But that drops the instant I see that it’s Kaeli’s phone and the face of the chump who’s calling her this early in the morning. Is she two-timing me or something?
The caller ID reads Roman, and he looks to be the same guy I saw with Kaeli a few times in Seattle, with his fucking blond hair and grin; he probably uses it to fool girls.
Not caring if she is, in fact fucking me on the side, I pick up the call when I still hear the shower running.
“Good morning, Kaeli baby!” Roman the chump, greets in a voice too suspicious to be cheery this early in the morning.
And baby?
Fucking baby?!
Who the fuck does he think he is, calling my woman baby? I’ll show himbaby.
Without giving him a chance to ruin my mood further, I bark at him, “Listen, you chump, this is the first and the last time I’m hearing you call her baby. Don’t you dare call this number ever again. If you love your limbs exactly where they are, then lose this number and forget about Kaeli.”
I drop the call without listening to his reply. Proud of myself, my lips tilt in a smug and satisfied smirk.
Kaeli saunters into the bedroom, wrapped in a towel, while I’m keeping her phone back. Finding me standing naked in her bedroom and her phone in my hand, her sharp eyes narrow at me. “What are you doing?”
I wave my hand and say, “Oh, this? Nothing. Just a wrong number.”
“Okay.” She chooses to believe me as she walks to her vanity mirror.
Not done with her yet, I grab her and pull her to my chest, my hands wrapping around her waist.
She gasps at the sudden action and tries to wiggle out of my hold. “Leave me, you dirty brute. I’m showered, and you stink.”
Arching an eyebrow at her claim, I remind her, “This is the same sweat you were licking like a drug yesterday.”
She flushes red and harrumphs, but doesn’t deny as she looks anywhere but at me.
Looking for my own dose of fix, I nuzzle her neck and take long pulls of her lavender and honey with hints of caramel smell. She feigns struggle, but a breathy moan betrays her.
A grin finds its way to my face when my eyes fall on the cactus in a pink bucket behind her by the window. She kept it. Ecstatic at the discovery, I pull back and look at her. “So, you kept the plant, huh?” I jerk my head in its direction.
Her head turns to look at it before she looks at me. “Of course, I did. I couldn’t throw it away after Stacy gifted it to me,” she shrugs.
My smile falls, and I look at her with my brows furrowed. “Stacy?”
“Yeah, when I got the job, I found it in front of my locker with a sweet note,” she recalls with a soft smile on her lips.
That’s when it clicks for me. Kaeli thinks Stacy is the one who gifted her this plant. Because, of course, she had no reason to think it was from me. And my dumb ass didn’t write my name onthe note.
And of course, she kept it. She would’ve thrown it out the moment she found out it was from me.
My heart drops as a weight settles, which feels a lot like hurt and disappointment. But I quickly cover it and feign a smile when I feel her staring at me.
Picking her up and tossing her over my shoulder as she shrieks at me and hits my back with her fists, I strut into the bathroom.
“Put me down, you brute. What are you doing?” she yells at me at the top of her lungs while I only give her a wicked laugh as I smack her ass, eliciting yet another gasp from her sinful mouth.
“I’m not finished with you, Feather.”
Thirty One
Kaeli
Who knew Ezra Moore, the man who abhorred my very presence, could be so clingy?
