“No emergency. Just busting on Stef for getting ready to make a grand gesture and then panicking and leaving town,” I reported.
“What kind of grand gesture?” Lucian asked, opening a cabinet and helping himself to a glass.
“He wants to move here and live with his hot boyfriend, but he got cold feet about actually admitting it to Jeremiah,” I said, still scrolling while Lucian got himself a drink of water.
Stef: Where’s Sloane? She’s always more fun to pick on than me.
Naomi: Sloane!
Lina: Yo, Sloane!
Stef: You don’t think she snuck off for another date without telling us and got murdered, do you?
Lina: Well, I do now.
Naomi: She’s not answering her phone. I’m worried.
Lina: Maybe she’s in the shower?
Stef: Maybe she’s in the shower with someone.
Naomi: She wouldn’t be taking a ninety-minute shower.
Stef: Not alone at least.
Lina: She’s probably working and left her phone in her office.
Naomi: I distinctly remember her saying she had today off. Chloe told Waylay Sloane had plans last night, but no one seems to know what they were.
Stef: Hopefully she’s getting laid.
Lina: We haven’t heard from her since 7:13 p.m. last night. Nobody gets laid for that long.
I smirked reading Lina’s text. I turned the screen so Lucian could read it. “Well, that’s not true,” I said smugly.
“You’d better tell your friends that,” he said, pointing to the next message.
Naomi: Maybe we should go to her house?
“Uh-oh,” I said.
Lina: Nash and I are naked but we could be unnaked in about ten minutes. Try calling her again and we’ll get dressed.
“Shit,” I muttered, thumbs flying over the screen.
Me: No need for a welfare check. I’m alive and well. Just busy!
“They’re going to know what you’re busy doing,” Lucian pointed out, running his hand down my ponytail.
“Damn it.” He was right. “I’ll tell them I’m cleaning the house.”
“Naomi will be over here with a truckload of cleaning supplies in five minutes,” he predicted. “Pick something they’ll all find unpleasant.”
“I’ll go with the truth then. They’ll be horrified,” I joked.
His grip on my hair tightened. “Would you rather spend the afternoon being interrogated by your friends or letting me fuck you?”
Me: I’m having my septic tank pumped! The fumes are powerful! Anyone want to come over for game night?
25
I Will Not Apply a Chemical Peel to My Dick Lucian
It was an exceptionally gray Monday. The invigorating February air was razor sharp as it hit my lungs. I felt awake, alive, ready to greet the day and destroy my enemies.
“Good morning, sir,” my driver greeted me.
“Morning, Hank,” I said, sliding into the back seat of the SUV. “How was your weekend?”
He blinked. “Um, fine, sir. Is everything all right?”
“Everything is excellent.”
“That’s…good.” He closed the door with a look of concern.
I pulled out my phone and typed a text to Sloane.
Me: Good morning.
I frowned at the words. They seemed flat and inconsequential considering the sexual acrobatics we’d performed all weekend long.
Me: Good morning, beautiful.
No. Definitely not. That one made me sound like a lovesick Morgan brother. I immediately deleted the text. What was the appropriate Monday morning greeting for the librarian who had fucked me into oblivion repeatedly?
Me: My cock is chafed.
Sloane: Good morning to you too. I think you sprained my vagina with too many orgasms.
Me: Is there some kind of balm or laser resurfacing treatment for this kind of situation?
Sloane: Repeat after me. “I will not apply a chemical peel to my dick.”
Me: I had two charley horses in my calves last night.
Sloane: Poor baby. Drink some pickle juice and then tell me how I’m supposed to not think about our rabid fucking every time I sit down today.
Me: If I have to be haunted by our poor choices so do you.
Sloane: Good thing we wised up and won’t be making the same mistake again. Our sex parts need time to heal.
Me: Glad we got it out of our systems. I haven’t even thought about you naked at all in the last four seconds.
Sloane: Hold please. I need to get through a staff meeting today without thinking about your “staff.”
She would think about me all day long, I decided with manly satisfaction as I pocketed my phone. Good. Not that I’d give her a second thought, of course.
“What happened?” Petula demanded the second I stepped off the elevator.
“With what?”
“You look cheerful. Did you unseat another senator?”
“I had a nice weekend,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster.
Petula rattled off the morning’s appointments while shooting me suspicious looks.
“What’s with the face?” Lina asked, stepping out of the kitchen. I realized that for once, I wasn’t the first person in the office. In fact, half of the staff was already here, gearing up for the day. I must have slept later than I thought thanks to She Who Shall Not Be Thought Of.
“Thank you, Petula. I’ll take it from here,” I said, dismissing her.
“If he starts to look feverish, I want to know,” Petula told Lina. “I have a medical team on standby.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my face,” I assured my newest employee.
“The mouth part is fighting its natural frown. You’re almost smiling,” she observed.
Nolan appeared behind her holding a cup of coffee and a stack of files. “Whoa. Someone got laid,” he announced, taking one look at my face.
“Don’t make me send you through HR’s six-week sexual harassment training,” I warned, telegraphing a message of dire consequences if he dared mention Sloane’s name in front of Lina.
“He didn’t even threaten to fire you,” Lina stage-whispered. “It’s official. Lucian Rollins has been abducted by aliens.”
“Aliens that had a lot of sex with him. Initiate Protocol D, people,” Nolan announced. Employees nearby grinned at him.
“You’re both fired,” I decided.
“You might want to hold off on that until I update you on that issue we discussed Saturday night,” Nolan said, nodding in the direction of his office.
“This concerns you too,” I told Lina.
Together the three of us trooped into Nolan’s office. He closed the door and dumped the files on his desk. Lina took a seat and crossed one long leg over the other. I remained standing.
“I pulled Travers off the Rugulio background check and sent him sniffing around Felix Metzer’s family this weekend.”
“And?” I prompted.
“He was able to confirm that Tate Dilton was the one who showed up at the Metzer family barbecue. Three family members IDed him after Travers showed them a couple of photos of our mustachioed, deceased douchebag.”
Lina was on her feet. “Tate Dilton. The son of a bitch who tried to murder my fiancé?”
“That’s the one,” Nolan said.
“Apparently he was connected to the man Anthony Hugo commissioned to create the list of law enforcement and informants,” I explained.
“Did he put Nash’s name on that list?” Lina demanded. Her fury was a controlled, icy blast.
“It looks that way,” Nolan said.
“But why the hell would he put Nash’s name on the list and then be the one to try to take him out?” she asked. “Why not just pull the trigger and forget the list?”
Nolan glanced at me. “The best we can figure it, Dilton was a dumbass.”
“Well, that tracks,” Lina said.
“He wanted Nash out of the picture but not enough to pull the trigger himself, until Duncan offered him cash. He could have been playing both sides, doing a little work for Anthony over here and a little something for Duncan over there. There’s no loyalty in dipshit criminals,” Nolan explained.
“It looks like that ties everything up in a nice neat bow,” I said. “Dilton put Nash’s name on the list. Dilton pulled the trigger twice. And Dilton ended up dead.”
Lina’s eyes narrowed. “I wish that asshole wasn’t dead so I could knee him in the balls and wax his mustache.”
“You, me, and the boss man,” Nolan agreed.