Raine (Gods of the Fifth Floor #2) - M.V. Ellis Page 0,12
I guess I’m really starting to.” I nibbled at my lip, absorbing this new information.
“Then there’s the added complication of you being female.”
“Yeah, everybody keeps mentioning it.” I’d never been so aware of being a woman in my life. “What’s with that?”
“Well, due to some unfortunate ‘incidents’ in the past, Raine is forbidden from having a female PA. As in, it’s part of company policy.”
“Oh wow. Do you mind me asking what happened?”
“I can’t say, specifically, but in a nutshell, he’s not to be trusted.”
“You mean like he’s handsy or something?”
“What? Oh God no. If anything, he’s more likely to ignore or be rude to a woman than fawn over her, but yet I don’t think he’s spent a night alone his entire adult life.”
“I don’t understand. If he’s not going to do anything inappropriate, then we’re all good.”
“While what you’re saying sounds very reasonable in theory, but in practice, that’s not how it plays out. Ever.”
“I don’t get it then.”
“Welcome to the club. Look, I don’t pretend to understand it, because I definitely don’t, but just know that it is what it is. I’ve watched it play out with my very own eyes on more than one occasion. The man is like catnip to women.”
This whole thing was ridiculous, and surely Angela was exaggerating. She seemed lovely, but I was fast getting the impression that she was a little drama prone.
It was one measly week. What the hell could possibly go so wrong in that time?
Chapter 5
Raine
* * *
Nate looked like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I glanced at the other two, and they looked like they’d had their hands inside Nate’s pants while he had his hand in the cookie jar. What the actual fuck?
“One of you better start talking, and quick, before I go postal on your asses for doing whatever it is you’ve been doing behind my back.”
“Calm down. All this kicked off at the crack of dawn, when you were no doubt balls deep in the woman of the hour?” Beck raised a questioning eyebrow as he finished speaking, then waited for my response.
“Well yeah, obviously, but that’s not the point. It was nothing and nobody that couldn’t have been interrupted. You should have called me. I was here, anyway.”
“Wait. So, have you even had any fucking sleep?” Dillon’s British accent always made me laugh when he was all fired up—he was so endlessly polite that it never really seemed to have the same weight as when anyone else was pissed off.
“Well, I had a catnap partway through proceedings. That counts, right?”
“You fell asleep while fucking someone? Jesus, Raine, you’re gross.”
“I guess technically, if I was asleep, she was fucking me, but yeah, that’s about the strength of it. And spare me the high-horse routine, Beck. Until recently you were only marginally better. Just because dating is no longer an Olympic sport for you, doesn’t mean you can take the moral high ground all of a sudden, you fucking hypocrite.”
“Maybe not, but no matter what I was doing, I wasn’t doing it in the office, then expecting to be able to carry out my job fueled by nothing but booze and coke.”
“And weed.” I interjected, just to piss him off. It was childish, I knew that, but I wasn’t above that level of pettiness in the face of his hypocritical sanctimony. Not even close.
“Don’t push me.”
I watched the rhythmic tic of his jaw—knowing it was a sign that he was close to the edge, but giving zero fucks. It wasn’t my job to be his conscience. If he flipped out, that was on him. To be fair, it wasn’t something that happened often. He was generally a calm and measured guy—some would say too much so, to the point of being ice cold—but every so often, he totally lost his cool. This time it could go either way.
“Or what?” I stood up, but instead of squaring up to him, I leaned casually on the front edge of my desk and crossed my ankles, shoving my hands in my pockets at the same time. That would piss him off more than a fighting stance.
“Fuck you.”
“Promises, promises, Becky. Promises, promises.”
“I mean it, Raine. This close.” He made a pinching motion with his index finger and thumb. “Especially as this latest crisis is a direct result of your total inability to keep your overused dick in your surfer-chic fucking pants.”
“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, would I? Given that nobody has thought to