Page 10 of Savage Temptation
Going through life without Tessa feels painful, but what choice do I have? She was investigating me, after all.
CHAPTER4
TESSA
Six Months Later
“He’s cute,”Ashley purrs, sliding her sunglasses from the bridge of her nose to the tip so she can wink at the cabana boy.
“He’s young, like eighteen young, and I’m not even sure he speaks English.”
“Good. Less fighting.”
“Um, I think that tattoo on his calf is gang related…”
“Yum—I do so like me a bad boy,” she says, waggling her brow at the attendant.
“Maybe if you stopped chasing red flags, you’d actually land a halfway decent guy.”
She snorts out a laugh. “You should talk. How long have you been pining for Mister Moneybags?”
“I’m over him, and I don’t appreciate you making it about money.”
“Like hell you are. When’s the last time you went on a date?”
“Two weeks ago.”
A sixth sense tells me she’s rolling her eyes behind her sunglasses. I can’t say I blame her.
“Are you really counting Raj?”
“Like he wasn’t a catch.”
“So, you weren’t seeing him to help make his ex-girlfriend mad?”
Dammit—she knows…
“Look, this isn’t about me. All I was trying to say is that the men you go after end up causing you drama.”
Ashley jerks her head in my direction, and I know she’s glaring. “Stop pushing your ideals on me. You might be happy going to bed early every night, but we only get one shot at life, and I fully intend to actually live a little.”
It’s then that I realize how annoying I’m being. All my life, the picture in my head of what a happily ever after looked like was being in a stable relationship, getting married, having children. The white picket fence.
Which would make Ashley miserable. Ashley is a butterfly, drifting flower to flower, collecting as much pollen as she can—and yes, that was an innuendo.
I’m one-half of a love bird pair who can’t find a mate.
Or rather refuses to accept one you actually have a chance with…
Atticus Savage ruined me. He never meant to. It was the unfortunate consequence of sneaking into his penthouse.
It’s not like I was dumb enough to believe that he’d actually want a relationship, but since that night, he’s been cold, no longer greeting me with friendly smiles. Heck, he didn’t even call to wish me a happy birthday. He’s turned into another person entirely. A total stranger.
I tell myself that it’s for the best, that it will help me get over him, but Atticus was more than just a crush. He was the boy I built every girlhood fantasy around, and the only man I’ve ever loved. Him discarding me so casually after sex—my very first encounter—crushed my will to date.
Ashley casts a gaze that makes her intentions clear, and the cabana boy comes over.
Just great, I get a front-row seat to one of Ashley Benson’s awkward sexual advances.
