Page 76 of Kings & Corruption

I was spooning mashed potatoes onto my plate while Luke and Ricky fought over the last piece of meatloaf when Neo swaggered into the kitchen. His hair was damp from the shower, which meant he’d probably been training in the gym on the second floor. I ordered myself not to stare at the defined cut of his biceps in his tank top anddefinitelynot at the bulge on display in his gray sweatpants.

Except that left me nowhere to look but his face, and that didn’t help either.

He really was fucking beautiful. The cut on his face was healing, the bruise turning yellow, but somehow it only made him look more dangerous.

More appealing.

“Can I help you?” Neo asked, looking right at me.

Fuck. I’d been staring.

“The cut above your eye looks better.” It was in direct violation of my don’t-be-nice-to-assholes rule, but it was all I could think of to say.

He stared into my eyes and everyone else in the room seemed to recede in the moment before he looked away to grab a plate. “Thanks.”

I exhaled a breath I hadn’t been aware I was holding. Being around Neo was like dancing across a field of land mines. That singular “thanks” might have been the only un-insulting thing he’d said to me since I’d been at Aventine.

“Stop acting like Neanderthals,” Rock said to Luke and Ricky, shoving them aside to set two more platters of meatloaf on the island. “There’s always enough food.”

The other guys waited around for a couple of minutes after dishing their food, clearly waiting to see if the Kings would claim the living room. There was another media room on the second floor, which was where the other guys in the house hung out to watch TV and play video games when Neo, Rock, and Oscar claimed the downstairs living room.

It seemed like an unspoken rule that the other guys weren’t allowed to take up space around the Kings unless they were invited. Maybe I should have felt sorry for them being treated like second-class citizens, but I’d learned the hard way that you got what you thought you deserved, what you demanded other people give you.

The other guys had signed up to be members of the Kings’ house and all that entailed. They had to have known what it meant.

“Beat it,” Neo finally said without looking at them.

They scattered for the front stairs.

“Love or Money?” Rock asked me, dishing his own plate of food.

I lifted my eyebrows. “Excuse me?”

“We’re behind on Love or Money,” he said. “Want to stay and watch?”

“I feel like you’re speaking another language right now,” I said. “It’s like you’re saying words but I don’t understand what any of them mean.”

“It’s that show where people have to find someone to be in a couple with and then at the end they get offered more and more money to break up,” Oscar explained.

“You’ve never seenLove or Money?” Rock looked mildly horrified.

“I’ve been traveling, remember?” I’d come home because of my mom’s engagement to Roberto Alinari and we’d spent the whole summer planning the wedding. I hadn’t had time to catch up on all the shows I’d missed while I’d been angling for the cheapest plane ticket from one country to the next.

“Riiiight,” Rock said. “Well, grab your plate and get settled on the sofa, because Amanda is about to dump Marcus and set her sights on Daniel.”

“Still feel like you’re speaking gibberish,” I said. I glanced at the stairs, thinking about the half-written paper in my room. “And I have homework.”

“It’ll wait,” Oscar said. “We’ll just watch two episodes.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Neo said, “stop begging like puppies. If she wants to go, let her go.”

That settled it. I guess my truce with Neo was over.

“Sounds great,” I said.

Neo scowled and I had to suppress a triumphant grin. I had no idea why getting under his skin was so muchfun.

I followed Oscar and Rock to the living room, hoping they’d make it easy for me to pick a seat. I really needed to talk to Rock about what had happened between Oscar and me at the Orpheum. They sat at opposite ends of the sofa, which didn’t make my seat selection any easier, so I sat between them, trying to be diplomatic.

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