Chapter 3

The woman standingacross from Sam wore simmering irritation the way some people wore fine garments. It was an elegant perfume. A rouge on her high cheekbones. An inferno in her exquisitely bright brown eyes.

Filled with the rush of meeting someone completely new, Sam ran her fingers through her hair, channeling every cool guy in every movie for the last fifty years, and waited for Natalia’s response. She didn’t have any intention of changing her mind about selling the book, but she wasn’t in a hurry to walk away from the electric exchange.

“Dr. Reyes?—”

“Sam,” she corrected. “Please.”

Natalia fixed her in her shrewd gaze, full, glossy lips parted but unsmiling. “Dr. Reyes,” she repeated in a voice so authoritarian it made the fine hairs on Sam’s neck stand on end. Like she was about to get called to the principal’s office and rewarded with punishment. “I’m sure you’re a prudent person in other areas of your life,” she said, without masking her opinion that Sam was being rash about the rights. “If you’d be willing to discuss this opportunity, perhaps in a setting more conducive to conversation?—”

“A place like a restaurant?” Sam coated her question with honey and dusted it with charm.

The mostly empty lecture hall echoed with potential, the air still humming from the ghost of the crowd. Sam wanted Natalia to be more interested in her than the myth she was resurrecting. She got the occasional groupie, but no one matched this woman’s caliber and Sam was finding she had an itchy trigger finger.

When Natalia tipped her head to the side, her luscious brown hair grazed her shoulder. “A restaurant,” she conceded, though it obviously hadn’t been her first choice.

“And what would happen at this restaurant?” Sam crossed her arms over her chest. “Are we talking a pitch meeting?”

“Something like that.”

“Not interested,” Sam shot back before Natalia finished responding.

“Why?” Natalia snapped, voice low but her tone screamed that she wanted to ring her neck for being stubborn.

“What could I possibly have to gain?”

“That’s exactly what I’d like to discuss?—”

“Before you say anything else,” Sam lifted a hand. “Take into account that there is not a dollar amount you could scribble on a square of paper and slide across the table to me that would prompt me to sell my rights. Literally, none.”

Natalia scoffed. “Well, if I had known I was going to meet a person so dedicated to their work that they don’t want to be paid for it?—”

“Oh, I want to be paid for it.” She gestured around the auditorium, pulse dancing in her neck and synapses firing. “The school pays me very generously. What I’m not interested in doing is selling something that’s taken me a decade to develop. It’s like selling a piece of myself.”

“Everything has a price,” Natalia said in a tone so deep and sultry that it would make the most pious monk sin.

“Maybe in your world, Ms. Flores, but not in mine.” Sam moistened her lips, wishing they were talking about anything else. Anything apart from a deal that was never going to happen.

Natalia watched her... eyes searching. “Why?” She asked like she was studying a confounding new life-form under a microscope. Like she couldn’t fathom a person turning down a check.

Sam dropped her shoulders. “This is my life’s work,” she said simply. “Before archeologists found those damaged scrolls in a desert cave ten years ago, the Lilith myth had been all but lost to time. It’s taken me years of study and research to fill in the massive gaps in the historical record when no one else cared. It’s my work. My stories. There’s no way I’m putting them through the Hollywood meat grinder, so that what comes out in the end is a distorted aberration cut together to please the male gaze.” She shook her head. “It’s not going to happen.”

“I represent Zoe, and I only represent LGBTQ+ creatives who share my passion for pursuing artistic visions that serve our community — not harm it. Zoe would never allow the story to be told through any other lens,” Natalia promised, jaw tight and expression intent. “We can negotiate.”

Chuckling, Sam shook her head. “So you can lull me in with pretty promises that will melt away as soon as I sign on the dotted line?”

Natalia stepped into Sam’s personal space. But it wasn’t close enough. She leaned in, perfume intoxicating and an hour-glass figure inches from Sam’s grasp. “If I promise you something, Dr. Reyes,” she whispered low and devastating against the shell of Sam’s ear. “I’m going to deliver it.”

Sam nearly bit her bottom lip and groaned. If she had any less conviction, she’d give Natalia anything she asked for. But there was no wavering. Not for her. Not on this.

“I believe you,” Sam decided when Natalia stepped back, leaving her to deal with the aftermath of her rising heartbeat. “Unfortunately, I don’t want anything from you.” She smiled, eyes resisting the urge to travel over every curve of Natalia’s body. “Not in any professional capacity.”

“Dr. Reyes,” a young lady called from the open side door. “We have the folks who paid for the?—”

“I’ll be right there,” Sam promised, turning her attention back to the stunning woman who could barely contain her displeasure. “It was nice to meet you, Ms. Flores.” She smiled. “I hope to see you again under less formal circumstances.”

Natalia blinked, long lashes dark and enticing. She didn’t say anything, but Sam guessed that if she could listen to her thoughts, they’d paint a solid blue streak across the bland, beige walls and stale brown carpet.