Free After Glow by Jayne Castle Page B

still doing the research.” The hair was stirring pleasantly on the back of her neck now. “I expect it will take me a while. I plan to do a lot of extensive tests.”
    He removed his fingers from her skin, walked deliberately around the sofa, and stopped on the opposite side of the low table. He regarded her with a disturbing intensity.
    “So long as I’m your only test subject, I don’t mind a lot of extensive research,” he said. “But if that’s not going to be the case, I need to know now.”
    Something hard and grim had slipped into his voice. She knew him well enough to know that he rarely used that tone, at least not with her. She swallowed uneasily.
    “Emmett?”
    “Sorry,” he said, not sounding sorry at all, just cool and determined. “This probably isn’t the right time for this conversation but given the circumstances, we’re going to have to have it soon so we might as well get it over with tonight.”
    She stilled. “Are you talking about a trip to the dentist or our relationship?”
    His smile was brief and humorless but at least his hard mouth curved slightly. “Our relationship.”
    “I see.”
    It was a subject they had both managed to avoid discussing openly. After all, they were only a few weeks into this affair, she reminded herself. They were still exploring new ground here. There had been no need to rush into decisions or commitments. There were issues. No one had said anything about love. They needed time.
    Blah, blah, blah.
    But there had also been a couple of underlying assumptions in their current arrangement, at least as far as she was concerned. One of them was that as long as they were seeing each other, neither of them would sleep with anyone else.
    Maybe they should have talked about that assumption earlier, she thought.
    “The problem is,” Emmett continued in that same too-even tone, “because of this situation with Wyatt and the Guild, I’m going to be busy for a while. I won’t have time to play the game the way you’ve got every right to expect me to play it.”
    Her mouth went dry. “I don’t consider our relationship a game , for heaven’s sake.”
    “Bad choice of words. Look, I don’t consider it a game, either. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some expectations and conventions that apply to our present arrangement.”
    She felt the first flicker of temper. “Expectations?”
    He moved one hand in a negligent, open-handed gesture. “Flowers, dinners out, theater tickets, long walks by the river. You know, all the stuff that goes with being involved in an affair.”
    “Sure. Right. Expectations.” It only went to show how little she knew about having affairs, she mused. She hadn’t even thought about their relationship in terms of expectations. Maybe she had been afraid to look at it in such specific terms because some part of her had been afraid that it wasn’t going to last very long.
    “What I’m trying to get at here,” Emmett said, “is that I won’t be able to spend a lot of time with you until Wyatt takes back his old job. I’m going to be tied up in meetings during the day and I’ll be working late most evenings.”
    She sat up on the edge of the sofa, knees pressed tightly together. “For goodness sake, Emmett, I don’t expect you to entertain me constantly.”
    “I know that.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I’m not talking about entertainment, damn it. I’m talking about making sure that you and I have the same understanding of our current arrangement.”
    “Arrangement,” she repeated neutrally. Something told her that she was going to learn to hate that word.
    He gave her a brooding look. “I’m not handling this very well, am I?”
    “You do seem to be floundering. Why don’t you try being a little more direct? You’re usually pretty good with direct.”
    “All right, I want to be sure we both agree that what we’ve got going between us is an exclusive—”
    “Arrangement?” she finished