Page 3 of Tied

CHRIS

“God dammit, Khaleesi! I don’t care if you’re having a six-headed dragon fall out of your cooch! I need you here!”

“I am a queen, and I love the pop culture reference, but Chris, you’ll be fine. You were fine before me and my awesomeness, you’ll be right as rain without me. Now suck up those tiny man balls and go be the governor I built you to be.”

“Jesus. Really? You had to go there? Reminding me that I have a job to do is a low blow, woman. Thanks, Carli Crown,” I quip.

I can almost hear the exasperated sigh through the phone. “Chris, man up. And I’m not a Crown.”

“Close enough,” I mutter.

“I heard that. Look, I can’t come there. I bloody wish I could, but I can’t. One, because I’m starting to look like a house, and two, Jamieson won’t let me out of the bed.”

I snicker.

“Get your mind out of the gutter. Jeez! Okay, so what’s the dilemma that has your sparkly girl bits in a twist?”

“Fine. I have to go to a big corporate function in New York in two days—”

“And?”

“And, Elaine is off in Peru for some fungus convention.”

“Ew. That’s a vision I don’t need.”

“Trust me, I know. But she won’t be back in time for us to go together, and you know how I get in crowds—”

“How you get in crowds, in public, and around hot as fuck men. Just admit it, Chris, you’re a whore. You’re going to have to step out of that closet sooner or later, and it might as well be in New York. Elaine can’t always be there for you, and I can’t be around anymore. With everything here, and the Crown’s still hunkered down…”

Pausing, she yells, “Yes! I mean you, Wyatt! Now stop torturing that throttle and reach for your own junk. I’m sure it could use a good tug.” As she comes back on the line , I hear Wyatt Crown yelling obscenities at her in the background. “Ignore him, I’m important right now.”

“Carli, I’m not good at this. Maybe Jamieson would let you out…like a hall pass.”

“Yeah, that’s a bad reference. Hall pass and a Crown don’t compute. Come on, you can’t tell me that you’ll be that bad in New York that you need a chaperone? You can curb your desires for a few nights by staying off the radar, can’t you?”

Don’t I wish. “What if I bribed you with sparkly diamonds and stacks of hundred dollar bills?”

“I have more than enough of that shit now. Every time Jamieson thinks he’s screwed up, there he is with a new bauble.”

Pouting slightly because I can’t sway her, I try a different tactic. “Don’t they have to come home to care for Crown Industries? Haven’t they been missed? Isn’t there a race or something coming up? Please tell me there’s a race coming up.”

She laughs. I’m glad she’s amused. “Chris, Wyatt isn’t racing because of his damaged wrist. Jamieson has been sidelined indefinitely, and if he thinks to even try to hit a slope, I’ll strap his balls to the board after I attack his junk with a meat grinder.”

That’s a picture that even I’m fearful of.

“And the only one who does need to go home is the one packing and leaving today, thank fuck.” Pausing again, she addresses a Crown in her midst. “No, of course I love you, China. But I can’t handle your wild tantric monkey sex every night with Risen.”

That has to be the busiest and scariest hotel to stay in right now. All the Crown’s, Carli’s sisters, and the other halves, they must keep the staff teeming with wild ideas for the bio’s they’ll write. And even though I’m missing Carli and her amazing skills at keeping me out of the limelight, I give her credit that she’s dealt as well as she has. Her life has been insane over the past few months. She left the States unwillingly to become the head of her Japanese mafia family. She was shot, almost died, is pregnant with Jamieson’s twins, and is prepping for her best friend’s wedding to Jamieson’s little brother, Wyatt.

And I thought my life was crazy.

Resigning myself to the fact that there’s no way to drag her back here to help me, I switch tactics and tell her, “I miss you.”

“I miss you too. No one can make me wonder why I need my car cleaned quite like you.”

“You’re not going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Fuck no. Until you tell me why you had it cleaned, and why I found a feather boa in it, you’ll never be off the hook, Chris.” I hear commotion in the background. “I gotta go. Just remember, cock in a sock—no glove, no love.”

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