Page 59 of Break for Me

“There it is. You said the M word.”

“You think something different happened?” She asked.

“I think I intend to find out. I’ll call you back sometime tomorrow, sweet pea,” I said and hung up the phone. I moved the computer to the table and took the wine glass with me to stand behind Trista while she held her gaze out the windows.

“Thank Memphis for me when you talk to her next time,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever stayed anywhere this nice.”

I was grateful that she couldn’t see the scowl on my face.

Thank Memphis.

Thank Memphis for what my money was buying.

I took her empty glass and put my full one in her hand. She smiled at it while I used a hand to sweep all of her hair over her left shoulder so I could kiss her right one.

“You don’t need to get me drunk if you want to fuck me again,” she said and laughed at herself. “I hate you, but it was still fun.”

“What I want you to do is talk to me, Fancy Face,” I said and kissed her neck.

“No thank you.”

She sighed when I put my hands on her hips, and I couldn’t do anything at all to stop my own thumbs from moving back and forth over the dimples in her lower back. The woman had curves for days. Terribly, unholy curves for days that made my mouth water.

“You don’t have to tell me everything,” I said. “I don’t need details. Tell me why they’re both after you. Why is Nate Evans paying my people to find you?”

“I told one of his competitors about a shipment coming in. When and where so they could interrupt it. Caused a big enough distraction for me to steal a bunch of his money and run,” she said.

“That’s it?”

She looked up at me over her shoulder, so I put an arm all the way around her waist to pull her back against me. She closed her eyes and laid her head back against my chest.

“No,” she whispered.

“Tell me,” I tried again. “Tell me about his other son.”

I didn’t even have to say his name and her whole body stiffened. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what that meant for her. She shook her head and moved away from me. She downed that entire glass of wine all at once before she sat it on the table. She didn’t do much of it, but she was very much done talking. I knew what I needed to know from it anyway. I started to unbutton my sleeves. She still owed me a session of begging for my forgiveness.

She took the slightest step back when I went toward her to get that session started and I surprised even myself when I hesitated because of it. I moved slowly when I closed the rest of the distance between us after that. She let out a sharp breath when I put two fingers under the strap of her dress just to run them along the full length of it.

“Jersey, can you —?” She stopped herself to look away from me. “Will you —?”

I waited quietly for a few seconds to see if she’d figure her own way out of whatever was happening in her head. She didn’t.

She wasn’t attempting to make me feel ridiculously powerful by trying to simply ask me a question, but that’s exactly what was happening on my end. She wanted something from me, and her discomfort about even voicing it to me turned my dick into a piece of fucking steel in a matter of seconds just because she was willingly putting me in control of whatever it was.

“Ask me.”

She looked back up at me. “Will you just kiss me before you fuck me up? Not in your mean and hateful, biting, everything is a fight kind of way. Just — just kiss me?”

Probably shouldn’t have told her to ask for what she wanted.

forty-three

TRISTA

It was pathetic in every way, and I knew that. Nothing about this night had been an actual date. This wasn’t anything more than another job to him. It wasn’t anything more for me than another situation that I’d have to escape later. It was about to be another savage fight for an exchange of orgasms. I just wanted something soft from him for a few moments first. The way that he’d touched me while he asked about the past, the way he’d kissed my shoulder, and held me against him; it all had me craving something that might resemble intimacy, even if it was entirely fake and fleeting. I was the master at manipulation. So, it wasn’t difficult for me to see that he was willing to do whatever he needed to try to get the information he wanted. And even after being able to recognize that, I still wanted the feeling from it to continue.

Part of me expected him to laugh at me, or maybe to just ignore me completely. Instead, the crazy predator glint in his eyes softened into something else for just a split second while he came the rest of the way to me, until the front of his body was flush with mine. He was so slow and so painstakingly careful about bringing a single hand up to the side of my neck that every inch of my flesh was pebbled with goosebumps by the time that he was leaning down to softly press his mouth against mine. He pulled his face away almost as quickly as he’d done it. Really, I imagined that was about as much as I could hope for in asking for something intimate and gentle from a man like him. As soon as I opened my eyes to try to prepare for whatever he had planned for his next move, he pushed his forehead against mine and closed his eyes like he was fighting with himself about something.

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