AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Picking it up quietly, I walked to the edge of the bed and gripped the duvet before pulling it back with one hard yank. Then, as he turned to shout at me, I did a Dorothy-like swing to soak the wicked witch—or in this case, Abel Clarke.
“What the fuck?” he shouted as he was showered with the freezing cold water.
Rivulets of water raced down his chest, and my eyes drifted over his hardened pecs and abs, drawing my attention to the touch of hair right above his boxer briefs. Of course, he had a treasure trail, but the most notable feature was the enormous morning wood he sported.
With his soaked boxers, the fabric only clung more to the length standing at attention, staring me down almost as much as he was. I swallowed hard.
Good Lord, he could destroy a woman’s uterus with that thing.
I yanked my eyes back to his face, not that the view was any better for being less distracting. But I had a job to do, and I needed to get it done. I needed this job more than anything. The agency promised me a top spot with a portfolio of big-nameactors if I could turn Abel’s career around and get a handle on him.
“Well, you shouldn’t have ignored my alarm.”
“You,” he said, pointing at me. “You set the alarm on my phone this morning!” I shrugged, and he sneered. “And how the hell did you manage that?”
I lifted my phone for him. “I have a friend—bit of a genius, actually. She gave me software to mirror your phone simply by being near it. Which I was, at yesterday’s wrap party.” I smiled, “Plus, your passcode isn’t that secure ‘one-one-one-one-two’ will not keep anybody out anytime soon.”
He scowled at me. “This is an invasion of privacy.”
“You’ve been a very bad boy this year, Abel Clarke, and Santa has put you on the naughty list. Only good boys get privacy. Bad boys get monitoring, which is exactly what I’m doing. Think of me as your corrections officer. There isn’t a single thing you can do that I won’t know about. So, you can cooperate or try to make my life difficult, which will only make your life difficult. Are we on the same page?”
He ground his teeth together, looking like a toddler on the verge of a tantrum. “No.”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“No.”
I smiled. “You don’t have any choice. You do what I say. Your days of choosing to do whatever you want, whenever you want, are over. I’m here as—”
“—my babysitter,” he cut me off. “Yeah, I got that. But babysitters don’t choose the schedule. They’re here to watch the children do what they want.”
“Not infants who’ve proven they cannot be responsible for making good decisions. Until the agency says otherwise, I’m in charge, whether you like it or not. And I say you have a daytime talk show to do this morning.” Since it was after 6 AM and hewas soaking wet, out of courtesy, I headed to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, and returned to him, tossing it in his face. “Dry yourself off and get dressed. We have to get to the studio in”—I checked my phone—"forty minutes. Don’t worry about your hair. They can fix it there.”
He stared at me. Was he trying to find a way to push back a little bit more?
Finally, he relented. “Maybe you can invade my privacy with my phone, but at the very least, you can leave while I dress.”
I made a face. “I can’t. Frankly, I don’t trust you. So, I’ll sit right here, and I promise to close my eyes when you take your boxers off, but you’ll have to get dressed with me here because I’m not risking you going back to sleep on the non-wet side of the bed.”
“You are a pain in the ass.”
I nodded in agreement. “Of the highest order. It’s what I got my bachelor's in.” I gave him a shit-eating grin before turning and plunking my ass into the chair.
I crossed my legs and flicked open my inbox to check my emails. “Tick, tock, Abel. We need to get going.”
Two
ABEL
Bachelor's degree in “pain in the assery.” I snorted to myself. I wouldn’t say she had a bachelor's; I’d go so far as to say she had a Ph.D. That girl rubbed me the wrong way like no other, yet I found sparring verbally with her enjoyable.
She was quick. I’d give her that. It almost reminded me of my improv days back in high school. Being able to come up with stories right on the spot, going back-and-forth with each other, trying not to break the scene or character with laughter … It felt the same with Scout.
It was easy. Too easy, and I didn’t like that either. If she was here to fix my career, she couldn’t be a distraction, which was what she was rapidly becoming. It wasn’t lost on me that she’d stared down my erection this morning, which is why I hadn’t bothered to cover it.
I wanted to see what she would do, and I swear to God she licked her lips, which was not the reaction I was hoping for. I expected her to blush and look away, but then again, in the five hours I’d known her, she didn’t strike me as the kind of person who looked away first. So, maybe subconsciously, I wanted her to stare, and I wanted her to imagine what I might be able to do to her with it.
Not that anything could happen, I reminded myself as I speared a piece of steak onto my fork and shoved it into my mouth. I chewed as I scrolled my emails on my iPad, trying to find if there was any communication to prove what she was saying was true about me being difficult.
