The Consequence of Seduction

Without missing a beat, Reid flipped me around and smashed his mouth against mine, digging his hands into my ass so hard I was going to have bruises. One minute I was standing, the next he was slamming me onto the table and silverware went flying, clattering to the floor. A plate was making a permanent indent in my back, but I didn’t care.

Because not only was Reid a movie star—he kissed like one.

You know those kisses you see on TV? Where you wonder if the kiss is as good as it looks?

It is. Trust me, it so. Is. My entire body trembled with delight. For a brief second I forgot where we were—or that we had an audience.

His mouth was aggressive while his tongue was smooth and calculated as it invaded my mouth with such finesse that I wanted to eat the poor man alive.

“That’s enough,” Max hissed from somewhere in the room.

Reid pulled back, face flushed. “Sorry.”

“Huh?” Seriously, the building could have caught on fire and I still would have been trying to figure out a way to pull the guy back on top of me and wrap my legs around his body—trapping both of us until we burst into flames.

“Damn.” Grandma snapped her fingers. “Didn’t know I’d been replaced.”

I choked. “Replaced?”

Reid’s expression was pained. “If you care about me as a human being, you’ll lie. And make it good.”

“What will you give me?” I whispered out of the corner of my mouth.

“Really?” He pinched my ass. “I don’t know—a place to live so you don’t have to roam the streets and live in a cardboard box with Otis while eating people’s leftover hotdogs?”

“Grandma!” I yelled and opened my arms wide. “We haven’t met! I’m Reid’s girlfriend, Jordan.” Yeah, that little lie felt way too easy to tell.

The grandma in question glared and flipped me off, then waddled over to the table and started chugging wine.

Max winked. “She’ll get over it. She gets very attached to her boy toys, though. She’s just sad because poor Reid was so broken after playtime.”

“So many things in that sentence that will probably scar me forever,” Reid said under his breath. “Thanks, man.”

Max nodded. “So shall we order?”

“Damn it!” Grandma slammed her fist onto the table.

Jason poured her another glass of wine. “Here you go, sport.”

“He was my favorite,” she said, disappearing behind a glassy-eyed stare. “That boy’s mouth.”

A horrified expression crossed Reid’s face while I sent him a judgmental stare. “You’re literally every publicist’s nightmare. Not only are we lying to the press but now we have a sexually frustrated grandmother we have to please?”

“There is no pleasing her.” Reid knocked back a glass of whiskey. “Believe me. At one point I thought trying it would be the only way to escape.”

“And?” I crossed my arms.

“I ended up taking her Xanax and threatening to kill myself if she didn’t release me from her clutches.”

“No way.” I fought to hold in my laugh. “So what happened?”

“She called my bluff . . . and her pills weren’t labeled correctly. Apparently Grandma likes to get high—a lot. They were . . . happy pills, and for thirty minutes I thought I was a mama eagle training my eaglets to take flight. Oh, and by training I mean I was under the impression I needed to show by example.”

Max came up and slapped him on the back. “He tried to jump off the roof.”

I gasped.

“Chill with the hero worship.” Max shrugged. “It was ten feet. Home skillet would have been just fine.”

“Where’s the damn waiter?” Grandma shouted. Somehow the wine bottle was empty, and her lips were red. She was the antivampire—the picture you showed children in order to get them to realize vampires weren’t cool but terrifying and covered with liver spots.

“So . . .” Max squeezed Reid’s shoulder. “Do you concede?”

Reid’s nostrils flared, his jaw clenched in a hard line. “Never.”

Max lifted a glass into the air. “Then shall we toast?”

Reid slammed his glass against Max’s. “May the best man win.” At this point I was a bit confused as to what winning entailed. It almost seemed like it was more of a competition between how long Reid could torture Max before he broke. After all, Reid and I were still in a situation where we had to pretend to be in a relationship, so really all Reid had accomplished with his silly taunt was keeping Max from sex for a few extra months.

“He already has,” Max offered in a bored tone. “Trust me, a few weeks of trying to tame this one—” He paused and offered an apologetic smile. “No offense, small fry, but when I went through your stuff, I didn’t even find red underwear. It wouldn’t hurt you to try to look sexy, just sayin’.” He shifted his eyes to Reid while I was ready to scratch his eyes out. “And you’ll back down, they always do. At least until this whole media storm blows over. You guys will have had some good times, right? Playing house while living in hell.” He chuckled.

Reid let out a bitter laugh. “Please, all I have to do is make everyone believe I care about her. How hard can it be?”

Something inside me snapped. It’s not like Reid owed me anything. I mean, for the most part I was semi in his debt, but hearing his lack of interest from his lips still made me flinch and my heart skip with disappointment.