Page 79 of Inked Adonis

God help anyone who tries to take her away.

27

NOVA

“Hello? Hope? Ms. Hope Levy?” I wave a chocolate croissant under her nose. “Are you still with me?”

Hope drags her eyes from her laptop for the fifth time in the last five minutes. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I’m here.”

I shake my head. “A human-shaped creature that looks like Hope is here, but you must not be Hope. Because the Hope I know would’ve called violent dibs on this chocolate croissant before I even opened the lid.”

To make up for being gone the last two weeks—and the fact that Sam made me fifteen minutes late on my first official day back in the Hope’s Helpers office by pinning me to the shower wall and eating me out until I cried—I came armed with pastries from La Cantina to woo my best friend into forgiving me for my absence.

So far, she’s shown very little interest.

She finally rips her gaze away from the screen, but her usual megawatt smile is dimmed to energy-saving mode. Before I canquestion it, she takes a deliberate bite of the croissant. “Fine. I’m here. Tell me about your billionaire sexcation.”

“There she is.” I sink into the chair across from her desk. “The fact that it took you this long to ask is concerning. Usually, you’re foaming at the mouth for details about my love life.”

She smiles in a way that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. But before I can ask about it, she leans forward. “So? Does he have super-secret bedroom moves unknown to those of us who tightrope the poverty line? I bet the sex ed at his private school was really thorough.”

“On second thought…” I check the nonexistent watch on my wrist. “Oh, my, would you look at that? I have a very important schnauzer walking appointment.”

“That’s not for another hour. Stop trying to get out of this and talk to me. How are things with Samuil?”

Just the mention of his name makes my face hot. I take a bite of my strawberry cream cheese danish to give myself time to come up with…somethingto say. Something that isn’t me jumping on her desk and recounting every detail of the bath we shared last night. Or the car ride the day before. Or, or, or…

Then again, Hope might actually love that. All of it.

“Things with Sam are… good.”

Hope flops back in her seat like I shot her. “‘Good?’You abandoned me for two weeks with a hot billionaire, and you’re gonna sit here and tell me things are ‘good’? No. No way. Unacceptable.” Before I can respond, she reaches across the desk and steals my pastry away.

“Hey!”

“Details earn back your breakfast. I don’t make the rules; I just enforce them.”

“I paid for those!”

“And I had to walk Mrs. Crenshaw’s demon-spawn hairless cat while you were gone.” She takes a vindictive bite. “Life isn’t fair. Spill.”

Mrs. Crenshaw’s cat is indeed creepy. Also, it hates walks. Because—and I’m not sure Mrs. Crenshaw and her coke bottle glasses know this—it’s a cat. But she pays premium rates to have someone shepherd her trembling, naked gremlin down the sidewalk, so I live with it.

“Fine,” I relent. “We had sex.”

Hope swats my answer away with a bored hand. “Obviously! If you’d ghosted me for two weeks without getting laid, I’d fire you on principle.”

“We need an HR department,” I mutter. But Hope just waves my kidnapped breakfast back and forth like the hands of a ticking clock. I groan. “I’m moving in with him!”

The danish hits the floor with a sad splat.

“You dropped it!”

But before I can utilize the scientifically-sound, germ-free five-second rule, Hope hurls herself across the desk and grabs me by the shoulders. “Youwhat? Moving in, like, together? You’re living together? With him?!”

“Yes, Hope. That’s generally what moving in together means. He’ll be there. I’ll be there. Sometimes, we might even be in the same room.”

Hope screams.

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