“She’s holding up,” I said, wincing at the pain in my neck as I adjusted the pillows behind me the way teenage Sloane had.
“Maeve and I call her every day, but it’s hard to tell if she’s hiding stuff from us.”
“She put the ashes on top of the refrigerator,” I told her.
Sloane let out a soft, sad laugh. “He’d like that.”
“He would,” I agreed.
She was quiet for a long beat, and I worried she was about to hang up.
“So did you go beat the crap out of whoever ran Holly off the road?” she asked.
“Now, why would I do that?”
“Because you’re you.”
“Let’s just say they won’t be running anyone off the road anytime soon,” I told her.
“Nash told me that you kicked Jonah Bluth’s ass at football practice because he was talking shit about me in high school.”
Nash had a big mouth to go along with that shiny badge.
“I have no recollection—”
“Errr!”
Sloane’s wrong answer buzzer almost made me smile.
“So what did you not do to these guys?”
“Nolan and I made sure they didn’t have a vehicle to run anyone off the road with and that the local police knew where to look when Holly reported the incident.”
“Look at you and Nolan becoming buddy guys. Did you go for a buddy guy beer afterward?”
I’d actually had a scotch to Nolan’s Coors Light.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
I wondered what she was wearing. If she was in bed or if she was curled up on the couch, lipstick still on, book in her lap. My cock stirred.
I pressed the palm of my hand to my groin. I didn’t get spontaneous erections…unless I was near her. I was an adult in control of his baser instincts. The husky phone voice of the woman who had nearly destroyed me shouldn’t have this effect on me.
“So you cleaned up the mess, got back at the bad guy. Now what?”
“What do you mean?” I repeated.
Was it just Sloane’s voice that had me thickening with arousal? Or was this a symptom of something else? Of me losing control, my edge.
Me sending a message to Anthony Hugo wasn’t going to stop him from making more moves. I wanted him to. Because sooner or later, he’d slip up, and I’d exploit that mistake to beat him.
“I can practically hear the fury dripping off your syllables, big guy. Someone messed with one of your employees. You handled it. But how do you blow off steam when justice doesn’t take away the mad?”
I scoffed. “I don’t need to blow off steam.”
“Personally, I’m a fan of sweaty, dirty sex. It always seems to set the world right again,” Sloane said cheerfully. “You should try it sometime.”
A strangled sound tore free from my throat. My cock pulsed and I pressed my palm over it, hoping to suffocate the arousal. I wasn’t going to sit here having a conversation on the phone with a woman and jerk off. Even if that woman was Sloane.
She laughed softly. “Only messing with you, Lucifer.”
But I could picture her sprawled beneath me. Her hair fanned over a pillow like a halo. Those milky thighs locked around my hips. Her breasts half an inch from heaving out of one of those useless tops with the spaghetti straps.
“Oh, so you don’t actually enjoy sweaty, dirty sex?” I shot back.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” She all but purred the words in my ear.
I didn’t know what the right move was, what tactic I should employ. Because I couldn’t have what I wanted. I didn’t want what I wanted.
“Why are you still awake?” I asked gruffly.
“Some pain in the ass wouldn’t stop texting me,” she said lightly.
I could hear the smile in her voice, could picture it in my mind. That slow, sultry curve of her lips usually reserved for anyone who wasn’t me.
This was a mistake. I was making another mistake. I couldn’t stop myself. Sloane was the bad habit I couldn’t quit.
“You should go to bed,” I said.
“Geez. Maybe you should take a class in how to talk to people without sounding like an ass.”
“I don’t have time for pillow talk with you.”
“That settles it. My next book club selection is going to be something about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Maybe then I’ll understand why you go from almost human to Lucifer between two sentences.”
It was a dance we’d been locked into for years. Every time one of us showed a side that was a little too human, the other managed to strike. Walls were rebuilt, animosity reinforced. We kept relearning the same lesson over and over again, but it never stuck. We weren’t good for each other. I wasn’t good for her. And I could never trust a woman who had so thoroughly betrayed me.