“I know.” The knowledge both thrills and terrifies me.
He traces a fingertip down my cheek. “Naughty, lying girls don’t get orgasms.”
That’s my punishment? I’d be lucky to have one tonight anyway. I don’t know what magic trick he pulled yesterday, but miracles rarely happen twice in a row. “Yes, sir.”
“Naughty, lying girls don’t get to sleep in their daddy’s bed, either. All last night, when I was lying there alone, I thought about having you with me tonight. I want you in my bed, Emily. But you’ll have to earn it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“No more lying. Not about anything.”
“No more lying, sir.”
“We’ll see,” he grunts and looks away from me, out of the window, giving me that sharp jaw, a well-shaped ear and the thick, dark shag of his hair, buzzed military-close to this head. The back of his neck is flushed an angry red. Okay, this is a big thing for him. No lying. In a way, I’m glad, even though I can tell he’s disappointed in me. I’ve had enough of lying, too.
I wait for him to speak, and after he doesn’t for several minutes, I get worried he’s giving me the silent treatment. Ashley used to do that kind of passive-aggressive shit, too, and I really hated it.
“Sir?” I finally whisper to him.
“Yeah, baby doll?”
Not the silent treatment. Maybe he’s just thinking, or watching Washington Square Park roll by. “You said you were escorting a client to and from a nightclub. I was just wondering, what is it you do?”
“Private security.” He looks down at me with a wry smile. “And I can’t get away from my clients no matter how hard I try. I turned down every call this week so I could get ready for the trip, but then a client, a really good client, called in a favor. You know who Rick Errol is?”
I shake my head.
“Porn star. I’ve known Rick for years. He was one of my first clients. He wants to bring a friend to my club, but it’s members only. I need to escort them in and out. That’s all. The rest of the night is yours. Sorry, baby doll.”
“No, it’s fine, sir. I don’t mind.” I certainly don’t mind that he has to work a little during our date. I’m not sure how I feel about hanging out with a porn star. But I’ve never met a porn star before, so what do I know? “Is he really a porn star? I’ve never met a porn star.”
He chuckles. “No? You haven’t lived, little girl.”
I guess not. I thought going to the occasional dungeon party was walking on the wild side.
As I’m about to ask Logan how he met his porn star friend, the cab stops in front of a brownstone. Logan pays cash, then he unbuckles my seatbelt and helps me out of the taxi.
* * *
His place is not what I expect. It’s a brownstone with three floors and original leaded windows. The entrance hallway smells like a cedar grove and is half-panelled with brown and beige patterned wall-paper above the wood wainscoting. With all the wood, it could be original, too. Logan steers me up a central staircase that wouldn’t look out of place in Tara. The staircase turns at the first floor, with four doors opening off a carpeted landing. There’s a dark oil painting on the landing wall. As we pass it, and Logan opens a door to show me a blue and cream-tiled bathroom, I see it’s a portrait of a woman in Victorian dress with a spaniel in her lap.
I can’t quite reconcile the dusty portrait with Logan’s black T-shirts, biker boots, and porn star clients.
After showing me where the bathroom is, Logan leads me down the hall and shows me into a bedroom with a huge, four-poster bed. He sets my overnight bag on a settee at the foot of the bed and leans against the bedpost, letting me look around.
“This is really nice,” I offer. “It doesn’t seem like you, though.”
“The house? I inherited it.”
That’s right; he said his parents had died. “You haven’t redecorated?”
Logan looks around as though seeing the room for the first time. He chuckles, the warm, deep sound making my toes curl inside my ballet flats. “Why, are the curtains too last season for you? I don’t do soft furnishings.”
The curtains are dark net, filtering the early evening light. I think my grandmother had the same ones. I laugh with him.
“So, baby doll,” he says, after our shared laughter dies down. “Anything you need before we get started?”
I shake my head.
He pats my overnight bag. “I’m putting this in here in the hopes that you earn your spot there.” He tips his chin at the bed. “You ready to pay for lying to me?”
My throat gets tight, but my belly does, too. “Yes, sir.”
He smiles. It’s not his funny, crooked grin. This smile is wolfish. “I like what you’re wearing, sweetheart. If I forgot to tell you, your dress is very pretty. I don’t want to ruin it, so you can either pull it up, or take it off.”
I’m totally taking it off; I want his hot eyes all over me again. “Now, sir?”
“Yes, now. Good girl for asking.”
Hearing him call me a good girl again, after not hearing it since the beginning of the cab ride, lights me up inside. I reach down and find the hem of my dress with my fingertips and work it up my body. I get stuck at my breasts and have to change my grip. As I do, Logan makes a low noise. When I look at him, he’s watching me, smiling that hot, wolfish smile.
“You’re wearing white panties again, baby doll. Nice.”
“Thank you, sir.” I finish struggling out of my dress. Why didn’t I wear something less fitted?
“You have any red ones?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t want to see you in red panties. Or black. Only white and pink for my little girl.”
I have to
