Page 92 of Landlord Wars
He looked up. “It’s about Cityscape.”
That was insanely fast. How did the reporter post it so quickly? And why? There had to be any number of tawdry stories more interesting than this one.
I held up my hands. “Okay, look, I can explain. The reporter outside—”
Max glanced at his phone again, and his brows rose. “Cityscape is back on.”
“What?” I reached for the smartphone.
Samuel Thompson: Max, this is Samuel. Cityscape is greenlit.
My jaw dropped. “Holy shit.”
He slid the phone back into his pocket. “You were saying?”
“Uh, well, you see, I might have mentioned Cityscape to a reporter. In my defense, I didn’t think he’d care about the project. And you said yourself that Cityscape was dead.”
He nodded slowly, an intense look in his eyes. “So you complained to the reporter about the assholes in the planning department, and you got my project back on track.”
My lips parted. “Maybe?”
He bent and grabbed the back of my thighs, hiking me over his shoulder.
A rush of air left my mouth on agah.
“We’re out, Jack,” Max said, speed-walking past the living room. “Gotta show my girlfriend my appreciation for her tenacity. With my tongue.”
I looked up at Jack, horrified. “No!” I smacked Max’s back. His tongue had been added to the list of my favorite things after he did some acrobatics with it in bed last night, but still! “He didn’t mean that!”
“Yes, I did,” Max said.
Jack’s laughter filled the air as Max climbed the flight of stairs to his apartment faster than any human should be able to with another person on their back.
Epilogue
Sophia
“Really?”Max said as he moved my last boxes into his apartment. “You called me Landlord Devil?”
Despite Max’s eagerness, it had taken more than six weeks for me to finally move in with him, but work was killing me softly with training the new hires and projects pouring in, so I’d kept pushing off the move until now. But this was just the official move in. I’d been sleeping over at Max’s nearly every night.
“Call. I call you Landlord Devil. As in, it’s my current nickname for you.”
His head tilted to the side. “I like it. It’s appropriate.”
“Isn’t it?”
Max reached down and picked up a pair of pink underwear. Not the ones he’d seen on Jack’s couch the first day, but still, they were pink, and they’d somehow fallen on the floor.
His face pulled into a naughty grin. “Did you plant these?”
“No!” I reached over and tried to grab them. “They must have fallen out of the laundry this morning.”
“Be honest—you planted them.” He held my underwear over his head, blocking me when I tried to reach for them. “What if I left my boxers around the house?”
“I’d envision you naked,” I said.
He nodded in appreciation. “Good point.” He absently tossed the panties behind him. “Maybe you should stop unpacking and come back to the bedroom with me.”
