I toss my hair over my shoulder and lift my brows. “Say what?”
“Don’t feel sorry for me.” He moves me away from him for just a moment so he can stand us up, but then I’m in his arms again, straddling my legs around his waist just like I had when I came in earlier. “I don’t want your sympathy. I just want to touch you. I want to taste you. I want to make things right for you so that when you fall asleep tonight—and make no mistake, Lucy, you’ll be doing that in my bed—you won’t think of your ex-husband or your mother giving you shit. You’ll think of me.”
“Okay,” I whisper, a thrill racing through me when he bumps his bedroom door open with his shoulder. The bed in his room is legendary, better than the one in the photo room back at EXtreme, and I have a feeling I’ll become well-acquainted with it tonight.
“And when you go home tomorrow—” he starts, dropping me on the mattress and reaching for something in his nightstand drawer that’s bound to tease me to the point of breaking. “When you go home tomorrow, fix things with your mum.”
I bob my head, moving it until the lump in my throat dissolves. “I will,” I promise just before cold metal closes around my outstretched wrists.
Twenty-Four
Lucy
Repairing things with my mother is nowhere near as easy as Jace made it seem.
And no matter how many times I sneak in quickies with him at work, or how many times I find myself pinned against the wall of his bedroom after business hours, it still doesn't make the next several days in my life any less miserable. I’m so worn down by the situation with Mom that it barely fazes me when the rest of the office realizes that Jace and I are casually … doing whatever we’re doing with each other after Daisy and Theo walk in on our boss kissing me in the breakroom.
They accept it without question, leaving me to go back to trying to mend the wedge I’d created when I accepted my job without telling her everything.
She isn't furious like I expected her to be. Instead, she's hurt. And not so much about the fact that I work for Jace's company—even though she hates that I promote sex for a living—but because I haven’t been upfront about it. She has very few words for me, and by the time I meet up with Jamie for drinks at the end of the week, I'm a wreck.
“You look like shit. Is Susie still giving you a hard time?” she questions as I slide onto the barstool next to her. Releasing a ragged breath, I drag my fingers through my hair, make a ponytail with my hands, and then let the black locks tumble around my shoulders. Jamie gives me a sympathetic look, her bottom lip poking out slightly. “Has she at least said anything to you?”
Biting the inside of my cheek, I signal the bartender then turn to my friend. “Just about everything she says to me is in Vietnamese because she knows I only know a handful of words. Last night, I left my phone in the kitchen, and when she saw me looking for it, she just said microwave, so I guess there’s that.”
Jamie slides her shot of what I'm guessing is tequila between her open palms and runs her tongue from side to side between her teeth. “Please tell me you pointed out to her that you are an adult?”
I sigh. “I told her that, and like I said, she gave me an answer in Vietnamese.”
“She'll come around,” my best friend says confidently.
After the bartender comes over and I order a shot of tequila—which makes my friend do a double take because I don’t usually touch the stuff—I hang my head and sigh. “How’s your week going?”
“My week?” Jamie releases an incredulous breath. “My week has been tame. I mean, I haven’t gotten pooped on, and I have a blind date with one of Dr. Schneider’s friends on—”
Lifting my head, I cock an eyebrow. “Hopefully not with another ass-loving PA.”
“Says the woman whose boyfriend is Mr. EXtreme himself. The ass lover’s fantasies probably don’t have anything on Jace’s.”
I cast her a dark look as I thank the bartender for the shot he places in front of me. “I'm not dating Jace.”
“Mmmhmm.” She rolls her chocolate brown eyes dramatically and mouths a what-the-fuck-ever. “You’ve been sexing up the guy all over the place for the last few weeks, so I’m just going to stick with what I said. By the way, I know you’re holding out on me.”
“We’ve agreed that what we are is … casual.” Because casual is supposed to leave my nerve endings tingling and my heart racing before, during, and after every time he touches me. I tip my glass to my lips and down the shot, wheezing as the fiery liquid rushes down my throat. I’m still coughing when I ask her, “And what do you mean when you say I’m holding out on you?”
“Lucy, the guy makes chrome dicks. You can’t tell me you two haven’t been trying some really kinky, toe-curling stuff.” She sighs, resting her elbows on the bar counter and cradles her chin in her palms. “He didn’t make you sign an NDA for that too, did he?”
Burying my face in my hands, I laugh. Coming out with Jamie is the best decision I’ve made all week—other than finally saying my peace to Tom, which hadn’t even made me feel any better. “Jesus, you’ve been reading too much.” I look up to see her full burgundy-painted lips pressed together. “No, my personal relationship with him has nothing to do with the NDA he made me sign.”
“You and Jace Exley,” she says, then releases a whistle and shakes her head. “I bet he’s incredible.”
Yes, he is, but I don’t tell Jamie that. Instead, I order another shot and focus on ways to fix things with my mother.
My big break with my mother comes approximately three days later, when she comes into the living room shortly after I get home from work, dressed for dinner with her new “friend.”
“Don’t you look hot,” I tease, feeling a lump form in my throat at how pathetic I must sound. I feel like I’m running out of time to connect with Mom—that if I let this go on any longer, we will be irrevocably ruined—and I’m willing to say anything to get her to hear me out.
She spins toward me, blushing. “Really, Lucy?” she says, surprising me because she isn’t addressing me in Vietnamese tonight. She fluffs her black bob and lifts her shoulders. “You’re being dramatic.”
I widen my eyes. “You said that in English, Mom. Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
She takes a seat beside me on the couch, and because there are pictures of sex toys pulled up on the screen of my laptop, I quickly slam it shut. She frowns. “Researching for that job?”
“Yes, Mom,” I sigh. “And I really like my job and the people I work with, so it would make things so much easier if you just …”