Page 85 of The Rebel

Slide into her tight, warm pussy.

So, I forced myself to avoid her.

Conversation, glances—I didn’t fuck with either.

Except, as the days passed since our last chat at the real estate showing, we seemed to be in each other’s presence nonstop. Meeting after fucking meeting. And she’d sit at either her conference room table or ours or the Daltons’, dressed in a suit or a dress, the outfits hugging her perfect body and delicious curves. Taunting me from the other side of the room, where I’d always plant my ass, not wanting to be close enough that I’d smell her with every inhale.

I didn’t look at her during any of those times.

Fuck me.

But I searched the air for her perfume.

And I caught glimpses in my peripheral vision, little hints as I was speaking to someone next to her or when she’d walk in or when she’d stand to leave. Details that would peek their way through, like the shine from her goddamn lips or the way she’d whip her hair off her shoulders, how her neck and collarbone would catch some kind of overhead light, highlighting that even that part of her body was exceptional.

She was nothing but a fucking cocktease.

Rowan probably assumed I was making a rash decision when it came to us.

But I thought about her a lot, whether I was doing the right thing.

If I should keep up this wall, not even allowing my eyes near her.

It wasn’t just the way my uncle would react. Shit, at this point, Walter probably wouldn’t be pissed; he was climbing into bed with the Coles after all and gave zero fucks about it. It was that my brothers would lose their shit if they found out. It was that partners, whose actions would affect the future of our company, shouldn’t be fucking. It was that her last name had been cursed by my family for as long as I could remember.

She knew that.

That was why she hadn’t told me the truth in Canada.

And that was what really ate me up because I wouldn’t have tasted her if I’d known.

Without a taste, I wouldn’t have developed this addiction.

So, this was all her fucking fault.

And that was what I wanted to growl in her face as she sat at the other end of the large oval, waiting for Jenner to arrive and give us the latest update on this bullshit merger.

I was just about to get out of my chair and head to my office, tired of waiting for this damn Dalton to arrive, when the door to the conference room opened and the motherfucker walked in.

Behind him were Walter and Ray and the Coles’ attorney.

They took up an entire side of the table, holding folders that they placed down on the wood, the grins on their faces telling me the deed was done.

We were one.

I had known it was supposed to go down today—my brothers and I had started a countdown in our group text. But seeing the proof didn’t make it any easier to accept.

The realization hit me straight in the gut, causing my breakfast to churn.

Fuck this.

And fuck them.

I looked at Brady, Macon, and Jo. Their faces told me they felt the same way.

The biggest moment of our career was a disappointment instead of a victory.

“The paperwork has been signed,” Jenner said, tapping the folder in front of him. “It’s official, Cole International and Spade Hotels are now Cole and Spade Hotels.”

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