Hothouse Flower (Addicted #4)(92)

But the headline definitely taints it.

They think we’re flirting. We are. But they also think I’m f*cking Lily. So I’m a player. I’m fooling around with both Calloway girls. It’s just so f*cking absurd.

My jaw locks, and I don’t waste another moment. I fling it into the fire.

“You have to wait!” Rose yells at me. “We’re doing this as a group.” She slaps my arm with another rolled up magazine and then tosses it at me.

“For f*ck’s sake you’re high-strung tonight.”

“Talk to me when you’ve had a worm suck your blood off your ass,” she retorts, walking past me to Lily and Lo. I read the headline of my new tabloid: Sara Hale at War with Her Family.

Fucking fantastic.

Daisy rolls up her magazine, hiding the headline from view.

“Everyone,” Rose says, sitting back in her chair and crossing her ankles. Connor is the only one without a tabloid. Rose is sticking to her earlier claim, refusing to give him one. “Take your magazine and read something you find particularly offensive before tossing it into the fire.”

“And what is this supposed to f*cking do?” I ask.

“Ward off evil spirits,” Lo says, sipping his Fizz Life while hooking his arm around Lily’s waist. She leans against his chest again. “Too bad it won’t cure your obsessive compulsive personality, Rose.”

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 f*ck 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 f*ck you.”

A blinding smile fills her face, and it stirs my need even more. I want her in my f*cking 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.