“Yeah? Anything specific in mind?” I said after him.
He continued to walk. “You’ll see.”
Eleven
Damien
Hades sat behind his desk.
I was in the armchair, flipping through paperwork with my legs crossed. Numbers were boring, even if they reflected my paycheck, but I smiled anyway, thinking about the sexy brunette waiting for me at home.
“What are you smiling about?”
I lifted my gaze but continued to turn the pages over.
“Gonna leave me hanging, huh?”
“You know I don’t kiss and tell.”
He turned back to his laptop. “Finally got laid. Good for you.”
“No. Annabella kissed me last night.”
He turned back to me, his eyebrow raised. “You’re that excited about a kiss? Did she kiss your dick?”
I shot him a glare.
“You know I’m kidding, Damien. I’m happy for you.”
“You better be.”
“It’s a start.”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t sex or anything kinky, but that wasn’t important to me anymore. I just wanted her. I grew impatient waiting for Liam to leave her thoughts. After she’d stayed with me a few weeks, that seemed to fix the problem.
We organized the stack of papers and put them into two different files before we were finished. Hades looked at me, giving me that familiar gaze I’d seen for a decade. “It’s nice to see you happy.”
He wasn’t a mushy kind of guy, so I appreciated those comments whenever they came. “Yeah, it’s nice. Never thought I would be a one-woman kind of guy. But there’s only one woman I want. So, I guess I am that guy…”
He smiled slightly. “Yeah. I couldn’t believe it either when it happened to me. But the sex is so much hotter when it is with that one woman, that one woman you can’t get enough of. It’s better than all my nights in the alleyways, public restrooms, and everywhere else I fucked around.”
It’d been so long since I’d actually had Annabella, but my memory hadn’t faded at all. “I’m gonna head back to my office. I’ll meet you in the conference room for the meeting.” I rose from my chair and headed to the door.
Hades watch me go. “Good. I don’t have to see your face for another hour.”
I flipped him off before I walked down the hallway.
I headed to my office, and I thought about how much my life had changed. When Hades and I weren’t friends, I didn’t have this camaraderie with anyone. No one to bullshit with. No one who knew me well enough to make a joke that landed. And now I had the one woman who’d ever meant anything to me in my bed at this very moment.
That high disappeared when I turned the corner and entered my office. A large man sat in the chair facing my desk, huge shoulders packed with layers of muscle and forearms that were thicker than mature tree branches. He didn’t need to show his face to give away his identity. I knew exactly who he was.
Liam didn’t turn around. “Your assistant’s nice.”
I stilled for just a second to digest the situation, but then I moved past him and walked over to my desk. With a slow beating heart, I lowered myself into the chair and faced one of my nemeses. My face was stoic, and I showed no fear because this man didn’t deserve any reaction from me. He could have a gun in his pocket, a bullet with my name on it, and I still wouldn’t care. “Yeah, she’s delightful.” I sat there with my hands together on my lap and leaned back into the chair, like this was a real meeting with a real client. My gaze was focused on his hard expression, and I waited for him to announce his intentions. He was probably there to kill me, but he wanted to give a speech first. “How can I help you?”
His eyes narrowed a little farther at my ease. “You should be scared, Damien. And if you aren’t, you will be.”
I was an asshole, so I responded like one. “I’ll pass.”
Liam let my words sink into the air around us for a few seconds, his eyes working like cogs in a machine. “Your plan is to keep Anna locked up in your home forever? You think your building can keep me out? You think your door and windows are thick enough to stop a man like me?” He stared at me like he knew he was making a valid point. They were difficult parameters to surround any relationship. And it definitely wasn’t the best way to start a romance. “Damien, you are the reason my marriage failed. And here you are again, interfering. Walk away and let Anna and me work on this.”
“Are you delusional?” I couldn’t keep my voice down because I was exhausted by his insanity. “There’s nothing to work on. She left you. You fucked somebody else, so she divorced you. She’s ready to move on with her life, and you need to move on too.”