Xo Novel
9
“We are,” I promised. “I’ll be in touch.”
I hung up and lifted my cell off my desk, swiping through the latest round of notifications on the screen. Now that I had a little more of a handle on the Hooked data, I could focus on the other issue that had been haunting me.
Oaklyn Rose.
I’d had no intention of kissing her last night.
Or touching her face.
Or thinking about her from the moment I’d left her apartment to right now.
But I couldn’t get her out of my fucking head.
When I’d shown up at her place, I’d expected her to be open to the three fantasies she wanted to try and how I’d kick things off with a pick of my own. What I hadn’t expected was the moan that came from her mouth as I brushed my beard across her face and down her neck, even going as low as the top of her chest.
I knew that kind of sensation wasn’t always pleasant and it could be painful to some.
That had been the point.
She needed a warning that I really wasn’t soft and I most definitely wasn’t tender.
But Oaklyn seemed to enjoy it. So much so that she pressed her chest against mine and tightened her legs around me. Movements that told me she wanted more.
That she couldn’t get enough.
That she was accepting the little I gave her.
But once I had kissed her, I’d pulled back, quickly ending what I had started. If she wanted more, she was going to have to wait.
The thing was, I didn’t want to fucking wait.
ME
8 p. m. Tonight. My place.Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.
OAKLYN
Ohhh. That must mean it’s time for lesson 1.
ME
Did you think I was inviting you over for dinner?
OAKLYN
Ha! Dick …
Should I bring anything?
ME
Your body.
OAKLYN
Obviously. Anything else?
“Someone’s talking to a woman.”
I glanced up and saw my sister leaning into the doorway of my office.
“Why the hell would you think that?” I opened my top drawer and placed my phone inside, hiding the screen from Hannah’s watchful, wandering eyes.
“You’re smiling.” She came in and took a seat in front of my desk.
“Hannah, women don’t make me smile. They make me scream. Huge fucking difference.”
“Gag.”
I lifted my orange juice off the desk and pounded a few sips. “What’s going on?”
She shrugged. “I just had a few minutes before my next meeting, so I wanted to pop in and see how Boston went.”
“Declan didn’t tell you?”
“He gave me the highlights.”
I rested my arms on the desk. “Now that I’ve pored through some of the info, I don’t think I can even comprehend the magnitude of this case. The two companies going to war against each other, the evidence that’s been presented, the lies, the data we’re going to have to sift through-it’s going to get interesting.”
“Declan mentioned that. He even said he needs to add more people to the team-he doesn’t think he has enough to cover what he needs.”
I nodded, linking my fingers together. “He’s meeting with Dominick right now to discuss that.”
“You lucky little shit.” She grinned.
“Hey, I didn’t tell you to go bang your boss and start a relationship with him so you’d have to get assigned to a different team. That decision was all on you.”
She laughed. “So out of character, I know. Let’s just say, I pulled a you.”
“If you had pulled a me, you would have ended things with him before they began; you wouldn’t be living with the dude, talking about how many babies you’re going to have.”
She tucked her hair back. “Babies aren’t going to happen until I’m at least thirty.”
“And you just proved my point.”
Even so, this conversation had me feeling guilty over last night, and another heavy dose of regret hit my chest when I thought about what was going to go down this evening.
I shouldn’t be going behind Hannah’s back to pleasure her best friend’s pussy.
I couldn’t even imagine what my sister’s reaction would be.
But Hannah certainly wasn’t going to hear about it from me.
Once we hit lesson five-if we even got that far, which I highly doubted since I didn’t think Oaklyn would even be able to handle lesson one-Oaklyn and I would be done.
Still, I didn’t know if Oaklyn could hide what was happening from my sister, who was one of the best people readers in the world. If I was giving her endless amounts of orgasms-something I planned to do during each lesson-then Hannah would know the moment the two of them got together, reading it from Oaklyn’s expression.
That was something I needed to discuss with Oaklyn before I got anywhere near her again.
“Are you going barhopping with the guys tonight?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I have too much work to do.”
“Lamest excuse ever,” Ford said from my doorway, who must have heard our conversation as he was walking by. “I’ve even got a sitter for Everly tonight. You’re going out with us even if I have to drag you there.”
I laughed at my cousin.
Usually, he was the one bailing on our outings because he didn’t want to leave his daughter or he didn’t have anyone to watch her since his nanny had become his girlfriend.
“I’m not going,” I told him. “I’ve got hours and hours of work to do on this case, and I get dick done at the office because people like you two”-I nodded at them-“keep coming in and disrupting me.”
“You know Jenner and Dominick are going to give you endless jabs for not being there,” he muttered.
Once my other two cousins found out, my phone would be blowing up with texts from them, where they’d remind me that they were actually my bosses, not Declan, and that I needed to put my work down and meet up with them.
“That’s why I’m not telling them until later,” I said. “And neither are you two. Mouths shut, got it?”
Ford put his hands in the air. “We never had this conversation-but let it be known, I’m pissed you’re not going to be there.”
“You know I’m a vault,” Hannah added before her eyes narrowed. “But I still can’t believe you’re choosing work over a night out. Who are you? And what have you done with my brother? You live for guy time.”
I was thinking with my cock.