Page 35 of Pick Six

There’s a presentation happening on stage already, so she just looks at me and then at the glass silently before she takes a sip. Surprise coloring her features before she takes a longer drink a moment later. She leans forward then, coming close so she can speak quietly.

“A paloma? How’d you guess that?” Her brow furrows as she looks at me.

I brush my fingers over her knee as I lean back, bringing my lips to her ear so I can answer her.

“I just remember what you tasted like that first night.”

Her eyes flash to mine, and even in the low light at our table, I can see the little rise of blush to her cheeks. Her eyes flick down to where I’m still touching her knee and she reaches for her glass again, taking another sip as I move back into my seat again.

Unfortunately, it’s not long after that my phone lights up. I’ve left it on the table as I’m waiting for a text from one of the trainers about what time he wants to do a session tomorrow. Except it’s not his name that shows. Just a giant DH.

The words flash across the screen in rapid succession.

DH

Come fuck me tonight.

I’ll leave the door unlocked. Just come to the…

The rest of the message is truncated by the little bubble surrounding it and I flip it over immediately, hoping Harper didn’t see it. But she’s still close to me and there’s no way the bright illumination didn’t catch her eye. Something I confirm when I look up and the eyes that had looked at me with soft flustered curiosity only a few moments before are now giving me an icy little once over.

Fuck.

EIGHTEEN

Harper

I recognizewho the text must be from the second the little bubble lights up. The DH is a dead giveaway and the fact that she’s still in his phone and the blunt way she makes the request after all this time makes me wonder if these clandestine trysts are a regular thing for them. I feel a slight flicker of jealousy light inside me. One I don’t have any real reason to feel. One that makes me wonder why I’m here with him, even as his fake girlfriend.

But he literally just brought up the first night we met, flirting with me shamelessly. I know he’s worried I’ll see it when he immediately flips the phone over. She doesn’t even care that he’s here with someone. Probably because she sees me as a mild inconvenience to getting what she wants.

Which means I have two options. Tell him I’m getting a car and run back home to bed where I can return to something close to my usual routine or decide to stage a little revolution and see how well he plays along.

I take another sip of the drink and then set it down next to his phone.

“Unlock it,” I say softly, but with more authority than I feel.

He glances over at me, startled that I’m ordering him around. But I’m taking him up on his earlier offer. He said I could look anytime I wanted. I raise my brow again in expectation.

“You’re not getting sexts while you have a girlfriend, remember?”

He stares at me for a long moment and then unlocks the phone and slides it to me. I’m surprised. I thought he’d cave. Tell me that I don’t have that kind of say as his fake girlfriend. Tell me that he needs to get laid tonight and I need to get over it. I definitely expected an argument, and now I feel like I’ve just initiated some sort of game of brinksmanship.

I scoot my chair closer to him, remembering how he’d dragged me close at Drew’s office, and I slide the slit of my dress to the side, uncovering my thigh in the process as I open up the camera app and turn the flash off.

“Put your hand on my thigh.”

He does as I ask, placing it close to my knee as he raises an eyebrow in question. His eyes flick over me like he’s trying to make sense of what I’m doing.

“That’s how you touch your girlfriends?”

In for a penny, in for a pound, right?

“I don’t have girlfriends.”

“That’s how you touch your fuck buddies?” I challenge him.

Something lights in his eyes and there’s a shameless tug at the corner of his mouth.