Page 61 of Mexico Can Choke On It
I’m not a girl who will be turned into a puddle by one well-timed compliment. I am woman. Hear me roar. Or at least hear the rustling of my dress as I flee.
Swish-swish-swish.
The dining chamber is a shrine to over-the-top wealth and questionable taste. It looks like Marie Antionette and Liberace had a decorating showdown and both won.
A single, ridiculously long table dominates the room, encircled by thirty chairs, each intricately carved with gold leaf and adorned with pale-blue velvet cushions. The place settings are terrifying—layered with six plates, three napkins folded into origami swans, and silverware arranged in a way that suggests measuring devices were involved.
And at the head of the table? Not a chair. A throne. For a dog.
A dog with more money than I’ll earn in fifty-thousand lifetimes.
I scan the monogrammed place cards.
There I am. Petra Brinkman.
And right beside me? Bryce Sterling.
Fuck.
I pick up his name tag, scanning the seating area for somewhere—anywhere—else to put him. Maybe inside the flower arrangement. Or under the dog’s butt. Or I could just eat it.
“Trying to move me toward the exit?” Bryce appears, reclaiming the slip and putting it back.
“I’m trying to create some healthy social distance. Foryourprotection.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
His gaze locks on to mine, and holy hell—something has shifted. Gone is the polite restraint. Something heated is lurking behind those cool blue eyes. Something hungry… and suddenly my thighs have opinions. Dangerous ones.
The air between us thickens, charged with an energy that makes it hard to breathe. The background noise of polite murmurs fades, leaving nothing but the sound of my own heartbeat thundering in my ears.
“Our conversation from earlier isn’t finished,” he says sternly.
“In my world, when someone walks away, that’s the universal signal for ‘conversation over.’”
“Good thing we’re inmyworld. Different rules apply.” His gaze drops to my mouth for a fraction of a second.
The smallest, most insufferable flicker of a smirk crosses his sculpted lips. It transforms him from handsome to devastating, and something molten spreads through my belly.
Who is this man, and what has he done with the buttoned-up Bryce Sterling?
The warmth of him seeps through my dress’s thin material, flushing my skin like a physical caress. He’s standing so close that if I shifted forward ever so slightly, my chest would brush against the solid wall of his arm. The temptation is maddening.
“Fight it all you want, Pip, but you’re not getting rid of me,” he bites out. “This is Gavin’s week. His wedding. I’m the best man, and he asked me to keep an eye on you.”
“Lucky me. My own personal billionaire babysitter.” I flutter my eyelashes. “Will you be checking under my bed for poverty monsters?”
“Whatever helps you accept it. But you’re stuck with me until this wedding is over.”
The cocky way he says“stuck with me”drips with heat, not obligation. My internal temperature skyrockets.
“If you think I take orders that easily, you have another thing coming, Moneybags.” I step into his space, daring him to push back. “I don’t wear collars for spoiled rich boys, and I sure as hell don’t fetch, stay, or roll over.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. It deepens—hungrier, dominant, electric.
“You’ve never had the right handler.” His voice drops. “If I clipped a collar on you? You wouldn’t be fighting. You’d be purring.”
And then he smirks. Not a subtle grin—a full-on smolder.
