Don’t Cross Mo Ellery

Chapter 1

The first Chicago fire burned the city to the ground.

The second Chicago fire is happening right now, between my legs.

In a good way.

In a very, very good way.

My original plan was just to pop home for a quick birthday lunch with my boyfriend. Chris is on overnight shifts for his emergency

medicine rotations, and this was the only time we could celebrate. I’m twenty-nine today, which is just a handful of panic

attacks away from thirty, and I’ve already had two this morning thinking about it.

But I’m not panicking right now.

Nope, right now, I’m sprawled across our sleek midcentury coffee table naked, Chris is doing mind-boggling things with his

mouth, and I’m fantasizing about calling in sick for the rest of the day.

Hard to believe that an hour ago, I was swearing at the copier. Why do we even still have a copier?? I think, just as Chris does a tongue-twisty thing near my south pole, and I accidentally gasp, “Take that, Xerox!”

He lifts his head. “What did you say?”

God, I wish my brain would shut up for once. “Oh, uh . . .” I scramble for a reasonable thing to have said. “Don’t stop!”

But Chris does stop, grins at me, then scoops one arm under my back and the other under my legs, trying to pick me up romance-novel style.

It’s an adorable idea, except he can’t quite get the leverage right, and he slips, dropping me back on the table in more of

a WWE kind of way.

Thankfully the table doesn’t break. My tailbone, on the other hand, sends out a sharp stab of pain and I wince. Bruised, broken, or some secret third thing?

It’s a good question, but I decide to shake it off for the moment, because there are more important, immediate things to take care of. That said, I also don’t want Chris to try that particular move again—not with his current success

rate—so instead I scoot across the coffee table, I hope sexily, my butt cheeks squeaking a little on the polished wood. He

grabs my wrist and tugs me through our open-concept living room, over piles of hastily discarded clothes, and directly to

the kitchen island.

I figure this signals sexy time is over, and tbh, I’m kinda bummed even though I guess a sandwich might be nice, but then

he swings me around and bends me over the counter, where the cold granite makes me yelp.

Okay, this is a totally different kind of lunch meat scenario.

I should mention that this is not how we usually operate.

We’re bed sex people. Maybe once, twice a week, ever since we first got together in college, when we fell into a routine and kept it.

Which is fine! Beds are comfortable, they’re specially made for horizontal activities.

Honestly, I don’t even go for sofa sex, because (a) it’s a really expensive microsuede couch his mom bought for us and (b) I worry about the cushions getting funky. People sit on those.

But when I got home from work and opened the door, Chris was standing right there, pitching a tent in his pajama bottoms,

and before I knew it, there we were! On the coffee table! And now apparently the kitchen island!

And okay, that makes me think about how I literally just called our sex life “fine” and maybe twenty-nine is too young to be living that

kind of life, when suddenly it’s Welcome to Dick City! and I can’t think about anything at all.

Chris grips my wrists together in one hand, pinning them behind my back, and holy smokes, what has gotten into him, this whole

kitchen counter scenario is very hot, and I’m doing the mental acrobatics of being extremely turned on while also taking play-by-play notes of what’s happening

because hopefully it’ll be Our New Thing. I honestly did not know sex could be like this! I didn’t know I liked this! I’m having a kind of simultaneous mind-body revelation right now—everything is vibrating!

And I guess I mean that literally—because right then, when Chris lets go of my hands to grab my hips, my right arm slingshots

itself across the counter.

And knocks over the terra-cotta salt bowl his aunt gave us that we never use.

Which spills a big pile of fancy salt all over the counter.

And because my brain is not functioning right, and only some glimmer of instinct is still operating, I automatically reach

out, grab a handful of salt, and throw it over my left shoulder.

The way you’re supposed to.

You know, so you don’t have bad luck. Look, it’s a good instinct.

Except at that moment, Chris is, of course, very very close behind me, and I guess his eyes must be open because he screams and cries, “My eyes!”

Shitballs.

“What is this?” Chris yells, rubbing his eyes.

“Just salt! Sorry!”

His voice is about an octave higher than usual. “You mean the cayenne salt?”

Who can keep track of all these fancy salts? “I didn’t want bad luck!”

“So you threw it in my eyeballs?”

My brain panics, bombarding me with questions: Why were your eyes open? You are not an eyes-open sex guy! Was I boring you? Were you thinking about work? Looking around for your phone? But also, if this is a thing he’s into now—unblinking sex—I don’t want to slut shame!

“I’ll get some water!” I yell instead and run to the fridge. Chris’s water bottle is sitting in there, exactly where it always

is. I grab it and run back to Chris, whose moans are definitely more pained than swoony now, and it’s at that extremely inconvenient

moment that my phone rings. It’s on the edge of the island, where I dropped it whilst being consensually mauled.

I lunge over and check the number.

It’s work.

“Shhh,” I say solemnly to Chris, who is sort of whimpering, and then I answer as I open the drawer where we keep the dish

towels. “Hello?”

“Hey,” says the voice on the other end. It’s Ollie, who manages the front desk. “You working remote this afternoon?”

“Yes, that is exactly right,” I say confidently, as if that was my plan this whole time. “Everything okay?”

“Kendra wants you to join the Midwest Tool Warehouse meeting. They just started.”

Nuts. Even though it’s three months away, we’re already nailing down the marketing material for their annual Black Friday

sale. Kendra, my boss, owns our scrappy little agency, and she literally can’t comprehend why anyone would not be working all the time. She works through lunch. She definitely does not have sex through lunch. So of course there’s a

meeting.

I would rather throw cayenne salt in my own eyeballs right now.

“Okay, sounds good!” I say, tossing the dish towel at Chris.

He still has his eyes closed, so it just smacks him in the face and falls to the ground.

“Why do you want to hurt me?” he whimpers.

“Mo? You there?” Ollie says. “Click the link I just sent and hit ‘Join.’ ”

“Got it, got it,” I say to the phone. I maneuver Chris onto one of the kitchen stools. He’s got his eyes squeezed shut. “Stay

strong,” I whisper. “I’m going to flush it out.”

He nods helplessly, and I make soothing noises so he feels taken care of.

I tip Chris’s head back and grab the dish towel from the floor to hold under his cheek, while, with the other hand, I hang

up the call, check my email, click the link, and hit Join. Once the call starts, I’m not totally sure how to do all this eye-flushing

and pay attention if someone asks me a question.

I shove the phone in Chris’s hand and lean over to whisper in his ear, “Video’s disabled, but I’m not muted, so just hold

this, okay?”

He grips the phone in response, and I’m pretty impressed with my multitasking skills.

Speaking of multitasking, I’m wondering if the sex is over, or if we can circle back to it after I get off this call.

Or during? Hmm.

“Thanks for being prompt, everyone,” Kendra says, and I know that’s a dig at me, since she had to get Ollie to track me down, but I decide not to

care. The meeting wasn’t on my calendar. This is fine.

“Ready?” I whisper to Chris.

He nods.

“So what are we—” Kendra starts.

I squeeze the water bottle so it flows directly into Chris’s eyes. He muffles a scream, and then he whisper-whines, “Lemon! There’s lemon in this water!”

“Lemon in water, cayenne in salt!” I whisper-hiss back. “Is anything what it seems in this condo?”

Meanwhile, through the phone, Kendra’s getting louder: “—looking at in terms of Oh. My. God.”

The sounds of chaos erupt on the other end of the phone, and I figure the Midwest Tool Warehouse deals must be pretty incredible

this year, until I hear Kendra yell, “Whose penis is this?”

I cannot believe I’m missing a meeting where somebody’s showing their penis is my first thought.

As I snatch the phone back from Chris and turn the screen to face me, my brain starts putting the pieces together. Not fast

enough, though.

“MO ELLERY, DID YOU COME TO THIS MEETING NAKED??” Kendra demands.

“Whoops, my wi-fi’s going out,” I say, making crackling noises with my voice like it’s an old-fashioned landline.

There’s another burst of chaos as I end the call.

Okay, so my video was not disabled.

Chris blinks his bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes at me in shock. “Did your entire office just see my penis?”