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“Fuck the bagels,” Jules said, her voice deceptively calm. “Was that David?”
Paige forced herself to swallow the bite she’d just taken, but didn’t answer the question, treating it as rhetorical.
“He spent the night?” Jules prodded. “Again?”
“Yes, he did,” David answered, coming into the kitchen. He was wearing his jeans, but nothing else, and looked thoroughly fucked, himself. He gave Paige a quick kiss, then took the coffee from her hand and took a long sip, making a face when he realized it wasn’t straight black coffee, and handed it back. “Is that a problem?”
Paige wasn’t surprised when Jules answered with her usual blunt-force trauma honesty. “Yes. And you couldn’t have put a shirt on?”
“I could have, but it’s … dirty,” he said, with a flick of his eyes at Paige, before turning his attention back to Jules. “And I’m not running out to my car to get my concert T-shirt, so you’re just going to have to deal with my bare chest. Now … why is my spending the night a problem?”
“Because you’re not supposed to,” Jules replied.
“I’m not?” This was news to him, considering he’d spent the night at Paige’s several times and she’d never once mentioned this. “Says who?”
“Says me. She’s not supposed to stay at your place, either.”
David plucked the bagel from Paige’s hand and took a bite, his dislike for the conversation growing exponentially. Jules had some pair of balls on her, making a rule that wasn’t hers to make, and while it cheered him to know Paige had obviously ignored it, he was pissed off it had been made in the first place. It also made him wonder if there were any other rules he didn’t know about that might possibly be working against him and his plan. “Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that rule—or whatever you want to call it—has never been followed. By either of us.”
Jules turned to Paige. “You’ve stayed at his place?”
“Yes.” Paige squirmed a little under the weight of Jules’s displeasure. “What? He got a new bed.”
“That’s not the real issue, and you know it.”
“What is the real issue, then?” David asked. “Because I’m confused as hell.”
“Intimacy,” Jules told him, succinctly.
He frowned. “Intimacy?”
“Yes. Spending the night is too intimate, given what the two of you are doing.”
“And what’s that?”
“Sex, plain and simple. And I don’t want her thinking what you’re doing is anything more than that.”
David crossed his arms and gave Jules his best You’re really pissing me off look, who responded by crossing her own arms and returning the look.
Fearing they were going to start scrapping like wolverines, Paige held up her hands. “Stop. Both of you.”
“You know what, Jules? You need to stay in your fucking lane,” David said rudely. “What Paige and I are doing is none of your business—”
“Wrong. This concerns her well-being, so that makes it my business. I don’t want her getting hurt.”
“Jesus Christ, neither do I.” He looked at her, incredulous, and his voice rose. “All I’m thinking about is her well-being. Everything I’m doing is for her well-being.”
“Everything?”
“Yes.”
“How is spending the night contributing to her well-being? Because as I see it, that takes ‘plain and simple’ sex and turns it into something not so ‘plain and simple’, and you can’t do that to her. Because when this arrangement has run its course, Paige needs to be able to walk away—”
“No, she doesn’t,” he bit out, only to stop, appalled.
Jules stared at him, speechless for several moments before asking, “What did you say?”
Paige turned to stare at him, too. “Yeah, what did you say?”
