Page 35 of Jealous Boss

“Sure. I’ll text you the address in a sec.”

The line goes dead and silence reigns in the car.

I chance a glance at Pia and she’s biting her lip and looking a little uncomfortable.

“What?”

“It just occurred to me… I’ve spent more time at your place than mine, and I don’t know if you have a girlfriend or not. I don’t want to get in your way if you want to go on a date or have someone over?”

My fingers tighten on the steering wheel, inexplicable irritation rising in my chest. Fucking Lorenzo. “You’re not in my way.”

“But it’s Friday night. Some of the people at work go on dates on Friday nights. Don’t you want to be?—”

“I don’t have a girlfriend, Pia.”

“Oh. Okay.” The smallest smile blooms again and I want to stop the car, drag her into my lap and devour her mouth and that insanely gorgeous smile. “What about one of those… casual hook-up things?”

“A casual hook-up thing?” Who on earth has this girl been talking to? I need to find them and punch them somewhere truly memorable.

“I don’t have anywhere to be or anyone to hook up with.” Okay, now I sound a little pathetic.

I’m a grown, healthy male with a fully functioning libido in the prime of my life. My bank account is obscenely fat, I love to fuck, and my social circle is the envy of my peers.

I have no reason to be self-conscious about what I sound like to a twenty-year-old. And yet… what if she finds me boring?

I’m scrambling for an excuse when luckily a ping signals the text from Lorenzo. I place a call and order a probably insane amount of food.

We pick it up and I drive us home.

We go through the usual routine of her stepping off one floor early to go change, and she’s at my place and we’re eating within ten minutes.

The food is delicious and I get a kick from feeding Pia, watching her eyes sparkle as she chews, sometimes with that cute hand-in-front-of-her-mouth thing.

As we’re finishing, she sends me two quick glances and tension rips through me. “You said we could talk about spanking.”

For the second time this week, I almost disgrace myself by spewing the contents of my mouth all over myself.

Jesus Christ.

Her timing is woefully deplorable. I rub my chest and let the chopsticks clatter to the plate.

She blinks her gorgeous blue eyes at me. “Are you okay, Ethan?”

Time to take control of this before I die of a heart attack. Or severe heartburn. “I’m fine,” I reply crisply.

Standing, I take my plate to the sink and discard my half-eatenbo khodown the garbage chute. Leaving the plate in the sink, I turn to face her, willing my chub to die down.

But, fuck, she’s staring at me with half-trepidation, half-expectation. And that one hundred percent innocence blazing from her face?

How has she not been kidnapped by some deranged, fixated psycho and kept under lock and key so other deranged psychos like me don’t have access to her?

“Look, Pia. You can’t really go around asking guys about spanking.”

She looks crestfallen for a moment, then the tiniest spark of defiance enters her eyes. I want to douse it immediately. I also want to fan it into a blaze and feel it burn every inch of me.

Yup, I’m losing my goddamn mind.

“Pourquoi pas?” She shakes her head when she realizes she spoke in French. “I mean, why not?”

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