliberate. Her big bust rises, falls. “So everything in the book—the roleplays, the scenes, the dialogue—it’s all from your greatest hits with other girls?”
“No,” I say, too fast. “Not at all. None of it is from other women. It’s all about you, Kitten. You showed up and my M.O. got derailed. You’re the only one who ever called me on my shit. The only one who ever made me feel like a man, not just a tourist in my own life.”
There’s a long, deep silence.
I want to fill it, but I can’t. Instead, I sit there with my hands open on the table, hoping she doesn’t stand up and walk away. Hoping she doesn’t call me a monster.
Kat doesn’t. Not yet.
But the look in her eyes says she’s thinking about it.
Kat’s silent long enough that I almost expect her to shatter. She just sits there, arms lashed across her big bust, golden hair tumbling wild over her shoulders. Every inch of her says “untouchable,” but I can’t stop staring because she’s so goddamn beautiful, even now, when I’m about to lose her.
She watches me with those cornflower blue eyes, so limpid and innocent that it makes my heart jackhammer against my ribs, knowing that just a few months ago, I could get her to melt with one smirk or one low-voiced order.
Now she’s all business, clinical, as if cataloguing my flaws for a future case study.
“So what was it between us then?” she says at last. “Just a game? A way to jerk off your ego between deadlines?”
Her voice is steady, but there’s a quiver at the end, a chip in the ice. I want to reach for her, but I know better than to touch a live wire.
“It wasn’t a game,” I say, but even I hear the bullshit in my voice. “It was structure. The roleplay, the stories, they were an opening with whatever woman I was spending time with.”
Kat stares at me.
“So you’ve done all those roleplays before?”
I flush harshly and contemplate lying, but I can’t. Not now, when so much is at stake.
“I have,” I say in a low voice. “The professor-student scene, the naughty stepdaughter, the BDSM club. I’ve done them before.”
“With other women,” Kat interjects.
I’m so ashamed that I can’t meet her eyes, and stare at the table.
“Yes,” I say in a quiet voice. “I’ve scened with other women.”
Kat continues to stare at me, her gaze unflinching.
“And the plaid skirt? The cuffs? Were those used by other women as well?”
I shake my head immediately, lifting my gaze to meet her eyes.
“No, never,” I vow. “We always bought new everything whenever a new girl was coming to the cabin. I admit, Jonah, my agent, did the purchases. He went on buying sprees and had it all delivered. I’m so sorry about all of this because it sounds impersonal and manipulative. Because it is.”
Kat nods and narrows her eyes, and I see the little tic in her jaw. “But the romance novel. That was a joke, too?”
I stare at the coffee in my hands, choosing my words carefully. “It was a lie. At first. Again, Jonah said if I pretended I was doing research for a new genre, it’d make the arrangement seem more legit—like I really needed help with a book. So I sold you that story.”
Kat’s lips go white where she presses them together. She looks away, toward the blank brick wall, as if the answer might be tattooed there in invisible ink.
“But you wrote it anyway,” she says, voice flat as an ice shelf.
I nod, feeling the sting of every word. “I wrote it because you got under my skin, sweetheart. Because every night you’d walk around in that towel or that little threadbare nightshirt, and I couldn’t think about anything but you.
Because I wanted to see what would happen if I just let myself want you, all the way.
Even if I technically was supposed to be working on my next thriller. ”
She takes a long, slow sip from her mug, letting the words sink in.
The light from the streetlamp outside catches in her hair, making a gold halo that sets my teeth on edge with want.
Even when she’s angry, she’s the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen—maybe more so now, with her guard up, every muscle tensed.
I can’t help it. I watch her lips. Kat’s worrying the lower one between her teeth, same as in the book, and it makes me remember every time I made her beg for it, every time she called me “Daddy” with a voice so desperate I thought I’d lose my mind.
The memory does things to me I don’t want to admit, not here, not now.
She finally turns, and I see her pupils blown wide, the way she used to get just before a kiss. But the moment is gone before I can reach for it. She sets the mug down with a precise clink.
“So,” she says. “The whole thing was a setup. You were never going to keep me.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t think I could. I figured you’d leave, just like all the rest. But when you did—fuck, Kat, it felt like someone ripped the whole world out from under me.”