AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It felt, really, really good.”
“Did you fake it when you came?”
I tuck my face into his shoulder and shake my head. “No. Are you mad?”
He huffs a laugh. “Why would I be angry about that?”
“Maybe you didn’t want them to see me come for you.”
“I’mgladthey had to see it, sweetness. They got more than they bargained for.” He sounds more like himself now. God, what a relief. “Did you fake it for Jacob?”
A shiver goes through me. Letting two men make me come in one night is on another level. “No. But I did what you said. I pretended he was you. And all I could see was your face.”
“Swear to me that I didn’t hurt you.”
“You didn’t. You wouldn’t.”
In the silence, I hear his heart slow. He settles. Then he lets out a long sigh. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Gabriel stands up and helps me to my feet. He starts to reach for his abandoned clothes, but I put a hand on his wrist. “We’ll take these with us, but you don’t have to wear them.”
He cracks a tired smile. “You want me to walk outside like this?”
“There’s a gym on the sixth floor with complimentary sweatsuits. We’ll get one, and we’ll go.”
Gabriel opens the door for me. “It’ll be a dream come true.”
21
GABRIEL
A corporate-sponsoredsweatsuit from Bettencourt International shouldn’t feel better than my own clothes. It’s some dark fucking humor that it does.
Elise finds a pair of shoes for me in one of the lockers. Then she strips her sacrifice dress off in the locker room and throws on another set of the gray sweatpants. A sweatshirt goes over her head. She steps into a pair of flip-flops from a shelf on the wall. Heat and want unfurl at the base of my spine. I lost it tonight, and I still want her.
She’s swimming in her outfit. Elise rolls up the ankles of her pants, then her sleeves. A graceful bend, and our wrinkled clothes are a bundle in her arms along with shoes I never want to wear again.
“It’s so screwed up.” Her voice is soft as she leads the way out of the gym and down to the elevator bank toward the back of the building. “My dad is just—he’s the worst. But these sweatsuits are really nice.”
“I hate that I have to agree with you.”
She grimaces. “Do you want to rip it off?”
“Whoever’s out on the street would enjoy the show, but I’d rather not give it to them for free.”
Elise gives a soft laugh at my joke. Thank Christ. I don’t want her to walk on eggshells.
No one stops us on the way out. We don’t see a single person on the first floor.
Something’s off about that. Bettencourt was a tyrant in that conference room, but he’s not going to make us stay and pretend to have a good time?
If I was being my coldly rational self, I’d have insisted that we get dressed and go back to the party. The other members of the consortium could be planning our murders together while they sip champagne and get close to the prostitutes.
Jacob wouldn’t do that.
But heisoutnumbered.
Fuck, it doesn’t matter. Bettencourt has my address. He has my company. He has everything, including Elise.
