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few.”
    He laughed. “Maybe, but yours is…” He took the opportunity
to take a straight-forward look at her chest, no subtlety, not hiding it. They
were adults here. They knew the score.
    “Useful,” she supplied when he tapered off.
    His hands paused at his tie. “Not exactly what I had in
mind. I was thinking more along the lines of a work of art, but was trying not
to be so trite.”
     
    Useful? Why the heavens had she said that? Of course it was
true. But that was no reason to say it to a mark. Still, Sophia had meant
useful. As bait in the game. It had been for years. As soon as Arthur realized
that she was growing up in such a way that she could no longer be invisible, he
made the most of it and made sure she was seen. At first he had to work at it
with plunging necklines that felt funny on her even though she was technically
“legal”, as Arthur kept reminding her. But soon her body blossomed in the most
unexpected way and her coltish long legs and slim height were instantly
transformed into a platform for a sex goddess.
    “Men love boobs,” Arthur had assured her in what he
undoubtedly considered a pep talk. “Just stop hunching over and put them out
there. They’ll do the trick for us.”
    The trick. At first, Arthur had the idea that could be more
than an expression. He actually mulled over trying to turn her into a
high-class escort and it wasn’t her horror at the idea that discouraged him
from that path either, as far as she could tell. It was simply that he couldn’t
figure out how to make enough money at it.
    “It’d probably be only serious money to take your cherry.
Some sheik or other might pay some bucks for that, but then where would we be?
Ten grand here. Ten grand there. In the long run, it’s not a big money maker.
We’re better off using your body as bait.”
    That was the first time Sophia had heard it, but not the
last. Arthur had depersonalized her body into a tool of the trade for them. As
long as the mark was straight, they were in business. Married, not married,
old, young. None of that mattered. They took the bait.
    Of course whether she slept with them or not in the end was
immaterial to Arthur, but he had a slight preference for not. “Makes it
stickier,” he’d advised. Once she’d had a taste of men’s reactions to her body
in private, she had a preference for not too. All that pawing and groping and
giddy excitement. It was off-putting.
    It worked better with the game anyway to cut things off
after a little frisky foreplay. It was true men liked the chase best of all, no
matter what they said. Being the girl who gave them just a taste—literally,
usually—and then got away drove them all crazy.
    With this one, though, she had to admit she didn’t truly
want to get away. Not yet anyway.
    Brendan approached and when he reached out to her, his touch
was surprisingly deft, light, barely tracing the skin of her shoulder. Such
restraint. Of course a man who was perpetually full was not likely to be a
glutton.
    Not sitting down next to her yet, just standing in front of
her, he ran the back of his fingers along the under-curve of her chin. It was
wimpy of her to shiver, but she did. Leaning closer, he whispered, “Your skin
is so soft.”
    “Yeah, all over,” she whispered back, trying to move him
along to that part where he got grabby and uncontrolled.
    He smiled slightly. “Tease.”
    “You have no idea.”
    He leaned farther forward and kissed her lightly, tracing
her lips with his tongue. She opened her mouth wide to let him in, but he still
hovered, tracing, kissing, even nipping. She was waiting for the part where he
shoved his tongue so far in her mouth she had to learn to stifle her gag
reflex. It usually came right around when a guy was cupping her breasts for the
first time. But Brendan did neither. As he came to sit next to her, one hand
just lingered at her waist, the other still engaged in that maddeningly shivery
caress of her chin, her neck as he