Chapter 8 #2
“Thanks for the offer, but I’m good.”
I hate how I’m letting her unsettle me, rendering me powerless to my emotions.
I’ve fallen in love twice, puppy love when I was a teenager and again with the woman who became my wife.
Diane and I made sense. We took all the same classes for our shared major and became study partners, then friends.
We spent so much time together that the transition to romantic partners was seamless.
Our relationship was what I was looking for, steady and predictable, until it wasn’t.
Now I prefer my single life.
Spencer pouts and blinks quickly, his eyelashes batting in pure innocence. I know him too well to let it influence me.
My breath begins to regulate once Isla shrugs off Max’s hand.
“Ask Max,” I say. “I’m sure he’ll lift with you.”
Spencer raises an eyebrow. “You want me to invite the guy you’ve been staring daggers at since you got out of the locker room?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Right,” he replies through a laugh, obnoxiously loud in this quiet space.
Isla’s head snaps toward the sound, and our gazes clash. One side of her lips hitches into a slight sneer before she spins around toward Max, who hasn’t stopped talking despite momentarily losing her attention.
“He’s a prick. She can do better.”
“Is that right?” A slow, knowing smile spreads across Spencer’s face. “Who did you have in mind?”
I hate that my reaction to Isla Covington is obvious, that Spencer has picked up on it in the limited time he’s seen me in her presence. My jaw clenches to the point of pain. “I’d place you ahead of Max.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”
I can’t stop the fucking words as they rush out of me, “Not your type?”
“You know my type is expansive,” he replies with a wry smile. “Even if I was into her, I wouldn’t. She made it crystal clear that it would be a deal breaker. Her last partner dumped her after he caught feelings, and she didn’t. It screwed her over and stalled out her career.”
What an asshole. Men like that are a scourge on society.
Spencer knocks into my shoulder. “No rule against her dating other people, though, including ones connected to me.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I repeat his words to him.
“What’s not going to happen?”
I jump at the sound of Isla’s voice. Spencer flashes his dumb shit-eating grin at me, loving the predicament this stupid conversation has put me in. But that’s a classic Spence move—to toss a grenade and watch the people around him scramble away from it.
Spencer rubs his chin. “Yeah, Wessy, what’s not going to happen?”
One side of Isla’s lips tips up again, reveling in hearing my brother’s embarrassing nickname for me.
What would it take to make this girl smile? I’m afraid to find out.
“Spence invited me to weight lift with you, but I’ve got work to do.”
Isla looks behind her. “Are you telling me or someone else?”
“What?”
“Not big on eye contact, Wessy?” she presses.
I let out a dramatic sigh and shift the focus of my stare from a distant point on the horizon to the face constantly on my mind. The glint in her eyes reveals she’s doing this to be a brat, to bother me as she has for the last week.
From this angle, my eyes snag on her ear piercings—three stud earrings in her earlobe and a bar that bridges the gap between two in her cartilage, one high on her ear and one midway up the side. Like everything else, it suits her.
“Happy?” I ask.
“At least I know you’re talking to me and not some devil on my shoulder.”
“Too worried I’d influence your main source of guidance?”
“Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you?” she asks. My eyes helplessly follow her movements as she lets down her hair from its ponytail and runs a hand through the strands. “Telling me what to do.”
“Only so I can get you to stop talking.”
My mind drifts to images inappropriate for this moment, a catalog of ways I’d make her stop talking if I had the freedom and her consent.
A hand over her mouth as my hips piston against hers while she sits fully on display on my countertop.
Isla reduced to moans while my tongue works her center torturously slow, causing her entire body to quake with the need to come.
My cock sliding in and out of her mouth, fighting against her gag reflex to take me as deep as she can.
The reminder of her influence over me forces me to step back, eager to shut down these thoughts. I need to rub one out with her on my mind once to purge her from my system.
Spencer snaps his fingers in the space between Isla and me, but neither of us stops glaring at the other.
Could she also be thinking—
No. She isn’t thinking these twisted thoughts like I am. It’s all me, which means it’s entirely in my control to stop it.
I take another step backward, bumping into the wall of the tunnel that leads to my office, and focusing my attention on Spencer. “If you can take care of the ice, I’d appreciate it.” I gesture toward the rink, which needs to be resurfaced for safety reasons. “Cybil’s at the front and will lock up.”
“I thought you had work to do,” Spencer calls to my back.
“Yep. At home.”
After I have the longest, coldest shower of my life.