Page 114 of Impromptu Match

Not even the fact that Fernando in the apartment next door had made zero effort to play his EDM quieter on weeknights. I didn’t care. Several of those nights, I was too busy writhing around under the covers with Holt to even notice the music thumping through my bedroom wall.

We were insatiable for each other. Over the last week, we’d only spent two nights apart. He’d come to my place on Monday and Tuesday after work. I’d cooked for us. Wednesday, he’d taken me to that restaurant he’d mentioned before—the one run by ghouls—before we went back to his place.

I didn’t watch the wrestling on Thursday, and Holt didn’t want to interrupt my sleep any more than he already had—which I was perfectly fine with, I might add—so we’d spent that night apart. But Friday, after the show, we were back at his, relaxing in the hot tub for a while before fucking on a sun lounger.

No balls were harmed in the process.

I spent the entire weekend at his place again. I was beginning to feel more comfortable and relaxed there than at my own crappy apartment. Saturday was rainy and cold, so we spent most of it watching British soaps before heading to the club for that night’s show. On Sunday, we went to Lupe’s Diner for lunch, and on the walk back to my place, Holt darted into a florist to buy me another huge bunch of sunflowers.

I was addicted to him. I was kind of obsessed with him. I couldn’t get enough of Holt Hector. I wanted to spend every spare moment I had with him.

While I was overall much happier, which made work less soul-destroying, I resented the hours we had to spend apart. We texted almost constantly every day while I was in the office. When he talked to me about work, I kept thinking of more ideas to make the wrestling club bigger, better, more cost-effective and profitable, but I didn’t want to overstep. Casually voicing my ideas was one thing, but Holt clearly knew how to run a profitable business already.

It was a Monday afternoon, and the day had been going fairly quickly thanks to the high I was still riding from the weekend. I’d missed Holt last night, but at least Fernando hadn’t played music until the early hours, so I’d managed to sleep well. Just as I was about to text Holt asking if he wanted to hang out later, a message from him came through.

Babe, can you come down to the office after work? I want to talk to you about something.

It wasn’t one of his usual playful texts, which made me pause for a moment before I replied.

Of course. See you later.

I carried an edge of nervous worry about him for the rest of the afternoon, but I was pretty sure that if something had gone wrong at the club or whatever, Holt wouldn’t hesitate to just text me complaining about it. He wasn’t one for bottling things up. I loved how freely he spoke to me, how he didn’t hesitate to tell me anything.

I wondered if it was his way of evening the score a little, so to speak, seeing as he could sense everything I was feeling. Or if he was just so truly comfortable with me that he wanted me to know all of him—every little part. I thought maybe it was a mix of both, and it just made me like him even more.

By the time five-thirty rolled around, I was beyond eager to see him. Before leaving work, I ducked into the restroom to make sure I still looked okay and give my pits a quick sniff. I decided to take the stairs down to the first floor so I wouldn’t have to make excuses about lingering in the lobby if any of my colleagues were in the elevator with me.

Poking my head into the lobby, I saw Seb waiting for me on one of the benches with his usual crossword puzzle book. When I whispered his name, he looked up and got to his feet.

“Good day at work?” he asked as we walked down the short corridor to the unmarked door at the end.

I shrugged, grinning up at him. “Eh, fine. Boring as always.”

Seb still wasn’t a big talker, but he was nice, and kind in his own understated, quiet way. I liked him a lot. And over the last week or so, something had seemed different about him. He was still stoic and a man—werewolf—of few words, but there’d been an air of almost… tense anticipation surrounding him, strong enough for even me to notice. Strong enough for Holt—who was a literal being who could sense emotions, but seemed to block them out when he wasn’t interested in feeling them himself—to mention it too. Only to me, in private, in a passing comment, and I hadn’t voiced my theory on why.

Larkin had seemed different too, the last week, but in the opposite way. Still hyper, at times a little manic, but… more fuelled by nervous energy than anything else.

I was convinced something had happened between them. I just couldn’t figure out exactly what. They could’ve had sex, or they could have argued. Or both. I had no idea.

“So… Larkin working today?” I asked, shamelessly fishing for clues, because I already knew that when Holt was working, Larkin was working. Well… ‘working.’

“Yes,” Seb said shortly as we made our way down the metal staircase, giving me nothing. Then, after a few moments, he added, “But he hasn’t been in the office much today. Off doing something somewhere else.”

I shot him a quick glance, trying to gauge what that meant and how Seb felt about it. Okay, maybe I was a little too invested in whatever was going on around here, but I couldn’t help it. Goliaths was infinitely more interesting than HutSec Corporation, and I’d just spent the day typing up mindless corporate drivel and chuckling at Lance’s terrible jokes.

When we reached Holt’s office, Seb told me, “Holt just had to go speak to maintenance about something, but he’ll be back soon, so you’re welcome to wait in his office.”

“Okay, no problem. Thanks, Seb.”

He opened the door for me. “Oh, and Holt’s buddy is around here somewhere today, so he might want to introduce you to him.”

“Oh.” I blinked in surprise. “Okay, cool. Sounds good.”

Seb closed the door behind me when I stepped inside. I made my way past Larkin’s empty desk to Holt’s office door, and when I opened it, it took me a second or two to realise someone was in the room.

Sitting in Holt’s desk chair was a slender guy with icy blue-white hair pulled back into a bun, eerie black eyes and pale skin that was sunburnt and peeling across the bridge of his nose. He had his boots up on the desk and a tumbler of dark rum in his hand, and was scrolling aimlessly on his phone as I stopped dead in the doorway.

He glanced up and smiled at me, but his dark eyes were intrigued as they trailed down my frame and back up.

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