You were going to take a shower and shave. You need to shave.
But Lexi was still there.
She doesn’t want you.
She was clearly with that skateboarder, the one who looked like he smelled like old yogurt and socks.
How could she choose him over me?
Everything—the stress, the lack of sleep, the fact that Lexi had come three times on my bed and I had to try to sleep there smelling the scent of her cunt—it was too much, and now she had moved on to some skateboarder who didn’t have his own car.
Abruptly, I made a U-turn. A taxi driver cursed out the window at me.
I was fully aware as I sat in traffic, yelling at the cars inching down the road, that I was losing it.
I turned on the audio book of Marcus Aurelius’sMeditations.
“It isn’t manly to be enraged,” the audiobook narrator droned.
“Get ahold of your anger,” I scolded over the sound of the authoritative narrator. “This is unbecoming.”
I parked the car in front of the building and carefully handed the key to the valet.
When I walked into my penthouse, I was already half undressed. I was going to be late for the plane if I wasn’t careful. Shower, change, shave then head to the executive airport. If Lexi was here, I was going to ignore her, because I was the master of my own choices.
I headed up the stairs, slipping off my undershirt as I padded down the hallway in bare feet.
“Lexi,” I announced, keeping my voice controlled, “if you’re up here, can you please let Anthym know that I’m about an hour out.”
See? Perfectly in control. Emperor Aurelius would be proud.
Until I stepped into the master bedroom and realized it was a lie, a horrible lie. Marcus Aurelius didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. He spent his days surrounded by elderly senators, and he didn’t have Lexi parading around his penthouse half naked.
She was standing there in my bedroom, her panties covered with Tinker Bell pictures and wearing a blouse that barely skimmed her hips.
She looked up at me with wide eyes.
She didn’t know what was coming.
“I thought the courier was going to come pick up these suitcases,” she said uncertainly.
“Why, are you fucking him too?” I snarled before I could stop myself. My carefully built house of control was just a pile of sticks and papier-mâché, and she had blown straight through it.
Lexi looked hurt.
“You don’t get to act all possessive and jealous after you kicked me out the other night.”
“Wrong,” I growled at her, stalking her. “You’re mine. You were mine the first time I saw you. And I’m about to make sure you never forget it.”
39
LEXI
Grayson advanced on me.
I scuttled backward and promptly tripped over one of the pieces of luggage on the floor.
He stepped over me. At first I thought that he was going to take me right there on the hard ground.
