Page 109 of The Price of Forever

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

JORDAN

I awoke groggy the next morning, completely disoriented. I’d emerged from the deepest slumber of my life—no surprise, since Seven and I had fucked our brains out until three a.m. He wasn’t in bed when I came to, and I looked around the room for a moment, struggling to place myself in the world. What day was it? What time was it? I looked at the bedside clock—almost eleven.

I yawned, collapsing back onto my pillow. I’d gotten my morning shift at the coffee shop covered, since I had a few more doubles on the schedule this week and even I had limits. One extra shift at the club more than made up for missing my coffeeshop shift, as long as I got it covered and didn’t leave my coworkers high and dry.

At this point, you might not even need to keep working at the coffee shop.

The thought cycled uncomfortably through my body, reminding me of the reason why: Eli. He’d texted me immediately after our VIP session yesterday, as promised. And I’d responded, as promised, just to let him know it was a real number.

I unlocked my phone. Notifications were piled up on each other. All text messages from Eli.

Fuuuuuck.

I swallowed a bad taste in my mouth, shoving the phone back onto the nightstand. I didn’t want to deal with him right now. I didn’t want to deal with him ever again, actually.

I rolled out of bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes on my way to the bathroom. Once I’d peed and washed my face and felt marginally more prepared for the day, I wandered into the living room. Seven was on the couch, carving wood. I couldn’t stop the huge grin that broke out. I never thought it could bring me so much joy to see a man fondling wood.

But this man knew how to carve. And it just made him even more irresistible.

“Morning.” I sauntered over to him, leaning over the back of the couch to give him a kiss. He smiled up at me as one kiss turned into two and then three.

“Good to see you finally woke up from your sex slumber,” he said.

“Well, when someone fucks you into next week, you need a morning to recover.”

“I couldn’t sleep in. But then again, I wasn’t the one walking on eight-inch heels for seven hours last night.”

I grinned, wandering to the kitchen. “It’s exhausting, that’s for sure. Especially when I have to restrain myself from using said heel as a weapon for part of the night.”

I could hear the thwick thwick thhhhwick of Seven’s carving tool as I got things together for coffee.

“I assume that’s in reference to Eli?”

“Mostly him. But you know how it goes. Most men are creeps.”

He laughed. “Where can I apply for an exclusion?”

“You were automatically excluded on day three,” I told him, filling the coffeemaker with water.

“Not even day one or two?”

“No, because that’s when you were following me around like a creep,” I reminded him with a laugh. I filled the coffee filter with grounds and hit the start button. “But when you broke into my apartment and didn’t have your way with me, I started to think I could trust you.”

“Ironic, considering how many times I’ve had my way with you since then,” he added.

“Yeah, true. Good move, then, I guess. Do you use that one on all your female clients?” I teased.

He pinned me with a serious look. “You’re the first. And the last.”

Seven busied himself with his carving, and my mind wandered back to Eli. I needed to see what he’d been sending. I fetched my phone and returned to the kitchen.

Sixteen text messages, all with varying degrees of fawning, obsessing over my looks, and requests to come to his place. He’d started sending them around one a.m., and the most recent one was from nine. He had to have been up all night. Or was he just a night owl? My stomach churned uncomfortably.

A new text message came in, thankfully not from Eli.

AXEL: Hey baby sis! You got some time for your big bros? We wanna host a dinner to celebrate some exciting news

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