Free Captivate her: Laws of Seduction Book 1 by Ava Hayworth

taking my hand. He pulls it up to his lips and kisses the inside of my wrist. I hope that he doesn’t hear my sharply indrawn breath. The simplest touches send heat pouring through me. He brings my hand down and holds it on top of the couch before speaking. “I apologize again for how I behaved that morning.” James clears his throat before continuing. “At first I told myself it was for the best. You are young and sweet, and I… Well, let’s just say… my lifestyle… I wouldn’t be right for you. I buried myself in my work like I always do, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
    “I am sure that if I had made an effort I could have discovered your number, but I took the fact that I didn’t have a means to contact you as a sign that I needed to leave you alone. Then I saw you last week, and I knew that I had just been fooling myself.  I am drawn to you, and I won’t lie to you. I want to fuck you again… badly… and soon.”
    I withdraw my hand from his so that I can think clearly about all that he has said. I can’t help but be gratified that he had been thinking of me and thought about calling me. That I wasn’t some forgettable one-night stand. Of course, he could just be saying these things to get me back into bed with him. Admittedly, the sex had been great. “What are you suggesting – something like friends with benefits?”
    James brings his hand up and brushes my hair behind my ear. “Listen, Lainey, I know you probably would like to have things clearly defined. To be honest with you, this is all new to me, and I would prefer not to try to analyze it to death.”
    “What exactly is new to you?”
    James sighs. “In the past,” he stops and starts again. “I fuck women. I am not friends with them, and I do not date them. That is, I don’t date them unless it leads to sex. I never pursue them. Christ, I am probably blowing this,” James says as he runs a hand through his hair in frustration. “I sound like such an asshole.”
    I am surprised by James’s revelations. The person who James claims to be does not correspond to the warm, compassionate man that I spent hours with on a stalled train. “You’ve never had a girlfriend?” I ask incredulously.
    “Well, they may say otherwise, but no, I have never called a woman my girlfriend.”
    “What do you mean they may say otherwise?”
    James sighs again. “Sometimes women have thought – or maybe   imagined  is a better word – that we were a couple, but I have never encouraged this. I usually cut those women loose as fast as possible.”
    “Huh.” I am apparently sitting across from the biggest commitment-phobe on the planet. “Why are you telling me this?” I ask, and I know that he can hear the bewilderment in my voice.
    “Because I want you to trust me,” he responds immediately. “I want you to understand why I blew you off last spring. What happened between us was unexpected, and it… threw me.”
    “So, you are telling me that if I call myself your girlfriend, you will cut me loose.”
    “Can we not go back to the labels? Listen, I told you that I was fucked up, and I meant it.”
    “I am not sure this will work, since you don’t do relationships, and I only do relationships.”
    “What about the night we spent together?”
    “What about the fact that we work at the same law firm? Isn’t that an obstacle?”
    James shrugs. “I don’t see why it should be. As long as I am not your boss, there shouldn’t be a conflict.”
    He says that so easily, but I know that it is more complicated. Did I really want to risk my career for a guy who sleeps with me, then doesn’t contact me for three months, and then only because he happened to see me again? I cannot discount the possibility that he is playing me. If that were the case, surely he would have attempted to contact me in the last three months, and more importantly, come up with a better plan to lure me back. The one he has chosen is not exactly inspiring me to