Author's Note: In the kink community, we have these things called safe words. Some people have personal safe words, but if you're playing with someone you just met who might not know/remember your personal safe words, it's best to stick with the standard ones based on stoplights. Red means stop. Yellow means slow down. Green means keep going. These can be used outside of the bedroom as well or in vanilla scenarios if the stimulation is simply too intense or whatever.

Chapter 16: Name Your Price

They fucked again. Brutally. This time Seto remained on top. He'd donned a condom out of pure habit, but it took all of his willpower not to remove it before he finished inside her. It tormented him even after the fact. Wasted opportunity.

Seto didn't know about Joan's copper IUD. He didn't know that even if he'd succeeded in breaking the condom, it wouldn't have mattered anyway, but he needed the illusion that something could come from this.

Joan knew better than to tell him about the IUD. She'd felt his urgency, his frustration with every thrust. She half-hoped to see him claim victory, useless polyisoprene dangling from his penis as he withdrew. But they were both too slick for that to happen.

After Seto rolled off her, Joan rolled halfway onto him. She kissed the ridges below his eyes, consolation for tears he refused to shed. He held his silence for what seemed like a century, just breathing. Feeling her weight on his chest. Knowing it would be gone tomorrow.

"When can I next book you?" he said at last.

"My weekend just freed up, but-"

"I want it all. I don't care what you're charging."

Joan finished what she was about to say despite the extra money on the table. "But I'm having lunch with my mother on Saturday."

"Mother?" The concept, though foreign to him, ignited longing.

"Yeah, um . . ." You know, the woman who fucked my father without protection, gestated me for nine months, and then put up with my demands for sustenance for the next eighteen years, Joan thought but held her tongue. Then she remembered Mokuba's use of the word guardian. She didn't know what happened to their biological mother, but it had to be a sore spot.

"Name your price," Seto demanded.

Joan had to check, just to make sure, before she agreed to anything. "What exactly are you getting at?"

"Lunch with your mother."

Relief splashed Joan's skin, leaving goosebumps. Her next words tumbled out of her mouth. "Bring Mokuba and I'll give you a discount."

The offer took Seto completely by surprise. "Mokuba? What does Mokuba have to do with this?"

"Didn't anybody tell you?" Joan straddled Seto's navel and ran fingers over his chest, making his loins ache for attention. "I have a brother fetish."

Seto's eyes widened as he processed the information. He'd been under the impression that it was entirely Mokuba's idea to hire Joan, but he should have known better. Mokuba had never taken interest in his whores before now. Joan must have approached Mokuba with a deal he couldn't refuse. Seto wasn't accustomed to thinking about his whores' desires. All women, he believed, only wanted money, money he preferred to give them directly instead of enduring the hassle of endless dates and mind games. "Just like that? You tell this to everyone you fuck?"

"Pretty much. If I don't tell men what I want, how is it ever going to happen? Even when I tell them, not everyone wants what I want. I've been trying to seduce my husband's brother for years with no luck."

Her honesty floored him. "The man's a fool."

"My husband or his brother?" Joan's curtain of hair brushed Seto's face.

"The brother at least. Perhaps both. But I won't know for sure until you show me how you fuck him."

Joan's lips grazed Seto's ear. "No."

"What?" Rage climbed the walls of Seto's heart.

"I'll get you close, but you're still using a condom."

"Name your price." Seto gripped her wrist. Crushing. Painful.

Joan had to admit that his persistence intoxicated her. She liked this aggressive side of him, of any man for that matter, but he was taking it too far, both physically and emotionally. "Yellow."

Seto's pressure abated, but he still held her. He hadn't realized how hard he'd been squeezing until she said the safe word, but the softness in her voice told him this was about more than that. Of course she wouldn't take him bare. He'd been foolish to hope that this was anything more than a job, a game to her. But why had she agreed to let him meet her mother, with Mokuba of all people? Why only yellow and not red?

Joan studied Seto's face and took note of his confusion. "Patience. If you really want this, it's not going to be pump and dump. It's not completely out of the question, but Michael will have to agree."

Seto's energy drained and his grip loosened. Joan rolled off Seto and lay silently by his side, her arm draped across him, letting him think in peace. So her husband wasn't a fool. Michael could trust her. And even if Seto could force his seed into her, she'd manage to ditch it somehow. Sooner or later would make no difference to her. Seto shivered at the thought of her walking into an abortion clinic, holding hands with Marc or another intimidating man he'd never even seen and having some faceless doctor scoop his child out of her.

Seto toyed with the idea of locking Joan up, of shoving her into a crate and shipping her back to his mansion in Japan. He'd been with one whore who'd been through something similar, but she was empty, worthless holes, no better than a blow-up doll. He'd sent a staff member to give the police an anonymous tip about that prostitute's pimp but otherwise stayed out of the mess. He couldn't risk turning Joan into that. Besides, even if he hacked into Joan's phone and told Marc and Michael to buzz off, Mokuba would never stand for it. Mokuba. The prospect sounded better than Duke, but she wasn't making babies with Mokuba either.

Seto took comfort in the fact that she remained by his side for now but worried that the coming few days would pass all too quickly.