Page 57 of Played
“What’re you doing right now?”
“About to go shower, then not move from the couch for the rest of the day unless it’s to get food from the DoorDasher.”
“Come hang with me.”
I jerk the phone away from my ear, stare down at the phone. Blink. Because surely I couldn’t have heard what I think I did.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Come hang with me, ma,” he repeats, tone gruffer, but it still sounds way too much like an order than a request.
“Why would I do that?” I ask, and I’m not even being facetious. Hell, I really want to know.
There’s a part of me that wants to jump in the car and go to—wherever he lives. But the other, smarter half that values the preservation of my sanity, feelings, and vagina is beaming images of not just that incendiary kiss at the firehouse but the faces of the Talleys.
I have enough drama in my life with this Matt situation. I don’t need any from Solomon and his in-laws.
“Because I’m asking,” Solomon says. “I can provide more privacy for you here than if I came to you. And because you want to, Adina. You want to come to me.”
God.
In this moment, I hate him for being right.
My belly gives a vicious twist, and heat pours into the hollowed-out bottom. How? How does he have me trembling and my pussy clenching around an emptiness that never bothered me until I met him? This need that I’ve try to deny and then convince myself I couldn’t—shouldn’t—have is not just physical, though. It’s mental. Because this man is a total mindfuck.
The grief he wears like a custom-made Tom Ford suit. The I-don’t-give-a-fuck-ness that drips off him along with his confidence that borders on arrogance. The sexual magnetism that has to be etched into his DNA. All of it screws with my head.
“Don’t think about it, ma. Don’t think about why you shouldn’t or why it’s a bad idea. Just go with what you want.”
I huff out a short dry laugh. “Are you talking to me or to yourself?”
A beat of silence. “Both.”
Damn. I wish he’d lied.
If he’d lied, it would’ve been much easier to saySorry, not sorry. Aragorn callethand go ’bout my business.
But he’d been honest. Even a little vulnerable. And that glimpse of softness on Solomon Young is my catnip. And my downfall.
I sigh. “Give me an hour.”
“See you then, ma.”
He ends the call, and I’m still standing in my kitchen, phone pressed to my ear. Shaking my head, I slowly lower the cell, pinching the bridge of my nose.
What did I just agree to?
“Holy shit.”
Like an awed child, I practically press my nose to the rear window of the black Mercedes-Benz Maybach S600. Ten minutes after he ended the call, Solomon texted and let me know he was sending a car to pick me up. I damn near drooled over the gorgeous luxury car idling at the curb when I stepped out of my house exactly an hour later. The Maybach wasn’t the vehicle he’d been driving the evening he popped up at my parents’ house.
With Solomon’s almost rough mannerisms and blunt speech, I sometimes forget that he’s a multimillionaire. But as the driver guides the car up the curved brick driveway and slows to a stop in front of the beautiful and utterly charming white-and-gray-blue Cape-style home, I’m reminded just who I’ve been dealing with. A wealthy man who can afford a sprawling home in Barrington that sits right on Smith Cove with a perfect view of Narragansett Bay. A three-car garage, a cupola on top of the pitched roof, columns on either side of the arched doorway, glistening bay windows lining the front of the home ... I don’t know what I was expecting, but this wasn’t it.
Nerves attack my stomach, twisting, churning. What the hell am I doing here? With him? I don’t belong here.
I almost order Demarcus to turn the car around and take me back home. This isn’t me. This isn’t my world—
Whoa.I straighten away from the window.Stop that. Right now.
