by Marni Mann
The LA office wasn’t going to be as big as our Miami one. At least, not right now. Still, we were going to have over eighty agents within the acting, music, and sports divisions and a full PR team. We just needed someone to oversee the place when the four of us weren’t there.
Since Scarlett had been interviewing candidates, I’d been thinking about agents in Miami who we could promote to do it.
“What about Josh Martin?” I asked Brett, referring to one of our top acting agents. “He’s been in the industry for a long time. He’s proven himself over the years. He could handle doing it.”
“I already thought of him, and Scarlett shot down the idea.”
I glanced toward Brett. “Why?”
“His baby mama lives in LA.”
“So?”
“I guess things ended badly, and living on opposite ends of the country is the only thing that keeps them from killing each other.”
I laughed. “Fuck.”
“Scarlett takes notes on all those bastards. Files that are inches thick.”
This was news to me, although I wasn’t surprised. Scarlett seemed to have dirt on everyone, and she used it to her advantage. Unfortunately, that was also why her last relationship with Vince Hedman, Miami’s quarterback, hadn’t worked out.
However, she was the only person I knew who had starred in a celebrity alert and gotten that alert retracted. In its place, a few hours later, was a written apology from the owner of the company and a verbal promise that her name would never appear on their site again.
“I’m scared to know how thick my folder is,” I said, still laughing.
We stopped at a red light, and he glanced at me. “She doesn’t need files on us.” He pointed at his head. “She’s got that shit stored up here.”
Now, we were both laughing.
“You’re not going to believe who I saw before James’s premiere.” I sighed. “Kristin fucking Evans.”
He looked at me again before he shifted. “You’re shitting me. Is that why you were so late?”
“She’s been working in Brazil for the last three years, and she just got back. I wanted to see how she was doing.”
“What does she look like now?”
I turned my head toward the window, thinking about that night at the bar.
Kristin had always been a pretty girl. Athletic. High-maintenance. Determined like hell to get what she wanted. And, man, could she fucking cook.
I’d never tasted food like hers or seen anyone have such passion in the kitchen. The first time I had seen her in one, I had known she’d make the most perfect chef. After graduating from culinary school, she had become one.
Now that she was back in the States, restaurants in LA were fighting for she. She’d told me she hadn’t yet decided which one she was going to pick.
“The same,” I said. “Maybe even a little better.”
He shook his head. “I remember all those nights she slept over in that first apartment we shared with Jack and Scarlett, right out of college. We didn’t have real beds, just mattresses on the floor, and we took turns sleeping in the one bedroom and the living room. You and Kristin would be fucking, thinking you were being so quiet, but you were loud as hell, and the rest of us were trying to sleep through it.”
“Those were some good times.” I watched Brett pull into the left lane, trying to pass some of the slower traffic. “Just call it payback for all the girls you fucked in college on the bunk bed above mine.”
“You mean, you weren’t sleeping?”
“My fucking bed was shaking. Who could sleep through that?”
I thought about what I’d just said, and in unison, “Jack,” came out of both our mouths, followed by the loudest laughs.
“So, what’s up with Kristin? Are you going to see her again?” he asked.
I saw the skyline of LA peek into the distance, and I knew we weren’t far from Eve’s place.
“She’s going to Miami to see some friends, and we’ll probably get together.”
“Are you going to tell Eve?”
I shrugged. “I haven’t really thought about it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not even close.”
“Would you want her to tell you if she were hanging out with her ex?”
I didn’t reply for several seconds, and then I said, “I don’t know.” I paused again. “I wouldn’t expect her to. She does her thing; I do mine. It works for us.”
“For you, but does it work for her?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”
“Max, you guys have been playing this game for a long time, don’t you think? Those trips to Miami she makes every few weeks are going to get old, and she’s going to get tired of doing it. And, one day, she’s going to want to get married, and where are you going to be with all that?”
I sucked in a breath and held it in.
Married?
Nah, I’d almost done that once.
I wasn’t ever getting that close again.
“Who says Eve wants to get married?” I asked him.
“She’s a fucking woman. That’s what they all want.”
I wiped my palms on my suit pants. “Damn.”
“You have to know it’s coming.”
Is that true?
I tried to think of a sign that I’d missed or something she had hinted at.
I couldn’t come up with anything.
“Brett, Eve and I are all about our jobs. Those come first, and they always have. She’s never once brought up marriage or kids or any of that shit.”
“But her best friend is getting married, and she’s the maid of honor. I promise you, brother, the thought has run through her head.”
“If it has, I don’t want to hear about it.” I waited a second to see if I felt any different. I didn’t. “We’re happy. We have a good thing going. She comes to see me when she’s free. I see her when I’m doing business in LA. There’s no reason to change that.”
I felt him staring at me when he said, “You’re not going to want to spend more time with her at any point?” I didn’t answer, so he continued, “James and I are going to be married, and kids are in our future. Jack and Samantha are probably going to pop out another one as soon as they get married. Where does that leave you? Single for the rest of your life?”
“Dude, don’t be fucking jealous. What I have sounds a lot easier than all that shit you’re spelling out.”
He came to another red light, and when the car stopped, he gripped my shoulder. “You and your fucking fist—one happy couple.”
I punched the hand he was squeezing me with. “My fist is much cheaper than a divorce.”
His hand went back to the gearshift, and we began to move again.
“In six months, you’re going to tell me that Eve sat you down and had a conversation about the two of you spending more time together. Guess what I’m going to say?”
We were two years in, and we hadn’t had that talk yet.
But the look I’d seen on her face in the elevator had been haunting me all fucking day.
I didn’t like it.
And I didn’t like that I wasn’t sure what it had meant.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if that happens,” I said.
“Listen, Max, I don’t know much about relationships, but soon after James and I started dating, I knew I wanted her to live with me. I wanted to spend as much time with her as possible. And I wanted to make her mine.”
Eve couldn’t live with me when all her work was in LA, and I couldn’t give her any more time than we already spent together.
We were exclusive.
She was mine.
Those two things were more than any girl who came after Kristin had gotten out of me.
She had it all.
Why would we want more?
Ten
Eve
I was soaking in the bathtub with a glass of wine and an overflowing mountain of bubbles when I heard Max open my front
door.
Since James was tied up with movie stuff tonight, I figured I’d come in here to relax and calm my nerves and then get a few hours of sleep before he woke me with his mouth.
I still felt the sting of not being able to have dinner with him. Thinking I would get that much time had just been stupid.
But I had.
And it hurt.
However, I hadn’t expected him to get back here this early.
I used my toes to turn off the water now that I’d let in a couple of inches of warmth to replace the cold I’d drained out. As I heard his shoes move across the floor, the sound getting louder the closer he got, I pushed my back against the porcelain tub. My fingers tightened around the glass, and I brought it to my lips. The sauvignon blanc burned the back of my throat as I swallowed several gulps.
“Damn, you’re gorgeous,” he said as he stood in the doorway. He leaned into the doorframe and crossed his arms.
His presence was like a fog that misted through the entire bathroom and thickened when it reached me.
“Hi,” I whispered, taking in the dark navy of his suit.
He had close to a hundred in his closet in Miami.
I always favored this color because of the way it complemented his eyes.
They were so sharp. Piercing. And they were focused solely on me.
“I’m going to grab a drink and join you.”
Before I had a chance to respond, he was gone, the sound of his shoes telling me he was moving toward the kitchen.
I could still feel him as though his hands were on my body.
It was always that way whenever he was near.
I had the strongest reaction to him. And the tingling he caused wasn’t just in my pussy. It was in my chest, my stomach. It forced thoughts to fill my head.
Thoughts that hadn’t necessarily made sense in the past, but my conversation with James had changed that.
More.
God, I wanted this man.
I heard the bottles rattle in the door as he opened the fridge and asked, “Do you want a refill?”
“Please.”
There were new sounds—a cupboard opening, a glass being placed on the countertop. As I listened to him, anticipating his return, sweat began to drip down my neck. Each bead passed my chest, ran between my breasts, and disappeared into the water. I watched its path, my nipples growing hard, my legs pressing together to dull the ache between them.
My eyes finally lifted when he was standing in front of me.
I wrapped my fingers around his to take the wine from his hand. He held on for a few extra seconds, the look on his face telling me how hungry he was. The intensity of his stare caused my clit to throb.
In those few moments, I felt so incredibly desired.
I knew that feeling would only grow once he was in the water with me.
Each layer he stripped from his body was set to the side of the sink. His shoes were left on the floor, his socks were next, and then he turned to face me.
Completely naked.
The candles that flickered around the back of the tub created the most romantic glow. They also gave just enough light that I could see his tan skin, the ripple of his abs, the tightness of his chest, and the small, dark patch of hair that covered it.
He wasn’t like the actors I styled.
He wasn’t primped and waxed and lasered and injected with every kind of filler.
He was all man.
And that was exactly the way I wanted him.
He put both feet in the tub and moved in behind me, sliding down until he was seated and his legs were surrounding mine. “Mmm,” he growled as my back rested against his chest. “You feel so good.”
So did he.
Hard and hot, and every inch of his skin that rubbed onto mine sent a shiver through me.
Holding the new glass of wine, I brought it to my lips and took a sip. “How was your work thing?”
He dipped his hand into the water, and then he ran his wet fingertips down my arm, stopping at my wrist and then going as high as my shoulder. “Productive.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Brett and I were interviewing new agents for the LA office. We hired all three we had dinner with.”
The office they were building was only twenty minutes from my house, so he’d brought me there several times to show me the progress. He’d also told me about some of the agents who would be working there. Since a few of my clients were signed with them, I knew The Agency was inheriting some serious talent.
He wet his fingers again before dipping them down my breast and circling my belly button. He continued to go lower, touching the top of my pussy, wedging between my lips.
“Ahhh,” I groaned as he gave my clit a quick, sharp stroke.
Just one.
But one that vibrated through my whole stomach.
He crawled back to my neck, teasing the skin around my collarbone and the tops of my breasts. Then, he used his palm to trace circles across each of my nipples. His touch was light. Just enough to flick the hardness, for me to crave the pinching of his fingertips.
“Max…”
His mouth left my hair and moved to the back of my ear. “Do you want something?”
During one of the rotations around my tit, his palm lowered, and his thumb clipped my nipple.
My back arched, and I moaned out a, “Yes.”
He steered the wine glass that I was holding toward my other breast, the coldness landing on my nipple.
“Oh God,” I breathed as the freezing sensation passed through me.
He held it there but brushed it over the peak and to the other side, so I felt it everywhere.
Just as it began to warm a little, he said, “Set the glass on the edge of the tub, and put my hand where you want it.”
I did the first part, and then I returned to his fingers, clasping mine around them. They were so long, manly, powerful. They needed to be between my legs.
So, that was where I put them.
And that was where I left them as I gripped the edge of the porcelain. “Fuuuck,” I groaned as he flicked up and down my clit.
“Always so wet for me.”
I knew there was a difference between my wetness and the bath water because, as his cock pressed against my lower back, I could feel the thickness of his pre-cum as several beads of it leaked out.
His fingers slithered up and down several times before he replaced them with his palm while those same fingers dived into me.
“Yesss,” I panted. “That’s what I want.”
My legs spread, and water sloshed out the side of the tub. It happened again when my back slammed into his chest and the top of my head ground into his shoulder.
“I love this fucking pussy,” he grunted. “So tight. So fucking perfect.”
His palm glided across me, using the pressure I needed, and he fingered me with such a speed that a build immediately took over my body.
It happened fast.
And, as if he sensed it, he moved even quicker.
Harder.
Deeper.
And then I heard, “Come for me.”
My nails found his thigh, and I dug them in as waves of pleasure spread over me.
“Mmm, that’s what I want,” he growled in my ear.
He pumped out each swell and slowed as the orgasm began to pass.
Once I stopped moving, he pulled his fingers out and trailed them up my pussy and in between my breasts. Then, he rested them on his lips. He sucked off whatever had dripped from them.
“That’s not going to hold me off for long.”
“What do you want?”
“My tongue on your cunt.”
I sighed as the tingling returned.
His tongue was as talented as his cock.
And I loved both.
Equally.
“Finish this,” I said, lifting his glass of scotch off the edge of the tub while grabbing mine, too. “Then, you can put your mouth wherever you want.”
My body was still so sensitive; I needed a second to recover. While he took a sip, I changed the subject and asked, “Did you go over to the new office today?”
“Didn’t have time. I’m going to try to get over there before my flight in the morning.”
“Has Scarlett hired anyone to run it yet?”
“Nah.”
I smiled even though he really couldn’t see it. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“What?”
I’d been thinking about this since we fucked in his elevator.
Brett wouldn’t take the job. James loved Miami too much, and she’d made it her home. Jack’s daughter, Lucy, was established in a private school, and it would be too hard for him and Samantha to relocate. Scarlett’s entire finance team was at their headquarters, so it made no sense for her to go.
That left Max.
“You can’t hand your baby off to a stranger and expect them to do as good of a job as you would. So, you should be the one to run the LA office.”
I nuzzled my face into his chest, watching his profile, the way his beard moved when the muscles in his jaw flexed. How his tongue skimmed the inside of his lip.
If he lived here, I could do this much more often.
We could be together whenever one of us wasn’t traveling.
I could have more.
“Nothing in this world would make me want to move back here,” he said. “I fucking hate this town.”
Nothing.
Not even me.
Before he had gotten in this tub, more had seemed so close.
Now, it was as far as LA was to Miami.
And I seemed to be the only one bothered by it.
His mouth moved to the side of my ear. “Stand up.”
I swallowed hard, trying to hide the disappointment that was plaguing me. And, because I knew it was on my face, I tried to mask that as well. “I’m good right here.”
“No,” he said. “You’re going to stand and turn around, and then you’re going to put your pussy in my face, so I can eat it.”
We had such little time together that I didn’t want to fight.
But I also felt like I needed to say something.
“Eve,” he growled in the back of my ear.
Here was the problem.
My heart was starting to want him as badly as my body.