Page 80 of King of Temptation

He shot her a hard glare, but his lips twitched, giving him away. “Don’t push your luck, brat.”

Chapter 28

Goldie

They settled into a new routine, and even if it wasn’t exactly the same as the one she had back at her apartment, she couldn’t complain too much. Not when Brody went out of his way to make sure she had plenty of food and alone time to do the work she was falling dangerously behind on.

And she really couldn’t complain when every little “win” in her day was rewarded with orgasms. Everything from hitting her word count to an offer from an audiobook production company was celebrated with pleasure that left her sitting at her desk grinning dazedly at the words on the screen.

It almost made up for not being able to raid her snack bucket whenever she wanted.

Almost.

Unfortunately for her, some habits really were hard to break, and she’d gotten caught multiple times sneaking into the kitchen for what she considered ‘writer fuel’. Brody, however, did not agree that snack cakes and cookies counted as fuel and whenever he inevitably caught her she’d end up sitting back at her desk with her ass aching from whatever wicked punishment he’d dreamed up.

More than once he’d followed through on his threat to make her squat with her back up against a wall, holding that position until she was a sobbing mess and she swore up and down she’d never break another rule again. Those were the worst punishments he’d come up with so far and she did everything she could to try and avoid them.

For the most part, though, living with a mobster was surprisingly… nice. Brody took care of all the cooking, and he had a housekeeper who visited regularly to keep the place clean. Which was pretty great since Goldie wasn’t nearly the neat freak Brody was and he got a bit growly when things weren’t exactly where he expected them to be. His need for everything to be exactly the way he wanted it had caused more than a few tense moments, but they’d worked through them.

Mostly because whenever she got in her feelings about not being allowed to leave her post-it notes out where she could easily see them or about the fact that she was living out of a suitcase his cousins had thrown together for her, she reminded herself this was only temporary. No matter what he told his family about his supposed hunt for a ring, it was clear he wasn’t actually ready for a wife, or even a permanent partner living in his space.

Which was fine. Really.

Totally fine.

The past week, however, things had gotten even more tense and Goldie was having a harder time than usual shoving those hurt feelings aside. She was coming up against a deadline and she was nearly ten thousand words behind where she needed to be. Which wasn’t unusual for her—trust the process, as they say—but Brody wasn’t thrilled with how much she was working and he’d been nagging her about it for two days straight.

“You need to take a break.”

“Hmm?” Without looking up, she continued typing, determined to get her couple through this final fight-to-the-death against the enemy family set on their destruction. At least that was a problem she could easily solve, unlike her problems with the man glaring at her from the doorway.

“A break. You’ve been sitting there for three hours staring at that damn screen. I'm not convinced you’ve even blinked.”

Shit. Had it really been three hours? It didn’t seem that long. “As soon as I’m done with this scene.”

“That wasn’t a suggestion, Marigold.”

Under normal circumstances, the warning in his tone would at least give her pause. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Didn’t he understand she had a deadline to meet?

“I’ll take fifteen as soon as I finish up here.”

“You’ll take an hour, now, or you’ll be taking the rest of the evening off entirely so I can remind you that good girls don’t ignore their Daddies.”

Jerking her head up, she glared at him. “You can’t do that. I have deadlines, and a responsibility to my readers.”

“And I have a responsibility to you.”

Okay, that made her a little bit melty. Enough for her to tone down the snark in her tone when she answered him. “I know. But I’m not trying to be a brat. I really can’t just stop in the middle of a scene. Please?”

She saw the moment he gave in. That little crease between his brow eased and he sighed, the sound filled with so much drama she nearly giggled. “Fine. But I swear if you don’t stop after this scene…”

“I know, I know, you’ll spank me.”

One reddish brow raised in a look that told her she was sincerely pushing her luck. “Clearly I’m not spanking you hard enough if you’re that flippant about it.”

“You are. I’m just a brat.”

That teased a laugh out of him. “That you are.” Crossing the room, he gripped her chin between his fingers, forcing her to tilt her head back to look up at him. “I am trying very hard to respect your process, Goldie. All I’m asking is that you respect my need to ensure you’re not running yourself into the ground. All right?”