Page 27 of Between Love and Loathing
“Actually, she just said in the news that she’s excited about the Pacific Coast Resort opening and that everyone should know you two willneverever be truly over.” Izzy held up her laptop, pointing at Natya on the screen.
And Natya might have been right in a way. I’d never look at another woman as openly. She’d broken something in me enough to realize I was better on my own.
On Izzy’s laptop, she stood tall, white dress pressed to perfection, with a small smile playing on her lips. She fiddled with a ring on her hand, and my heart dropped when I saw it was the one I’d given her years ago. Bile curdled in my gut at the audacity she possessed to wear it, to talk about the resort she knew would mean so much to me, to say we weren’t over.
“Ignore her. She’ll learn,” I ground out. The woman wanted attention, negative or positive, and it’s what we couldn’t give her.
“You could tell that woman a lot of things,” Izzy said, her husband’s tattooed arm slung around her neck. Her fingers danced over his bicep as she shrugged at the screen. “Cade could have told me he was done with me, and I would have come for him anyway, Dom.”
“Well, you two are a different breed.”
She smiled like she was happy about it.
“You need to think of something,” Dex repeated. “Figure out a way to make her stop talking about you and the resort. I need to solidify this contract. If they think you two are still a thing …”
“If we just leave it alone—”
“Last time you did that, she almost ended your engineering career and your life, man,” Dex threw back. “Find a girl or something. She thinks you still love her.”
“I’ve found a lot of women,” I growled. “Do you guys not know who you’re talking to? I’m your big brother. I—”
“You set an example for all of us. Blah blah blah,” Dex said without even making eye contact through the screen. I knew he was working while talking, probably like most of us wanted to be doing. “Set an example by getting rid of your obsessive ex-girlfriend. She used to just be bad for you. Now she’s becoming bad for the HEAT empire. And that’s bad for the family business. We don’t need association with her if we intend to go public with our stock in the next couple years and solidify this casino deal.”
“I’m not—”
“He’s right. Listen to Dex,” Izzy said before Cade pulled her back while she giggled and clicked off her screen.
“What Izzy said,” Dante, Lilah’s husband, growled before he disconnected also.
Declan and Dimitri didn’t even attempt to wait for me to say anything, they just hung up too, leaving Dex as the lone caller.
“No one fucking listens to me.”
“Everyone in that resort listens to you,” my brother countered. “You got a whole team listening to you all the time and have a bunch of yes guys. Your family, though, will always give it to you straight. Find a girl for a while so she knows you’ve moved on, okay? What’s the harm in that? You know Natya never wants to look like a fool. She won’t bother you if you’re not single.”
I didn’t respond to that because it actually made some sense.
“Even if it’s only until the opening of the resort. Just figure something out, Dom. Your dumbass heart can’t take another beating from that woman.”
Then he was gone, too, leaving me to face my own thoughts.
That’s when the worst sort of darkness could overtake a soul. I swore and ripped my sheets off, ready to get the day started and put Natya out of my mind.
I escaped to my personal gym and lifted weights before running harder than necessary. I wasn’t running from the thought of Natya this time, though. I was running to get Clara out of my mind … the way she’d moaned my name, the way she’d pushed back with her bakery, the way she’d stripped down in the penthouse and tried to pull me to the bed.
That moment—her standing in the city view and moonlight in front of an open window, nipples puckered for me, pink pussy on display—would replay in my mind forever. So would her saying, “If there’s ever going to be a night between us, it’s going to be this one, Dominic, because I don’t hate a lot of people, but I sort of despise you.”
She’d meant it too. The words had fallen easily from her lips. I’d thought I’d felt the same, but my heart lurched at her words, and then I found myself doing something I normally wouldn’t. I kissed her forehead, “Save your begging for another night, baby. I intend to fuck you so good, you’ll beg for rest.”
She gripped my shirt with her small hands, her eyes already languid. “Why not now?”
I shook my head and smoothed a hand over her cheek. “Go to bed, cupcake. Please.”
Her eyes drifted shut, and I set up water and ibuprofen next to the bed before I left her last night. Now, I stood in a scalding hot shower trying to burn away the memory. My cock throbbed at the thought of her and even as I turned the water freezing cold, I still hardened while I imagined her begging. I thrust into my hand, squeezing my length just as she had the night before.
Why hadn’t I just fucked her and gotten her out of my system?
I knew the answer.
