LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter Three

      “ZAIR, CAN I trust you?” Nora Grant asked.

      But his gaze was bleak. His mouth a hard, bitter crook.

      “Absolutely not,” Zair al Ruyi told her, his voice low. “I would sooner trust a fat-tailed scorpion than the likes of me. It would be far less likely to strike you dead where you stand.”

      And Nora didn’t know if she was crazy to trust him anyway. How could she tell what was crazy after a night like this? When everything inside her felt torn into pieces and turned on its head? But the fact remained: she’d offered herself up to him on a platter, on her hands and knees in front of him, and he hadn’t taken the bait. He hadn’t taken her.

      If he were the man he claimed he was, he would have.

      “I’m looking for someone,” she said, before she could think better of it. “A friend.”

      He went still, though the green of his eyes seemed sharper somehow. “I think you need a better class of friends.”

      “You’ve met her.” She smiled, even if it felt strange on her lips. “You said once that she was like a lightbulb.”

      He let out a long breath with a muttered curse at the end, and raked a hand through that thick hair of his again. “The tiny little brown-haired one. I remember.”

      “Sometimes we also call her Harlow.”

      Zair sent her a dark look, but he didn’t respond. Nor did he allow the mood in the room to lighten. He moved over toward the bank of windows and frowned out them, as if his gaze could penetrate the night. Was Harlow down there, Nora wondered? Did he know where?

      Would he help Nora find her?

      “What would make you look for her here?” he asked after a long moment, and his voice was weary despite how straight he stood, how tall. “In a place like that auction? And do not kid yourself, please. An auction was exactly what that was. Flesh for sale to the highest bidder.”

      She laughed, though she wasn’t sure why. “Google?”

      “Is this amusing to you, Nora?” That politely relaxed tone reminded her how dangerous he was. She wasn’t sure why she kept allowing herself to forget it, especially when he turned and fixed that cool green gaze on her. “A time for jokes? If I’m understanding you, you have some reason to think your friend has found herself neck-deep in the worst kind of trouble. It might dress up nicely for Cannes and parade around in front of the paparazzi for a couple of weeks in May, but make no mistake, it’s a grimy spiral of a brutal, painful, deeply bleak existence. It is no place for a soft little thing like that friend of yours. Much less you.”

      “I was fine.”

      “You had a target painted on your head, and what I can’t decide is whether you did it deliberately—if that was your plan all along—or if you’re truly so stupid that you were oblivious to the danger you were in. Laurette Fortin makes a run-of-the-mill monster like me look like a guardian fucking angel.”

      “I was handling myself fine,” Nora told him, from between her teeth. “This isn’t about me. It’s about my missing best friend.” She lifted her head, tilting up her jaw. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.”

      “How poetic.” His voice could have stripped paint. “That sentiment goes nicely in a greeting card, I’m sure, but is less comprehensible when it involves prostitution. Or am I misunderstanding the common American concept of friendship?”

      “She would do the same for me,” Nora said staunchly.

      “And yet she was not there, hawking her wares to the unworthy like one of your New York City hot dog vendors, was she?”

      “Stop!” she threw at him, and she didn’t know which one of them was more shocked. Nora doubted very much he was the kind of man anyone dared yell at. “If you want to pretend to be concerned about why I was on the same boat you were tonight, that’s going to have to wait. Harlow is missing. No one else seems to care, but I do. We tracked her to France, so here I am. I’m not a complete idiot!”

      His mouth moved into a curve that hurt to look at. “I have seen no evidence to support that.”

      “I knew I’d have to sleep with someone, yes,” she snarled at him, and there was a heedless thing a little too much like exhilaration in doing it, like careering in a car down a steep hill with no brakes. “I knew it would probably be awful. Maybe it would hurt. Who knows? I didn’t care. Women do it all the time, Zair.”

      “Spoken by a woman who never has,” he pointed out.

      Nora stiffened and tried not to die of the sudden shame she felt bloom across her cheeks, then stain her neck. “I’m not a virgin.”

      “You have my deepest congratulations,” he said, and the chill in his voice made that shame brighten and spread across her skin. “But your experiences, however pale and pointless, are hardly likely to have prepared you for a goddamned sex auction.”

      She felt that like a punch. How could he know—how could anyone know—things she’d never said out loud? Not even to her best friends? Pale and pointless. Her entire romantic history—her entire personal history, for that matter—in two sharp words. She felt bright and glowing red with mortification, as if he’d peered into the very heart of her. He had.

      “It’s

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