Page 51 of Need Him Like Oxygen

Lore let out a tinkering little laugh. “Well, I will keep an eye out for books with a lot more torture for you.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” Saff agreed. “I mean, if the main characters still want to have many detailed sexcapades, maybe while covered in the blood of their enemies… oh, who are you raising a brow at?” Saff asked, looking at me. “Like you’re not the biggest whore in this room.”

I wanted to look at Cinna when Saff said that, but I didn’t dare. Not when Saff was clearly a lot better at reading me than she had any right to be.

“I heard he ignored a beautiful woman flirting with him at the pizza place tonight,” Lore said, excited to be privy to some gossip.

Fucking Elian.

He and the boss’s wife were close.

“You?” Saff asked, eyes going wide.

“We had to get the food back here,” I said, waving it off.

“Um, didn’t I hear a story about you being three hours late to an important meeting because you were banging two women in an alley?” Saff asked.

Christ.

The last thing I wanted right that moment was to be talking about the women in my past with Cinna standing right there. Not that she didn’t already know. But I don’t know, it felt different now.

The problem was, I leaned into those stories when someone brought them up. That was what people expected of me. So I couldn’t just shrug it off.

“It was the back of a van in an alley,” I clarified.

But as soon as I started speaking, Cinna turned and wandered off.

Some part of me wanted to believe it was because she didn’t want to hear me talk about other women. The other part, though, was worried she didn’t want to hear my voice at all.

I was trapped there with Saff and Lore for a while. Maybe that was for the best. It kept me from following after Cinna like a lost fucking puppy.

But when I saw her pull her phone out of her pocket and dip into Renzo’s office for some quiet, I went ahead and excused myself from the women who were in a debate about some TV show, the two of them disagreeing about the love interest, Lore loving them, and Saff insisting that the heroine belonged with someone as equally as badass as she was… like the villain of the show.

They didn’t even know I’d left.

I tried not to look suspicious as I made a beeline for the office, pushing the door the rest of the way open, then closing and locking it before Cinna could even look up from her phone and notice me.

I moved in on her, grabbing her phone, setting it on the desk, then reaching behind her to grab a handful of her hair at the base of her neck, angling her head up at me.

Up this close, there was no way for her to hide the way her eyes blazed.

“What are you doing?” she said, trying for snippy, but her voice already sounded thick with desire.

My lips crashed on hers in response, hard and hungry and as desperate as I’d been feeling for weeks, thanks to her.

My teeth nipped her lower lip, dragging a low moan out of her as I backed her up until she slammed into the wall.

My free hand moved out, pressing between her thighs.

“There are people ten feet away,” she insisted, breathless, needy.

“Then you’ll have to be quiet,” I said, sealing my lips over hers again.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cinna

“Just go,” I snapped, cutting the zip ties off of the wrists of a man I’d bound to a chair a few hours before, intent on getting some fucking answers.

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