Page 99 of The Sweetest Return

Tomorrow could do whatever the hell it wanted.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

My phone rang somewhere beneath the pillow beside me.

I ignored it the first time.

When it started again, I cracked one eye open and reached beneath the pillow with a groan. Daylight pressed around the edges of the closed curtains, but the room still had that expensive-hotel quiet that made eight in the morning feel unnecessarily early.

My body had other complaints.

My bottom lip was faintly tender where Dre had bitten it in the elevator, and apparently sleep had done nothing to erase the memory of his hand squeezing my ass while mine stroked the hard length of his dick through his jeans.

I had eventually fallen asleep.

My pussy had apparently remained awake.

Anybody calling twice this early either had an emergency or lacked home training.

When the phone buzzed again, I dragged it from up under the pillow, ready to reject the call on principle.

Then I saw the name on the screen.

Andre Malik Jones.

My body woke up before the rest of me did.

For a second, I only stared at it. His name, still saved in my phone like eight years had not happened, like I had not once told myself deleting it would mean something I did not actually want to mean.

The phone kept buzzing.

I answered before I could talk myself into sense.

“Andre.”

A low laugh moved through the line. “Damn. You sleep?”

My eyes closed for half a second.

That voice woke up every part of me daylight hadn’t reached.

“It’s morning,” I said, pushing myself higher against the pillows and looking at the clock.

“Good observation.”

“Did you call me before eight to admire my awareness of time?”

“No. I called because I had to get your number from Jabari, which is crazy considering you had mine saved this whole time.”

I looked at the screen again, as if his name might explain me to myself.

“I didn’t know it was still your number.”

“Why would I change it?”

“People change numbers, Dre.”

“Not when they tell somebody to call if they ever need them.”