Blood of Zeus (Blood of Zeus #1) - Meredith Wild Page 0,41
length of super-elastic rubber that latches on to my phone with a loud thwop. Before I can blink, the device is yanked out of my grip and handily caught in his thanks to his little gizmo. “Well, look at all this.”
“Goddammit, Jesse.”
“And this…and this… Why, Maximus Kane. Are you cyber-drooling over Kara Valari?”
“Give me my phone back.”
He holds it up and out of the way, as if we’re kids quibbling over who gets to be player one on the game system. “Not until you give me the scoop about what happened with this little cutie.”
“Don’t call her that.” Protective rage is a strange invader in my senses.
“Make you a deal.” He raises a brow. “I’ll stop talking when you start. Let’s start with the other night…at your place.”
I scrape a hand through my hair. “What’s going on here? You’ve never pulled this with anyone else I’ve been seeing.”
“Because none of them have showed up at your front door on a Sunday night before.”
“And that changes…what, exactly?”
As a maddening answer, he simply wiggles the phone over his head. “No details for Jesse, no phone for Max.” He doesn’t relent his pose, knowing I won’t breach his personal space unless I’m lifting him for practical purposes. “Come on, man. Humor me with a few juicy details. Don’t leave me holding your phone and my dick here.”
“Thanks for the terrifying visual.”
“Know what’s even more terrifying? The fact that in the three years we’ve lived at that building, I can’t recall any woman in your doorway except for your cleaning girl and old Mrs. Worthington with her brownies.”
I take a turn with the brow cocking. “Do you have brownie envy? Is that what this is about?”
Jesse narrows his glare. “This is about you and healthy human companionship. Well, besides me. The kind of companions who might like the idea of your manly scruffstache between their silky—”
“Okay, hold up.” I surge out of my favorite wingback chair and start marching around the end of his desk. “Damn it, Jesse. Why are you pushing this?”
He tilts his head, his expression sobering. “Because part of me is worried about you, man.”
“I’ve dated, okay?” I turn and brace my ass to the desk’s edge. “You know there have been a few…exceptional ladies…in my past.”
“Sure,” Jesse drawls. “But Wendy from college, Therese from the staff retreat, and ‘Recto Verso Renee’ don’t count.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re all ancient history.” He huffs. “Dude, Wendy is married, Therese has kids, and Renee moved back to Britain.”
“Okay, fine.” I rub my knuckles through my beard. “So I’ve been busy.”
“No,” Jesse counters. “You’ve been fucking picky.”
“You know, there’s this term that a few guys in this world still live by, Mr. North. It’s called being a gentleman.”
For extra fun, I overenunciate every syllable of the term. As revenge, Jesse exaggerates his new laugh. I grit my teeth. He’s so gleefully certain about all this, seeing through my rhetoric and down to my most agonizing truth. That I haven’t pursued a woman for such a long time because there’s been nothing inside to pursue her with. A void I’ve filled with a thousand other things besides what’s really me. A me I know nothing about. Because chasing it results in exactly what happened at the shop with Mom.
Anger. Confusion. Frustration. Disappointment. A deeper dive into a darker void.
“Okay, just for giggles, let me get this absolutely straight.” Jesse’s interjection is a needed slice into my moroseness. “Are you telling me you had Kara Valari at your front door, looking like sin and smelling like the ocean, and you were a gentleman about the whole thing?”
I drop my gaze and abandon the quest for my phone. At the moment, there’s a bigger concern in front of me—like controlling how much of the truth I feel okay about revealing here. No way do I want to lie to him, but what Kara and I share is still too new and special in my mind—and other places of me. It feels too vulnerable.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Ah! Yesss.” Jesse pumps a fist. “And here I thought that extra bounce in your step might just be from caffeine.”
“It is just from caffeine.”
“Which means what?”
“Exactly what I said.” I move back to the chair and drop into it. “I’m a gentleman, not some horny hellhound.”
“You ever think she might want a horny hellhound?”
“She didn’t leave disappointed.” All right, maybe a little. “But it was just a kiss.” And groping. And stroking. And caressing. And gazing into her huge, dark eyes until my