Page 54 of The Worst Pucking Deal

Sawyer isn’t hanging around, waiting to be invited further into my apartment. He’s already making his own way into the living room. I follow, hot on his heels, my anger at his rudeness and total disregard for my home lengthening my steps.

He turns, his upper lip curled. “You fucking left—”

I hold my hand up, silencing him. “Stop right there,” I whisper-yell. Though I want nothing more than to scream at him, I deliberately keep my voice pitched low. Gail and I have never had any real problems with hearing the other tenants in the building, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to risk a screaming match. “You’re in my apartment now, Sawyer. My home, my fucking rules. And I don’t like people forcing their way in here and trying to throw their weight around.”

His eyebrows shoot up his forehead, and his lips part, but he doesn’t speak. He clenches his jaw tight while narrowing his eyes like he can intimidate me telepathically. I meet his gaze straight on, lift my chin, and place my hands on my hips.

“Got it,” he chuckles, the sudden change in him surprising me. “I only get to make demands when we’re at my place.”

There are many things I’ll bend on, but I will not allow him to intimidate me in my own fucking home. “That’s right,” I shoot back. I don’t like the smile that spreads across his face.

Sawyer schools his expression and looks around the living room. I try to imagine what he’s thinking as he takes in the place that screams home. Gail is big on knick-knacks and keepsakes. So we have Polaroid pictures littering one wall, all of which are of us doing everything from eating ice cream, walking on the beach, to the day she won a beer drinking contest. My home is everything I never allow people from work to see in me; it’s soft and oh so personal.

“This is different from what I imagined your home to look like,” he says. I watch as he moves over to the wall and runs his index finger over a picture from the day we moved in here. “Guess you don’t have a stick up your ass all the time.”

I shrug, refusing to take the bait. “Only when some jerk shoves one up there,” I retort.

He nods as though he agrees and finds my statement reasonable. “Tell me why you left,” he probes, still staring at the Polaroid pictures.

“Because I had to get ready,” I answer, opting for a half-truth.

A smirk splays at the corner of his mouth, and he runs a hand through his untamed hair. It looks wild and free when it isn’t constricted by an elastic band. Just like his beard. “Another half truth. Do you want me to start putting them together like a damn jigsaw puzzle and draw my own conclusions?”

I purse my lips, trying to come up with a deflective retort. But nothing comes to mind, so I say nothing.

“Well?” he prompts, impatience coating that one word when I still haven’t answered him.

Licking my lips, I meet his gaze. “You pissed me off with your stupid demands, and I needed my dress, Sawyer. There’s nothing else to it.”

At the mention of his demands, his eyes leisurely peruse my robe covered body. He isn’t even trying to hide the way he studies my bare legs all the way up to my mid-thigh, where the fabric covers the rest of me. The belt is keeping the robe mostly closed, but my cleavage is still on display. Is he aware he licks his lips and that his pupils widen? Clear signs of arousal.

I momentarily consider distracting him with another blowjob. Definitely not because I regret not taking my time the last time I had him in my mouth. But more to get rid of the tension that’s building in the room. I decide against it and tell myself it’s because he took them off the table.

It feels like I’m being doused in cold water when he rips his gaze away and says, “Okay,” like he isn’t affected at all. “I need to go home and change. Pick you up in an hour or so?”

“Fine,” I say, reluctantly.

Sawyer slowly moves closer until our bodies brush against each other, and he bends down to rasp into my ear, “Don’t wear any underwear. Those sponsor events are boring as fuck, so I plan on making you keep your promise tonight.” I shiver as his lips graze the shell of my ear.

“We can’t,” I squeak, hating the effect he has on me. “The whole point of living this lie is to endear you to the sponsors.”

He chuckles darkly. “Then we better not get caught, bunny.”

I stand there, gaping and frozen in place as he leaves and bounces down the stairs. I’m feeling both schooled and… I don’t know how to describe the way he’s managed to unsettle and excite me with just a few words.

This isn’t going how I want it to at all. And what’s worse is that this isn’t me. I’m in charge of my career, and the way people see me. Only very few people know the real me. Gail’s probably the one that’s got the closest. With her, I don’t have to wear a mask of indifference. She’s seen me laugh at silly things, cry at movies. During all our years of friendship, there’s only one thing she didn’t know; the truth about my family.

I hate how much Remus’ presence has thrown me and my world off kilter. In barely any time at all, everything has changed. My best friend won’t talk to me. I might have managed to make Fabian my ex husband by marrying Sawyer, but it’s not enough. The world still needs to know, and then he’ll need to come to the Vatican with me, so we can stand in front of the Senate. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I’m winging it, one shitty decision at a time.

My legs shake and I feel like they might give out at every moment as I stagger back to my room. I look longingly at the green dress, but instead of putting it on, I lie down on my bed. I need a few minutes to calm myself down before getting dressed.

Every time I’ve wanted something big in my life, I’ve attacked it in stages. When I decided I wanted to be free of my family, I didn’t approach my uncle straight away. I took my time, and came up with a plan for how and when to present it to him. Until then, I let my entire family, my parents included, think I was fine with my marriage. It wasn’t until my seventeenth birthday that I asked my uncle for my freedom.

There are two paths to take in my family; either become my uncle’s protégé at fifteen, which basically means you sign up to get trained by him, and have to follow the plan he lays out for you. Some of my siblings and cousins went down this path, all of them wanting the chance of being the next head of our family. Since I had no such aspirations, I chose path number two, and my uncle and parents chose a husband for me; Fabian. We got married on my sixteenth birthday, which was the single worst day of my life.

My family dabbles in many things, but the biggest is that almost every lead politician is a Russo in blood. Not just in Italy, but all over the world. And Fabian, who was in with the current Prime Minister of Italy at the time, was pushing his own agenda. He allowed deals my uncle worked against. When I got proof of that, I used it to barter my way to ten years of freedom, all with my uncle’s blessing and funding.

I guess that’s the blessing about your husband seeing you as nothing but a stupid little girl. For Fabian, his arrogance became his downfall, or so I thought. It’s why I can’t understand why or how he got a seat on the Senate. He should have been ousted for going against my uncle’s orders.

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