AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Riddled with embarrassment, I watched her out of the corner of my eye. The smile on her lips and the gleam in her eye both equaled disaster for me. “Well, you get your laughs now while you can, Miss Ryan. The next time won’t be so damn funny.”
“Baby, nothing about what happened was funny.” She brushed at a piece of hair stuck to the back of my neck. “To tell you the truth, I needed this. I haven’t felt close to you lately.”
“And now?”
“And now I feel like we can fix anything, or talk about anything. Is there anything you want to tell me, Julian?”
I held my breath as I faced her head on. “Phoebe…don’t.”
“C’mon, Bale. A few weeks ago, after the blow up with Ryker, you said our discussion wasn’t over. In fact, you said we had a very,” furrowing her eyebrows, she lowered her voice in a mock representation, “important thing we needed to talk about so I wasn’t to give a lame excuse.”
“I never said that.”
“You most certainly did.”
“Well, I didn’t say it like that.”
“No, you said it with smart-ass undertones.”
I held my hands up in surrender. “Fine. First of all, I never called bullshit on your story at the time, but you know how ridiculous that was, right?”
“You didn’t exactly give me time to think on my feet.”
“Just clearing that up. Don’t insult my intelligence like that again,” I warned. “Besides, Ryker can’t lie to me for shit. He sang like a fucking canary the next day.”
“Traitor. I’m totally kicking his ass.”
“You’re not going to like what I have to say next, so please just listen to me until I’m finished.”
“If you think…”
Placing my palm directly across her mouth, I shook my head. “See? Just like that. I said to wait until I’m finished. Do you listen when I talk, or are you always formulating a rebuttal?”
“Eph rull fahe or ahn ohp ma mouh, I deh ou.”
I wrinkled my nose at her. “What the hell did you say?”
Reaching up, she grabbed my wrist and raised her chin defiantly. “I said if you’ll take your hand off my mouth, I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
A confused look crossed her face. “Wait, what?”
“What you were going to say?”
“Nothing,” she insisted. “You were saying something.”
Growling, I grabbed my hair and let out a groan of frustration. “I swear, woman, you drive me crazy. You said if I took my hand off your mouth, you’d tell me.”
The devilish smile plastered across her face had me weighing options of shaking her in annoyance or fucking her senseless again. Blowing out a chestful of air, I gently pulled her off my lap and grabbed my pants. She watched as I pulled them over my hips and secured the zipper. Clasping my hands behind my neck, I looked down at her.
Her blue eyes tore into me. They were the same eyes I engaged in a battle of wills in a club in New York almost eight months ago. The same eyes I couldn’t forget. The eyes I’d gazed into in a hotel room after touching her for the first time, knowing things would never be the same.
I’d never be the same.
“Julian, what are you staring at?”
“You, princess. I’m staring at the reason I do what I do. I don’t know if you realize how important you are to me, personally and professionally.”
