She shoots him a scathing look, the flames reflecting in her eyes. “Too bad it won’t cure your alcoholism, Loren.”
He raises his soda can. “Look, it’s already working. You’re practically a licensed witch…shit, I meant bitch.” He snaps his fingers. He might as well have said aw, shucks.
She opens her mouth to argue and Connor cuts her off. “This is all very fun, but the more we talk about witches and spirits, I find myself becoming stupider and stupider. So please, for the sake of all humanity, shut up.”
I shake my head while Lo grins, finding this hilarious.
Rose combats her husband almost immediately, “You really think your intelligence benefits all of humanity? You own a diamond business.”
“And I give a large percentage of my money to charities and research, darling.”
They start to bicker, and Daisy leans closer to me. She folds a napkin into an origami swan, glancing from it to me every so often. “Want to know a secret?” she whispers.
“Sure,” I say, my arm stretching across the back of her chair again.
She smiles and says, “You’re my favorite four-letter word.” Her bold green eyes flit up to me.
She makes the corniest pickup lines sound like the sexiest things I’ve ever heard.
“The word fuck didn’t do anything for you?” I ask, my muscles tensing.
“You’ve desensitized me to it. It might as well be as powerful as the word foot.”
I lean into her ear and lower my voice. “You won’t be saying that when I actually fuck you.”
A blinding smile fills her face, and it stirs my need even more. I want her in my fucking arms. I want to kiss her so deeply that air has trouble reaching both of our lungs, gasping with wild, arresting pleasure.
One day, it’ll happen.
Just not this moment.
“I’ll go,” Lily announces, cutting in Connor and Rose’s bickering. She stands up with her magazine in hand. “Um…so there’s this picture of me in this one that really bugs me.” She flips a couple of pages and then nods. “Yeah, so I’m buying condoms and they captioned it with Lily’s spiraling out of control again.”
Rose claps, excited to have a willing participant. “Okay, now throw it in.”
Lily tosses the magazine into the flames. It falls against the logs and burns quickly.
Connor stands next, snatching a magazine off the towering stack beside Rose.
“Oh so now you believe in it?” Rose asks.
“I believe in you,” Connor refutes. “Not your superstition.” He flips open the magazine. “Connor Cobalt’s seventh sex tape has grossed over twenty million dollars. Making Scott Van Wright, the owner of the tapes, one of the world’s richest pornography distributers.” Scott Van Wright is the reason Connor and Rose have sex tapes leaked every few months. He screwed them over. After Connor dropped the lawsuits and used the publicity to grow both Rose’s fashion business and his own, I offered to personally beat the shit out of Scott. But Connor said that he didn’t want to see me in jail—even if the offer was appealing.
I hope someday that son of a bitch gets what he deserves.
Connor throws the magazine into the fire, hate actually passing through his blue eyes.
Rose is next. “Rose Cobalt is a bitch.” She nods and tosses hers in.
“That’s it?” Lo asks when she sits down. “That’s all you could come up with?”
“Those are hurtful words,” Rose replies.
“I call you a bitch five times a day and you don’t bat an eye,” Lo reminds her. Then he remembers her outburst tonight and corrects himself, “Well, not usually.”
“They’re not hurtful from you,” she refutes. “That was Vogue.” She touches her chest. “I cried for two days straight when I read that.”
“Vogue is her Bible,” Lily says.
“Does that mean I’m like your saint?” Daisy asks with a smile. She was in Vogue a few months ago. On the front of the fucking magazine.
“You’d be more saint-like if you participated,” Rose says.
Daisy brightens and then stands on the seat of her canvas chair. “Daisy Calloway ‘the baby Calloway’，” she reads and adds air quotes, “has been spotted with another male model at a Gucci fashion shoot. Close sources have confirmed that she’s been seeing him. This is the third guy this month for Daisy. Could this be a clear sign that she’s following in Lily’s footsteps? Only time will tell.” She flings the magazine and it spins to the fire like a Frisbee.