Page 21 of Riordan's Revenge

I paused, one hand to the cool floor to jump up. The noise came again. Wait, it wasn’t her, but someone else’s feminine tones. A male voice joined in.

“I’ve come to fix your bedroom light. Wouldn’t want you alone in the dark, mama.”

“I’m so glad you came so fast.”

“Not what most of the ladies say. They want me to take it slow.”

She was watching porn.

Holy fuck.

The man continued speaking. “Like my toolbelt?”

A thud followed, presumably him taking it off. Cassie uttered a gleeful laugh. I pictured her rubbing her hands together and thumped the door with my fist.

She giggled again. “We could be doing this right now, just saying. The difference is that I can act on my problem solo. You’re stuck out there having to listen.”

With a grumble that was fifty percent desperation, I closed my eyes, unable to move away but equally unable to go join her.

The backtrack of cheesy dialogue and sultry music continued, with the porn star guy commenting that he had to strip to his underwear so he didn’t get the woman’s quilt dirty while he fixed her overhead light. Then he groaned in shock as she crept up on him and tugged down his shorts to reveal his dick.

“I’m holding a live wire. I can’t let go. Mama, you’re killing me here. This isn’t part of the service.” The tone changed. “Yeah, that’s all for you. I was hard when you answered the door in that shirt with your nipples poking through. Right then I knew you were a dirty girl.”

Cassie was probably taking notes on the sex act. I strained to hear any sound that wasn’t the film. At last, the guy ordered the woman to let him come on her face and not in her mouth.

I expected another joke. A line about how Cassie was watching carefully. Instead, I picked up a small sigh that was all her.

But of pleasure? Frustration?

I gritted my teeth and let my imagination fill in the gap. She was touching herself for sure. Damning need zapped through my veins, so much, my balls tightened without even a single jerk of my dick.

I breathed through my nose.

Was she naked? Did she have a toy to play with or just her fingers? In my head, all options played out. She’d be shy but enthusiastic. Willing. So goddamned beautiful on her knees.

My dick thickened all the more.

Abruptly, the porn show cut out. I took a sharp inhale, hopelessly turned on.

“You done?” I demanded through the door.

No reply came. No further noises followed.

I waited and waited, my blood still running hot, but Cassie wasn’t answering me now. After long minutes, I picked up the faint sound of breathing, as if she’d taken a nap after her hard work.

For fuck’s sake.

I was charged up still, desperate and on the edge, though I wasn’t going to touch myself. Not only for the sake of being out in the corridor but because it didn’t feel right. I wanted her on me. Under me. With me.

That electricity in my veins shifted to something else. No matter how badly I was attracted to Cassie—a need that apparently refused to die no matter what she did—I had good reason not to go there.

The longer I sat in the cold corridor, the darker my thoughts became.

Anger ate away at me. A bitterness that I’d never felt in my life, not even when I’d realised the reason Genevieve’s dad hated me. Adam Walker had never been kind to me in his whole life, not when I was a kid and not when I’d returned to live with him as a teenager. Yet he’d kept up the façade of being my parent, at least on paper, and presumably for the rest of the family’s sake.

When I’d finally confronted him, he’d laughed in my face.

It hurt to think about. Not his rejection but the child version of me wanting his approval and having no hope of getting it. He’d fawned over Gen, and I’d watched from the sidelines. Mum had doubled down. I realised now that she’d done everything she could to give me what I needed, and I’d loved her with my whole heart. I missed her so badly I was almost proud of Adam for hunting down and ending the life of the gangster who killed her.

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