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I sighed, walking over to the large ottoman seating and flopping down.
“I fucked someone. It was short-lived, and now I can’t get her out of my head. She’s like a migraine that just won’t go away.”
“But aren’t migraines bad?” Magnus asked, sitting beside me.
“Shut the fuck up, Magnus,” Ari snapped.
“She’s pure sunshine,” I confessed, staring into the crowd vacantly.
It was as though the clouds parted, and my focus came into view. Bodies dispersed, moving apart. There Pepper stood, her hands above her head, her body moving to the beat, her curves gliding to the rhythm in slow motion. I sucked in a breath. I knew her body intimately, every square inch and every curve.
Pepper turned, and our eyes met in an instant. She laid her hands down her body, and I swallowed hard. She was the sexiest woman here, and in a room full of models, that was saying something.
Closing her eyes, she let the music envelope her, and her hands trailed from her hair down the side of her body, tracing her curves like an artist sculpting a masterpiece.
“Oh hell, no.” A voice beside me pulled me from my trance and the thickness pressing against my zipper.
“You were fucking Pepper?” Reluctantly, I pulled my eyes away from her only to find Ari staring at me in disbelief.
“Was. Am no longer.”
“But you want to?”
I nodded. I didn’t care if he knew or Magnus. She was an addiction I couldn’t be without.
“Well, put her out of that head, Connor. Alfred made the deal. Your wagon is hitched to Francesca. The world knows it, and there’s no going back, even if for a millisecond the thought had crossed your mind.” Magnus stared at me, a stern look on his face.
“Don’t you think I know all this?” I reached for my cocktail and painfully gulped it down.
“Fuck man, slow down.”
“Why? My life’s over anyway.’’
“Are you listening to yourself? Francesca is gorgeous,” Magnus said. “You’re rich, you’ve got a beautiful fiancée, one that is royalty, mind you… don’t be so fucking ungrateful.”
“Ungrateful?” I yelled over the music.
“Okay, chill, Connor. Magnus, shut the hell up, would you?” Ari said in a stern voice.
“If I have it all, then why do I feel dead inside? Why do I feel like I have nothing at all, like my world is on Groundhog’s Day?” I slammed down my empty glass, heat scouring my chest. “Explain that to me, would you?”
“Because you’re in love with Pepper,” Ari said, squaring me with his matter-of-fact stare.
“No, I’m not,”
“Yes. You are.” His voice was eerily confident.
I paused.Is this what love felt like?Like a stabbing need of wanting and thinking about the same person from waking up to closing my eyes at night?
“Fuck.” I breathed out. The reality was a throat-punch sucking the breath from my lungs.
“You’re fucked,” Magnus offered.
“Sorry, Connor. I really am,” Ari said, genuinely patting me on the back. “You’re in no man’s land.”
“I know,” I choked out. The cold, hard reality of the situation glared back at me.
“Do you think Alfred would…”
