Page 46 of Playing Hard to Get

“Okay,” I said, slow, like a reminder for her to slow the hell down. I glanced at Vivian and found her shaking her head and waving her hands in front of her. She placed a finger to her breast, then her lips. I nodded my understanding. “When do you need me?”

“I'm on my way there now. Get a bag packed, our plane leaves in an hour.”

“Um, that's not gonna work.”

“Excuse me?”

I motioned for Vivian to follow me. Took her warm hand in mine and we made our way upstairs. “I'm a little busy at the moment, Frankie.”

“Busy.” Her voice was flat. Unbelieving.

“As in, I'm entertaining a friend? And I don't need you barging in and making things awkward.”

“Oh.” There was a brief pause before Frankie spoke again. “How soon can you get rid of her?”

“Well, darlin’, I can't exactly kick her out on her backside,” I told her as I grabbed at my hair and gave it a tug. “I gotta drop her off at home. Might take a while to get there and then over to the airport—”

“Airfield. We're taking Marco's plane.”

“Then you can delay.”

“Mitch, we gotta move.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I'll move as fast as I can.”

The line went dead. I tossed my phone on the bed and turned toward Vivian. She was in my arms in an instant.

“I have to go,” I told her, a whisper against her lips.

She pulled back and looked at me with sad, sad eyes. Cupped my cheek with her palm as she scoured my face, like it might give her answers to the questions my behavior downstairs had surely raised. “How long will you be gone?”

“Don't know.” Because truthfully, with Daginger? Could be a day, could be a month. “But I'll text you.”

Her face split open with the most beautiful smile. “I'd like that.”

“You going to answer?”

Vivian shrugged and gave me a crooked smile. One that told me this wasn’t over, but she’d let it go for now. “Maybe.”

My eyebrows rose, then I lifted her off the floor. She squealed as I dropped us onto the bed. My hand slid down to cup her ass before my fingers grazed along her sex.

“I'm going to miss this.”

“Mmm, me too,” she said, palming my cock.

“Remember, this is mine,” I told her, pressing harder at her soaked panties.

“I'll save it just for you.”

I captured her lips with mine. I needed one last taste, one last smell, one last look before she was gone.

11

Vivian

He broke me.

Seeing Mitch sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, staring up at me with such intense pain in his eyes, absolutely killed me. The handsome, self-assured man who'd spent the day ravaging me was gone. In his place sat someone so devastated and broken it tore something deep inside me.