Page 107 of Bad Enough

She felt his breath stop. Then he growled. Literally growled. She felt it in his chest as well as heard it, and it made her heart pound.

Jinkies, that was hot!

“I still don’t believe I deserve you. But fuck if I’m not going to take you and spend the rest of my days proving myself wrong. You have never once told me, without prompting, what you wanted. Hot as fuck, little Flame.”

Without a word, he pulled his arms from around her waist, grabbed her by the hand, and stalked around the conference room table to the closed door. Down the hall in front of the elevator, he pulled her, then pushed the down button. She swore she heard a chuckle and a murmured “Thank fuck” from one of the offices they passed.

Arriving just after them, Cherry sat down at her desk, not looking up. “I’ll mark you out of the office for the rest of the day, shall I?” she asked.

“Fuckin’ right,” he grumbled loud enough for her to hear. He punched the down key again as if that would help it to arrive faster. Sylvan felt laughter building at his actions, but she worked hard not to let it come out. He wouldn’t appreciate the humor in the situation right now.

When the doors finally opened, he went to pull her into the car, and Nemo stood along the wall by the buttons, leaning nonchalantly against the railing, arms crossed loosely over his chest, popping his gum, and grinning like a fool.

“Going down, kids?”

Sylvan worked extra hard not to giggle. He really was incorrigible but in the most adorable way. Some woman was going to be so irritated and yet so full of laughter at the same time when he was finally caught.

“Get out, Neanderthal,” TB ordered.

Nemo held up his hands in mock surrender and pushed off the wall. “Good luck getting to the garage, Teeny Bopper.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and sauntered out of the elevator, whistling to himself.

As the doors closed, TB muttered something about, “Thankfully, it wasn’t a fucking confetti cannon.”

“I think this might be worse,” Sylvan said, and now the giggles were getting closer to the surface.

40

JUNE 19TH

TB

He looked at her quizzically, then followed her eye line to the button panel. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. I’m gonna kill him.”

Nemo had pushed every button on the panel. All ten of them.

Then he groaned. Not only that, but the elevator was actually going up first, not down. “Definitely going to kill him. Slowly.”

The lobby was on floor two, so when the doors opened at floor three, they saw Midas standing there. Unexpectedly, there was an explosive pop. TB automatically sheltered Flame in the corner of the elevator with his body while multi-colored paper showered around them. “Goddammit, Midas!” he thundered.

He felt shaking in his arms, so he quickly turned to the woman he held there. “Princess, I’m so sorry, my team—” He stopped short.

Instead of cowering in his arms, she was actually giggling. She looked up at him, a pink rectangle of paper caught in the top of her hair. “Guess you should be more careful of what you’re thankful for.”

The doors had closed and were now opening at floor four. Waters stood there. Explosive pop. More confetti.

TB felt Flame peek out from around his arms, and then looked over his shoulder just in time to see Waters wink at her. “Just for that, I’m not coming in tomorrow,” TB growled.

“Wasn’t expecting you to,” his boss replied as the door closed.

Floor five. Doors opened. Steel. More confetti. He saluted TB as the door closed.

Floor six. No one was there.

Thank fuck that’s over.

Floor seven. BANG! Demon. “Seriously? He got you in on it?” Demon just shrugged and waved to Flame as the door closed.

By this time, tears were streaming down Flame’s face, and she was holding her sides in pain from the laughter.

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