Page 57 of Smart Ass

Okay.

Good. That was one thing taken care of. Ben would break the news to Evan gently. He would just have to calm himself down first.

Or punch something.

What the fuck was wrong with people?

“You can ask the lawyers for advice,” Max suggested.

The… ohhhhh, yeah. That was the other thing he was supposed to do today. The reason he’d set his alarm so early. “Right. I have to call them sometime.”

“In five minutes.”

“Wait, really? Shit!” Couldn’t the world just slow down for a bit?

Ben left the tablet with Max in the kitchen and ran to his room to throw on some real clothes. (Did he want Max watching him? Yes? As long as Max wanted to watch him?)

He dashed to the bathroom to fix his hair. No time to shave. At least he looked okay scruffy, especially since he’d put on a tie.

And then back to the living room… where Max was apparently already setting up the call on the wall screen.

It had a built-in camera and mic, and Ben wondered if Max had been using those, too, to monitor him.

Probably.

That warm, fluttery feeling was back.

“Ready?” Max asked.

“Go.”

The screen was soon filled with two faces. Two very familiar faces. On the left, dressed in a smart suit, was a man with rich mahogany skin, exquisite cheekbones, and tightly-coiled hair trimmed close to his head. On the right, his partner’s tawny skin glowed with golden eyeshadow around their luminous dark eyes and ruby at their lips.

“Uh…” Ben’s brain stalled out. “Sir! Mx!” He greeted them before remembering the context. “You’re, um…” Letters appeared at the bottom of the screen. Thanks, Max. “Justice and Rashid Pierce?” Ben knew the pair of sexy sparks by different names at the club: Jewel and Rock.

Justice raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “And you’re Ben Curran. Is this going to be a problem? I can refer you to someone else if you’re concerned about a conflict of interest.”

“No! Nope. It’s fine. Uh, thank you.” Just his old Doms kind of meeting his new Dom? Unexpectedly?

“I take it you didn’t see our pictures on the website before you set this up?” Rashid asked.

“Uh, I didn’t set up… I mean… No. I missed them.” Usually Ben could think faster on his feet, but after the past couple days, his words were all over the place. Max had set up the meeting using Ben’s email account and signing his name.

They both gave him piercing stares, but Justice spoke first. “We’re representing Quincy, as I understand it. An unregistered spark?”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed. “But he’s applied for registration.”

They both nodded. “That helps. Tell us everything that you know about what happened.”

Ben looked away. Shit, shit, shit. He hadn’t figured out what to say yet. Pretending he didn’t know anything would be far safer for Max. But Max also had access to recordings from Evan’s car cameras.

Oh, fuck.

Ben wished he could have discussed this with Maxamillion first. They should have talked about it yesterday. Or this morning. There’d just been too much other stuff going on.

Ben took a deep breath and told the lawyers everything, getting more specific as they asked more questions.

He felt himself getting shaky in the middle though. He had to explain that he’d tracked Quincy’s location and sent it to Evan’s car, because otherwise how could he explain what Evan was doing there? But he tried to keep that part brief.