Page 45 of Break a King (Five Kings 3)

Hunter

Ileft Lexi sleeping after possibly the longest night of our lives and yet I still couldn’t sleep, so headed to the office to try to get my head back into the problem that brought her to me. I think we spoke, kissed and fucked most of the night, and I have never felt so close to anyone in my life. Lexi will spend the day doing what she must to look into the lives of those closest to me, and I need to look inside my business to discover the leak in an otherwise watertight ship.

Miss. Baxter is her usual blank self, and that’s just how I like it. I don’t need her conversation, just her organizational skills and after a particularly heavy morning, I’m grateful for the lunch she has organized in my office.

Taking a sandwich in one hand, I call Lexi and love hearing her voice on the other end of the phone.

“Hey, baby, I’m missing you.”

“Same.” She sounds almost breathless and I picture her sitting with her hand on the phone and I whisper, “I’m imagining you naked right now.”

“I am.” Instantly, my cock hardens and she whispers, “I’m touching myself.” She moans and I rub my cock that is almost bursting out of my pants.

“Spread your legs, baby and play with your clit, let me hear your moans.”

The sound of rustling and then a small moan makes me almost come inside my pants and I say huskily, “Imagine my lips where your fingers are now, tasting your desire, sucking, biting…”

A loud cough behind me makes me say quickly, “Sorry baby, someone’s just walked in, hold that position, I’ll deal with it later.”

I cut the call and spin in my chair to see Miss. Baxter looking uncharacteristically flustered.

“What?” I’m fucking irritated beyond belief that such a pleasant conversation has been interrupted so rudely.

“I’m sorry, sir, but you have a visitor.”

“I don’t do visitors, Miss. Baxter, you know better than to disturb me.”

“Still an angry son of a bitch I see.”

Looking past my extremely unhappy assistant, I see Ryder watching me with an amused grin.”

“Fuck me, Ryder, you’re like a bad penny.” I sigh and say irritably, “Arrange coffee for my guest and throw some fucking rat poison in it.”

Miss. Baxter backs away and Ryder laughs as he heads inside and takes up a position opposite me. “Sorry, this couldn’t wait.”

Tossing him the other half of my sandwich, I say roughly, “This had better be worth cutting my call for.”

“It is.”

He pushes a printout across the desk and the food stays in my mouth as it stops working. On the paper is a printout of tomorrow’s headline story and it’s a picture of me with Lexi at the charity fundraiser with the headline –

Cinderella meets the Beast

Underneath is a blow-by-blow account of Lexi’s humble beginnings as ‘trailer trash’ and a damning story about how she has been solely responsible for distracting my mind from the job and feeding information back to a third party. They accuse her of de-stabilizing the markets and me for spilling classified secrets by way of pillow talk. They assume she’s a paid prostitute and there are several accounts by women I’ve paid for sex about how much of a sadist I am in the bedroom. It’s a character assassination taking two of us out with one straight bullet, and yet all I can picture is the hurt in Lexi’s eyes as her past once again drags her back to the gutter, making her feel worthless and unworthy.

“They are seriously not going to run this.”

I am so angry I can’t even speak, and Ryder nods. “It appears so.”

“But Dexter…”

“Knows.”

“What do you mean, he knows and did nothing? Dexter Prince is the media King, if he says kill, it detonates on command.”

“It came from his office.”

I stare at Ryder with a look of utter disbelief that is mirrored right back at me. Dexter did this—but why?

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