Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
PINEAPPLE
By nine in the morning, Pizza is trending above a recent celebrity divorce, one political scandal, and a butter shortage in the northern sector, which would almost be impressive if it were not currently wrapped around my mood like barbed wire.
The photographs are everywhere already. Me leaving her place.
My face turned just enough for recognition.
Her address blurred too late to matter. The whole thing has already been chopped, seasoned, plated, and served to the public as if they were entitled to every private thing a woman loses when her body and reputation get caught in the same frame.
The headlines are as stupid as they are predictable.
Pizza ruined.
Flavor betrayal.
Industry darling goes bad.
I have read so many variations of the same tired little fantasy by now that I could probably write the next three myself, and the most annoying part is not how lazy they are.
It’s how much of my morning they have stolen when I would much rather be thinking about the exact moment her voice went breathy in my ear and she admitted I had left her aching.
That part, at least, belongs to me.
I sit at the kitchen island in my penthouse with my phone facedown beside a cup of black coffee that has already gone lukewarm, and I let myself think about her for one long, indecent minute before I force my mind back to the work in front of me.
Her mouth had gone lax when I praised her.
Her pulse had jumped beneath my hand when I placed it around her neck.
Her center had been warm enough that I could feel the need of her even after I walked away radiating through my soaked fingers.
The memory of it moves through me now with the same hot, low satisfaction it carried last night, and if I close my eyes I can still see her leaning against the counter in that little dress—furious, flushed, and moist with the kind of arousal that makes a woman think she hates a man right before she starts craving him harder.
I left her that way on purpose.
That truth does not trouble me nearly as much as it should.
I told myself it was strategy, and it was.
Women like Pizza do not give themselves over all at once, especially not women who have spent years being praised for composure and punished for appetite.
You do not take someone like that by force, or even by speed.
You teach her body to trust the pressure.
You let her hear herself answer before you ask for more.
You leave her with the shape of you under her skin and enough unsatisfied tension in her center that the next time your name flashes across her phone, her whole body leans toward it before her pride has time to interfere.
The problem is that it worked a little too well.
Her texts from this morning are still sitting in the thread, and every time I think about them, something dark and hungry tightens in me.
She was angry. She was embarrassed. Her clunge was a weeping hole, she was restless, and trying so hard to sound like a woman still holding the line.
Underneath all of it, though, there was that softer thing she is still pretending I have not already found.
She wanted me to tell her what this was.
She wanted me to take the decision away from her while still leaving her just enough room to claim she had one.
Most of all, she wanted proof that I was not about to touch her, stir up every guarded, gorgeous part of her, and then vanish the second the attention turned sour.
That last part is where the rest of my morning begins.
I pick up my phone and call my agent first, because public narrative is a blood sport and he understands the need to draw first blood better than most.
He answers on the second ring. “Please tell me you’re calling with a plan and not a sex hangover.”
“A plan,” I say.
He exhales, relieved and annoyed in equal measure. “Good. Because the internet is currently acting like you personally committed a war crime against comfort food.”
“They’ll live.”
“That depends on whether the breakfast panels get hold of the phrase topping scandal before noon.”
I glance at the muted television mounted over the bar and catch Pizza’s face on one of the entertainment channels, all glossy archival beauty and public poise, while some square-jawed host explains to a panel of deeply unserious people that the food world has lost its moral center.
I almost laugh. The whole thing would be funny if they were not doing it to her.
“I want this tightened,” I say. “No outlet gets her address. Any publication running driveway shots or language suggesting trespass, harassment, or stalking gets flagged. I want the narrative moved from scandal to speculation before lunch.”
There is a pause. “You’re serious.”
“Very.”
He makes a low, thoughtful sound. “You care about this one.”
I let the silence answer for me, which is apparently enough.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll get publicity on the cleaner outlets and bury the worst of the frenzy under opinion pieces about freedom of palate or whatever ridiculous phrase people are using to make this sound enlightened.”
“Make it sound expensive,” I tell him. “People forgive anything if they think it belongs in a tasting menu.”
That gets a real laugh out of him. “God, I hate that you’re right.”
“Also,” I add, “I want her left alone.”
His amusement drops away. “That part isn’t up to me.”
“No,” I say. “That part is for legal.”
I end the call and ring my attorney before the coffee cools any further.
Marta has the sort of voice that could ice a lake from three states away, which is one of several reasons I keep her on retainer.
“If this is about the photos,” she says without preamble, “I’m already drafting.”
“Good.”
“You have trespass exposure, aggressive freelance harassment, and at least two outlets veering into defamatory implication. The cease and desist letters will go out within the hour. I’d like permission to be nasty.”
“You always have permission to be nasty.”
“That’s why we work so well together.”
I smile in spite of myself. “I want them reminded that private residences are not red carpets and that making a woman’s home public property because she had company is going to cost somebody money.”
“And the woman?”
There it is again. That little shift in tone people make when they realize this is not one of my usual flare-ups.
“What about her?”
“Do you want her represented separately, or am I covering both names for now?”
I lean back against the stool and look out over the city, bright and polished in the morning light, all those windows holding all those lives no one is entitled to.
Pizza is somewhere under the same sky, probably still in bed, probably glaring at her phone, probably throbbing with irritation and that sweet, stubborn ache I left behind on purpose.
The thought settles low in me like a hand at the back of my neck.
“Cover her if she needs it,” I say. “Quietly. No grand gestures. No press.”
“And if she doesn’t want your help?”
That should have been an easy question. Instead it hits the exact place she got to last night when she talked about being wanted until she became inconvenient.
I hear it again, her voice frayed and honest and too close to the bone, and for a second all I want is her back under my hands so I can kiss that fear out of her mouth and make her understand what I have already decided.
“If she tells me no,” I say slowly, “I’ll respect the no.”
Marta hums, unconvinced by whatever she hears underneath that.
“And if she doesn’t?”
My smile returns, slow and unrepentant. “Then I’m going to be the problem.”
She sighs. “I’ll send the letters.”
When the call ends, the quiet in the penthouse feels too thick for the thoughts moving through me.
The practical part of my morning is handled.
The press machine is being redirected. The legal teeth are already on their way to the throats that deserve them.
None of that settles the deeper thing under my skin, the part that has been hard and hungry since I left Pizza’s place last night.
Because damage control is only half the plan.
The other half is seduction.
Flowers would insult her. So would a slick apology, some polished little speech about chemistry, or any other easy gesture meant to make me look charming while she does the harder work of pretending she is not already halfway undone.
Pizza would chew through something like that and leave the bones on the table.
What she needs from me goes deeper and costs more.
She needs steadiness. She needs follow-through.
She needs a man whose mouth, hands, and intentions all mean the same thing, and who has enough patience to let her learn that without turning her softness into a public performance.
She needs to feel me coming long before I ever put a hand on her, to spend the day with my words working under her skin until every glance I give her lands where she is already warm, already aching, already too aware of what happened the last time I had her listening for me.
I know exactly what I’m going to do before the coffee is gone.
I’m not going to chase her like a man begging for access.
I’m going to give her room to come to me, then make it impossible for her to pretend that choice was ever anything but hunger.
That means no pounding at the door like a horny idiot with a savior complex.
It means I give her enough room to breathe and exactly enough pressure to make breathing around me feel impossible.
I will take her somewhere private and expensive and a little inappropriate for the hour, somewhere she can arrive angry if she likes and leave with her lipstick ruined for a better reason.
I will feed her. I will let her insult me.
I will keep my hands to myself long enough to make her body start reaching before her mouth gives permission.
Then, when she is good and worked up and still pretending she is there to argue, I will put my hand at the back of her neck, tip her face up, and ask whether she wants another lesson in what ruined really feels like.
The image of it is so clear it borders on obscene.
My phone lights up with a fresh alert. Another article. Another photo. Another panel of talking heads discussing the moral collapse of the menu. I mute it and open her thread instead.
For a moment I just look at the last thing I sent her.
Me: Brat.
Me: You’ll pay for that.
The truth is, I don’t want payment. I want access.
I want the next hour with her. I want her in a booth across from me pretending she came for a night-cap while her wet heat remembers exactly how my mouth felt at her throat.
I want to watch her fight the pull of me in public and then fail in private.
I want her so badly it has stopped being an option for her to refuse me.
I type.
Me: Legal is handling the photographers.
Me: Stay off the comments.
I wait. No answer.
That is fine. I wasn’t done.
Me: I’m not apologizing for leaving you wanting.
Me: I am apologizing for the circus outside your door. I am sorry, Sweetheart.
The bubble appears almost immediately, then vanishes, then returns. I picture her glaring at the screen in one of my shirts, her lower lip caught between her teeth while she decides whether to reward me with a response.
Pizza: I am not rewarding that with sincerity.
My mouth curves.
Me: You just did.
A longer pause this time.
Pizza: I am still mad at you.
Me: I know.
Me: Are you still aching too?
Nothing.
The little bubble returns, and hovers there for a solid minute.
Pizza: You are an unbelievable man.
That is not a denial.
I lean back, stretching my legs out under the stool, and let myself enjoy the pulse of heat that moves through me. There is a very specific kind of power in knowing a woman is trying not to give you the answer while her whole body has already done it.
Me: Meet me tonight.
The bubble appears and stays another minute.
Pizza: Bold of you to assume I’m in the mood to be ordered around today.
I smile wider at that, because there she is.
Me: Then don’t think of it as an order.
Me: Think of it as me offering to finish what I started.
Nothing comes back for so long that I almost call it and decide to let her stew. Then three dots bloom. I feel my grin spread.
Pizza: That depends entirely on where.
I already know the place. Small private dining room over the old citrus bar downtown. No photographers. No crowds. No room for her to hide behind the noise.
Me: Citrus Room. Eight.
Me: Wear something that lets you pretend you’re there to argue with me.
Her answer takes thirty seconds and does much more to my pulse than it should.
Pizza: I will be there to argue with you.
Me: Good.
Me: It’s cuter when you think your lies work.
The reply is immediate and furious and, because she is Pizza, somehow elegant even now.
Pizza: I hate you.
I let myself enjoy that for a full breath before I answer.
Me: No, sweetheart.
Me: Remember your lies don’t work on me.
The typing bubble flashes. Stops. Starts again.
When her answer finally comes, it is short enough to be dangerous.
Pizza: Eight.
I set the phone down and sit there grinning at nothing like a man with poor judgment and worse intentions.
Somewhere, letters are already landing on desks with the force of legal consequence behind them.
Somewhere else, Pizza is probably staring at the thread and hating herself for the part of her that is already counting down.
Good.
By five after eight, I plan to have her blushing over the appetizer, furious by the second drink, and trembling under my touch before dessert ever reaches the table.
And if she keeps calling it a mistake while leaning into every filthy bit of it, I will be generous enough to let her have that lie for a little while longer.