Chapter 7
Callie
Thank God I’d put Dottie outside before he came. I was sure he would go mental if he found Dottie inside the house. I wasn't taking any chances.
There were more smoke alarms upstairs, but he started in the kitchen. He stood on one of our dodgy chairs, reaching up to open the smoke detector.
Didn’t those things have a little button you could press without taking them apart?
My brain wasn’t functioning. I’d become addicted to my new vibrator, and it was seriously impacting my sleep schedule.
And it didn’t help that he’d turned up in tight jeans, perfect butt cheeks, and bare arms. When did arm hair become sexy?
I wiped the counter again even though it was already clean, then filled the kettle.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” I squeaked—then cleared my throat and tried again. “Tea?”
“Sure,” he purred. “A touch of milk and one sugar.”
My eyes trailed down his body as the flashbacks from that night in his kitchen hit me.
Yeah, no wonder that woman had been practically dangling from the ceiling.
I grudgingly dragged my gaze away from his ass and opened the fridge to sniff the milk discreetly.
Hopefully, it was Melissa’s.
While I made myself a poor woman’s black tea, he climbed down from the chair.
“So, what do you actually do for work?” I asked, adding some milk to his mug.
“I’m a penetration tester.”
The spoon clattered on the counter, and I swung around to face him.
“You’re a—sorry, what?” I blinked at his smirking face.
He had to be pulling my leg—penetrating what, exactly?
Who was he penetrating?
“Cybersecurity. I test how easy it is to break into systems. Legally,” he said, before pausing.
“But yeah. That’s the actual term.”
“Who the hell came up with that?!” I spluttered, trying to push all the nasty images out of my head.
He shrugged.
“I happen to love penetration.”
I began to hyperventilate, so I turned away to stir his tea—too vigorously. It swirled over the edge and spilled onto the counter.
“Uh-huh,” I muttered.
Of course he was an expert penetrator—on both professional and personal levels.
The only thing penetrating me was a vibrator on Klarna.
Is this life?
Would it always be so unfair?
He moved behind me, his hand curling around to take the tea.
I froze.
His arm brushed mine—bare skin against bare skin—and I shivered.
It was just the wet hair making me cold, I told myself. Just the draft from the window. Nothing more.
But deep down, I knew.
I was a filthy liar.
When I lifted my head, I spotted Dottie in his garden.
He’d jumped up onto his windowsill.
Fully on display. Staring right at me, like I was the traitor—for kicking him out while the sexy landlord came over.
I grabbed my tea just as Alistair turned away from the window.
“Why don’t we have our tea in the living room?” I said quickly, already halfway to the door.
He sat across from me, his eyes lazily dragging up my crossed legs.
What would Melissa do?
He took a sip of his tea, leaned back against the couch—and spread his legs wider.
Yeah. I went there.
I looked down at his denim-covered crotch.
“What are you studying?” he asked.
Your big dick.
“Accounting and finance,” I said, forcing my eyes upward.
I needed to observe Melissa in the wild.
Her natural habitat.
The local bar, where drinks got stolen and men lost their dignity.
“It sounds as exciting as my course,” he said with a smile.
I nodded, silently hoping the tea wouldn’t stain his pearly white teeth.
“Does your job make you grumpy?” I blurted out.
“Sometimes,” he said with a shrug. “I like rules and order.”
His rich brown eyes looked warmer when he wasn’t frowning.
“What do you do to people who break your rules?” I asked, bolder than I felt.
He stared at me for a moment, and the silence grew thick.
“You don’t want to know.”
I didn’t have a rebellious bone in my body, but somehow, he made me want to break every rule—just to find out what he’d do.
“What if I do, Mr Graves?” I asked, layering on the bravado I didn’t feel.
He took a slow sip of his tea.
No slurping—thank God. Slurpers brought out my violent tendencies.
“Well,” he drawled, setting the mug down, “you come around to mine anytime you want to find out. But you’d best be prepared… because I won’t go easy on you.”
My mouth went dry.
“Is that a warning or a promise?”
He smiled.
“Both.”
For once, I wanted to stop playing it safe.
To throw caution to the wind.
And be a very, very bad girl.
“Are you going to break my rules, Callie?” he asked, tapping his fingers on his thigh.
I already had, but I wasn't throwing Dottie under the bus.
I pushed my glasses up with my middle finger and smiled when his eyes narrowed in on the gesture.
“I would never do such a thing,” I said sweetly.
A lie, obviously.
But I liked the way his jaw ticked, like he was deciding whether to call me on it—or bend me over his rulebook.
I could feel it in the air. The heat. The tension. The way he sat straighter and the slight flare of his nostrils. His dark eyes gleamed before he blinked.
“Little girl, you’re not ready for what I’d do to you,” he said softly.
“Little girl?” I said, pursing my lips at the gauntlet he’d just tossed between us.
He lifted his tea in triumph.
“To be fair, you look good for a man double my age.”
He scowled.
“Your maths is terrible. You’d be eighteen if you were half my age.”
I blinked at him, stunned.
He knew how old I was.
“Okay, Grandpa,” I said, recovering quickly.
Thirty-six years old, but at times he acted double his age.