“Yes.” At least I wasn’t lying to him. I could wholeheartedly agree that the sex was addictive even without kink. It was so good. So good.

“And Donadea is private and safe and don’t forget the bonus of the art gig. You’re going to be paid very well for a large job which could take an awfully long time to complete. It’s the perfect arrangement in so many ways.”

“But the university will be credited with the evaluation, not me. I won’t be paid personally. My salary is from—I work for U of L—”

“Yes, you will be fucking paid, Gabrielle. My contract will be with you alone. I no longer have a contract with the university as of the morning after you left here the last time. Paul Langley called me out, chastised my stupid arse for sexual harassment of his student, and then dropped me as a donor to the university.”

Whoa. I had no idea about Paul dropping Ivan. He’d mentioned before that Ivan was a big donor, so it must have hurt the budget a lot to cut him loose. I felt a twinge of guilt for turning him in to Paul, but he did proposition me and accuse me of being a sex worker. I truly believed he was mentally unstable. God, that situation with us the first time I came to Donadea was a complete clusterfuck of misunderstanding from start to finish.

“So… the art evaluation is a private contract between you and me?”

“It will be. I’ll have the original redrawn and you can look it over tonight before you sign.”

“Don’t forget, I’m still a student in a graduate program. Any new works I bring in will still have to be certified by an official body like the university to be taken seriously in the fine art world. Nobody will accept the observations of a mere grad student. If I’m all on my own here, it won’t be a sanctioned evaluation until you bring in someone official. Don’t you want this to be an official cataloguing of the Donadea collection, Ivan?”

“When you put it like that,” he said thoughtfully, stroking his stubbled chin in a way that made me insanely jealous of his hand, “I’m only more determined that it just be you, Gabrielle.” He gave me a devious little wink, making me note his successful fake-out. “The fact that you’re so passionate about protecting the provenance of the Donadea collection before you’ve even had any kind of look at it, and willing to forgo payment even, just further convinces me that you’re the only person I want for this job. Can I make myself any clearer on the matter?”

“Wow, that’s a lot of confidence in someone you don’t even know beyond a friendship with your cousin’s new bride.”

“Not really. Paul Langley sent you here in the first place. He said you were uniquely suited for this job, in fact. He chose you. We may not be on the best of terms at the moment, but I trust department chair, Paul Langley, as the go-to-guy for knowing who to entrust with a valuable collection of bloody fucking art.”