Friction(58)

"What the fuck do you think you're doing showing up here?”

“You never used that word before,” he points out in a low voice, and I cross my arms over my chest. “I came here because I was in town and I want you to come home, Lucy. I think we deserve another chance.”

“No.”

He shakes his head, looking at me incredulously. “You’re selling sex toys now, Luce. Your picture is all over a website claiming to specialize in everything extreme. I’m worried about you. You were my wife, after all. This isn’t the woman I fell in love with.”

“Were you ever even in love with me?” I hear myself whisper before I can stop myself. “You know what, don’t answer—”

“Yes. I’ve always loved you, Luce. That’s why I want you to come home,” he says huskily and takes a step toward me. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping that it will stop the tears from starting. I’m over Tom. I’m over his games and what I thought was real, but I don’t think I’ll ever get over the way he manipulated me. The way he’s still manipulating me.

“Then if you love me, stop bothering me. Just let me live my life without threatening to sue me every single week.”

“You’re selling sex toys,” he says again, but this time his voice takes on a nasty edge. “You’re above that. At least you were when we were still together.”

My eyes fly open only to narrow angrily at him. “I’m marketing for a well-respected metalwork’s designer. Just the same as I marketed for the pricks who own the world’s shittiest coffee company. I don’t see what the problem is.”

“The problem is you’re better than this.” He skims his lips together, and when he smiles, a chill races down my spine. “Does your mother know you’re doing this?”

“This isn’t about my mother, this is about you and me and why you can’t just leave me alone,” I spit out, praying he doesn’t see right through my answer. I’ve avoided telling Mom too much about my job at EXtreme, and I have no intention of giving her a dossier on the company anytime in the near future. I already know what she’ll have to say about it, and it won’t be pretty. “I’m not coming back to San Francisco because we’re divorced. You’re in love with Shane. Don’t try to lie and say he’s no longer in the equation because we both know he is and you’ll do anything to save your company from tanking. I’ve moved on. I’ve—”

“Lucy,” an accented voice calls my name, and my shoulders tense as I spot Jace, Daisy and Theo coming around from the back of the building with their arms full of takeout boxes. His blue eyes harden when they land on Tom, but he grants the other man a brief nod. “I’m Jace Exley, the owner here, can I help you?”

As Theo and Daisy duck inside, carrying our boss’s share of the boxes, Jace strides over to us. My ex’s focus zeroes in on the possessive way his tattooed arm comes around my waist. “You’re screwing your boss?” He shakes his dark head in disappointment. “Jesus Christ, Luce, you really have gotten desperate, haven’t you? How trashy of you. I—”

“Tom!” I gasp and Jace’s hand immediately drops from my waist at the mention of his name.

Before I can blink, he seizes Tom by the lapel of his suit jacket. “Careful there. I’m very protective of my employees—especially Ms. Williams—and I’d hate to break her ex-husband’s pretty veneers right in front of her. She’s not coming back to San Francisco. She’s not your fucking beard. She’s not anything to you anymore, do you understand?”

“Yes,” Tom growls, his nostrils flaring as Jace releases him. He turns to me as he straightens his clothing. “I’m flying back to San Francisco this evening, but my lawyers will be in touch with yours. Shane and I will be following through with the suit.”

“Of course you will,” I say, relaxing against Jace when he slides his hand into the back pocket of my black skirt. “Goodbye, Tom.”

He doesn’t say another word as he turns abruptly and stalks toward the black rental car parked on the curb, but I don’t expect anything else from the man I once swore I’d spend the rest of my life with.





Twenty-Two





Lucy





I'm still on edge about Tom's visit when the work day ends, but when Jace comes into my office and pulls me close to him from behind, I feel some of the pressure lift from my body. Of course, a new pressure replaces it, and it only intensifies the second he dips his mouth to my ear and drawls, “Come over tonight, love. I have plans for your sweet cunt, and I don’t think I can wait much longer.”

My body arches. There’s nothing I want more than to wash away my frustrations beneath his body and sweat, but that’s not an option this evening. My mother has already texted twice. She wants to know when I’ll be home since we have plans to go out to dinner with her new “friend,” and I don’t want to stand her up. If I do, I’ll never hear the end of it—she still brings up the phone I lost while I was out with Jamie whenever I leave my device lying around the house.

“Come home with me,” Jace repeats, his warm breath fanning the nape of my neck.

“I can’t.” I splay my fingers on my desk as his hands wander past my waist to my ass. He cups it roughly, giving each cheek a pump that steals the breath from my lungs. If someone had told me my senior year of high school that this is where I’d be ten years down the road—bent over a desk by my boss, Jace Exley—I would have fainted where I stood. Doing this with him is madness, the opposite of what I thought I wanted out of a relationship, and yet I can’t get enough. I suck in my bottom lip and inhale deeply through my nose before releasing both. “I really, really can’t because I have dinner with my mother and her new boyfriend.”