Page 39 of Little Devil

I smack Xander’s chest to get him to move and jump out of bed, quietly running to my bathroom to grab my silk robe from the hook on the back of the door. I throw it on over my shoulders and scramble to collect our discarded clothes from the floor, throwing them into my closet before shutting the door to hide them. I turn around to check the room and tie my robe around my waist, gritting my teeth at Xander when I catch him grinning at me with his arms folded beneath his head and his hard dick resting on his stomach.

Fuck me, he’s.. dead.

So fucking dead if my mom catches him in here.

He opens his mouth to say something and I grab a fist full of his hair, pushing him off the bed to drop him down behind it. “Stay there.”

“Fuck, ow, baby–”

I smack him again to shut him up and cover his body with the blanket, quickly tossing the unused condom from the mattress before I move to open the door.

She’s never home on weekends, barely even here on weekdays, and yet the one time she decides to show up at my bedroom at nine am on a Sunday morning just so happens to be the one time I’m hiding a boy in here.

The same boy I let fuck me senseless last night after knowing him for exactly three weeks.

Fucking hell, this is mortifying.

“I’ve been calling you for ten minutes,” my mother says, dressed in a knee length navy blue dress with her hands propped on her hips. “Why aren’t you up yet?”

“Sorry,” I say lamely, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe to block her view of my bed.

“What happened to your hair?”

“I, uh.. went to the beach last night,” I admit, inwardly bracing myself for the fallout. “It got wet.”

“In the sea?!” she screeches. “What on earth is wrong with you? Do you know how disgusting that is?”

“It’s just salt water, Mom,” I mutter, self consciously lifting my hand to finger the tangled ends. “It’ll be fine as soon as I wash i–”

“Don’t bother,” she cuts in, pulling her phone out from her purse to tap away on it. “I’ll call Gabriella and have her come by to give you a deep condition. She can color your roots for you while she’s here. You should have had those done two weeks ago, at least.”

My jaw ticks and I cross my arms over my chest, silently watching her while she makes her call.

I’m naturally blonde so you can barely see my roots unless you look really closely, but I don’t bother defending myself against the never wrong Elizabeth James.

I already know how that game works, and I never win.

She hangs up on our stylist and I glance over my shoulder, discreetly checking Xander’s still out of sight before turning back to her. “Are you here to stay?”

“No, I just wanted to talk to you about this Washington nonsense before I leave for New York this afternoon. Are you free for an early lunch at eleven thirty?”

I swallow and blink the stupid tears from my eyes, mindlessly nodding my agreement. “Sure.”

“Don’t look at me like that, JJ,” she huffs, rolling her eyes in annoyance. “A career in phot–”

“Mom,” I hiss, reluctantly telling her what she wants to hear to shut her up. “I’m working on my application essay to Princeton, okay? I’m doing everything you’ve asked of me. Can we please just talk about this later?”

“Why are you acting so strange?”

“I’m not,” I lie, but my cheeks are on fire and I wouldn’t be surprised if she could see my pulse hammering against the side of my neck.

“I talked to Noah last night,” she informs me, scanning my face to check my reaction. “He told me there’s a new boy at school who’s been bothering you, harassing you, even. Is that true?”

Jesus Christ.

“No.”

“Are you sure?” she asks, clearly not buying it. “Because we can always get a restraining order if it’s an issu–”

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