Page 55 of The Boss

Fuck.

When had I turned into this guy?

“Nate, baby!”

Dammit. Not Ashlee. Not even close to Ashlee.

“How the fuck did you get in here, Roma?”

My ex grinned up at me and held up a key.

I sighed and repeated the question with a slight change. “How the fuck did you get a key, Roma?”

“I might have borrowed a spare so I could surprise you sometime. Surprise!”

She bounced up and over until she was only a few inches away from me. I didn’t back away even though I didn’t want her to touch me. If I gave her the slightest inch, I’d lose the power I had over her, and I had no intention of that happening. The smell of alcohol poured off of her in waves, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to gag or curse. She could be a nasty drunk if things didn’t go her way, which meant I needed to get her out, the faster, the better. When I got worked up, it turned Roma on. The best way to get her out of my house was to act like I didn’t care. Fortunately, I didn’t care about her, so it was easier to keep my head.

I held out my hand. “Key. Now.”

She stuck out her bottom lip in a mock pout. “Don’t wanna.”

“Roma.” I made her name a warning.

“Don’t be that way,” she put her hand on my chest. “You can punish me for being bad. You like doing that.”

“I told you that we were done.” I wrapped my hand around her wrist and moved her hand off my chest. “I meant it.”

“But I don’t wanna be done.” Her eyes narrowed, and I knew she was transitioning from flirty drunk to mean drunk.

“That wasn’t the arrangement,” I reminded her. It was essentially pointless to argue with her when she was like this, but I needed to say the words, if for no other reason than to remind myself that this wasn’t about me treating Roma like shit, but about following the terms we’d both agreed to when we started things.

“Fuck your arrangement,” she snapped.

“It wasn’tmine,” I said through gritted teeth. “It wasours. As in something that both of us made. One point of which was that either of us could end things whenever we wanted. I wanted us to be over, so we’re over.”

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?” Roma poked my chest with one long, manicured nail, something she never would have done when she was my sub.

I’d always suspected that Roma hadn’t been a true submissive, but she’d been willing to play the part both in and out of the bedroom. At first, at least. Ashlee wasn’t playing a part at all. Even when she was quiet, she had a strength that told me she had certain limits that would never be breakable, and when it came to sex, she either flatly rejected it or immediately submitted. I’d always thought I preferred women who were submissives all the time, but Ashlee was making me reconsider.

“I’m tired, Roma,” I said as I pushed thoughts of Ashlee from my mind before they could give me a hard-on. The last thing I needed was Roma thinking it was for her.

“Then let’s go to bed,” she practically purred.

Her zero-to-sixty shit was another reason I hated it when she got drunk.

“You should go to bed,” I said. “Alone. In your own apartment.”

She closed the last bit of distance between us and reached down to grab my cock through my pants, frowning when she realized I was soft.

“Fighting always gets you hard.”

I took her wrist more firmly this time and pushed her hand away from my crotch. “Not with you. Not anymore.”

She stumbled backward, confusion on her face.

“Stay there,” I said. “I’ll call you a cab.”

“Don’t want a cab.” She sat down.

---