Chapter 11 #2
I knew I was going to have to face their ire.
But truly, it’s done now, and they’ll simply have to learn to live with it.
That thought floats me up the elevator and down the long hall toward the suite as a smile quirks up my lips.
I go to take a sip of my now-tepid coffee, just as a strong hand snatches my arm and slams me up against the door of the room next to mine.
The coffee goes tumbling from my hand, spilling most of it down the front of my yoga shirt before landing on the carpet and splattering everywhere.
And while I was annoyed it wasn’t hot before, I’m beyond grateful it’s not now.
“What the fuck, Ezra?!” I shove him back, using the cardboard carrier and coffee that’s still in my other hand to create some distance between us, hoping some of it spills on him in the process. “This is getting way out of hand.”
“Out of hand?” he snaps, grabbing the coffees and setting them down on the floor.
“I haven’t seen you or spoken to you in over a week, Georgia, and I was looking forward to seeing you here so we could work this out between us, and then not only do you show up fucking married, but I have to listen to you fucking him all night? ”
That last part is a bit of an oops, and it wasn’t intentional.
And now that I get a better look at him, he does appear as though he didn’t get a lot of sleep.
Still, he always liked making me look like the crazy, irrational one.
Like, he wasn’t being overbearing or controlling, but rather attentive and concerned for my safety.
Like, he wasn’t being isolating, he just wanted me all to himself.
Like, he didn’t want me financially dependent on him, he just didn’t want me to work so he could take care of me.
If our relationship hadn’t all but been arranged and I had been blinded by love, I might not have seen the warning signs. Possibly not until it was too late.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. We broke up months ago, and I’ve repeatedly told you we have nothing left to discuss with that.”
His hands fly around him. “Bullshit. We have everything to talk about. Goddammit, Georgia. How could you marry him?”
Because I don’t want him to be able to state marriage fraud or try and contest it, I say, “Lenox and I reconnected shortly after I ended it with you and have been talking since. I love him. I always have.” If I was still the Georgia of six years ago, that wouldn’t even be a lie.
He grips my shoulders and gets right up in my face. “You know he doesn’t love you, right? That he’s using you.”
“There is this saying about stones and glass houses and also black pots and kettles. Are you familiar with them? Maybe you can remind me exactly how they go.”
His hand slides up along my cheek, and he stares into my eyes. “That’s not how it was for me. I wanted to marry you.”
My hands plant into his chest and I push him off me. “You wanted to own me. You wanted to suffocate the life out of me until all I knew was you. But more than that, you wanted my money, and you wanted Monroe.”
He growls, running a hand through his hair and making it stick up all over the place from all the product he has in it.
“And all he wants to do is fuck you and take your money!” he shouts.
“Jesus, Georgia, use your brain and see what’s right in front of you.
At least I’m trying to grow our empire. Marrying me makes sense. There is no sense in marrying him.”
Except for the freedom it gives me from you and this life.
“I love him, and it’s done. There is nothing you can do about it now.”
Something about that, as if he just finally realized it’s done and he won’t win this battle, sets him off.
He starts to charge at me, mania dancing in his brown eyes, and I react the same way I would to a predator coming to attack me in a dark alley.
Years of martial arts tell me to take him down, and I do so the fastest way possible.
The second he reaches me with his hands outstretched like he’s going to pin me, I strike.
My knee flies up, and I nail him straight in the balls, my fists at the ready should I need to punch him.
His face puffs up like a red blowfish, and he grunts as he falls to the carpet in a heap just as the door to my suite flies open and there is Lenox wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, his hair wet and unbrushed like he just got out of the shower and heard the commotion.
“Morning, darling,” I drawl, trying to ignore how freaking hot he looks like that.
Hello, wet skin, tattoos, and nipple rings.
“Glad to see you’re finally awake.” I smile brightly at him, and his gaze drops to the man on the floor, still groaning and holding his junk as he snarls out expletives.
“I’m starving, and since most of my coffee ended up on my shirt instead of in my stomach, I’d love to?— ”
Lenox cuts off my words as he grabs me by my upper arm and swings me inside the suite, slamming the door shut on Ezra. He drags me into the living room and releases me, doing a long, sweeping once-over of me as if he’s checking for injuries.
“Did he hurt you?”
I shake my head.
“Did he touch you?”
“He got handsy but not aggressive so much until the end. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do, so I took a proactive approach.”
He nods, pleased with this, but then, before I know what the hell he’s doing, he spins around and storms back for the door. I scramble after him, grabbing his arm.
“What are you doing?”
“You didn’t kill him, Georgia. I’m going to kill him.”
“What?!” I laugh the word. “No. Stop.” I jump in front of him and press my hands into the giant wall of muscle that is his chest. I push against him, but he keeps walking, and even though I’m leaning all my body weight into him, digging into the floor with the balls of my feet for extra leverage, he keeps going, pushing me along as if I’m barely a hindrance.
“Oh my God, Thor, stop! You can’t kill him!
” My feet slide back along the carpet. “He’s not worth the jail time. ”
And since Ezra is the sort of man who would press charges, I take matters into my own hands.
Twisting my body, I plant my left foot into the carpet and drop into a crouch, sweeping my right leg in a fan motion as fast and as hard as I can—because, let’s face it, Lenox is a big guy—straight into the backs of his legs.
His legs swoosh out from beneath him—the leg sweep far more effective than I thought it would be on him—and he goes crashing down to the floor, landing with a hard thud on his back.
“Holy hell! That’s two I brought down today.” I climb on top of him, straddling his chest so he doesn’t get any ideas to try and go for Ezra again. “Are you okay? Can you breathe?” I’m worried I knocked the wind out of him.
He’s staring up toward the ceiling, stunned .
“Blink if you can hear me.”
He blinks.
I sag. “Oh good. Sorry, I didn’t think that would work as well as it did. Twenty years of martial arts has officially paid off today.” I high-five the air but can’t help but start to crack up.
His chin drops, and his bewildered blue eyes meet mine. “How did you do that?”
I shrug. “Legit, no clue. You’re like twice the size of me.
But how cool is it that it worked? Anyway, as I was saying before you decided you wanted to kill my ex, I’m already done with all things Monroe Securities for the day after dealing with two of their finest. And since the coffee didn’t make it anywhere other than my shirt, we should go out for breakfast.” I pull my coffee-soaked shirt away from my chest for emphasis.
“The conference starts in like an hour, but whatever, I can be late or play hooky. I own the company now. It’s not like they can ground me or put me in a time-out for ditching. ”
“You okay?”
“Dandy as a peach tree in the rain.”
He raises his eyebrows at me but gives me a look that tells me he wants a real answer.
“I don’t know what I am. I’m a lot, I think.”
“That’s for sure.”
In a flash, he rolls us until he has me pinned beneath him, his forearms on either side of my head and his body pushes down on mine without putting the full force of his weight on me.
With him like this, so close and only wearing a towel with his body heat surrounding me, and smelling like the shower and like Lenox, it’s nearly impossible not to squirm.
Or wrap my thighs around his waist and grind myself to an orgasm for that matter.
My heart races at the idea and I wonder if he can feel it through my thin sports bra and soaked shirt. My nipples are certainly hard, but I can blame that on the coffee perking them up.
“I don’t like him touching you.”
“He won’t again. ”
He licks his lips, and my eyes naturally track the motion. “I would have ripped him apart. No one puts their hands on my wife.”
Swoon! Bastard. I frown. Because yeah, he made me swoon. Even in jest, which I’m positive that’s what that was. “Unnecessary. Clearly. I took him by the balls. Literally.”
His lips bounce. “Are we okay?”
I force my gaze back to up his because, I realize a fraction too late, I’ve still been staring at his mouth longer than I should be.
“You mean because I physically took you down to the ground or because last night you fucked me six ways to Jesus?” And once again, I have a nervous mouth that doesn’t know the meaning of limits.
His blue eyes smolder, and his mouth twists to the side in a hint of a smirk without actually smiling. “Is that what I did?”
I’m having palpitations. “It’s what I did too.”
“Then I guess I’m wondering about both.”
“If you’re asking if I still don’t like you, the answer is yes. Does that help?”
“That was the answer I was hoping for.”
He grinds into me, and I gasp at the feel of his hard cock, only covered by a measly white towel. He winks devilishly and pops up off me—thank God, right?—and extends his hand to help me up.
“Give me fifteen to shower, and then I want a Vegas-style buffet. One not in this hotel,” I say as I pull off my coffee-soaked sports shirt and toss it toward the corner of the room where my suitcases are sitting.
I shut the bathroom door behind me and start the shower, ready to wash off a night of sex followed by a morning of yoga, coffee, and assholes.
After I do all that, I change into late-fall in Vegas attire—with an elastic waist because I do want that buffet—and then find Lenox dressed in a blue T-shirt that makes his eyes more vivid than the summer sky and low-slung dark jeans working on his laptop from the couch.
“He hires gatekeepers,” he tells me, and my brows furrow. Lenox rises off the sofa and puts his laptop thing in the safe, punches in a code, and then immediately heads for the door, holding it open for me to pass through. Ezra is long gone, but I expected him to be by this point.
“Who are you talking about, and what is a gatekeeper?”
He points to the floor, where Ezra’s body was last seen. “I was right about his open source, and with him next door, I went into his laptop. Gatekeepers are people who protect personal systems.”
I shrug as we step onto the elevator. “Is that unordinary? He is the COO of a cybersecurity company.”
“Do you do that? As the owner and the daughter of one?”
My head bounces to the side. “No.”
“No. Only people with something to hide protect their assets, and there is nothing more valuable than information.”
“So he’s protecting himself. Does that mean you can’t hack it?”
Lenox takes my hand, playing the part of my husband as we step into the lobby. “I can hack anything. I just don’t want him or his cronies to know someone is doing it. That’s what will take a bit more time. I have a feeling Alfie will be even more fun to sort through. He’s smarter than his son.”
“Have fun and all that. If only you allowed me to pay you for your hacking or husband services, this arrangement wouldn’t be so one-sided.”
He twists until his eyes meet mine, the outside Las Vegas sun hitting his back through the glass doors, creating a halo around him. An angel with the devil’s intent.
“I’m paying off a debt I owe to you and your cousins. Think of it that way.”
“I don’t care what you think you owe them. It’s me you have to deal with.”
His eyes search my face. “Dealing with you is only half the battle.”
I smile up at him, batting my eyelashes playfully. “I never said I’d make it easy for you.”
“You’re too beautiful, Georgia. I’m not supposed to think that way about you. This is a fake marriage, but when you smile up at me like that and the sun hits you just right, I start to think about last night and all the ways I want you, and that can’t happen again. ”
Oh. I flush. And then obviously want to keep looking exactly like this forever, but that’s not going to be helpful for anyone. He’s not alone in that. A woman could easily grow addicted to the way he looks at them and how his hands and tongue can’t seem to get enough of their body.
“It won’t, so you don’t have to worry. What happens in Vegas…” I trail off, and he’s utterly unamused. “Will always stay here and never travel.”
“I can’t go down that road with you again.”
I look away, hurt flashing like a flood through me. He means the road where I fell head over heels for him and he felt nothing for me. The road where he betrayed his best friends because he liked the sex and wasn’t in the best of mental places.
I turn back to him, all traces of my smile now washed away. “Agreed. Never again,” I tell him with an assurance I feel down to the marrow of my bones. “So stop worrying all hell is about to break loose.”
Except the moment we step outside, all hell does break loose.