Page 11 of Mr. Wrong (Hollywood Knights #1)

Eleven

Ellenore

I woke up to the smell of coffee and a mouth between my legs.

Not a horrible way to start the day.

“Lex…” I raise myself up on my elbows to look down at him, the rest of my thoughts spinning away before I can form them into words when he slips two fingers inside me and slides his tongue up the seam of my pussy before flicking it against my clit.

After that, my arms collapse under me and forming complete sentences becomes impossible.

“Coffee’s almost ready....” he says while I’m still recovering, pressing a kiss to the inside of each of my thighs. “Are you hungry? I can make you some eggs.”

Coffee, orgasms and eggs?

“Are you real?” I push myself up on wobbly elbows to peer down at him.

Jesus, he’s even hotter than he was last night.

Dark blond hair tousled and messy. 5 o’clock shadow.

Sleepy eyes and a soft mouth. I don’t know if I want to dig in and refuse to leave or run away.

“I mean, seriously—does this kind of stuff happen to other women on a regular basis and I’m just now—” Something about the way the sun slants through the curtains makes me bolt upright and he has to sit up just as fast to avoid catching a knee in the face. “What time is it?”

“I don’t know…” He frowns at me, kneeling in the center of the bed, glancing around like he’s looking for someone to tell him. “Seven. Eight.”

“ Ohmygod .” I scramble to the side of the bed and snatch my phone off the nightstand. It’s dead.

I set the alarm but forgot to charge it.

I look up, panicked, to find Lex rifling through the nightstand. A few seconds later he pulls out a wristwatch. “It’s 7:45.”

“7:45?” I feel the panic fluttering in my chest drop like a shot, swell and grow until it’s churning and swinging around in my gut like a wrecking ball. I shoot around the edge of the bed, scanning the floor. “Where are my clothes?”

“In the—”

I bolt past him and out the door, stepping directly into a large living room.

The curtains are pulled back, sun streaming through the window illuminating the entire space.

There’s nothing here. It’s like the second he got them off of me, my clothes disappeared into thin air.

Holy shit, I don’t even know where or how he got me naked.

Lex the Super Villain is some sort of sexual Houdini.

I plant my feet and press a hand to my forehead. Close my eyes and force myself to breathe deeply. Think. I have roughly seventy-five minutes to get to the address Landon Trask gave me. The problem is that I’m mostly naked, my phone is dead and I have no idea where the hell I—

“Ellenore?” I open my eyes to find Lex standing in the bedroom doorway, wearing a pair of boxer briefs and a frown.

“I have to be to work by nine and I—”

“Call your boss.” When I hold up my dead phone he points to a cordless landline on one of the end tables near the couch.

“Tell him you’re running late.” He sounds so calm, so reasonable that I want to choke him.

Closing the distance between us, he settles his hands on my shoulders and turns me toward him.

“We’ll get your phone charged. Get you fed. It’ll be okay, just—”

I feel my breath hitch in my chest. My safety net unraveling underneath me. “I can’t.” I shake my head. “It’s my first day and my boss is a total asshole—he’ll fire me on the spot and I really need this job. I—”

“Okay.” He tips his chin, the line of his jaw tightening at my tone. “We’ll get dressed and I’ll take you to work on my bike. I can have you there in plenty of time.”

I shake my head, fast and tight. “No.” The panic is back.

“No…” I can’t let him drive me to Landon Trask’s house—not when he made me sign a non-disclosure agreement the size of a telephone book.

Revealing his address or that I even work for him is expressly prohibited.

“I’ll call a cab. I don’t want to put you out.

” I can’t order an Uber because my phone is dead.

A cab is plan B. “Where are my clothes?”

He’s still frowning. I don’t know anything about one night stands but isn’t he supposed to be relieved that I’m being so easy to get rid of? Finally he sighs and drops his hands to gesture toward the kitchen. “In the dryer.”

I bolt around him, making a beeline for the kitchen area. Skirting the island, I push through a door, hoping that the room beyond it houses the laundry room. It does. Pulling my bundle of clothes out of the dryer I search them.

No underwear.

Great. Not only am I on the verge of losing my job before I even actually start it, my hot as fuck hook-up—the only one I’m probably ever going to have in my entire sad, pathetic life—is going to find my boring beige briefs under his bed or mixed in with his laundry and as soon as he sees them, he’s going to have an epic what the fuck was I thinking moment.

Trying not to think about it, I step into the kitchen to find Lex leaning against the island, cup of coffee in his hand.

As soon as I appear, he straightens and pulls my clothes out of my arms before pushing the coffee mug into my hands. “Drink it,” he says, when I open my mouth to offer up a protest.

Because I don’t know what else to do, I do what he says, taking an impatient sip of coffee, casting a quick glance around while he drops my clothes on the counter in front of him.

The kitchen itself is small. Tidy. Dishes in the drainer next to the sink.

Crayon drawings of dinosaurs stuck to the fridge with magnets shaped like sailboats and ladybugs.

“I couldn’t find your underwear,” he says, reading my mind while he pulls my jeans from the pile and shakes them out before handing them to me.

“What did you mean about your boss being an asshole?”

I set the cup down on the island in front of me and shrug. “Nothing,” I say, backpedaling a bit. “He’s just particular about how things are done.” I step into my still-damp jeans and pull them up while pretending that spending the entire day not wearing underwear doesn’t totally mortify me.

“What did you say his name was again?”

“I didn’t.” I focus on buttoning my jeans and zipping them up without snagging something important.

When I look up, Lex is watching me, my boring beige bra hanging from its strap off his hooked finger.

“He’s just some weird Hollywood-type. You know how they are,” I say, even though I have no idea what I’m talking about.

I’ve been in LA for three days. I know less than nothing about this city or how it works.

“If you tell me his name, I might be able to make some calls—smooth things out.” He says it like he doesn’t want to say it. Like by saying it, he’s telling me too much about who he really is.

“No.” I shake my head. “I won’t ask you to do that,” I say, stalling out at the thought of taking my shirt off in front of him.

Seriously, Ellenore? This is the guy who had you bent over the bathroom sink a few hours ago. The same guy who just tongue-fucked you and offered to make you eggs. Get over yourself.

I hold my breath anyway as I pull my borrowed shirt over my head. “Thank you,” I murmur, trading it for the bra in his hand. Once my bra is on, I look up to find him shaking the wrinkles out of my T-shirt. For some weird reason, that slows me down. Calms me.

Before I know what I’m doing, I close the distance between us. “I’m sorry I’m being such a jerk.” I take the T-shirt from him and set it aside. “You were nice enough to wash my clothes and make—”

“Make you come?” The corner of his mouth jerks upward in a smirk when I blush.

“I was going to say make me coffee , but yeah—that too,” I tell him, swaying closer, hoping he’ll take the hint and kiss me. “I wish I had time to return the favor.”

“It’s okay,” he says, reaching up to push my hair away from my face. “We’ll raincheck it.”

I roll my bottom lip between my teeth and nod because I don’t know what it means. If it’s just an expression or if he really wants to see me again.

“I’m sorry I made you late,” he continues, his thumb sweeping across my cheekbone. “I shouldn’t have insisted that you stay.”

“You didn’t—I wanted to stay, remember?” I say, leaning my cheek into the cradle of his hand. “And I’m the one who forgot to charge my phone. That’s not your fault.”

We stand here for what feels like forever, looking at each other, before he finally drops his hand and clears his throat.

“You should probably go finish getting ready. There’s a brand-new toothbrush with your name on it on the bathroom sink— maid stocks them,” he explains before I can ask where he got a new toothbrush on such short notice. “Hurry up or you really will be late.”

When I turn away to do as he says, he swats my ass and I let out another embarrassing yelp on my way to the bathroom.

When I emerge from the bathroom ten minutes later, Lex is dressed, wearing the same shirt I wore to bed and a pair of jeans.

He’s standing in front of the living room’s bay window, arms folded over his chest, staring at the pool, or maybe the main house on the other side of the property.

My shoes, sweater and purse are stacked neatly together on a table near the front door.

“Cab’ll be here in a few minutes,” he says without turning around.

“Oh.” I gather the rest of my stuff, pulling on my sweater before slinging the strap of my bag over my shoulder. “Okay—thank you.” More awkward silence. “I’ll just—”

“I’ll walk you out.” He finally looks at me and moves toward the door.

I shake my head again, practically lunging for it in an effort to get there first. “That’s not necessary.”

“Actually it is,” he says, taking me by my shoulders to turn me around until my back is toward him.

I feel the pop and crackle of static electricity between my shoulder blades and look over my shoulder to see a pair of socks dangling from his pinched fingers.

One hot pink with tacos and the other orange and green argyle.

“If you’re caught creeping around the property without an escort, you’ll be detained by security. ”

“Oh. Okay.” Embarrassed, I take my socks and tuck them into the front pocket of my jeans. I’ll put my shoes on in the cab. “Thanks.”

He doesn’t say anything. Just opens the door and gestures me through it.

Walking side-by-side like we did last night, neither of us talk until we’re across the cobblestone driveway and he’s leading me through an ivy-covered pedestrian gate set into the huge plaster wall that surrounds the property. When we step onto the sidewalk my cab is waiting curbside.

I turn to look at him, to tell him I don’t want to leave. That I want to see him again, but he stops me with a soft, almost brotherly kiss on my cheek. “See you around, Elle Who is Not an Actress ,” he says when he pulls away from me, flashing me one of his gut-clenching grins.

“See you around, Lex the Super Villain .” I try to sound like he does. Casual. Easy about the fact that I was intimate with a total stranger that I’m never going to see again. A stranger I’ve become far too attached to in a ridiculously short amount of time.

Oxytocin.

The man has flooded my brain with what probably amounts to an oceans’ worth of oxytocin in only a handful of hours. That’s what this is.

That’s all it is.

It’ll wear off soon enough and I’ll be me again. I’ll come to my senses and realize that what happened last night was a mistake and that Lex McLeod is all wrong for me.

A few hours from now, I’ll be back to being me.

I watch Lex lean into the cab through the passenger side window, talking to the cab driver before straightening. He opens my door and I slide in, letting him shut it behind me.

Giving me one last smile, Lex thumps his fist on the roof of the cab before disappearing through the gate he just led me through.

I have to hook my feet under the seat in front of me to stop myself from running after him.

Did I say hours? I meant days.

Maybe months.

“Where to Miss?”

My attention snaps back to the driver. I’m being ridiculous. Lex isn’t real. Nothing that happened between us was real. It was just a one-night-stand. For all I know he offers breakfast and performs early morning oral on all his conquests. I’m not special.

I’ve never been special.

I never will be.

Not to someone like him.

So he made me coffee and washed my clothes.

That means he’s considerate, not in love.

Besides, he’s all wrong for me. He lives in his rich brother’s pool house and that rich brother fired him, for Christ’s sake.

I might not be his usual type but he’s not mine either.

I like men with goals. Ambition. Someone who—

“Miss?”

“400 Farmstone Road,” I say, rattling off the address I committed to memory. “Brentwood?” I offer when the cabbie doesn’t so much as shift into drive.

“Is this some sort of joke?” He turns around in his seat to shoot me a suspicious scowl. “Is that Ashton Kutcher in the bushes with his camera crew?”

“Who?” I look out the window before bouncing my gaze back to his and shake my head. “I don’t—”

The driver glares at me, baring teeth that are stained from too much coffee and too many cigarettes. “Because I don’t have time for this shit—some of us have to work for a living.”

“What? No, this—” I take a deep breath and close my eyes, forcing myself to remain calm. “No, this is not a joke. I need to get to 400—”

“Miss, this is 400 Farmstone Road,” he says, his tone popping my eyes open to find him pointing toward the gate Lex just disappeared through. The ivy on the gate is trimmed away to display the address:

400 Farmstone Road

“Brentwood?” I hear myself say.

“That’s right—Brentwood,” the driver confirms, holding up a wad of cash. “And don’t think I’m giving this back.”