Page 74 of Devil's Kiss

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Umm, not last time I checked.”

Derek shut his eyes and told himself to keep his cool. There was no reason to get mad, because this game Jordan was playing was just that—a game. One that Derek was not going to participate in anymore.

“Well, you must be if you think I’m going to do what you wrote here.”

“Ohh, so you got my flowers? Are they beautiful?”

“I told you, I was done with this. With us,” Derek said, choosing to ignore Jordan’s question.

“No, you said you were done with what we had. And I accept that. ‘Fuck buddies’ is off the table.” Jordan paused and then added, as though checking off a list, “And off the bed, and off the floor, and hell, anywhere else I’ve had the pleasure of fucking you,buddy. Anyway, you get the picture. But this isn’t that.Thisis a date.”

Derek looked down at the card in his hand and shook his head. “This isn’t a date. This is a demand. Actually, it’s several fucking demands.”

“Well, of course it is. I’m not really the sweet,tiptoeing around what I wantkind of guy, am I, Derek? If I want something, I go after it. My parents spoiled me as a child, so there’s really no helping my bossy nature. On the plus side, I didn’t pay two thousand dollars to get your attention.”

Derek growled in frustration, and when Jordan chuckled in his ear, his cock got impossibly harder. “You’re insane.”

“And you love it,” Jordan said, and then added with extra flourish, “you told me so.”

“Something you have no shame in using against me, obviously.”

“Obviously.” Jordan paused, and then his voice came back through the phone, the most serious he’d been since picking up the call. “Derek?”

“Yeah?”

“I meant what I wrote. I am coming for you, and I plan to get you back.”

Derek closed his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. “Why now? Because I walked away? BecauseItold youno?”

“Yes.”

The answer was so quick, it caught Derek off guard, but what followed next was what truly made him speechless.

“And because one day of knowing that you might not call me at the end of it was one day too many. I know I missed all the signs, and I know the moment of perfection came and went before I even knew I’d missed it. But this isnothow we end, Derek Pearson.”

He swallowed, imagining Jordan’s face looking up at him as he said those words. “Because you didn’t decide it?”

“No. Because we haven’t even begun. Not in the sense where you get to break up with me and walk out. For that honor, you have to date me first.”

Derek laughed at Jordan’s audacity. The guy was a fucking head trip. But God help him, he wanted him anyway. “And this is your idea of a date? A night at my gym?”

“Not under normal circumstances, but when have we ever been normal? See you tomorrow, He-Man. And don’t wear too much. I want to look at you while I sweat.”

Derek swallowed and slipped his hand into his shorts.

“And stop touching yourself?—”

“How did you?—”

Jordan laughed then, and the pure joy of the sound had Derek grinning like a fool.

“Because I’m doing the same exact thing. Good night, Derek.”

“Night, Jordan.”

Chapter 20