My cheer faded, suddenly. I was only going to be the toast of this room. Of his bed. And for far less than a whole night. I’d stepped into a dream and now, in the middle of it, was all too aware that it would be over before I even realized it.

“We’ll be dining at Ciel Bleu and, if you are so inclined, there will be dancing nearby in the hotel afterward.”

I gaped. “Dancing? What sort of dancing? You mean like waltzing and stuff?”

He shot me a strange look. He looked adorable when he screwed up his face like that. Like a little boy, almost. Almost.

He looked stunning in just about everything he dressed in, whether it was jeans and a casual shirt, a designer business suit or this scrumptious black evening suit and crisp white dress shirt. I couldn’t forget what lay under that polished suit. That perfect body, those hard, defined muscles. That tattoo with a woman’s name just above his heart.

Who was she? And why wasn’t she in his life anymore? I wondered if I’d find the courage to ask before the night was through.

He held a bubbling flute out to me. “Come, have a sip. Then let’s be off.”

I should have told him that I didn’t date. I should have told him that this would be so much easier if we didn’t go out. If we just took our clothes off and did this now. But I didn’t want to. I didn’t want the magic to go away so soon and somehow I knew that the moment the act was finished, it would be.

***

“Not even one little hint? Come on…” I whined over my glass of iced mineral water.

His dark eyes flickered with amusement. “The secrets are not mine to reveal.”

Players of Dragon Epoch had been searching for clues to start the secret chain of quests that lay in the Golden Mountains region for months. It was one of the most notorious Easter eggs ever hidden in an online game and here, I had the CEO and chief designer of the game as my captive audience. Hell yeah, I was going to take advantage and try to weasel some clues out of him.

“It’s your company. Your game! And players have been working on that quest chain for months. There are entire wikis and databases full of clues.”

He grinned, looking off to the side, as if remembering something funny. “Yeah. Half of that stuff is pure bullshit. Some of it was planted by our own developers.”

I sat back and groaned. “Pretty please?”

“Emilia, you can bat those gorgeous brown eyes at me all night and I won’t tell you. I am sworn to secrecy.”

I sighed, surprised at the heated flush crawling up my cheeks. I’d been told before that I had pretty eyes. They were large, round, dark and my lashes were thick. I suppose people found them attractive and I usually accepted the compliment with a self-deprecating smile. No one ever told me that I had a gorgeous butt or lovely breasts. Thank God for that because it probably would have made me die of embarrassment. But it was something about the way Adam complimented my eyes that made me react so strongly. It was so nonchalant. He didn’t throw out the compliment as a way to score points with me or butter me up. He stated that I had gorgeous eyes as if it were a well-known fact—and that no amount of batting them (and for the record, I never bat my eyes!) would get me what I wanted.

I wanted his secrets. The game secrets would be great to start with but as I had come to spend more time with this man throughout our day in Amsterdam I found myself wanting to know all of his secrets. What drove him to be so successful in his business, to enjoy the trappings of his money without being so ostentatious as to fly in a sandwich for his lunch? What was his family life like? Why hadn’t he slept with anyone in eight months and why wasn’t he with someone now?

And who was Sabrina? Why did he have her name tattooed over his heart—a man who seemed the very antithesis of making such a sentimental gesture? Perhaps he’d had it done when he was very young or drunk. She was the lost childhood love who broke his heart by moving on to someone else once college came along. Or maybe she was a college sweetheart.

I remembered reading that he’d dropped out of college. He’d already made his first couple million by then. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder why he hadn’t finished what he’d started—especially when he seemed to be such a driven person.

As I was musing over this, he asked me about my own college plans. “So Heath mentioned that you had finished your BS in biology early and are taking the semester off.”

I took a sip of wine from my other glass. I shot him a look. “Yes. I’m calling it a ‘gap year’ without the Europe experience, but this might well count for that, even if it’s only for two days.” I sipped again. There was no reason to tell him I was an utter failure and waiting to retake the damn test that was the bane of my existence. I affected a nonchalant shrug. “I’m taking next year off and then on to med school.”