Page 78 of The Nanny and the Beefcake
“The man knows how to use his mouth and his hands, and let’s just say, he’s got the right equipment below the belt.”
“So, more than ten Os?” Penny pressed.
“That’s a lot of Os,” Charlotte added with an impressed whistle.
Libby’s skin tingled, and her core clenched. Her body ached for more Os.
“Have you tried masturbating to see if your O is back for good? You do have, as everyone on the internet knows, sixteen vibrators in your possession,” Penny continued.
“That’s the next step we agreed upon.”
“The next step?” Penny and Char questioned in unison.
“I set up an O curriculum. First, we tested my ability to have an O with him. Next, I’ll try to knock one out on my own, and the final test will be to pick out another man, a sort of test subject, to see if I can have an O with another partner. Raz agreed to it, but I’m not so sure we should keep sleeping together.”
“Why not? You like him, right?” Char pressed.
Libby shook her head. “No, I don’t like him.”
Lie. Lie. Lie.
Her brain was furious, but her treacherous body wanted more hickeys. And what about her spirit, her soul? The man had aligned her chakras with one kiss. When he looked at her, the connection between them practically sparked. Energy flowed between them as seamlessly as two rivers coming together to become one. But he certainly wasn’t that man this morning.
“Why don’t you like him? I figured you’d be doing cartwheels across the park after more than ten Os,” Penny remarked.
“Everything changed the minute his grandmother and son arrived. You should have seen him. He barely interacted with Sebastian and bolted the second he could without a backward glance. I also hardly know anything about him. Sebastian told me his mother had passed away. Raz is a widower. Did you guys know that? Do Rowen and Mitch know about Raz’s wife?”
“The guys are oddly protective of each other when it comes to their pasts,” Char answered as Penny nodded.
“It’s sweet. I’d never say this to Rowen, but it’s like they’re their own support group, even though half the time they’re messing with each other. The truth is, they’re there for each other when it matters.”
“Penny and I try to honor that,” Char added, “but now that you’re working for Erasmus, I think we can get a little dirt on the man without feeling like we’re snooping around his personal life.”
“Already on it,” Penny announced, tucking a blond lock of hair behind her ear as she concentrated on her phone. “I’m on his wiki page. Wife, Meredith Holmes Cress, died unexpectedly three years ago. It also says here that Raz learned of her death moments after winning his last heavyweight championship fight. And, oh, this is heartbreaking.”
“What is it?” Libby asked, leaning in.
Penny held out her phone. “There’s a picture.”
Bloody and glistening with sweat, Raz stood in the center of a media circus with Augie next to him. The glittering championship belt hung limp in Raz’s hand while he pressed a cell phone to his ear with the other. Libby enlarged the photo and stared at his face. Tears trailed through the blood on his cheeks. Her breath caught in her throat and a heaviness set in as she took in Raz’s hollowed-out expression—the gut-wrenching look of a man learning he’d lost everything.
Steadying herself, she read the paragraph below the image. “A year later, it says he was a no-show for his next fight, then he disappeared until reemerging now to fight the current champion, Silas Scott.”
“I wonder what brought him back?” Char mused.
Libby stared at the image of a broken Erasmus Cress. “I don’t know.”
Penny scrolled down, revealing a picture of Raz, Meredith, and Sebastian, when the boy was just a baby, then passed her the phone. Libby studied the image. With Sebastian in his arms, holding a paper butterfly in his tiny fist, Raz smiled down at Meredith as she cut a ribbon.
The caption read: Erasmus Cress and his family donate to local community centre. Photo courtesy of the Cress Family Foundation.
Cress Family Foundation.
“Will Raz stay in Denver after the fight?” Penny asked.
Libby handed the phone back to her friend. “I don’t know that either. But I do know that I need to do whatever I can for Sebastian. He deserves to be happy.”
“What about you, Libby?” Char asked.
