Page 20 of Sensual Games

It was gorgeous up here. I had no idea it was possible for this many stars to be visible. Too much time spent in the city.

Unfortunately, Mom didn’t answer. I was worried when I called the nurses’ station, but they assured me she was fine and had gone to sleep a little earlier than usual. At least I knew she was all right, even if I hated the idea of being all the way up here when literally anything might happen. “Please, don’t decide to get out of bed on your own again,” I whispered to my phone before tucking it into my pocket and taking a few deep breaths of the sweet night air. We had gotten off lucky earlier in the week. She hadn’t broken anything. Her luck had to run out sometime.

Unless I went to sleep out here on the balcony, I couldn’t avoid Lucian forever. Funny how the idea actually appealed to me for a second or two as I squared my shoulders and stiffened my spine.

Time for the next round in this endless battle.

9

LUCIAN

“Ithought you were going to stay out there all night, Poison.” From my position on the bed, where I had settled in and was now flipping through television channels, I had the pleasure of seeing her scowl.

“Making yourself comfortable already?” Her scowl deepened.

“Sure. What, was I supposed to go down there and rub elbows with everybody else?”

“You know, it wouldn’t break your neck to do that.”

“It wouldn’t break my neck to do a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean I have to do them. I know you’re supposed to be my babysitter around the office, but do you have to sound like my mother too, Poison?”

Her nostrils flared the way they sometimes did when I called her that. “When you insist on acting like a child? I can’t help it.”

“Come on. Why don’t we try to start over?”

She chuckled, standing with her back to the television and blocking my view. Not that it mattered. She was much more interesting. “Fine. I would be glad to. But only if you tell me the truth about how those rooms ended up being released.”

“You heard the girl at the desk. Somebody called and said we didn’t need them.” She rolled her eyes. “Didn’t we have this discussion earlier, anyway? You made a little quip about me and my father, if I remember correctly.”

“I need to hear you say it.”

It wasn’t like she could do anything to me. “Fine. Yes, I made the call.”

“You fucking bastard!”

“I gave you what you wanted, right?” When a tissue box sailed through the air and hit the wall above my head, I sat up straight. “Listen up. Fun is fun, but that doesn’t mean you throw things at me.”

“Fun?” She burst out laughing—high-pitched, humorless. “You are a piece of work. Tell me, what’s so fun about having to scramble around and find an alternative after you fucked me over? Was that fun for you? Because it sure as hell wasn’t for me.”

“Well, should’ve thought about that?—”

“Enough,” she grunted out through clenched teeth, cutting off anything else I was about to say. “You’re not going to gaslight me into thinking anything about this is okay.”

“Now I’m a gaslighter?” I murmured, looking around like I was confused. “I’ve never heard that one before.”

Either she was too furious to hear me or didn’t care to acknowledge it. “I am sorry if you don’t like working around me. I am. It kind of sucks when there’s no choice but to go along with the shit you don’t want to do, doesn’t it? Guess what?” She threw her arms into the air. “That’s how the rest of the world lives. I don’t deserve to be treated like a joke because you can’t handle being treated like a regular, normal person. And let’s not even pretend you live like the rest of us!” she continued while I could only stare at her in disbelief. “You are still nowhere near the sort of life we live. Do you think it’s in any way normal for somebody with no experience to be promoted to vice president of an entire division in a huge company? Do you think that’s really the way the world works for anybody but you?”

She was lucky her sanctimonious bullshit didn’t get her thrown out of the lodge after I fired her smart ass. “Spare me the working man sob story and admit you’re pissy because I fucked with your retreat. I knew you would find a way out of it. And you did, so no harm was done.”

She folded her arms and popped one hip out to the side. Her lips pursed as she looked me up and down. Damn. Even now, staring daggers, she was blisteringly hot. “Sure. No harm was done. If it makes you feel better, tell yourself that.”

She went to the closet and flung the door open. From where I stretched out on the bed, I could see her reach inside and pull out an arm full of extra pillows.

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“What do you think?” She yanked the blankets back on the other side of the bed, muttering to herself as she placed the pillows in a line down the center to separate us.

“You can’t be serious,” I laughed, but she kept working. “You’re splitting the bed in half?”

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