I was expecting the call, but the last thing I wanted to do was answer it.

I glared down at my phone, feeling annoyed. I felt Teagan's hands sliding around me until I could feel her breasts pressed against my back. Instead of looking over my shoulder, she pressed her cheek to my shoulder blade. I took one of her hands, sliding my fingers between hers and squeezing.

"Sorry I woke you up."

She hummed, her lips pressing a kiss on my bare skin that had my body shivering.

"It's okay. You should answer it," she said.

I kind of had to, even if I didn’t want to. He must have been waiting for me back at his house, and if I took too long to answer his calls, he'd get even more impatient and storm my apartment. It was the last thing I needed with Teagan there. I was thinking of what excuse to give her so she'd let me go and I could slip out of the room. But her arms slid off me after a last kiss on my neck, and then she was moving.

When she slid off the bed, I turned so I could see her. She raised her arms up in a stretch, and I could feel my cock twitch. It was innocently provocative, and if I didn’t know her any better, I would think she was trying to seduce me.

"Do you mind if I use your shower?" she asked.

I shook my head, pointing it out to her. I didn’t think I could speak just then, even if I wanted to. By the time she was out of sight, the phone had stopped ringing. He called again before I could call him back. I glanced in the direction of my bathroom and heard the water come on before I answered the call.

"Seamus."

"What the hell, Ronan? I've been waiting for you since last night, and I've been calling you since early this morning."

Right. It was closer to noon, but I couldn’t help waking up so late. If I hadn't heard my phone, I probably could have slept longer. I wasn’t sure when we even went to sleep, but it must have been closer to early morning.

"Sorry. I had that competition thing yesterday. Then I won, and everybody wanted to celebrate. I just forgot. It won't happen again."

I was lying out of my ass. I knew it was a promise I would break easily.

"Ronan." His tone made me think he already knew it. "I'm getting worried about you. We've been planning this for so long, yet you're letting your dick dominate the decisions we're making. I know you're still you, but you are an adult, so act like one and get a hold of yourself."

"You've got to stop bringing up my dick or I'm going to start getting suspicious," I muttered with a roll of my eyes.

"Don’t joke. I'm not in the mood. And can you honestly tell me that in this party of yours, she wasn't there? And she wasn’t the reason you went at all? Or why you were so late getting up?"

No, I couldn’t say that. I would have blown off the idiots tugging me off to party with no problem if I hadn't known she would be there. Also, I had a routine that had me up at a decent hour, but I couldn’t help that I was out most nights. The whole underground biker thing didn’t mean meeting up and racing only at night, but that was when it most often happened. Still, she was part of the plan, so he could complain all he wanted, but he couldn’t tell me to keep away from her.

She was too important.

"There's no need for you to worry, Seamus. I'm on the ball. I'm not distracted, and everything will happen the way it's supposed to."

"Excuse me if I feel a little skeptical, Ronan."

I rolled my eyes again. "Think whatever you want. I must go. Teagan is here and the last thing I need is for her to overhear this conversation."

Even with the shower on, if she left for whatever reason and I wasn’t looking, the possibility of her hearing something damning was high, seeing as Seamus was in the mood to argue.

There was silence on the other end, then the sound of something crashing, loudly. It surprised me, and I pulled the phone away for a second, glancing at the screen as it lit up to tell me the call was still on, then put it back to my ear.

"What the hell—"

"Ronan."

I stopped at the sudden urgency in his voice, gritting my teeth because I knew what would come out of his mouth next.

"You need to get rid of her, Ronan. And soon. We have work to do, and you don’t need to be any more distracted than you already are, especially over a woman."

I wanted to argue. Teagan wasn’t just any woman. Seamus himself had told me about her, helped me get closer to her over the past year. He was the one that helped me study her so I could get as close to her as possible. Whatever his problem was with the progression of things, it was all part of the plan. It was his idea to involve her, to begin with.

I wanted the call over, though. I wasn’t in the mood to argue over the phone.

"I'll do it."

I hung up quickly so he wouldn’t challenge me on it. I wanted to throw my phone across the room, but then it would break.

It wasn’t like I needed him to tell me. I knew the plan came first. We'd both spent a lot of time on it, and I wasn’t planning on letting it fall through, let all that time and effort go to waste. I hadn't been prepared for this recent development, but it changed nothing.

"Ronan?"

I looked up at Teagan's call, feeling panic try to creep up on me. Had she come out? Had she heard something I didn’t need her to?

But I couldn’t see her, and I realized her voice was muffled by the door. She must have been shouting for me to hear her over the shower.

"Yeah?"

The door slid open part way, her face peeking out. Her hair was wet, and I couldn’t see more of her besides her shoulder and part of her arm, but my mind supplied the visual for me.

"Why don’t you join me in the shower, if you're done with your call?"

It was a bad idea, I knew it even as I got to my feet and walked forward, wordlessly. She shot me a smile and disappeared from the doorway, and I moved faster. But I wanted to see her, naked and wet, not just imagine it. I let myself inside and closed the door behind me, letting my hungry eyes devour her form.

Once again, I was distracted.

I should have cared more than I did just then.