Page 58 of Emerald

Yeah. I’ve got this. Nash is just a man. He’s no one special. I just need someone to give me a good fuck and then I can continue my work and not have that man distract me from it. Excitement bubbles beneath my skin. “Okay, I’m going to try that. Thanks for listening to me.”

“Anytime, keep me posted,” she says as we hang up.

I grab my sexiest bikini, put it on, and head out to the pool. You’ve got this. You have seduced hundreds of men, he is no different to any of them. Nash is doing laps and stops when he sees me.

“Oh, hi, didn’t realize you were here,” I say, playing nonchalant.

“I’m just leaving,” he says gruffly. He didn’t look like he was about to leave as he was in the middle of a laps.

“Don’t,” I say, and that stuns us both. I take a seat on the edge of the pool. His green eyes track my movements, his lips arepursed together, and he doesn’t look happy about me being here. “Are we okay?” I ask him.

“We’re fine,” he answers gruffly.

I raise my brows, that answer did not convince me he is fine. “Are you embarrassed about what happened last night?” Those eyes narrow on me and he doesn’t answer. “It was hot,” I confess. He swallows. Tension swirls between us. “I thought about it as I finished myself off last night.”

“Jesus Christ, Ellie,” he curses, and gets out of the pool, grabs a towel from the railing, and walks away.

“Nash,” I call out to him, but he ignores me. My face flames with embarrassment. Did I read it all wrong? Is he embarrassed? He shouldn’t be. Is he not interested? I’ve never had a ball of anxiety appear in my stomach before. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s obvious that he wants to forget about what happened. That he’s ashamed of it. I’m such an idiot. Who would want a woman like me? Of course, he’s not interested, I was fucking someone else. My job is to be the government’s whore.

What man in their right mind would want a woman like that?

21

NASH

“Boss, we have a problem at the bar,” Jose says over the phone.

Fuck.

I curse as I rush out of my home and down the sandy pathway toward the bar. When I rush in, the first thing I see is fucking Ellie Clark dancing on top of my bar, drunk, in a dress that is barely covering anything on her gorgeous body. I close my eyes for a moment and count to ten as I try to suppress the anger and possessiveness that seems to have grown inside me since last night. Watching her fuck Manuel while I touched myself was hot, not because she was fucking someone else but because of how beautiful she looked. She truly did look like a goddess come to life with how she moved, and the way she dirtily dared me to join her as if she needed me in that moment. And like a fool with a crush, I gave into my basic needs. This morning, I had to go for a run because I couldn’t jerk off another time to images of her naked, my dick was fucking raw. Then the temptress walks out in a barely-there bikini and confesses that she touched herself thinking of me jerking off to her. My dick was hard as steel beneath and water, and I knew I couldn’t cross that line. She hasa job to do and she’s obviously very good at it. Knocking out a cartel member so she could clone his phone and then make him think he passed out due to sex. I mean, if her lips were wrapped around my cock and I woke up to her sucking me, telling me that I had passed out because of what we had done I would have believed her, too. I’ve never met a woman who has twisted me into knots before. She’s come into my perfectly constructed life like a wrecking ball and is determined to smash down my walls with every interaction. There’s a reason I keep myself locked away. Why I keep my relationships convenient. I can’t take the chance.

“What the fuck is happening?” I glare over at Jose who is clapping and smiling up at her as she wiggles her ass in his face.

“Shit, um … here is your problem,” he says with a smirk.

“Urgh. Jose, I thought we were friends. Why did you have to call him?” Ellie whines.

“You’re going to have a sore head in the morning,” Jose tells her.

“I don’t care. I just want to forget. I can never forget. But these drinks are making me forget for the first time in my life,” she tells him.

Jose looks over at me, his brows pulled together, and concern written on his face.

“I’ll take care of her,” I tell him.

“I like her. Please make sure she is okay,” Jose whispers.

Of course, he likes her and now he is going to question me about her the next time I see him. Reaching up, I grab Ellie and haul her over my shoulder, the rest of the patrons boo and hiss at me.

“Show’s over,” I yell at them. They grumble and go back to their conversations.

“Let go of me, I was having fun,” Ellie says, slapping my ass. “I never get to have fun.” I ignore her as I walk out of the bar and head back home.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I yell at her as I walk along the path.

“I wasn’t. That’s the thing, it was the first time in my life I wasn’t.” Her fists stop thumping against me, and she goes slack.

Slowly, I place her on unsteady feet and hold her, there are tears in her eyes. “Why can’t I be normal?” she asks me as the first tear falls down her cheeks while we stand in the darkness outside the bar.

---