Page 12 of Overruled

“Is that what this whole thing is about for you?” I don’t ask because I disagree, but I want to understand what I’m getting into, considering everything I have riding on this. “Do you even care if we win?”

“Oh, we will win,” she says fiercely, curling her fingers around mine. “You are a powerful woman, remember? You will make him feel it.”

I find myself nodding slowly, a small smile painting my lips. “I’m sure as hell going to try.”

“That’s my girl,” she chuckles. “Do you forgive me?”

“I’m your lawyer,” I say. “Consider it one of the hazards of the job.”

Her lips tilt in a smile. “We will speak more of this.”

I take a deep breath, my mind already spinning in the face of all the extra digging I’m going to have to do. Weirdly, it only makes me more excited.

I give her an answering grin. “Sounds good.”

···

I accompany Bianca to the elevator before making the walk back to my office, my head buzzing with the various possibilities that might be tied to her husband’s mysterious account.

Having a mistress is one thing, but regular payments for almost three decades?

Is their entire relationship transactional, or is he just too lazy to bathe her in his money in person?

I don’t notice there’s someone else in my office until I’ve already shut the door behind me, my lips turning down in a frown at Ezra’s broad back as he stands across the room studying the framed pictures on my bookshelf.

“By all means,” I grumble. “Make yourself at home.”

He glances over his shoulder at me, flashing me his panty-dropping smile (I wish I could say that was just a baseless metaphor) as he points to the photo of my dad and me at McKinney Falls. “This is sweet. You should go back to pigtails.”

“I was eleven,” I mutter.

“Must be why you’re smiling. Your face had to have forgotten how to do it not long after.”

I roll my eyes. “Cute.”

“Your parents seem so happy in your pictures.” His eyes move from the frames littered on my shelves in a way that feels almost…wistful. “Hard to believe they got divorced.”

“Yeah, well,” I snort. “When you’re just pretending to enjoy being married so your kid can have a ‘normal childhood,’ I guess it’s an easy decision to split.” His eyes widen, and I feel my own mirror the action. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“They told you that?”

I hate the pity in his expression.

“Are you in my office for a reason, or did you just come to bother me?”

He eyes me for a moment longer, like he wants to press the issue, but it’s gone as quickly as it came. He grins at me instead. “Well, I do love bothering you.”

“Ezra.”

“Fine.” He raises his hands in apology. “I came to assure you I have no idea about any secret accounts. Whatever happened in that room was news to me.”

I force my expression to remain passive, not wanting to reveal yet that I believe him. “Your brother didn’t seem very surprised.”

His face does something strange then, a bitter shade passing over it that I never see on him.

“I didn’t know he would be here today,” he tells me. “My father sent him.”

“Doesn’t trust baby boy to handle things?”

I mean it as a tease, but the shadow across his face deepens, and he cuts his eyes away from mine. “Wouldn’t put it past him.”

I wrestle with that for a moment. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ezra speak ill of his family. Is there more to the Heartbreak Prince than just some family lawyer royalty? I decide it’s not my business.

“Well, considering Bianca is emailing me the records she found, I guess it will all be out there soon.”

“Yes, I imagine so,” he sighs. His eyes find mine again. “But I needed you to know I didn’t lie to you or withhold information.”

I won’t pretend that his admission doesn’t make my chest tighten, but I play it off with a shrug. “Why would it matter what I think?”

“Because…” His lips curl in a sultrier smile now. “I enjoy our…arrangement.”

“Our arrangement,” I echo.

He strolls to my desk, toying with the bronze scales of justice paperweight at the corner. Then he turns, leaning to rest his ass against my desk while his stupidly large hands slide down to grip the edge.

“Yes. I would hate to see it end because of a misunderstanding.”

I purse my lips. “I already told you it was over.”

“Yes, I know, but I wouldn’t want to give you a reason to actually mean it, for once.”

I glare at him. “You don’t think I mean it?”

“I think you want to mean it, Dani,” he laughs. “But no, I don’t think you actually do.”

“The sun doesn’t rise and set on your dick, Ezra,” I scoff. “I think you’re putting too much stock into it.”

“Maybe.” He shrugs one shoulder with a sly grin. “I’d much rather be putting it somewhere else.”

I groan. “Does that actually work for you?”

“I don’t know.” His eyes flick down the length of me with heat in them that has me suppressing a shiver. “You tell me.”

I hate that it does. Hate it. There’s no good reason for warmth to be filling my chest, no reason for me to be getting wet from such a stupid come-on. So why am I?

Why him? I ask my body for the thousandth time. Why does it have to be him?

I take a step forward, pressing my fingers into his chest with every intention of telling him off and booting him out of my office. “Listen here—”

His hand lifts to cover mine, his thumb rubbing lightly across my knuckles, sending a jolt of electricity down my spine. “Yes?”

“I…” My eyes drop to where his fingers graze the back of my hand in light touches, my mouth going dry. “You’re…”

His voice feels closer now, and I can smell the mint of his toothpaste as his breath hits my cheek. “What am I, Dani?”

“Infuriating,” I mumble as his lips graze my throat.

I can feel his laugh against my skin. “I think you like it more than you pretend.”

“I’m not pretending anything.”

“You’re not?” I feel the warm weight of his palms sliding over my hips in a featherlight hold. “Then tell me to stop. Tell me not to touch you, and I won’t.”

Just say it, I chide myself. Tell him to stop touching you.

But I don’t do that. Why don’t I do that?

“Come on, Dani.” His hands move slowly to slide against the fabric of my skirt, a barely there touch on my ass where he cups me. “Tell me you don’t want me to touch you.”

“I hate you,” I groan instead.

His teeth nip gently at the sensitive skin below my ear, and much to my displeasure (figuratively, at least), a tiny moan escapes me.

“I know,” he says.

I don’t mean to press my hips further into his.

I don’t mean to zipper my body to the front of Ezra’s like I’m trying to wear him.

At least, I think I don’t. My head is a little fuzzy right now.

It’s like when Ezra touches me, all the stress and the worry that is my life melts away, allowing me to focus on nothing else but his hands and his body and the sizzle of irritating pleasure he brings.

“You always smell so good,” he murmurs, his nose skimming along the length of my throat. “But you feel better.”

I gasp when he rolls his hips, feeling the hard length of him even through the layers of his dress pants and my skirt.

Even with the way that little part of my brain is still screaming at me for giving in to this again —my body lights up like a Christmas tree at even this.

He says that I feel good, but it should be illegal , how he feels. It should be a goddamned crime.

“I think about fucking you over this desk,” he tells me roughly, nibbling on my earlobe as I shiver. “Or maybe mine. Every time I see you in one of these fucking skirts, making your ass look like a fucking gift —I think about inching it up over those pretty thighs of yours and filling you up.”

He squeezes my ass for good measure, and an irrational urge to turn my face and press my mouth to his floods me, but I hold it back. Even if it’s something I can’t stop thinking about when he’s this close.

“I could have you right now,” he rasps, pulling me closer to the throbbing heat between his legs that I know will feel incredible inside me.

“It would be so easy. So fucking easy.” My head falls back at the soft kiss below my jaw.

“And you’d let me, wouldn’t you, Dani? You’d let me push you over this desk and take what’s mine. ”

Everything inside me freezes. Isn’t this the exact thing I said I shouldn’t be doing? Didn’t I just resolve not to let myself get wrapped up in this anymore? That there’s too much at stake to risk doing so?

What the fuck am I doing?

I wrench out of his grip, untangling myself from the heat of his body as mine screams in protest. His eyes are heavy lidded, dazed in his lust-drunk state, which no doubt matches mine, and I breathe deep through my nostrils to try to steady myself.

“I’m not yours ,” I say through gritted teeth. “I’m not your anything.”

He blinks once, then twice, his hands still reaching slightly as if the fact that he isn’t touching me anymore hasn’t quite caught up to his brain.

I watch him lower them slowly, running his palms over the tops of his thighs as his throat works in a swallow, his head turning to the floor for a moment as if he’s thinking.

When he looks back up at me, there’s a small smile on his mouth, but it’s not the one I’m used to. It’s almost…sad.

“You’re right,” he laughs softly. “You’re not. I got carried away.”

I feel…flustered. Not just because I was practically humping his leg seconds ago, but also because I’ve never seen Ezra look anything less than assured. Which is not how he looks right now. He looks like he might be trying to figure out why he even said what he did in the first place.

I watch him adjust himself, and then that brief moment of uncertainty is gone, in its place the same collected, confident Ezra I know. “Just thought you might want a little stress relief after that doozy of a bomb your client dropped.”

I’m still trying to catch up to whatever the fuck just happened, but I manage a snort. “I have a bottle of wine at home that will give me less of a headache than what you’re offering.”

“Right,” he chuckles. “You really do make a habit of comparing me to activities involving your mouth.”

“Get out of my office, Ezra,” I growl, brushing past him to my desk, as if I wasn’t four seconds away from letting him do exactly what he said I would. “Some of us have work to do.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets, striding to the door as I drop down into my chair. He turns as he pulls it open, lingering in the doorway. “You have my number if you change your mind.”

“I won’t,” I say a little too quickly.

He’s still smiling, but I notice it doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “Sure.”

I tell myself I don’t care why he was different just now, because I don’t.

Ezra Hart’s issues are of no concern to me.

That’s not what we are, and it’s not what we’ll ever be.

Still, I stare at the cracked door he left behind for far longer than I’d like to admit.

I don’t know how many seconds pass before I start tapping the end of a pen against my notepad.

Even hours later, I can’t escape the nagging idea that I might not have Ezra as figured out as I thought.