“Hollis, where is it?”
He tugged at his hair. His jaw ticked. But he said nothing.
“I’m not leaving without my underwear!” I shouted.
At that moment, we both turned and noticed Sophia standing in the doorway.
She didn’t look happy. “What the hell is going on?”
“Sophia, I’m really sorry about this,” he pleaded.
“Yeah. So am I,” she huffed. “Goodnight, Hollis.”
Her heels clicked against the marble floor as she marched down the hall to the foyer. After we heard the front door slam, silence filled the air.
Huey’s voice rang out in the distance. Baaa! “Anna’s home.”
“Are you happy now?” Hollis finally said.
“No, I’m not. Because I don’t have my underwear.”
“Do you see how ridiculous this situation is?”
“Actually, I don’t. You’ve been fucking with my mind all week—using me to get your rocks off. Then, I innocently come back here to retrieve my phone—which you probably looked through—to find you getting ready to fuck someone else.”
“How is it any of your business who I fuck under my own roof?”
“It is my business when you’ve been playing with my mind.”
He took a few steps toward me. “You started the game, Elodie.”
I pointed at his chest with my index finger. “Are you smoking crack? You started this by stealing my damn underwear.”
“That was a mistake,” he muttered. “It was just a prank.”
“A prank…”
He swallowed and said nothing.
I snapped my finger facetiously. “Oh! Because thirty-year-old men in suits who work on Wall Street go around pranking people like little children all the time.” I blew a breath up into my hair and held out my hand. “Look, just give me my panties back, and I’ll be on my way.”
He wouldn’t say anything.
“Come on, Hollis.”
He bit his bottom lip and said, “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re not here.”
“Where are they?”
“They’re…in the laundry.”
“The laundry?”
His voice was low. “Yes.”
“Why are they…” I stopped when I figured it out.
He gritted his teeth. “I came home and saw them, and…I… Anyway, I thought I had until Monday to get them back to you.”
I felt my eyes widening. Was I horrified or completely turned on by the fact that he’d used my panties to jerk off? I mean, I knew that’s what he did with them; I just didn’t know he did it with them. I guess this was new.
In a sense, I guess I couldn’t fault him. I’d led him on to do exactly what he did. I was just frustrated that he’d chosen to not see me as anything more than this game. He’d invited Sophia to spend the evening with him—not me. And that spoke volumes.
I looked down at my feet. “I thought maybe this was…leading to something. Then I walk in and find you with her.” Laughing angrily, I said, “I’ve been kidding myself. To be honest, I’m hurt, Hollis. And I feel like a fool for feeling this way.”
I let out a frustrated breath and walked out toward the door.
He followed me. “Elodie, wait…”
But I kept on going.***On the subway ride home, it bugged the crap out of me that I’d found my phone in Hollis’s bathroom, because I didn’t remember bringing it in there. If I’d learned anything about the infuriating man, it was that if my gut said something was awry, it probably was.
I wondered if he’d been checking out my photos, maybe collecting a little spank-bank material for his jerk-off session before his big date. That was the part that upset me most—the thought that he used me to get off before his actual date. I’d thought I’d put my job with Soren behind me, but apparently my only use to any man was my looks. My cheeks heated with anger.
Yet I couldn’t help but be curious what photo might have done it for him. I wasn’t even sure what was on my phone anymore. I looked around the subway car; no one was sitting next to me or would see my phone. It would be the perfect time to scroll through, so I clicked to my photo app. The very first picture stopped me in my tracks.
What the hell?
I lifted my cell for a closer inspection.
At first I couldn’t make out exactly what it was; all I saw was tan skin. But then I turned the phone sideways, and I gasped. Oh my God!
Oh my freaking God!
I knew those clothes and that hand. Hollis had used my phone to take a selfie—a close-up of his lower half. The picture was shot from the belly button down. His dress shirt was hanging open, revealing killer abs and a deep-set V, and his slacks were unzipped with one hand pushing down the band to his boxer shorts. It didn’t reveal his dick, but it was sure as hell close. The entire photo was all taut skin, veins, and little bit of neatly trimmed hair right above where his shaft would be.