I wondered if he realized how revealing that was. Most people his age—hell, most peoplemyage—were permanently attached to their phones. “We could walk back down,” I suggested.
He leaned forward again, another flirtatious smile playing on his lips. “I have a better idea. Let’s go up to my rooms.”
Suddenly his plans were becoming clearer. “I don’t think that’s a great idea.” My dick did, sure. But that was the problem. If we got anywhere within reach of a bed, I might just lay him down on it. Whatever else he was, Miller Beaumont was incredibly tempting, coming on strong, and I hadn’t gotten laid in weeks.
“How come it’s not a great idea?” he pouted. “The texts sync with my laptop. You can read them on my computer. Why, what did youthinkI meant?”
I held his gaze for a second and then I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
So did he. He dropped the flirty twink act completely, and for a moment I saw the real him: just a young man enjoying his life, who maybe really had been a little worried about his sister, but had been reassured by her texts this afternoon. And onceIsaw those texts, maybe…maybe I could lay this business to rest and flirt back a little.
I slid out of the booth. “Okay, Trouble,” I said. “Take me up to your room.” So maybe I’d started the flirting a little early. He reallywastempting.
He shot out of his seat and grabbed my hand. “Nowyou’re talking.”
CHAPTER10
JACK
Miller’s rooms—plural—wereon the second floor, down a series of hallways and corridors that made my head spin. Redwood Manor was bigger, but it was laid out in a simple floor pattern that made sense. This place had so many staircases and hallways and decorative features that I lost all sense of direction. Once we passed a middle-aged woman who hurried away as though we were radioactive, even though Miller called out, “Hey, Mrs. K!” in greeting as we walked.
The way he sent conspiratorial looks at me over his shoulder only made me hungrier for him. Something about him went straight to my head, and I couldn’t stop looking at his lips when he turned his face.
And his ass, God help me. I couldn’t stop looking at that, either. It was a thing of beauty, curved and high, his pants hugging each cheek in turn as he walked.
Lucky pants.
He stopped before a set of double doors and entered a code in the alarm panel set into the wall. “Helps keep the riff-raff out,” he told me with a wink, pulling me into a whole new wing of the house. “By which I mean, my father. And my close personal acquaintances out there who come over to party.” He nodded in, I assumed, the direction of the pool.
He had what he called “his own space,” if that space were the size of the Rockefeller Center. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating—but itwasa whole house worth of rooms, including a kitchen, a room for TV and games that I could see coming off the living area, and a bedroom that, even from just a brief passing glance, looked twice the size of my apartment.
He led me into another room that looked like a rainbow had exploded inside it. Coloreverywhere—on the walls and floors and even the ceiling, a fresco showing two men with impressively large erections reaching lazily toward each other, like Michelangelo had gotten high while painting the Sistine Chapel and decided to portray his personal sexual preferences.
And color was everywhere else I looked, too: paint spatters of every hue covered a long, wide table where there were several canvases stacked face-down. There were easels spread around the room, but again, all but one or two canvases were turned around, hidden from view. Taking up the end wall was a bank of pigeonholes and drawers, each crowded with paint tubes, pencils, paper, brushes…
A strange shock of familiarity hit me. One of my Vegas cousins, a gifted artist and an art dealer, had a room much like this. Based on the one or two paintings I could see thathadn’tbeen covered up—not to mention that aesthetic expression of lust laid plain across the ceiling—so was Miller Beaumont.
Goddamnit. Talented people were a weakness of mine.
“This is my art room,” he said, tugging my jacket off my shoulders and hanging it up on a hook on the back of the door. Thecloseddoor. “We’ll havemuchmore privacy in here,” he went on, pushing me toward a small desk in the corner, and then into the chair. His hands were on my shoulders, and he leaned down so his mouth was level with my ear. “I mean, if you need to ask anyawkwardquestions.” On my shoulders, his hands squeezed, massaged. “Go on. Open it up.”
I reached forward to lift the lid of his sleek laptop. It came to life on a paused close-up of a very large cock about to enter a glistening asshole.
“Well, this is a little embarrassing,” he purred.
Could he see my amusement reflected in the screen? “Yeah, you sound mortified,” I said, and minimized the window. “The texts?” I rolled up my sleeves, reminding myself once more that I was at work.
No matter how talented and tempting and titillating Miller Beaumont was—and oh, God, hewas—I had work to do.
“You need to learn to have some fun now and then, JJ,” he said, as though reading my mind. He leaned over me, tapped something on the trackpad, and brought up his messaging app. “There.”
I couldn’t help running my eye down the list of contacts on the left-hand side before turning my attention to his sister’s texts.AnnieandNateappeared at the top.Dadwas represented low down in the list, but I couldn’t see aMomor aMichelineat all in the list, although she might have been further down. The remaining recent contacts were a long list of male names with question marks next to them, as though he wasn’t sure he’d gotten the monikers right.
Why the fuck are you snooping on this guy’s texts?I asked myself, and turned my attention to his conversation withAnnie.
I read the exchanges between them that were displayed on the screen, then scrolled a little way back, but as Miller had said, there wasn’t much there. Still, the very last text from her—an emoji with its tongue out—was the only emoji she’d sent him over the last few months, and I wondered privately if that meant anything.
“Like I said, she’s a publicity ho,” Miller offered with a grin. By now he’d let a little oxygen come in between us, and as I looked up at him, he sat on the edge of the desk, facing me. “But then, she’s an actress.” He walked his fingers up my forearm, to where I’d rolled up the cuff below my elbow. “So, JJ. Are you convinced?”
