Page 24 of A Very Addicted Christmas

Before I can reply to Akara, the door opens.

Loud voices collide in a jumbled mass, originating from the first-lounge, and Maximoff and Farrow walk into the second-lounge. Hand-in-hand. Maximoff has a phone pressed to his ear and stares at the floor, almost in a daze.

I lock eyes with Farrow.

“Get the fuck out,” he says, “Maximoff has to take a call, and both your clients are high in the first lounge.”

Highin the first lounge.

Goddammit.

I’m already on the move. Akara ahead of me. Pushing through the hallway where bunks line either side of the bus.

I don’t know what I expected to find. Lines of white powder? A bong? Not three girls curled up on the gray couch under a huge fleece blanket. Luna, Sulli and Jane stare up at a TV playing some Christmas movie I’ve vaguely seen before.

“Whoa, does anyone else see that frog with the pipe?” Luna asks, staring wide-eyed at the screen.

Akara and I hang back in the doorway to the first-lounge. None of the girls have noticed us yet.

I focus on Jane. She’s not puking. Not hurt or paranoid. She’s dressed in a reindeer onesie like Sulli. Fixated on this movie.

Jane tips her head to the side, her cheek almost resting on Sulli’s broad shoulder. “You know, I watch this every year, and I’ve never noticed how strange it is.”

“That’s because you’re high now.” Luna digs into a popcorn bowl. “Everything is clearer.”

“Keanu is still way hot.” Sulli grins.

“Most surely,” Jane says at the same time Luna says, “Uh-huh.”

Akara knocks on the doorway. All three turn their heads. Before he even asks, Sulli confesses to him, “We ate pot cookies. Not fucking purposefully. I thought they were organic.”

My brows draw together. I want to ask where they found edibles, but I have a bigger priority. A greater purpose.

Akara heads to Sulli.

I walk deeper into the first-lounge and crouch in front of Jane. Eye-level, my forearms resting on my thighs. “Jane.”

She fixates on me as intensely as she’d been the movie. “Hmm?”

“You good?” I ask deeply. “You need something? Water?”

“I…” She’s a little flustered. “You’re…you. Which is to say…”

I watch her curious eyes trace my hard jawline and then fall lower. Tracking down my muscles to my waistband. Blood pumps hotter in my veins. I’m staying fixed on her gaze.

Do not drop your eyes, Thatcher.

I’m not.

Her gaze rarely roams this freely, but there’s a clear explanation. She’s high.

Give her space.

I need to back the fuck up. I also need a cold shower and a hotel pit stop where I can jack off for a solid half hour. Living on a tour busoff-dutywith Jane is like carrying around an unpinned grenade.

It doesn’t help that I’m pent-up, and I unfortunately can tell my client is pent-up—and I have a gut feeling that she’d be willing if I am. And this is just the beginning to many months in a confined space.

But if I’m anything, it’s disciplined.

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