RIAN
I clap my hands together and feign calm. I am not calm. I am not okay. This whole thing could blow up in my face and I would really like to keep my face. It’s the only one I’ve got. “Let’s get down to business.”
“I think you did that last night,” Marley quips.
She and Lawson snicker, Pierce coughs from my right. I glare first at her, then at Pierce, who both quickly school their expressions. Lawson’s smile is wide and his teeth are blindingly white against his tanned skin. “Oh come on, you have to admit that was funny. We’re doing business, you got the business from my brother last night.”
“Can it, Law,” Pierce mutters. “And will you please button your shirt?”
“I don’t like being confined by fabric.”
Pierce shakes his head. “You’re a pain in my ass, you know that?”
“Sure do. All right.” Lawson slaps a palm on the table. “While you two were having a lover’s quarrel and some super quiet sex in the bathroom—”
“We were not having sex in the bathroom,” I snap.
“Whatever, it’s cool either way. Just as long as there aren’t any messes to clean up, we’re golden.” He gives me the thumbs-up. “So this is how it’s going down. I received some intel that our neighbor two doors down are putting their bungalow on the market tomorrow. I want to get in there and put an offer on it before it goes public.” He points to Marley. “And I need you to work your magic to make that happen.”
“Who told you they were putting it up for sale?” Marley glances at me, a hint of potential accusation in her eyes.
I try to use facial expressions to indicate that I in no way divulged that information to Pierce last night. I was far too busy having orgasms to talk about what houses might be for sale on the beach. Besides, he didn’t even know what I do for a living until now, and I didn’t realize he wasn’t just a landlord.
“I might’ve had a conversation with their granddaughter the other day. So I’m thinking, since you owe my brother some money for damaging his car, you can get us in to see it first and give us a break on the commission. Drop it by a percent or something.”
“No. Absolutely not,” I cut in. “First of all, I’ve already given Pierce a check for the paint and that has nothing to do with the sale of the house. So no discount for anything.”
“How about half a percent?”
“Still no.”
“My brother could’ve called the police, but he didn’t,” Lawson says with an arched brow.
“And you’re breaking a contractual agreement by taking your house off the market, so don’t throw out baseless threats in a bid to cheat us out of money we’ll earn by getting you a good deal on the house.”
“Fuck, you’re hot,” Pierce says.
All three of us look at him. I’m sure my face is red again. And for the love of all things Coco Pebbles, my nipples have perked right up. So stupid. This guy is way too smooth, too good with his words and his hands and his magnificent man hammer. He’s too intense. It’s bad. Intense equals dangerous. This kind of lust dulls all the other senses, whitewashes reason, makes a person do thoughtless, senseless things; like having sex with a relative stranger on a dryer after one dinner date. And it wasn’t even a real date.
Pierce taps the counter. “I said that out loud, huh?”
“You sure did. Good job holding your cards close, dude.” Lawson shifts his attention back to me and clears his throat. “Okay. No cut on commission. Can’t blame me for trying.”
“Okay.” Marley smiles, no longer pissed off at the situation. “Now that that’s settled, you want me to see if I can get you in to see the property before it hits the open market?”
“Exactly. You think you can make that happen?” Lawson sips a seaweed green shake. It coats his mustache and makes it look like he sneezed all over his upper lip until he licks it away.
“Let me make a few calls.”
Of course Marley can make it happen. She’s the agent on the house Lawson is talking about. All she has to do is call the owner and set up a walk-through. All I need to do is draw up the paperwork. And we’ll make full commission on the sale, which could put us in an excellent position financially. It means we might finally be able to finance our own flip.
I don’t like how much it seems like a setup on both sides. It feels … dishonest not to let them know that we’re the selling agents.
But I know Marley, and she isn’t going to tell him we’re the selling agents until she absolutely has to. Not when he’s pulled his house from the market in the eleventh hour. She slips her phone out of her purse and crosses through the living room. Flipping the latch on the sliding glass door, she steps out on the deck, leaving me alone with Pierce and Lawson.
“So, kind of ironic that you’re the lawyer and he’s the one with the piercings, huh?” I gesture between them and wish my mouth and brain would work in tandem instead of independently of each other at times like these.
“Right?” Lawson grins. “And I even have the junk jewelry. Guess you already know my brother here is too straight an arrow to decorate his dick.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell Lawson it actually curves a little to the right and is fantastic without any decorations, but luckily Pierce speaks before I do.
“Really? Was that a necessary share?”
Lawson inclines his head in my direction. “She’s the one who brought it up.”
Pierce sighs. “If we’re going to look at a house, you need to change out of your hippie gear and dress like a real human.”
“I’m not changing, and I’ve already been in that house. I know what it looks like. I want it. We just need to know what we have to offer to get it.”
“Do you mind if I talk to my brother alone for a moment?” Pierce asks me with a tight smile.
“Oh! No, not at all. I’ll just step outside.” I’m glad for the reprieve. I join my sister on the deck. Now that I’m thinking with my brain and not my sex parts, I realize I should’ve followed her in the first place, then maybe I wouldn’t know about Lawson’s peen piercing. Those two men couldn’t be any more opposite.
Marley’s heels lie on the deck, while she paces the length in bare feet. She gives me some kind of eyebrow wag with a little thumbs-up, then she inclines her head to the right.
I glance over and do a double take. Beyond the loungers that are set up facing the beach with a perfect view of the volleyball nets in front of our rental, and the side table with what appears to be a set of broken binoculars, lies a dog. Apparently, Pierce really does have one.
Trip—I think that’s his name—lifts his head when he sees me and pops up, running around in a circle before he trots his lopsided way over. He only has three legs. I’m instantly in love with this dog, and a little bit more enamored with Pierce. Trip seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that he’s missing a leg.
I rub that space under his chest that makes so many dogs happy, and his tail thumps on the boards.
That’s when I realize it wasn’t the dog Marley was pointing out, but the set of dolls perched in lounge chairs, tiny glasses with little umbrellas in them poised in their plastic hands. Huh. Odd. Maybe one of them has a kid. Oh God. What if I slept with a single dad? What if he wants me to be his baby mamma?
I can barely handle doing my own laundry and cleaning up after myself and my sister, let alone a little child. It’d be one thing to mess up my own offspring, but I don’t want to be responsible for messing up someone else’s.
“Actually, we’re in the area. We could arrange to meet in say, twenty minutes? They’re very keen to move quickly. Yes. Definitely. We’ll see you then.” Marley ends the call and does a little hip shimmy, then looks over her shoulder to make sure we’re not being watched from the other side of the sliding glass door. “It’s on. We need to make sure they give their best offer up front. They were planning to follow the listing for their place as a gauge, but I said if we start at $799K, that we should get a little over $800K for it with so few on the market and what other comparable properties have gone for.”
“Does this feel dodgy to you?”
“Does what feel dodgy?”
“Don’t you think we should tell them we’re representing the sellers too? What if they think we held off on putting up the property until tomorrow to scam them?” My fingers are at my mouth and I’m at risk of biting my nails.
Marley’s confused expression shifts to understanding. She takes my hand in hers and squeezes. “We didn’t do anything wrong, Rian. You’re not scamming them. We’re going to make a legitimate sale like we always do, no messing with numbers, no playing odds or people.”
I take a deep breath. “It’s just … he’s a lawyer and he’s in real estate. What if he knows people who knew Dad? He could figure out who we’re connected to and then no one would want to buy from us.”
“Take a breath, Rian,” she says softly. “We’re completely ethical here. Is it crazy that you’ve slept with this guy and now we’re potentially selling them a house? Sure, but it has nothing to do with what happened with Dad. You need to stop owning that; you were a kid and you had no idea what he was doing.”
I exhale my panic on a nod. Logically, I know she’s right, but all of these pieces coming together make me anxious, as does the fact that I’ve slept with a relative stranger—and would like to do it again, despite current circumstances. Beyond that, being so close to affording our own flip makes me as antsy as it does excited. And maybe it has something to do with being so close to the Mission Mansion this weekend, where so much of our history is tied up. As much as I want to be close to it, I still get nervous. We’ve done our best to distance ourselves from our family’s scandalous past, but if it ever came out, our careers in real estate could come to a grinding halt. Who would want to buy houses from a couple of girls whose family is responsible for stealing millions of dollars through real estate fraud? It doesn’t matter that we weren’t responsible, a sullied name taints the generations that follow.
“Do you think we should reconsider giving them a break on commission since we’ll be getting all of it?” I fight to keep my fingers from migrating to my mouth.
“Let’s see what they offer first.” Marley motions to the dolls, probably to distract me. “What the hell do you think this is about?”
“Maybe one of them has a kid?”
“Yeah. I thought that too, but those dolls are too perfect. Like they’ve never been played with, and there was one in the hallway. It’s odd, right?”
“Yeah. Definitely odd.” It would be my luck to hook up with someone who’s extraordinarily awesome at sex and also a serious weirdo. I’d like to say this doll thing will deter me from hooking up with Pierce again, but I don’t think that’s true.
I’m mostly calm and rational once we go back inside and inform them that we’ve secured a walk-through. While Lawson has been inside the yet-to-be advertised house, Pierce has not, so we make the ridiculously short drive down the beach to the property in question. Pierce decides I need to be the one who shows him around, leaving Marley and Lawson to talk offers.
“This is one of the bedrooms.” I Vanna White the room and step aside to let him go first. It’s outdated, but at least it’s just bad paint and no wallpaper. Sometimes that stuff is a nightmare to get off, especially if it’s circa the seventies. I have no idea what kind of glue they used back then, but it sure was made to last.
The rose-and-doily décor is awful, and for most Hamptons buyers, it would be an absolute turnoff. They want move-in ready summer homes, not properties they need to sink time and money into before they’re visually palatable. If Marley and I had the capital ready, we would’ve already put an offer in on this one, but we only have enough to purchase, not enough to cover the cost of a renovation without making things tight. This sale will change that, though.
“I messaged you this morning and you haven’t responded yet.” Pierce brushes by me.
Even that simple, innocent contact makes all my special parts zing. The presence of a bed doesn’t help either. “It’s rude for me to check messages when I’m with a prospective buyer.”
“Even if you’ve slept with that prospective buyer? The same prospective buyer who’s messaging you?” He takes a look in the closet. “This is small, but workable.”
“You can probably give yourself a tour; you don’t need me.” I turn to walk away, but he grabs my hand and threads his fingers through mine.
“What’re you doing?”
“Keeping you from running away.” Pierce tugs me forward and brings our twined hands to his lips, biting my knuckle. I clench my jaw and try my hardest not to make any noises of pleasure, or do anything else to encourage him to continue. “Where do you feel that?”
“Pardon?”
He bites my knuckle again. “Where does the sensation resonate the most?”
“Where your lips just were.” That’s untrue. That’s where it starts, but it’s as if the sensation pushes through my veins and ends right in the sweet spot between my thighs. Which I clench, lest I give in to the urge to wrap myself around him and front hump him.
“I don’t believe you.”
Why does it feel like he’s burrowing his way into my head when all he’s doing is touching me? “Why ask the question if you’re not going to trust I’m being truthful with the answer?”
His lips turn up against the back of my hand. “Why’re you still so prickly with me, Rian?”
I try to pull my hand away, but he tightens his grip. “Why do you ask so many uncomfortable questions?”
“I didn’t realize I was making you uncomfortable.”
I scoff. “Yeah, right. I don’t buy that for a second. You get a kick out of antagonizing me. You like to have control over these interactions we have so you pose uncomfortable questions and use intimacy to unnerve me.”
“Are you psychoanalyzing me, or yourself?”
Probably a bit of both. “This thing you’re doing, this game you’re playing with me, you’re too good at it. How often do you do this?”
“This whole seduction routine.”
He almost looks hurt. “You think this is a routine?”
“Isn’t it?” It’s bad that I don’t want it to be, that I want this connection we have, these strange coincidental meetings to be fate throwing us together, even if it is a colossally bad idea.
“Why are you so hell-bent on villainizing me?”
That’s a good question. One I can’t answer honestly because it’s tied up too much with a past I can’t share. I think I like him. No, there’s no thinking. I know I like him, and the chemistry between us is unreal. It makes me feel vulnerable, and vulnerability is a weakness. Besides, he’s just so perfect, too perfect—he has all the right components—physical, sexual, and I bet if I got to know him better, I’d probably like every side of him—which is terrifying, because he can’t know every side of me and still like me. “Why do you keep coming after me? I haven’t even been nice to you.”
He’s still kissing my knuckles, lips sweeping back and forth. “You were nice to me last night, before you kicked me out, anyway.”
“You’re not going to let that go, are you?”
He flips my hand over and kisses the inside of my wrist. “Probably not. Can I tell you something else? Something important?”
He looks so earnest. Please don’t let him be a baby daddy. “Sure?”
“My intention last night wasn’t to get you naked.”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, come on.”
“I’m serious. I usually like to take things a little slower. I mean, I’m certainly glad I had the opportunity to get my hands on you, and I won’t lie and tell you I wouldn’t love to have that opportunity again, but I had no expectation that would happen last night.”
“You could’ve said no.”
He laughs. “No, I couldn’t have.”
“Because I’m so irresistible?”
“Yes. You’re smart and sassy and sexy, and right now all I want is for you to bite my lip like you did last night, and I’m a little obsessed with knowing what color your panties are.”
I stare dumbly at his gorgeous, sincere expression. If I end up sleeping with him again, I won’t be able to kick him out. I won’t want to.
“Help a guy out here. Say something, Rian.”
I grab his tie with the hand that isn’t still twined with his and drag his mouth down to mine. And I do exactly what he wants. I bite his lip. Well, it’s more of a nibble.
“Thank fuck. I thought I was going to lose my ever-loving mind.”
Fingers still laced, he folds my arm behind my back—I think this is his thing—his other hand slides into the hair at the nape of my neck, twisting through the strands to anchor there. I suck his bottom lip, dragging my teeth across the sensitive skin.
Pierce makes a low, rough sound in the back of his throat and a shiver forces its way down my spine, goose bumps exploding on my skin.
He angles my head to one side and slants his mouth over mine, tongue pushing past my lips, hot and aggressive. Our chests and hips meet, his hardness pressing against my stomach.
It’s like I can taste the pheromones in the air, and it only serves to fuel the lust. Our tongues dance and twirl, battle and stroke, teeth nip and bite.
Pierce rolls his hips. “I want to fucking consume you,” he groans into my mouth.
I get what he means. I would seriously rip his clothes off and ride him on the horrible floral print comforter, get as much of him inside me, have as much of his skin touching mine as I could, if I wasn’t suddenly conscious of the fact that my sister and his brother are upstairs, talking numbers.
The numbers I usually deal with.
I grasp his chin in my free hand and push his face away. It’s the only way I’ll be able to end this kiss. We’re both panting. I tip my head back even as he tries to bring our mouths together again. And I want him to. The desire is visceral, a shimmer in the air, a heat in my veins, and a fire in his eyes.
That is what wanting someone is.
This is the pinnacle of desperate attraction. This is the chemical reaction that ignites and burns until there’s nothing left but ash.
This insatiable craving is why people ignore a two out of ten on a compatibility test.
“Enough,” I whisper. My voice comes out a smoky rasp, but there’s command in it and he yields.
He nods his head once, eyes darting to my lips, the longing making his lids heavy. “Never. But okay … for now.”
He releases my hand and he takes a step back as he smooths out my hair. “Sorry. That was … I…”
“You’re fine.” I’m not sure I am, though. My whole body feels like it’s been lit up and I’m on overdrive.
He glances down to where his very impressive erection pushes against the fly of his dress pants. “Well, that’s questionable.” He turns around, his broad back shifting as he rearranges things—I can see his reflection in the mirror across the room, though. His eyes roll up as he moves things around and his lip curls.
I don’t think I’ve ever had this effect on another person before.
The power is intoxicating.
His eyes meet mine in the reflection and his grimace turns into a grin, which matches mine. “Now who’s enjoying whose discomfort?”
I raise my hand, finger and thumb half an inch apart. “Me. But just a little.”
“Not interested in helping me resolve it, then?”
I shake my head. “I’m going to show you the rest of house now, and you’re not going to antagonize me into kissing you again.”
He nods his agreement.
“Great.” I put a little extra sway in my hips. “And Pierce?”
“Yeah?” He follows me out of the bedroom.
“Mint green.”
“What?”
“You said you wanted to know what color my panties are. They’re mint green.”
He grabs the top of the doorjamb and heaves a deep sigh. “Patterned or solid color?”
“Solid.”
“Cotton, satin, lace, or a combination?”
“Lace.”
“Thong?” He sounds hopeful.
“Cheekies.”
“Ah fuck.” He bites his lip. “Wanna give me a peek?”
I laugh. “Nope.”
“Never hurts to ask.”