Asher
It takes every inch of my self-control to do what I’d promised. Eat pizza like I can taste anything other than Victoria,drive her home, and walk her to her apartment with nothing but a chaste good night kiss.
Well, chaste might be a stretch. But still.
I do everything by the book, acting exactly how I should rather than how I want to—and all that leads to is so much pent-up sexual tension that I toss and turn in my bed. Finally, somewhere around 3am, I give up on the bullshit and go to my apartment’s gym. It’s small but serviceable, and I spend forty minutes trying to exhaust myself on the treadmill, followed by another hour of trying to tire myself out with weights.
It doesn’t work. I’m as restless when I get back to my apartment as I was when I left it, like I’m supposed to be somewhere else, doing something else.
In other words, with Victoria.
I am losing my fucking mind over that woman. I check my phone for the umpteenth time to see if she’s textedme—she hasn’t. I angrily toss it on my kitchen counter, open my fridge, and look for something I can rage-eat.
All that greets me are perfectly portioned meals packaged into neat little boxes that my chef leaves behind a few times a week. He’s a health nut and works closely with Gio, so of course, I never get to eat anything good at home.
If I’d said fuck you to first date manners and brought Victoria here, I’d be feasting like a king.
Fuck.
Whyam I doing this? And how do I actuallydo this?Act like a decent person and be a good person to date?
I pick my phone back up, and call the last person I usually have any desire to speak to. My older brother and once the bane of my existence—now, my uneasy ally. Grant.
“If you’re in jail and need me to bail you out, the answer is no,” he drawls, picking up on the sixth ring.
“Hello to you too, motherfucker.” My jaw clenches. I’m already regretting this, but Grant is infamous for his many relationships, while I’ve just had a long string of one-night-stands. “If I were in jail, you’d get some county memo before hearing—”
“You’re already boring me, and I have shit to do. What do you want?”
To rearrange your face. Being ugly could only do him some good; it’d bring out his true nature splendidly.
“I need…”Screw it, I already made the mistake of calling him. Might as well see this all the way through. “Advice.”
“Obviously.” He murmurs something to someone in the background, then gets back to me. “I will permit you ten minutes of my time before I start charging you. My rate of consultation, when I stoop that low, is 6 grand per hour—and yes, I will count by the minute if my time is being wasted. Go.”
There’s no comradery between me and Grant. I don’t feel like his brother, mostly because we didn’t grow up together, aside from summers. But I do know him to be an extremely talented businessman and excellent strategist, which makes him a good candidate for giving advice, even if he’ll be the biggest jerkoff imaginable about it.
“There’s a girl.”
“Obviously,” he intones. “Why the fuck else would you be calling me at 5am?”
Shit, is it already 5? I check the clock on the wall; it is. At least I’ve already gotten my morning workout in.
“If you got an STD, the best I can do is refer you to an excellent and discreet doctor,” he goes on. “I can’t give advice, since I ask for clean bills of health and demand exclusivity during the course of an arrangement rather than sticking my dick into whatever has double-Ds like you.”
People who call me an asshole have never met my older brother.
Since I already have him on the phone, I decide to power through his typical, unbearable bullshit. How he has so many willing women at his beck and call, I’ll never know. My trick has always been not letting them get to know me. Otherwise, who would put up with me?
Victoria. Victoria just might.
“She’s not like the others,” I growl.
“How adorably cliché. Will you be getting to the point any time soon?”
“Thatisthe point!” I roar.
“If you could scale back on your emotional tantrum for thirty seconds, perhaps we can actually hold a conversation.” Grant sighs “How we share the same DNA, I’ll never know.”
