He tapped my nose and gave me a snotty smirk. “Trust me, I will.”
I glared at him, and he laughed.
“This is horse shit.”
He slid forward and gave my middle a squeeze. “You need to get into the habit of being productive. It’s not healthy to sit around and do nothing. Trust me, I know what I’m talking about.”
“Yeah, that’s what jail was. A fuck of a lot of nothing.” I glanced back at the stupid fucking list.
“Exactly.”
Line one was a mockery, and I shook my head. “No one is going to hire me. What’s the point?” I knew I needed a job but hated this.
“You’re going to try. You never know.” He kissed my cheek, bringing more of his amazing scent with him.
I snorted.
“Hey.” It gave me more pleasant tingles when he wrapped his hand behind my neck and jerked me down to look him in the eye.
“Oh, I’ll do it.”
“Good.” The warmth from the kiss he pressed on my lips almost distracted me from how awful today would no doubt be. “My laptop is in the living room. I don’t keep it passworded, so you’ll be fine.” He grinned.
The list trembled in my hand, and then I realized it was my fingers shaking because paper can’t dance that way on its own, and I slapped it back down onto the counter. Stormy stepped in and pressed himself more firmly against me, and I was only too happy to wrap my arms around him and give him a tight hug. My head was spacey at the thought of writing a fucking resumé.
“Ex-mayor. Kicked out of office. Yeah, that’ll get me headhunted for sure.”
“Just do what I told you to do,” he said and then kissed me hard. The soft touch transformed as he bit at my bottom lip until tears stung the corners of my eyes.
I nodded, and he backed off. We stared at each other for a few long seconds, but he didn’t say anything else, just grabbed his keys from a bookshelf on his way past to the door—and then he was gone. The sound of the lock clicking from the other side had my heart beating faster. He’d locked the door behind himself, probably out of habit, but on the other hand, maybe he wanted to make sure no one sneaked in here.
Or, maybe he wanted to remind me to stay put.
Or, maybe I was just going fucking nuts. I stared around the empty apartment—high-end, just like Stormy—and dragged in a deep breath. Cheerful yellow sunlight streamed in through the windows, and I snatched up the list and went over to sit in a patch of warmth on the stone floor, feeling very feline. I hung my head and stared at Stormy’s precise handwriting on the paper. What the fuck had I been thinking? I couldn’t do this with Stormy, even if I did kind of like it.
What other options did I have, though?
This was the price I’d pay for a place to live and clothes on my back and food in my belly. My cock twitched, and I laughed as I glanced at the closed front door. No, I wouldn’t start my day out directly violating an order. My cock surged with heavy warmth as I thought all about how Iwasn’tgoing to jerk off.
I ignored the laptop sitting on the coffee table and went out to the kitchen and rummaged around in the fridge. I ended up making a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich for breakfast, because it involved zero cooking, and enjoyed the food far more than I thought I should’ve. There was a coffee maker, but it was a fancy one and I wasn’t confident about all the buttons, so I snagged a can of some nitro coffee latte concoction from the fridge that cracked like a beer when I popped the top. I took the caffeine wonderfulness with me to the living room and sipped at the sweet treat with a moan.Vanilla caramel. Yum.
I picked the list up from where I’d set it on the coffee table and glared at the cleaning instructions. The washing machine was still chugging away, so that wasn’t ready to be dealt with yet. The resumé, I at least had some clue about.
It took me three cans of nitro lattes before I worked up the courage to open Word, and my heart was hopping and my hands were jittering across the keyboard by the time I had a semi-usable resumé. I didn’t have anyone I felt confident listing as a contact—not a single soul. I didn’t want to put my time as the mayor on my work history. My time working with Vane was hit or miss, but I didn’t want to push my luck. All I had was my experience at Dad’s company, and it wasn’t very impressive. I’d worked there off and on, more or less when I needed money for something beyond what I got simply for existing. I’d never needed to work much. Dad had never turned it into an issue because I was his only son and he loved me.
And Dad wasn’t happy right now. What would he say if someone called him as a reference? Would it matter since I was his son? No one would take him seriously.
I groaned and held my head in my hands as I stared at the resumé. Trying to get my shit together, I did a quick online search and found a random job at a local bookstore that needed someone to do their record keeping, and even though I knew nothing about retail, I did know about inventory because I’d handled that at the medical-supplies warehouse more than once. I applied. The process was grueling, and they made me fill in a lengthy application even though they asked for a resumé. I was exhausted by the time I was done, and then they emailed me a morality survey.
I laughed and didn’t bother opening it. Depressed about the idea of answering questions about whether or not I would steal paperclips, I closed the laptop.
“Fuck this,” I snarled and shoved the computer away from me.
The sun in the room had stretched long, and in a panic I checked the clock on the wall. How had it gotten to be past three o’clock already?
Groaning, I ran into the laundry room. I took all the clothes from the washer and stuffed them into the dryer. I had no idea how long they should be in there, so I set it to auto, hoping the machine knew, and pressed Start. That seemed safe. Then I went back to my list where I’d left it near the laptop. I had no idea how to clean anything, but I found a broom in the pantry and started sweeping the floors.
When that was done, I collapsed onto the couch and wanted to curl up into a ball. After too long had dragged by, I sprang up, scared Stormy would get home and find me not doing anything. Even though this job hunt and chores shit was depressing, he really was helping me out and keeping me going. He’d only asked me to do a few things, so why did they feel so fucking insurmountable? I growled and went into the kitchen.
