AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Shesmiles. A slow, sensual, and very teasing smile as she unapologetically glides down the stripper’s body.
Not that she has to apologize for anything. I, more than anyone, can appreciate the world’s vices, including half-naked bodies.
But the way she holds my gaze is anything but professional.
So she wants to play with fire, does she?
“Where the hell are you going?”
Enzo’s got my arm. Which is an impressive feat of mind reading since I’ve only just made the decision to go over there. He knows me well.
“She’s all but taunting me to say something.”
He glances in Ada’s direction, but she’s not looking at us anymore.
“You can’t go over there,” he says, stating the obvious. As if he’s worried I’m going to sandwich myself between Ada and the stripper.
“I won’t cause any problems for us,” I assure him. “Trust me.”
Enzo’s harsh laugh is not encouraging. “Like I trusted you to not get us arrested at that party junior year? How about the time you told me it was perfectly legal to drink on a boat in the middle of Lake Lugano, and it almost landed us in a Swiss prison?”
I roll my eyes, taking them off her for just long enough to address my friend.
“First, we may have gotten arrested, but who was the first one released? No charges, no record.”
“Thanks to your parents.”
I don’t dignify that with a response. “As for Lugano, how was I supposed to know the rules were different there than in Geneva? And again, who didn’t end up in prison that night?”
My parents have a house in Switzerland, and I’ve spent enough time there to navigate the area—and its laws—well enough, until that particular night. I might have been showing off a bit, but as I remind Enzo, we got out of it relatively unscathed.
Enzo could rattle off countless other examples of how I got myself, and us, into trouble over the years. But then we’d be here all night, and not in a fun way.
“Trust me like you did with Angel,” I say instead.
Enzo’s eyes narrow. “The problem isn’t with how much I trust you, Hayden. It’s with how little you trust yourself.”
He might have said something similar once or twice or a hundred times before.
Anyway. Of all my fuckups, just one shining exception stands out, and it’s the one that will put Enzo and me on the map. His invention and work ethic. My business sense and my father’s money. Combined, we’re poised to literally change the world.
We both know what’s at stake, which makes Ada Flemming the least appropriate woman for me to sleep with. Or date. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun. Besides, she started it.
“I’ll just be a few minutes. Promise.”
7
Ada
It’s odd that I should be thinking about my dad right now. Moments after grinding on a stripper while staring down Hayden Tanner.
But I am.
I can still hear the disappointment in his voice after I told him why I had to exit the research program we’d worked on together, the one I’d chaired. One bad call—a stupid, careless mistake—had cost me so much.
I’ve spent years compensating for that error in judgment.
This time, as another potentially horrible decision stalks toward me, I’m more self-aware. I understand my flaws, of which there are many. And a weakness for dangerous men is one of them.
