by Lulu Pratt
“Just admit you fucked her.” Paxton says. “Admit it. It’s okay to sleep with people, Geoff. You’re allowed to get your dick wet.”
“You guys really are assholes, you know that?” Geoff rolls his eyes. “I’ll go get another round.”
“Say hi to your girlfriend for us! Tell her we miss her!” Paxton calls after him. “Well, I’ll be damned. Geoff took your girl.”
“Becky isn’t my girl.” I say dismissively and attend to the vibrating phone in my pocket. A series of texts from David flood in, livid about his recent billing. I shoot back a quick reminder that if he kept his goddamn dick in his pants and listened to me, we wouldn’t have this problem. “I fucking hate this guy, Pax. Hate.”
“We all take on dipshits we don’t like, because those dipshits have money. You don’t have to like him—”
“I just have to like his wallet. Yeah, yeah.” I rub my face, frustrated. “I don’t understand what Kate ever saw in this guy. He’s an ugly fuck who can’t keep it in his pants. He’s whiny and compulsive. I knew he piggybacked off Kate’s contacts in LA to make it into the scene, but I swear to fuck this man has no talent.”
“I liked his last movie.” Paxton shrugs. “So he’s a typical piece of Hollywood trash. You know they crawl out of the woodwork here. How is he different from your other clients?”
“He thinks he owns the planet.”
“So do all those other fuckers.”
“All those other fuckers don’t marry good humans.” I down my beer and turn my phone upside down so I can’t see the bullshit David’s still texting. “Kate’s record is impeccable, man. She’s always been the loyal, loving wife. Stands by his side, gets him into places that would rather give him the boot. Half of what he’s done has her name on it.”
“We’ll touch on that other shit in a minute. I thought you said this case was a slam dunk?” Paxton leans across the table. “If her name is on everything…”
“I know.” I throw myself back against the chair and stare at the nasty bar ceiling like it’s a fortune teller. Maybe if I stare long enough, it’ll tell me the secrets to the universe. “That’s because everyone has a past, man. Everyone. This town fuels itself on lies and deceit. But Kate is a genuinely good person. There’s no affairs, no sketchy shit. Thought I had her nailed on some topless photos from a few years ago with a dude, but it turned out to be a very gay friend, some make-up artist. They were on a shoot together and hit the local spots. Which means I have nothing.”
“No wonder you’re sleeping for shit.” Paxton lets out a low whistle. “So the plan has been bully the fuck out of them in mediation.”
“Exactly. Vivian isn’t standing for that, either, but if I can get Kate to buckle, maybe. Also, we’re calling into the legitimacy of her involvement in everything. I mean, we’ll be okay. I always win. It’s just stressful as fuck.”
“I guess you sleeping with his wife isn’t providing its usual healing powers, eh?”
“It’s just sex.” I wave him off and ignore the strange feelings in my gut. “I was hoping to break her a little with my dick.”
“And?”
“She’s proving to be formidable.”
“Right. So back to all that bullshit you were spewing.” Paxton snaps his fingers at me. He knows I hate it. “Kate is not the purest human on the planet. Kate is a normal person who’d inherited an exceptional amount of money. Exceptional amounts of money mean secrets you can exploit.”
“I know.”
“Then fucking do it, man.” Paxton spreads his arms wide and shoot me a look that’s usually reserved for Geoff. “Quit prancing around and knock her out. You know, legally. But if you really like her—”
“I don’t.” I jump in, again ignoring my gut. Apparently, I have a terrible case of Kate-shaped indigestion. “You know I don’t do feelings.”
“Right.” Paxton pounds his glass on the table. “We are fucking cavemen. Brazen men looking to spread our seed and steal fat-fucker money. But you’ve got a problem, bro, and it needs to be addressed. Get her the fuck out of your head so you can land the killing blow without getting your balls in a knot.”
“You’re right.” I know he is. Why Kate has gotten to me is questionable, but there’s probably something to do with my lack of sleep or excessive drinking or overhaul loathing of David McArthur. “She’s nothing to me. I just hate him.”
“Prove it.”
“What?”
“Prove she’s not a problem. Prove to me, Ms Charity in Nicaragua—”
“Honduras.”
Paxton stares at me. “Jesus, this is worse than I thought.”
“My job is to know my enemy, Pax. Don’t be a dick.” I smart off, but secretly file away all the other information about her charity work I might accidentally volunteer while drinking. She really is a hell of a woman. “I’ll prove it. See those girls over at the bar?”
I point to a trio of very busty women, laughing over beers. Smart suits, bright red lips, briefcases. The dream, really, because they aren’t interested in long-term shit, either. They work too hard to lose their lives to men. Pax nods his approval.
I order them a round of drinks and invite them over to our table. Geoff looks annoyed, finally back from wherever he disappeared to while allegedly getting drinks. The blonde shoots me a flirty wink when they walk over to meet Pax. I smile back, but my chest doesn’t feel right. For some reason I feel… ill. Like I need to go home.
Like I shouldn’t be talking to these women.
At that moment, my phone rings. It’s David, again. I grab my jacket from the table, holding up a finger like I’m coming back, and slip out the front door. For once in his life, that asshole proved useful.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
KATE
There are precious few things in my life that I haven’t been able to settle while in the tub. Big tubs, big bubbles, hot water and a glass of wine, maybe something stronger, have the capability to make everything seem less toxic, more manageable. Tonight, I’ve got bubbles up to my eyeballs.
“Maybe I just need to become a nun.” I say to my bright white bathroom tiles and take another sip of whiskey. “The opposite sex is clearly a disease.”
Outside of my sanctuary, someone bangs on my front door. It’s a commanding knock, not a timid one, and it immediately sets my teeth on edge. The last time I heard that knock, it was the night before mediation and…
I shudder. Not a place I’m willing to return. Instead, I sink deeper in the bubbles and pretend no one is there.
They knock again, louder. And again.
It is destroying my Zen vibes in the bathroom and that’s enough to make me angry.
“This LA apartment may look comfortable, but the walls are thin and I need whoever the hell is outside to go away.” I call, stepping out of the tub and wrapping my dripping body in a towel. I carefully skirt through the water puddles so I don’t slip and fall. “It’s the middle of the freaking night and I—”
My voice dies. The peephole doesn’t show David. It shows Eric Stevens. Looking disheveled, sexy and almost manic. I don’t remove the chain, but I turn the top lock and crack open the door.
“What do you want?”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Okay.” I have no idea what he wants and my entire body is on edge from it. He is painfully sexy in this light, with him so clearly flustered. It’s a powerful, manic energy. But we also haven’t spoken since we had sex in Lily’s hotel and, you know, that’s awkward. “Talk.”
He narrows his eyes at me. It’s not menacing. It’s panty-dropping. If I were wearing them.
“Kate, open the door.”
I stare him back down, but my resolve edges away. Our business is not for my neighbors’ ears, and my thin apartment walls are still better than the hallway. Me being in a towel, however, is not exactly ideal. I slide the chain off the hook and hide behind the door.
“I was just in the bath, so first I need to—”
I don’t even know what I w
as going to finish saying, because as soon as Eric crosses the threshold of my apartment, he kicks the door shut and envelopes me with his entire body. My words die in his mouth, between his lips and his tongue. His hands take my hair and my waist and he claims me like something out of a black and white movie: with total absolution.
Just like that, I’m lost in the feel and smell of him. He tastes like beer, but I taste like whiskey. His body warmth cascades down me and thaws every piece frigid from getting out of the bath. Eric is more aggressive than ever with his kisses. He bites, pulls and sucks like he’s desperate.
I can feel myself slipping. It’s so easy to give in to him, to his power. He commands the entire room with his presence, but this was so unexpected that I have no choice but to obey anyway.
He moves to my neck, biting and sucking while making my towel disappear. No longer cold, I’m burning hot and need him to stop the swell within me. I need Eric to touch me in all the most intimate places so I can get relief, relief, relief.
“Eric.” I finally find my voice and fight against the growing need within me. “What are you doing?”
“Tell me to stop if I need to stop.” He mutters against me. I’m thrust and lifted against the wall so he can take my breast in his mouth. He sucks hard and I gasp from the pain and heat of him.
“I—” The words die in my throat, because I can’t speak. I’m naked, pressed against a wall, with my nipple between the teeth of the man I couldn’t stop thinking about. Nothing within me, nothing, could tell him to stop.
He looks up at me with intense, heavy dark eyes. I have nothing to say but yes, please, now.
Eric carries me across the living room, his tongue massaging my nipple as he walks. My body illuminates under his touch. All I want is more. No talking, no thinking, just primal urges satiated in the candlelight of my apartment.
We bump into the couch arm and he sets me down, fingers digging into my skin as I move against him and the thickness in his pants. Eric spins me around and spreads my legs with one hand while the other cups my breasts. He draws circles across my inner thighs, leaving me lightheaded and dizzy at his touch.
He’s so close to what I need and yet so far. The perfect metaphor of whatever fucked-up relationship it is we have.
The firm head of his cock presses against my opening and I cry out in desperation. I don’t wait for him to tease or for him to find me. Reaching back, I guide him into me and engulf his cock with my wetness.
“You are a fever in my veins.” he grunts as he thrusts into me.
Our first time together, we had sex for hours. After every orgasm, we kissed and licked and touched until he was ready to slip himself back inside me. Four hours passed, easily. Not once in that time did he fuck me the way he is now.
The intensity radiating out of him spills into the way he loves me with his cock. Because there is no other word for it in this moment. It’s not a sweet love, it’s not a cherishing love, it’s dominating.
I’m a fever in his veins. The words send chills through my body and make everything heightened. I wasn’t supposed to hear it, I know I wasn’t. Eric Stevens doesn’t show weakness around me. Tenderness, certainly. But not weaknesses.
I reach behind and give his balls a squeeze. He stops mid-thrust and groans, his head to my back. His breath is heavy because as much as he acts in control, he’s desperate. And that is incredibly liberating. Sexy.
My hips grind against him and his fingers dig into my softness. He leaves a trail of hot kisses along the back of my neck and throws himself into me. I lose myself to the motion of our bodies. I stop thinking, stop breathing and just survive on the rhythm between us.
At some point there is a misstep and we topple sideways. He picks me up and presses me against the wall, his cock back inside me before I feel fully righted. This is more intimate than anything we’ve been in and my brain can barely comprehend it.
“You asked me once what I saw when I looked at you,” Eric breathes against me. Our bodies continue in a perfect carnal dance but my chest tightens and my vision blurs. I can’t hold out much longer against him like this. His voice tightens, like he’s feeling the same thing. “The answer is perfection.”
I am no longer Kate and he is no longer Eric. We are bodies of energy that fly apart and come back together as one.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ERIC
“So then I said, who do I look like, fucking Spielberg? And he said yes, that cheeky fuck! It was hilarious. Man, you had to be there. Next time I go to dinner with those boys, Eric, I’ll give you a call. They’ll all need someone like you on retainer, I’m sure.” David wipes his eyes, finding his own terrible story hilarious.
They all do. All their stories are uninteresting and pathetic. All their stories revolve around being compared to someone else famous, someone clearly better than them, like a massive penis competition. Who has the bigger ego? Who has the bigger dick?
None of them. All their egos are as fragile as my old man’s hairline and their dicks are tiny. It’s why they cheat with young girls to begin with. They don’t know any better.
“Let me buy you dinner. Tonight.” David slams his palm down on my desk and jolts me out of the mental ass-beating I’m dishing out. “You look you could use a break, and maybe some pussy. One of my favorite spots? The girls, Eric! You wouldn’t believe the girls.”
I lean back in my very expensive leather desk chair and steeple my fingers before me. If I wore glasses, I’d take them off in a very dramatic fashion. Mental note: tell Sophie to order me some of those fake glasses Geoff always wears to court. They don’t make him look smarter, but they would be a nice accessory when dealing with dipshits.
“David.” I interrupt his stream-of-consciousness chatter about whatever club he wants to take me to. “I’m sure it’s swanky as hell. But we’ve talked about this shit.”
“But if my lawyer is with me.” David’s face splits in a stupid grin and he spreads his arms to match. He’s like a crucified glutton who looks completely content with his lot in life. “Who can say no? I’m just taking a friend out, having a good time…”
“Looks like bribery.” I don’t move from my stoic, steepled pose. This is my Fuck Off and Get Serious pose, and McArthur has seen a ton of it lately. “Looks suspicious. It makes me look cheap and you look broke.”
“I—” David’s jaw flaps a bit. “But we both know that ain’t true.”
“Perception is everything. Which is why you are instructed to lay low.”
“And I have been! I’ve been laid up in my big ass house, all alone. I mean, aside from the visitors, if you know what I mean.”
“Goddammit, David.” Pose broken. I massage a pulsating headache spreading across my temple. “You’re trying to claim that you still have an active marriage. If you can’t knock off this shit, the case is as good as dead. You thought I was kidding, man. I’ll put you on goddamn house arrest if I have to, because—”
A very loud, obnoxious ringtone kicks off from David’s pocket. Immediately, I want to throttle the guy into the atmosphere. He knows I have a very strict phone policy in my office. I lean across the desk and take it out of his pocket. It’s turned off in two seconds, cutting the sound dead.
“See this shit? You know this shit isn’t permitted in my office. You aren’t a petulant child, David. You’re thirty-six-fucking-years old. You are divorcing a beloved younger woman, who is widely known her for charity work and humanitarian efforts, because you can’t keep it in your pants.”
“I thought you said we were framing it as her having the affair.” David swipes his phone back and turns it on. “That’s what you said. Then I can look like I’m free.”
“Because you told me she cheated, David.” I say through clenched teeth. “You’ve been unable to provide any proof, which says you lied to me.”
“I didn’t lie.” David holds his phone up at me like he’s going to reprimand me with it. I seriously consider snapping it in two pieces. “I suspected.
She was always gone, you know? Sure, she said it was some charity gala or event planning, but she always came home late and was in such a good mood after. We stopped having sex. She sometimes wouldn’t even sleep in the same room. That screams affair, Eric. You just need to dig deeper.”
Or she was trapped in a miserable relationship with a selfish asshole and hated being at home. I shake my head slightly to ditch the thought. I can’t do this to myself. I can’t sabotage the entire case because I like to fuck his ex-wife.
“So, come with me to dinner and—” The phone rings again. David grins like an idiot and stands up, a finger in my face before he goes to pace across the length of my office floor. “Brad! How’s it going, baby? Did you get a chance to see the script? Sure, I can talk, I’m just with my lawyer. No, no. He can wait. I pay him enough to do what I say.”
At this, David shoots me a wink.
His pacing takes him to the windows at the front of my office, with a great view of the city. He stands there, blabbing and bragging about some movie he’s putting together, disrespectful as fuck. I swear to God, he acts like I have no other clients. Like he’s the singular most important thing in my life right now.
Well, fuck ‘im.
Screw him. Overwhelmed with anger at him, I stealthily unzip my pants and pull my dick out under my desk. After a quick glance his way to make sure he’s still acting like an ape, I pull up the file of Kate’s topless photos on my laptop and two clicks later have a pretty solid hard-on. It’s stupid the shit this girl does to me. She takes my mind off my stress and makes me do crazy shit.
Fucking her at her apartment did not pull her out of my system like I’d hoped. If anything, it sank me deeper, which is quickly becoming dangerous. For the moment, though, it paid off in spades.
I snap a quick shot of my dick in my hand, painfully thread it back into my pants, and send it to Kate with a quick note:
David is here. Thinking of you.
She’ll probably hate me for it. Women are so finicky about the dick pick. If they’re horny, they’re happy for it. If they aren’t, they get pissed. It’s walking a fine line I don’t usually have time to figure out.
