by K. Bromberg
It’s as cute as it is annoying, and I can’t help but wonder if the whole Miles Finlay situation made him think twice about letting the testosterone-filled and alcohol-laced ranks corner me on one side of the room alone.
You look gorgeous tonight.
But it’s that comment right there—the one that threw me off my stride and still has me thinking about it that makes me wonder if something else is going on here.
He laughs with the woman to our right. She’s buxom and blonde and genuinely nice. Right or wrong, I hate her instantly.
It takes me a second to register that it’s jealously. Desire for Zane to stop paying her any attention even when his attention is completely benign in the first place.
Wait a minute. Is this what Zane felt like the other night when he saw me with Miles Finlay? Is this his subtle way of showing me what it’s like and rubbing my face in it?
I look over at him and he glances my way with a soft smile before looking back toward the blonde.
Jesus, Low, get a grip. You’re losing your mind here. This is not who you are. You do not care if he finds her attractive so long as she doesn’t end up in your shared bed.
But I do care.
Even when I don’t want to.
You look gorgeous tonight.
Those words replay in my head, and tell me clear as day that he was right the other night. I’m starting to believe those little touches of his mean something. I’m beginning to overthink his intentions with each and every one. I’m starting to fall in love with words when I have no business doing so.
It’s only been a week and I need a bit of space from him. That’s my only thought as I gather a few things—clothes, toothbrush, face wash—from the tour bus and throw them in a bag. Tonight’s one of the few repeat nights we have in a city and so I’m going to take advantage of the opportunity and get a room in the hotel where we’re parked.
I open the door to the coach and am just about to head out when I come face to face with Zane. He eyes the oversized bag in my hands and then looks back to me with confusion etched in his handsome face.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m not feeling well,” I lie. “I got a room at the hotel so that I don’t get you sick.”
Zane twists his lips and the question in his eyes is unrelenting. “You’re sick?”
“Yes. Sore throat. Slight fever. Headache.” Stop talking or he’s not going to believe you.
“Uh-huh.” He nods his head but his noncommittal tone tells me he doesn’t believe me. He stands at the foot of the steps so that I can’t leave.
“Do you mind?”
“Who’s the guy?”
“What?” It’s the last thing on my mind and the first thing on his so it throws me when he asks it.
“You’re leaving a perfectly good bed in the tour bus for one in a hotel so I can only assume you’ve found someone for the night.”
I swear I must blink a hundred times as I try to process what he’s saying. A very small and childish part of me wants to agree with him and tell him that yes, I am meeting someone else. Something, anything to release this sudden tension between us that is a constant any time we’re near each other.
But all I can think is that if I tell him yes, then doesn’t that open the door for him to do the same? The churning in my stomach at the thought has me shutting my mouth.
And reconfirms that I really do need a little bit of space to clear my head.
“Sorry to let you down, Zane, but there is no one else.” I swallow over the lump in my throat. “I’m not feeling well and we’ve been in each other’s business for the past six days . . . I thought maybe we could each use a bit of space since it’s one of the only opportunities we’ll have. I don’t know, just so we don’t get on each other’s nerves or something.”
The green of his eyes burn through the dimly lit night and I can see the fight in them to decide whether he believes me or not.
That in itself should piss me off. The fact that I want him to believe me when in reality it’s really none of his business what I’m doing with my personal time.
And yet I want him to believe me.
I don’t want him to think I’m with someone else.
“Let me walk you to the hotel,” he says softly as he steps back so I can disembark from the bus.
“I’m fine. You don’t have to. I’m sure you’re tired.”
Why am I suddenly so nervous?
“I’m walking you.”
And we do. We walk in silence across the parking lot to the front of the hotel. He escorts me to the lighted entrance.
“Let me go in and put the room on our bill for the night.”
“That’s not necessary, but thank you.” I reach out and put my hand on his bicep to stop him. “I’ve already booked it.”
“Then I’ll call my contact and take care of it that way.” He gives me a tight smile and for the first time I can see how tired he is. My first instinct is to reach up and touch his cheek, then I realize how stupid that would be when he’s Zane—untouchable, my boss, a player, and I’m me—too trusting, off-balance, confused.
At least I know he’s not getting any more sleep than I am. This whole co-sleeping in the same bed where I’m trying to not move all night long so I don’t accidently end up cuddling beside him in my sleep is having a similar effect on him as well.
“Thank you, Zane.”
“Let me to walk you up to your room?”
“No, I’m fine. This was kind enough.” I look down at my fingers fiddling with the strap of my bag and hate how his very presence is making my nerves dance around.
“I hope you feel better.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing.”
When I look back up, Zane is right there, in my face, seconds before his lips press lightly to my cheek and stay there. “Get a good night’s sleep, Harlow,” he murmurs into my ear.
“Yes.” My voice is breathless. My heart is thumping. “You too.”
It’s only when he gets about ten feet away that I breathe again. His strong back is broad against the night’s darkness. Shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows, tailored slacks hugging his ass perfectly, the silver of his watch reflecting off the parking lot lights overhead. I watch him walk toward the coach until I can’t see him anymore.
And then I stare after him some more.
This is not good.
Not the sudden butterflies in my belly. Not that burning ache between my thighs. Not me wanting to follow after him.
This isn’t supposed to happen. Me liking him. Me rationalizing to myself why it would be okay to sleep with him. We’re stuck in the same tour bus for weeks on end, after all. Two single, attractive adults. It would just be the natural progression of things.
It’s never a good thing when I begin to justify my actions before I act on them. Or forget the reasons why I’m not supposed to like him—his ego, his mood swings, his privilege.
Never.
And yet I do.
Walk into the hotel, Low. Get your space.
Clear your head.
I COULDN’T FUCKING SLEEP.
It’s not because Harlow wasn’t here. Couldn’t be.
And yet she’s who I’m thinking about as I stand in the shower with my dick in my hand. The hot water. The slick soap. The thought of her sliding over my cock with her fingers pressed against my chest, tits bouncing as she hovers above me, and that soft keening sound coming from the back of her throat like she did when I kissed her the other night.
It’s not what I want—my hand—instead of the heat of her pussy but fuck if I’ll take it because sleeping beside her night after night is enough to test a man.
Even worse, not sleeping beside her last night had me thinking about her nonstop.
Was she really alone or was she putting those condoms she brought to good use?
I push the thought from my mind and focus on her. Her tits. Her ass. Her voice. What I can only imagine she’d feel like.
And when I come with a groan that fills the small bathroom, it’s nowhere near satisfying enough.
At. All.
Christ. This fucking sucks. The thought remains as I scrub a towel through my hair then wrap it around my waist so I can lie back on my bed and stare at the ceiling to . . . clear my head? Not think of her? See through the fog of my hangover that lingers from last night, when I perched myself in the hotel bar on the off chance that maybe Harlow was lying to me. That maybe she was meeting up with someone and they’d come to the bar where I was.
Yeah, it’s that bad.
Even worse was the women sidling up beside me at the bar, angling for so much more than the drinks they were hinting at me to buy them. Normally I’d buy, we’d talk, and go from there, but for some reason I really wasn’t interested.
Harlow’s fucking up my mojo and doesn’t even know it.
I groan again and it’s definitely not because I’m coming again thinking of Harlow.
How in the hell did I get in this predicament in the first place? It’s all fucking Kostas’ fault. Isn’t that how it’s always been?
I think back to our trip. To the nights full of friends, alcohol, and maybe a bit of trouble. To the bet we all made.
“I’m bored.”
I look over to Kostas. He’s leaned back in his chair with his shoulder-length hair falling out of its ponytail and onto his face, a litter of empty beer bottles sits before him on the table. He has that look in his eye that tells me he’s looking to start trouble.
Won’t be the first time I’ve seen that expression. I’m sure it won’t be the last either.
“Whatever it is you’re in for, I’m out, mate,” I murmur, noting that my comment pulls Enzo’s focus away from the raven-haired woman across the outdoor patio who’s owned his attention for the past few minutes.
“Uh-oh,” Mateo says, the scrape of his chair on the concrete beneath us. “Last time you were bored, I ended up taking the brunt of it.”
“That was two years ago.” Kostas says with a roll of his eyes. “Munaki,” he mutters calling him a pussy in his native language.
“Jail is jail,” Mateo says, but his smile belies his firm tone of voice.
“C’mon. It was a mix up. You didn’t spend more than thirty minutes behind bars.”
“What is it you’re thinking about?” Enzo cuts off the fight Kostas and Mateo are surely headed for.
“I’m bored,” Kostas repeats. “I need to be challenged. I go to the office day in and day out and it’s the same fucking bullshit. I want to figure something out. I want to create something and make it succeed.”
“You can make anything succeed when you throw unending money at it,” Mateo counters.
“I know what he’s talking about,” Enzo pipes in. “I miss that thrill of the chase. When my Nonno tasked me with adding a new market to the vineyard, I felt like I could breathe again. It was new. It was different. It wasn’t the same ‘ol day in, day out bullshit.”
I hate that they just put words to how I’ve been feeling lately. Bored. The day to day not holding any sort of challenge, like it did in the beginning. We’d succeeded in the world of business. The hustle was over.
The breeze off the Mediterranean swirls up and smells of salt and sea and the coconut oil worn by many around us.
“What are you thinking?” I ask, interest piqued, but plate more than full.
“I say we have a contest,” Kostas says as he picks up a fresh beer. “One where we find that thrill again.”
“You can find it in the next woman who walks through the door. Who are you kidding?” Mateo jokes.
“True, but it’s not the same.” He looks out to the bar, the people, and takes his time finding the words he wants to use just like he did when I first met him at Princeton over a decade ago.
“You’re too young to be having a midlife crisis,” Enzo adds. “More pussy will fix that for you.”
“I’ve got all the pussy I want,” he counters.
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, knowing those words will only lead to a pissing match between the three of them to see who’s fucked who lately. “We all can . . .so Kos, what’s the deal?”
“I’m too young to lay down and die.” Kostas and his flair for the dramatic. “I think we should make a bet. A contest. Whatever the fuck you want to call it.”
“A contest? We’re not in college anymore,” Mateo says. Memories flash back of the four of us. The competitions that would end in fist fights. The egos that would spar for dominance. The need to be on top always paramount.
“Hear me out,” Kostas says with a lift of his finger. “We each get to use one million of our own capital to invest how we please in a new business venture.”
Enzo blows out a sharp whistle when god knows he has billions in that family bank account of his. “Only a million?”
“Only a million,” Kostas says like only one who has lived a life of infinite privilege could. To most new businesses, a million would be a fortune. To us, it’s a simple drop in the bucket. “It has to be something you’ve never dabbled in before. We put a time frame on it. A start date. An end date. We see who can take that million dollars and make it the most in that amount of time.”
The idea makes my blood hum.
I study the reactions of those around me, men who are like brothers to me. Our lives are so busy that we may only get to see each other ever year or two, and yet we’re so similar in drive and ambition, it’s scary.
“Okay,” Enzo draws the word out. “What are the stakes?”
“Pride. Getting our balls back.” Kostas purses his lips and looks at each one of us. “Not being in our early thirties and feeling like there’s nothing left to accomplish.”
“A good lay with two or three of my closest le signore could do that for me,” Enzo says with a laugh that tells me he’s already been there, done that. Possibly even paid for it. Fucking, Enzo. “We need more to it than that.”
“How about four million,” Mateo speaks up and has us all whipping our heads his way. “One million from each of the losers. We set a start date, we all put up the million dollars for our venture, we all agree on a neutral accountant and after a set amount of time, that accountant goes through the financials of each company. The one that makes the biggest profit or has the greatest resale value—something like that—wins a million from the other fuckers.”
“And this stays between us. No one outside the four of us will know about this,” Enzo says and we all nod.
“Of course.”
“Outside investors?” I ask thinking how beneficial it could be to merge forces with someone. “Can we have help?”
“Mmm,” Kostas murmurs as he runs a finger over his bottom lip in thought. “They can add another million max, but you have to retain majority ownership. But why would you share your profit?”
“You never know what opportunities might present themselves,” I murmur, meeting him stare for stare.
“Agreed.” A sly smile slides onto Kostas’ lips. It’s high enough stakes that he’ll bite. “Does it matter what we invest in?” he asks.
“It must be legal,” I interject, knowing they sometimes dip their fingers in pies that aren’t always free and clear.
“Of course,” Mateo says.
“I’m not fucking around on that, mate.”
“Relax, Zane. It’ll be clean,” Enzo adds.
“Who’s in?” Kostas asks.
I look around the table. I’m the only self-made man here.
The only one who didn’t start with lined pockets from a daddy’s shipping conglomerate (Kostas), a grandfather’s Tuscany vineyards (Enzo), or another’s family tobacco plantations . . . and possibly other crops (Mateo).
I’m the lone fucker who stole his way out of Brisbane to avoid the fists of his father, berating of his mother . . . and made something of himself.
But we’re all ambitious men.
College has a funny way of putting you together with like-minded people.
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br /> If that’s what you want to call us.
“I’m in,” Enzo says with a flick of his wrist before turning back to the woman across from us.
“Definitely,” Mateo adds.
“The cautious one is last,” Kostas says as our eyes meet.
“Not cautious . . . just not foolish.”
“You in or not Phillips?”
“I’m in, mate.”
I may have went to Mykonos those two weeks to relax and catch up with my college pals, but before I left there the following week, I was already making headway on the contest. I’d found a small start-up that was making waves in the cyber-dating world in Australia—its premise was different and unique and people were talking about it and talking is always a good thing. I’d pulled an all nighter, researching AI and how I might be able to integrate it with the platform, and knew this might really be something. It took them only forty-eight hours to accept the offer I made the next morning.
The buzz had returned just like that for me. I couldn’t wait to get home so I could overhaul certain aspects of the company—name, image, branding—and make it my own.
Hell, I may not believe in love or even bet on it, but there are a shit ton of people out there in the world who would pay a mint to find it.
I run a hand through my hair. I may not pay money to find it myself but fuck if I’m not paying for it in other ways right now.
Fucking contests.
They get me every time.
“ROBERT? WHAT ARE YOU DOING here? What a nice surprise.”
Not really.
I look up from the table in the coach where I have paperwork strewn everywhere, a stale cup of coffee a couple hours old on the counter . . . and still no Harlow in sight. Robert’s standing in the open doorway, his golf spikes on, his hair beneath at flat cap.
“I have business meetings here over the next couple of days and then some free time so I thought I’d check the schedule and stop by to see how things were going.”
“They’re going great,” I say as I shut the door behind me and walk down the steps.