Dr. Stud

“I did not!”

“Well, you tried. I was right about the trying, then.”

“You're not right about anything!” she objects.

She snatches her blue handbag off the table top and pivots outward like she's going to leave. Emmet drops a hand to block her, brushing his palm against her knee. Surprisingly, I'm a little jealous that he already got to touch her below the shoulders when I haven’t. I’ll have to fix that in a hurry.

“Let me go,” she says calmly and clearly, as though coached on those words in some kind of self-defense class.

“Look over my right shoulder,” he tells her, measuring his words out carefully. Her eyes hesitate for a moment and then rise over his shoulder, scanning the front of the room. I see her mouth narrow into a frustrated line.

“Shit.”

“What are we looking at?” I ask, following her gaze. And there he is, right in the corner, pretending to type on his iPhone while holding it up high enough to be snapping pictures. The same blogger who caught us balls-deep in the Congresswoman.

“Oh, shit, indeed."

“Has he been there the whole time?” Emmet asks me.

“How should I know?” I answer. “It's not like I did a security sweep before I walked in.”

“You're supposed to know,” he scoffs. “Seriously, Dillon. You’re supposed to be aware of your goddamn surroundings. It’s lesson one.”

“Is he taking video?” she adds, her voice suddenly different. I expect her to go even further down the shy and outraged girly path, but when I look at her, she's hard as a rock. Her eyes are narrowed, one eyebrow arched in an expression of intellectual fury.

Wow. She is hot as hell right now.

“Video… pics… maybe even some narration. Who knows at this point?”

“Right,” she says, almost to herself. She shifts in her seat, turning toward Emmet and perching her elbow prettily on the table. “Lean forward.”

Emmet raises an eyebrow, mirroring her expression. “Who, me?”

“We are making careers here, Mr. Riordan,” she purrs, her voice sliding subtly up and down. “So make it good.”

“Hey, what's going on here?” I mutter as they smile at each other, angled precisely perpendicular to the blogger’s camera. They lean toward each other slowly, smiling like chewing gum commercial actors. He reaches out and cups her jaw in his hands, tipping her face toward his as his mouth closes over hers, executing a video-ready kiss that's probably going to be the headline on TMZ for the next four days.

Her cheeks cave, and I swear her hands flutter helplessly. He tips his chair toward her, dangerously nearing the point of capsizing.

“Dang, you guys,” I mutter. “Tone it down, just a tad.”

When they finally separate, a little fog of pheromones bursts outward from them. My cock swells in my pants, throbbing against my zipper.

“I was just kidding,” I admit. “Do it again.”

“Do you think he got it?” she murmurs, batting her eyelashes and blushing like an ingenue.

That makes three different people she’s been since she showed up: awkward, shrewd, and innocent. Which one is the real Bella, I wonder?

“I think it was simulcast on Sirius. Now, we need to get out here,” I advise them.

“That's a great idea,” Emmet says, but he is still gazing into her eyes like a fucking cartoon character.

“Seriously, you two, knock it off. I think you sold it, but one waiter telling that blogger that she was just licking my molars will blow the whole gambit, understand? Save a little bit for the honeymoon, why don’t you?”

She blinks several times, taking a few slow breaths as she reassembles that invisible brick wall in front of her face. I'm fascinated by watching her defenses go back up. What a complicated creature she is.

“I think that was sufficient,” she announces clinically, like she's reading the results of a marketing test. “Mission accomplished. Meeting adjourned. But I don't want him following me home, okay?”