Page 36 of Over My Dead Boss
It makes me feel special, warm and all tingly on the inside that he is willing to share those little secrets of his and I reckon I am probably among very few people who are privy to that sort of detail about him.
We spend the rest of the drive listening to Beethoven and Debussy from his playlist. When we get home, it’s early afternoon and I convince Phoenix that he should read his entire book to me — for editing purposes, of course. Not because I really want to spend hours listening to the soothing sound of his voice. We both lounge into the giant couch and, while he is reading, I drift off until I am actually asleep. The last couple of nightmares must have taken a toll and I don’t wake until I hear a voice from above.
It’s Liz who’s bringing Dog back home. “Well, aren’t you the cutest,” she says and flashes us a bright smile.
I rub my eyes and lift my head, only to look straight at Phoenix who is doing the same.
21
“Looks like you two had a prettyexhaustingday. Fell asleep on the couch afterwards, did you?” Liz laughs and Dog jumps on top of me, asking for head scratches. “You should get your snoring checked though.” She looks over at Phoenix and then back at me. “How can you sleep when the guy next to you is putting a jackhammer to shame?”
I sit up straight and push Dog a little to the side. “Actually, I slept really well. What time is it? It’s already dark.”
“After eight. I brought dinner. You guys hungry?”
Together, we share a giant assortment of fried food and a couple of beers and I am surprised by how familiar Phoenix and Liz seem. Like old friends. It makes me feel a little ashamed when I recall that I suspected her of being interested in him when we first met. She also reveals that she went on a date that day, which is why she was all dressed up.
The next day, we deviate from our usual schedule since Phoenix has something to take care of in the city which I am not too unhappy about because it gives me time to do some laundry, order some things online, call Sienna, my parents and then Isabella who, to my good fortune, seems to have a good day. She signed an up-and-coming author whose work sounds very promising — god bless his poor little soul—, she saw a kid fall down some stairs on her way to work, and Verna has started using headphones for her podcasts after I texted her the other day. Just like the last time I got off the phone with Isabella, I am relieved that I still have a job and that she still allows me to pursue the manuscript. I consider whether she might have forgotten about it since it didn’t come up in our actual conversation.
When Phoenix returns, we both sit down at the table outside and, without saying a word, begin writing. Sometimes it can be hard to put words down on that digital paper, but for some reason, they just keep flowing that day.
“Intriguing,” Phoenix says, making my pulse race with a single word. He finishes writing his sentence and then looks up at me. “I think I know exactly what you’re writing without having to actually read it.”
“What? Why?” I ask, trying not to blush.
“You just wrote something somewhat heart-wrenching, didn’t you?”
“How do you know?”
“Your writing makes noises. Earlier you wrote something sad and I could practically hear the tears in yourhmpfsandhmmms.But it sounds like your protagonist turned things around.”
He’s right and, to my surprise, instead of feeling exposed, I feel… seen. He never struck me as someone who pays a lot of attention to other people, or any attention at all, but I like that he apparently does pay attention to me and I love the way it makes me feel in that moment. “Well, you’re gonna enjoy what’s about to happen next then.” I smirk and almost silently start typing away:
Xander knew they were living on borrowed time, that they were loving on borrowed time, and that they would have to pay for it. With interest. Interest so steep, it would cost both of them dearly. But he was determined to make it worthwhile.
I gasp a little for Phoenix’s benefit.
So when they came up to the safe-house, where they had joined forces in their blood oath, he did the only thing he could think of: he grabbed her by the collar and pushed her against the wall in their corridor. Remnants of his magic throbbing through his veins.
I imagine myself being pushed against that wall in a moment of passion and feel arousal grow inside me as the world around me disappears and I delve into my imagination.
It was as if a low vibration vacillated through him, through every single cell of his body. Instinctively, he ran his hand up her side and through her silver hair, making his fingertips tingle. Xander pulled back a little to look into Ophelia’s eyes, revealing a similar glow to the one he saw when she tried to kill him the first time. Only now it wasn’t a glow of hate, it was a glow of lust.
I shake out my hands a little and bite on my lips.
She wanted him, and he knew it. When their lips touched, that feeling of nothingness inside him was lit on fire. He grabbed her hair tightly and wanted to swallow her whole. She tasted as if her lips had been dipped in the nectar of the gods. Their tongues met and—
“Jesus,” Phoenix says, drops his pen, gets up and leaves without another word.
By evening, he returns from upstairs and luckily seems less bothered by my probably Oscar-worthy performance when we prepare dinner together. By now, we have settled into somewhat of a routine of me doing whatever I am being told to do, which is mostly the chopping of things, and him taking care of all the steps that actually make our food taste good. After dinner, we get back to my schedule and find ourselves on his couch for our allotted reading time.
“I probably don’t want to know, but I have to ask anyway: what were you writing earlier?”
I grin and prop up a little, excited to talk to him — the best author on this planet — about my own work. “So, my characters just survived their biggest hit yet. They barely got away with it, but they did, and now they’re planning on hiding out in their safe-house. Two people who hate each other in a confined space, but they’re hot and horny and attracted to each other and on adrenaline and, well, what better way to celebrate than to have a whole lot of sexy, sensual, steamy, smutty…”
“Reading time?” his deep voice cuts me off.
“Sex. Rough. Risqué. Repeatedly.”
