Page 41 of The Influencer

“Will you accept my apology?” he asks, the sweetest look on his face.

“Yeah.”

I’m still frozen in place. I like the way he’s looking at me. All dreamy-eyed and well-fucked. At least, I hope he’s well-fucked—that he meant what he just said.

“Let me guess,” he says. “You have to go.”

“I figure I didn’t pay for the full night, and…”

“You can’t be out all night. I know. I wish you’d have a drink with me, though.” His voice is soft. The most inviting I’ve ever heard him, like all the snark and sass left his body when he came.

“I think my fall from grace was steep enough not to add alcohol into the mix,” I say, finally unsticking myself from the spot I’d been standing in to pick my jeans up off the floor.

“Or, if you’re already down in the dirt, might as well wallow…”

“I see what you’re doing there.”

“Good,” he sighs. “Because I have no idea what I’m doing. I think you fucked my brains out.”

“Well…that’s… something.”

“Come.” He pats the space on the mattress in front of him. “Sit.”

With my jeans zipped, I do as he says. He covers my rough hands with his softer, more delicate ones. “You really should end it, you know?”

I nod.

“Why don’t you?”

“I already had this conversation with my brother once today.”

“And what was your brother’s conclusion?”

“That I should end it.”

“You’d be doing her a favor, too, Asher.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

“You think she wants to be with a man who pays other men for sex?”

Did he just slap me across the face? It fucking feels like he did. I glare at him. “Don’t worry. Won’t happen again.”

“Well, that would be a shame.”

“Fuck you, Jade.” I stand up and grab my shirt, shrugging it over my shoulders and buttoning it from the top down.

“This doesn’t make you a bad person, you know?”

“No. I don’t know that. In fact, I fundamentally disagree with you on that.”

“Then why did you do it?”

I bite my inner cheeks hard enough to give myself sores. “Thought I explained all that.”

“Which part? The need to self-destruct, or how you couldn’t stop thinking about my nipples?”

I hadn’t even gotten to see his nipples tonight, I realize, and frown. That was an enormous oversight, and now it’s too fucking late. “I need to go.”

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