Page 28

chapter

twenty-seven

Stella

M uch to my disappointment, I did have to eventually resurface for air, but Gem was right there waiting with a dry towel. He wrapped me up like a human burrito, then tossed me over his shoulder while I cracked up laughing at the absurdity of it all.

My wet hair hung down over my face, so I didn’t catch sight of Demon Spawn as Gem carried me upstairs to his bedroom where he laid me out on his bed and proceeded to eat my pussy like a starving man while my arms remained trapped in the towel prison.

When I came, I bit my lip to keep from being too loud, but Gem wasn’t satisfied.

“Try again, Slick,” he growled, then bit my inner thigh hard enough to make me yelp. “This time scream my name.”

I was nothing if not obedient—at least as far as Gem was concerned, anyway. And when he was willing to put in the work…

“ Oh, uh! Gem!” I screamed it this time. “Yes! Gem! Don’t fucking stop!”

Apparently, I wasn’t the only obedient one.

He let up on me after my second climax tailed off, chuckling smugly to himself as he licked his lips—and mine—to clean up, then helped me untangle from the towel. The man was a god; he carried me right into the shower with him and rinsed us both off before toweling me down and setting me on the bed again.

“I’ll grab you some clothes,” he murmured, disappearing into his massive walk-in closet while I lay boneless and more than satisfied on his bed.

He returned with a T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, which were both designer label and felt incredible against my skin. Better still, they smelled like him.

“Jealous,” Ollie muttered with a pout as we returned back downstairs with flushed faces and easy smiles. “Remind me to hold the towels next time.”

“Next time?” Seven barked, already pacing a hole in the floor in front of the bar. “There won’t be a next time. Do you have no concept of the agreement we made, Stella? Do you seriously not fucking comprehend the fact that you arriving at a party with me and the leaving with him ”—he jerked a thumb in Ollie’s direction—“could completely fuck the story we only just started to craft?”

“How do you know it was him?” Gem asked, flopping down on the sofa with zero fucks about Seven’s rant. “Could have been me. I do love to rescue a damsel myself. And if it was me, then no one would be any the wiser…”

Seven glared daggers. “It wasn’t.”

“Chill out, Sev,” Ollie added. “No one saw us, and what happens in the privacy of our own home is also no one's business. Not even yours, funnily enough.”

“It is my business because I’m literally paying the stray by the damn hour for her time and you two are out there playing hide the pickle in our pool. Which, by the fucking way, I expect you to sanitize before the morning because I do not need to swim in a pool of your semen.”

Ollie and Gem exchanged a long look, while I wrinkled my nose. “Pickle is a bit inaccurate, isn’t it?” I muttered, mostly to myself. “Cucumber is closer to reality. Or a zucchini? One of those ones they grow for farmers markets and shit, where they win prizes for their enormous…um…vegetables.”

“Technically I believe the Langelang Giant Cucumber is sliced to make pickles so he’s not totally wrong,” Ollie offered thoughtfully, making me grin. “And those can grow up to twelve inches long.” Then he winked, and my pussy throbbed. Crap, I had it bad for Olivier Griffiths.

“Would you two shut the fuck up about vegetables?” Seven exploded, throwing his hands in the air, his face red with anger.

I squinted at him, pursing my lips. “You must be a carnivore. This hatred toward vegetables isn’t necessary, Spawn. They never did anything to hurt you.”

Gem snickered, grinning like he was really enjoying himself as he extended a hand to me. Before I could take it, Ollie grabbed me around the waist and sat the both of us down in an oversized armchair together.

“There was that one time with the carrot—” Gem started to say with a sly look.

“Shut the fuck up, Gemini,” Seven hissed.

My lips parted with a question burning the tip of my tongue, but Ollie squeezed my hip, silently telling me not to ask. Well, fuck, now I was extra curious what’d happened with the carrot.

“You,” Seven said, redirecting the conversation back to me, “need to explain why the fuck you thought it was okay to just disappear from a party where you knew no one and had no mode of transport.”

I tilted my head, eyeing him with curiosity. “Were you worried?”

His face darkened and he spluttered. “Absolutely not. Why the fuck would I worry? But our agreement?—”

“Was done. I attended the premiere, arrived at the party, posed for pictures. You ditched me, remember? This isn’t a date, Stray . Ring any bells? The way I figured, we were done for the night. Don’t worry. I won’t charge past nine.”

His jaw tensed, the muscle of his cheek twitching. “That’s not the point.”

“Spell it out for me, Demon Spawn. What exactly is the point you’re trying to make? Because I had a whole bucket load to drink as well as several orgasms, so I’m tired . Hurry up and say what you wanna say so I can go home.”

Ollie’s arms tightened around me when I said that, like he didn’t want to let me go home. As tempting as it was to propose a sleepover, that was taking things far too quick for my liking. Threesomes? Fine. Sleepovers? Whoa, baby, pump the breaks.

Seven glared at me for the longest time, then folded his arms once more. “We can discuss it when you’re of clearer mind. There’s no point trying to talk sense when you’re so obviously intoxicated.”

The way he said it was so incredibly condescending, there was no way he wasn’t trying to pick a fight. Like he was deliberately pushing buttons to see what might blow up.

Well, sucks to suck because I was more than fine with that decision.

“Okay, suits me,” I said with a yawn. “Can one of you boys drop me home? My date unfortunately lost his manners somewhere along Sunset Boulevard and I seem to be stranded.”

Ollie chuckled and Gem grinned, while Seven seemed to have steam coming out his ears.

“I’ll drive you,” Gem offered, already getting to his feet. “Ollie has to be up for an eight a.m. press junket.”

Ollie groaned, hugging me against him as he buried his face in my wet hair. “Not fair,” he complained, but reluctantly let me go when Gem offered me his hand.

“This conversation isn’t over, Stray,” Seven called after us, like it was his one last effort to pick a fight.

I snorted a laugh. “Try harder, loser. I’m way too high on dopamine right now.”

The amusement carried me all the way out to the garage, where Gem led me over to a modest little Honda Civic. As he opened the passenger door, he said, “I don’t like to get noticed.”

An unfamiliar affection rippled through me. “You also don’t have dick envy,” I murmured, pushing up on my toes to nuzzle a kiss to his jaw. “So I like it.”

His snort of laughter was real, and I loved the way he seemed to light up. “What am I going to do with you, Slick?”

I winked as I climbed into the offered passenger seat. “Apparently, pretty much whatever you want. Why? Am I boring you?”

“Not a chance in hell,” he promised, then shut the door before he circled to the driver’s side. When he held out his hand again, I set mine in his. He didn’t move so much as dip his head to kiss my knuckles, then he locked eyes with me.

“Address?”

There was a downbeat and an upbeat before laughter rippled out of me.

“You mean you haven’t snuck it into your phone already?” Ollie had. Seven had. But Gem? We’d talked a lot and met elsewhere; he hadn’t come to my apartment. Not yet.

“Might need to up my stalking game,” Gem said, stroking his thumb along the side of my hand. “Or it could be I am savoring the fact that my girl keeps coming back to me and there’s a reward in being the one who is found.”

“Synchronicity?”

“They made a movie about it,” he reminded me with a wink.

Yes, yes they had.

“Right, well, I like cheating—as you might have noticed earlier.”

“I like cheating too,” he told me with a grin and then handed me his phone. It was unlocked and the name of my contact was Slick.

Grinning, I typed the address in with my thumbs and then passed it back. “Tag,” I told him. “You’re it.”

It was in this happy, dopamine-infused bubble that we drove to my place. It was just nice to hold hands, listen to the radio, and enjoy the night driving. Not that we got a lot of open driving, as the traffic grew thicker the closer we got to my place.

Instead of dropping me off, which I expected, he parked and climbed out. After opening my door, he reached a hand out to help me up. Wearing only the pair of pool slides Gem had given me in place of my stilettos when we left his place, I was acutely aware of how tall he was.

“I can walk to the door on my own.” I was more than used to seeing myself inside. The nice thing about my apartment was we had access to garages that were a separate rental fee. Mine wasn’t right next to the apartment, but it did mean that I didn’t have to worry about the Bel Air while out. That or my bike.

“I know,” he said. “Just like the idea of making sure you get in safe and sound. Indulge me?”

I made a big show of thinking about it as he closed the door and slipped an arm around me before settling his hand on my waist. “I suppose,” I said. “But who will walk you back to the car?”

“You could do that,” he said, eyes twinkling as we crossed the lot toward the breezeway to my place. “Then I’d have to make sure you got back to your apartment.”

“Oh no,” I said, exhaling a mighty sigh. “We’ll be forever trapped in a loop unless you stay with me!”

“ Or ,” he said, stressing the single syllable, “you come back home with me. I have a very big bedroom, and you slept very well the last time you stayed.”

It was near impossible to suppress my smile. Before I could respond though, Gem’s smile fled and his eyes narrowed as he looked ahead. I turned, frowning.

My front door was open.

“Oh, man…” There’d been break-ins a few months earlier, but I thought they’d caught those guys.

“Wait,” Gem said, tightening his arm around me. “Let me go first.” Without waiting for agreement, he tucked me behind him and headed for the door. Once there, he nudged it inward with a booted foot.

Inside it was…just destroyed. The sofa was torn up, every cushion shredded. Stuffing hung from everything. Broken glass decorated the floor. The hard shells of books were open, their pages ripped out and scattered. The television had a huge hole in it.

The smell of cat urine and worse seemed to just waft out of there. Splashes of paint were on the walls, the carpet. The little wooden card table I’d saved from a dumpster in college, then sanded to a new color was in literal pieces.

Everywhere I looked, there was destruction. The photo prints Dad had framed for me when I moved in as a housewarming present were broken, the prints sliced and more. My stomach fell away like I’d just taken a tumble off a cliff.

A scuff of shoe against pavement had me twisting, and Gem with me. Dillon strolled around the corner, his dark eyes alight with a kind of malicious glee that his thin, fake smile couldn’t mask.

“Oh, that looks terrible,” he said, pausing to glance past us into my apartment. His smirk faltered only briefly when he looked at Gem. Dillon definitely wasn’t happy to see him, but then he turned that unfriendly gaze back my way. “Must have really pissed off the wrong people this time.”

“Why don’t you fuck off?” Gem said, his expression tightening.

“Hey, man,” Dillon said, raising his hands as if in surrender. “Just saying…looks bad. You know what she does for a living right? Your actor boyfriend does know, doesn’t he?”

“I think you misheard,” Gem stated, taking a step forward. “I said fuck off before I make you fuck off.”

“I’m out.” He just kept right on smirking as he backed up and then he turned left.

“You know that asshole?” Gem asked, pulling his phone out as he glanced from me to the door to where Dillon had gone.

“Unfortunately… Oh, the dark room.” That reality sank in and I hurried in, avoiding Gem trying to snag my arm. My new camera and equipment was all secured in the new camera safe in the car, in the garage that was also locked. I also used mostly digital for pap shots.

The dark room was just for me…

The door of the second bedroom that I’d converted was off its hinges and the smell of the chemicals was eye-wateringly bad. I’d almost missed it in the other room because of the urine smell, but in the hall, it was impossible to miss.

So much wasted film. Canisters ripped open and exposed. Images torn up and shredded. Everything had been overturned or broken. Glass was everywhere. The chances of recovering anything were slim to none.

“I’m sorry, Slick. Come on,” Gem said, tugging me with him. The brief look I got in my bedroom said that room had fared the worst of all of it. My clothes were also part of the mass destruction, along with the bed, the pillows, and everything.

“This is Gemini Harrison. I need to report a break-in, burglary, and destruction of property.” He kept talking, and it gradually sank in that he was calling the cops. When the call ended, he pulled me against him, where we stood in the courtyard outside the apartment. “I need to make a couple more calls, then you’re going home with me.”

“Gem…”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. His grim expression and firm tone allowed for no argument. “Someone broke into your place and did that.” His phone buzzed and he swore. When he showed me the screen, I wanted to swear too.

Get the Inside Scoop on Seven Harrison’s new mystery woman, celebrity photographer Stella Charles…

“Oh my god.”

“We’re going to take care of this,” Gem said. “We’re going to take care of everything.”

Dillon had something to do with this. He had to have.

Right?