I much preferred Casual Sloane and I gathered that was the real her. Work Sloane was a front. A total put-on. No part of her enjoyed getting tricked out and going to work in a sex club.

The longer I stared at her, the tighter the knot in my gut got.

All sorts of horrendous scenarios played out in my head but the one that caught, the one that made the most sense was Marco Kelly was using her. I’d seen it before. Sick, twisted assholes using beautiful women to lure men in deeper. To give them a taste of what they could buy. In some ways, human trafficking was similar to drugs. A taste leads to dependency. And once the junkies are hooked they’ll do anything for a fix. The sex trade was a slippery slope of depravity. Some men liked going to strip clubs and getting their fill of a beautiful woman dancing in front of them, but they didn’t actually want to touch. Some wanted a few hours of wild, uninhibited sex and would happily pay a prostitute and walk away. But there were some deranged, repulsive, sick fucks who wanted to own a toy. It was the third kind that needed to be taken down.

What I could not wrap my head around was Sloane willingly allowing herself to be used as bait. In no universe could I imagine Sloane working girls and sending them out to be sold—not even for the night. And if I was wrong it was time for me to quit Takeback and find a new career.

But something was off.

“Adam?”

Fuck. I hated when she called me that. It sounded all sorts of wrong coming from her.

“Right here, sweetness.”

“Are we going back to your place?”

Fucking hell.

In any other situation, Sloane asking me that would’ve made my cock stir to life. Hell, any other situation, her sitting across from me looking stunning, smiling her sweet smile, acting like she normally acted I would’ve been fighting a hard-on all damn night. But with the turn of events, Sloane putting herself out there in a way that was so unlike her, and hearing her ask me if we were going back to my place, pissed me right the fuck off.

“No, we’re not.”

“But I thought—”

I knew what she thought, she’d been working it hard all night showing interest that was not real.

“My place is an hour away and that’s if we don’t hit traffic. We’re goin’ to yours.”

Panic assailed her face before she poorly attempted to cover it.

And since I was pissed, I pushed again, this time being a dick. Sloane wanted to play this game, we were going to play.

It would be up to her when to call a stop to it.

“Is this going to be a problem for you?”

Sloane shifted in her seat, pushed her mostly empty plate to the side, and rearranged her napkin before she asked, “Is what going to be a problem?”