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“I would never steer you wrong, Grimm.”
Winter takes another sip, sloshing the whiskey gently in her mouth to let the complexity of the flavors swirl on her tongue. I’ll save her the sexual innuendo.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” I say, leaning back against the booth.
“Why did you get mad at me when I mentioned youpossiblybeing enabled by your parents? It was a callous thing to say, I’ll admit. For that, I apologize. But you don’t seem like the kind of man who cares what people say about you.”
“You didn’t‘possibly’mention my parents enabling me, you stated it, like it was a fact. And I don’t care what people say about me. At all.”
“Then why did you get upset?”
“I don’t know, exactly. You weren’t completely off base, I grew up with more than most. But Richard and Mildred Fox are good people.Excellentpeople, actually.
“They didn’t just hand me everything I’ve ever wanted, then walk away. They taught me how to earn it, appreciate it, and see value in it. I understand my privilege. And there are moments when I don’t feel I even deserve it.”
I take a breath, surprised by my candor. But I recognize that I don’t often feel comfortable enough to talk about myself and my family. So I continue.
“That said, I worked hard to get to where I am professionally. I was gifted an excellent education when many more deserving than me didn’t have the luxury. So I worked hard to be deserving of it. I’m good at my job because I love my job. I’ll be awarded the kingdom as President of Fox & Latham before the age of thirty-three because I earned the spot, andknowI could have achieved it without my name.”
Taking a sip of my whiskey, my eyes stay on Winter. I marvel that someone like her is so interested in my life. As much as I want to take the spotlight off of me, and turn the tables on this little chat, I’m becoming addicted to the way she’s looking at me.
“And contrary to what you may think, life hasn’t always been a cakewalk. Having money doesn’t take away the ability to feel, Grimm, it only allows you the luxury of being able to afford distractions.”
“Is that what your little orgy was about?Distractions?” She takes a slow sip of her whiskey, leaving a light print of her lipstick on the glass. I grow hard under the table imagining her leaving a ring of red lip prints around my cock after she sucks it.
“As I said, orgies constitute four, or more. You chickened out, so I was left with a threesome.”
“Chickened out?” Her eyebrows hit the ceiling. “I did not‘chicken out.’You disgusted me. I would never have slept with you then.”
A broad smile lifts my lips while hers fall flat. She knows what she’s said the second that statement left her beautiful, pouty lips.
“Are you saying Idon’tdisgust you now? More importantly, did you just Freudian slip on your own lies?”
“No,” she says defensively. Her cheeks blooming from pink to beetroot-red andnotbecause of the whiskey.
“Hm-hmm. Don’t backpedal, Grimm. You said, and I quote, ‘I would never have slept with youthen.’ Are you saying you want to sleep with menow?” My gaze becomes a loaded gun.
She swallows hard. “N-no. That’s not what I said—”
I hold my hand up, stopping her embarrassing charade. “You get a pass, but maybe no more Macallan for you—your subconscious is showing.”
“You’re just changing the subject. I asked you if you were distracting yourself with those women. I want to know if my new roommate truly is an irredeemable monster or flawed like the rest of us.”
“One, I wouldn’t be a monster for wanting to fuck two hot women, I would be human. Aman, and a greedy one at that. Two, as a matter of fact, yes, Ididneed a distraction. That day was a shitty one. My brother was being a real dickhead, and I was pissed. I felt… out of sorts. So I had some drinks at the bar before going up to a suite I didn’t want to be staying in, to meet a woman I didn’t want to be stayingwith, no offense. If it’s any consolation, they came to me. And three, stop trying to make me a better person in your head. Enjoy me the way I am, then leave me the way I am.”
“You have a brother?”
“That’swhat you pulled from all that.” I laugh, then finish my glass and pour myself another two fingers, topping Winter’s off as well. “Yes. Hayden. I’m not his favorite person. Admittedly, he’s not mine.”
“So you two aren’t close?”
“We’re close because we have to be. He’s a junior partner for Fox and Latham, soon to be senior partner, and current dipshit. He’s always hated me for becoming next in line at the firm, but I earned it. I was eating, sleeping, and breathing my work while he was balls deep in every high society pussy he could pull away from bottle service. Not to mention, he didn’t want the responsibility. I work day and night with very little room for a personal life.”
I sigh, running my hands through my hair. “Moving back here has stirred up some old shit between us. Shit that angers me more than I know how to handle. Truth, our rivalry was part of the reason I moved to the New York branch to begin with. That, and my father only trusted me to clear the rubble of what a former senior partner did with it.”
He embezzled over $100,000, bought trips to the British Virgin Islands, and massages with happy endings with his company card, to be specific.
