“You’re not going anywhere,” he growls, and then he approaches me. He takes my hand in his and places a soft kiss on my knuckles. “I want you in my bed.”
“But you don’t want me...” I say as a tear falls down my cheek. I quickly wipe it away. “I came on too strong. I said things that probably scared you. I’m not the girl you thought I was, that’s what you’re thinking, right? This is why I’m always vanilla, why I don’t step out of my box to do things I don’t normally do.”
“Baby, stop.”
I shake my head and pull my hand away from him. “I get it, JP. You didn’t like what I said tonight.” I slip under the covers of his bed. “I should just sleep it off, you know?”
He stands next to the bed, staring down at me, tugging on his hair. I can see he wants to say something, that there’s something on the tip of his tongue, but instead of telling me what’s on his mind, he turns away and goes to his side of the bed.
My heart completely falls.
I almost expected him to tell me that he did like what he heard, but that... I don’t know, something is on his mind. But instead, he turns off the lights and slips under the covers with me.
But the worst thing that happens, worse than his rejection, is that when I fall asleep, he’s not holding me. He’s on his side of the bed, as far from me as he can be.
* * *
JP
“I’m going to fucking puke,”I say as I walk into Breaker’s place.
He woke me up at five with a phone call telling me he needed me at his place as soon as I could get there. I sprinted out of bed, threw some clothes on, and rushed to his place.
Kelsey was still sleeping when I left. The phone call luckily didn’t wake her.
Last night was fucking torture, and I still feel sick about it now. All I wanted was to take my confident girl to bed, to do all the things she wanted to do, but I knew I couldn’t, not with the threat of that defamatory article hanging over my head. It not only didn’t feel right, but I’ve been so nauseated with worry that attempting to get it up seemed impossible. That was proven when she was walking toward me, so goddamn sexy in absolutely nothing, and I didn’t even have a stir of excitement. And the hurt on her face. Fuck. I hated that in particular.
“What’s going on?” I ask Breaker. “Is Huxley here?”
He shakes his head as we both walk into his office off the entryway. “I didn’t think I’d bother him with this bullshit. He has a wedding, so I just told him it was handled.”
“Has it been? Handled, that is?”
He shakes his head as he takes a seat at his desk. “The article is currently on hold, pending our decision.”
I know exactly what that means—blackmail.
Searing anger pulses through me as I ask, “What do they want?”
“Well, the good thing is, the person who sent them your email had signed an NDA with the gossip website, meaning they can’t sell the story to anyone else. So, if they don’t run it, she can’t take it to another website.”
“Thank fuck for that. But I’m sure they paid her to sign that NDA.”
Breaker nods.
“And they want that, on top of what they would’ve lost in website revenue for clicks, right?”
“They want two million.”
“Jesus fuck,” I roar as I stand. “That’s fucking extortion.”
“I have Taylor on it. That’s why it’s currently pending. They, of course, don’t see it as extortion, they see it as us buying out a piece of revenue.”
“Bullshit,” I yell. “Show me the goddamn numbers that prove they’d make two million dollars of revenue off that story.”
“I know, but, dude, this is a dip in the bank that won’t make a huge difference. I looked over the numbers, and I can maneuver things around and slip the damage control fee into the books in a way that no one would know, and we’d still get a tax break for it. We’re trying to convince them to see it as a donation.”
“That’s lying.”
